ABC news is bread and circuses agitprop, nothing to see on matters of national importance

UPDATE: For those who can’t see the ABC footage we have a copy at dropbox, thanks to Panda.

UPDATE #2: This episode has now been pulled from the ABC website 13 days early. The ABC, with its billion dollar budget, has a website to show all its programs for 14 days after they run. But for no stated reason this one has been deleted after just one day. Did the ABC not like us discussing it? (H/t to Panda). Thank goodness we have a copy. [Screencap of current ABC page here.]

h/t to Peter Q. Thanks to Andrew M as well.

Dennis Jensen has  a lot to say on matters of national importance, but the ABC doesn’t ask him very often about those.

Tonight Dr Dennis Jensen was just the “Climate denier” target who had stepped over the line on another topic — breaking a sacred taboo. He might lose pre-selection. He might be out of a job. The ABC seem to think we care about the party political machinations more than the suffering of Australian citizens, which Jensen had been trying to get us to discuss. Instead the ABC went into great details of his dire career plight. That apparently was “the message”.

You could be forgiven for thinking the main point of the ABC news was not to discuss matters of national importance, to inform us of what we are allowed to talk about, and to let us know our sentence should we let slip the wrong phrase. Watch out, you too might get sacked, be exiled, and called nasty names “denier”. (Have you done a PhD? The ABC can erase that — not a doctor, just the brain-of-a-dog, a man who barks.)

As the only Federal MP who did a PhD in a science and engineering area, Jensen was one of the first to speak up, years ahead, about problems with climate science and our energy policies. He was right. He also has a lot to say on defence. But on climate, defense and energy policy, the ABC is more likely to ask Sarah Hanson Young.

There was no discussion at all today of the problem Dennis  Jensen was trying to get the nation to talk about, nor about his experience in South Africa. It’s a crime we can’t discuss that here (sorry)– it’s SNIP 18C and all — lest we offend.

Some Australians have shorter lifespans, poor health, and lower employment. The intolerant racists appear to be the ones distracting us from the real issues and stopping discussions that might help them.

Dennis grew up in South Africa. He fought against apartheid then, and he fights against it now.

Sell the ABC.

ABC “News” WA

Dennis Jensens Speech to Parliament

Note to commenters. You can discuss the ABC and the point of namecalling public broadcasters, or the marvel of free speech and how Australia doesn’t have it. On other matters, moderation may be unbelievably slow and comments may be deleted or fester in the moderation queue for days. Apologies. OpenAustralia (Dennis’s speech link) appear to want comments on those other topics there…

 

 

PS: Any youtube geniuses out there who can convert the ABC video to something that people overseas can watch? Thanks 🙂

 

 

9.1 out of 10 based on 77 ratings

139 comments to ABC news is bread and circuses agitprop, nothing to see on matters of national importance

  • #
    Pathway

    This is what you get when you allow a state run media. Defund it now.

    412

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      Yup!

      Show me how much I get paid, and I will show you how well I can perform … and would you like fries with that?

      150

    • #
      Ted O'Brien.

      Not state run, state funded!

      182

      • #
        Leonard Lane

        Exactly Ted. I know a little about ABC and how they treat some people after first praising them and congratulating them. I will never do an ABC interview again after that nice reporter turned into a “gotcha” reporter and attacked me the second the camera came on. But that is history and lessons learned.
        Here in the USA the taxpayers pay for national public television and public radio. Since day one they have been an organ against the USA and for socialists and communists. It is so unfair and evil to make USA taxpayers pay for their own destruction.

        160

      • #
        ghl

        Exactly. I just watched “Insiders”. EVERY item was a direct or indirect criticism of Tony Abbot. Unceasing.
        The Greek solution, shut it down.

        80

  • #

    More than so called missing heat the missing heat,I’d
    like to see gone, Obama from the reins of US government,
    Britain (and others) from the octopussy UN, the IPCC
    with its consensus science meme likewise gone, and gone
    the ABC. ‘The people’s ABC’ it is not… more like a
    lefties’ feeding trough.$$$$$$$$$

    381

  • #
    bobl

    Jo, I must comment HERE, even if the moderation is slow.

    Dennis is exactly right, and it is for this reason that constitutional recognition should not be done. Our constitution should be blind other than to reserve certain roles to Australian Citizens (or maybe as in the US) to natural born Australians.

    A specific point that needs to be added is that “indigenous” means natural born and there are Australians of many ethnicities that are natural born. For example I am a natural born Australian and so are my Mother and Father and their Mothers and Fathers. Frankly there is no other country I have a right to live in, I *AM* Australian, as indigenous as anyone else alive today. Yes, let’s address true inequity wherever we find it, but the same rules for every disadvantaged individual. Let’s stop with the communism, now called communitarianism where we try to bundle individuals into an identifiable groupings which allows the politics of race to play out.

    Socialism ironically is the basis of the new racism. It is moving away from the ideal of seeing the nation as simply a group of individuals forming a nation (classic liberalism) that is feeding this, ultimately it’s the government under pressure from the do-gooder activists who are doing the grouping and labelling that is tearing apart our society.

    Our Politicians need to stop the political correctness disease fuelling the discourse underpinned by 18C as the ultimate in Political Correctness enforcement. There should be no “Groupings” under our constitution other than.

    1. The Individual
    2. The City/Shire
    4. The State
    5. The Nation

    All citizens of this nation are equally Australian and we have a right to be treated as INDIVIDUALS with individual rights and responsibilities, any label other than Australian should be ignored.

    720

    • #
      bobl

      Ugg don’t know how that happened
      Allowable groupings in law should be limited to
      1 The Individual
      2 The FAMILY
      3 The City/Shire
      4 The State or teritory
      5 The Nation

      Our laws should be blind to anything else.

      Somewhere along the line the Family got deleted…

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      • #
        bobl

        ug ^2 can’t spell…

        50

        • #
          Peter C

          Good work bobl.

          I was reminded of these lines:

          We are one
          But we are many
          And from all the lands on earth we come
          We’ll share a dream
          And sing with one voice
          I am, you are, we are Australian

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3Sv5c7_Ops
          Watch the video clip, if you can and enjoy the ageing Seekers, our first and possibly greatest pop group.

          It is Bruce Woodley’s great contribution to building our Nation. It seems a bit Utopian now.
          Before we can build it any further we have to agree on something. The ABC and most of politics has not been helpful in that regard.

          370

          • #
            Ted O'Brien.

            Careful there! It’s a great verse, but they are a bit precious about who uses it.

            50

          • #
            Climate Heretic

            This verse should be part of our national anthem. The current one is pathetic.

            Regards
            Climate Heretic

            90

            • #
              Another Ian

              Time for another look at C.J. Dennis’s “Australaise”?

              40

            • #
              Rereke Whakaaro

              Do you mean, “Advance Australia Fair”?

              An advance, is borrowing money against future income.

              You are quite right. It is pathetic.

              92

              • #
                Ted O'Brien.

                I have always found the lyrics a bit cringeworthy, but on the musical side, it’s the second best in the world.

                10

      • #
        Yonniestone

        The family wont be deleted just reprogrammed by the Ministries of Peace, Plenty ,Love and Truth, the last currently under development.

        I despise the overuse of “Community” in all aspects of our lives, its just newspeak for collectivism and people appear happy to be reengineered.

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    • #
      Evo of gong

      I wholeheartedly concur with Dennis Jensen and Bobl. As a 5th generation Australian of European heritage I reckon I am indigenous as [snip… “anyone”]. Our constitution should be blind and there should be no recognition of any race if we are all Australians.
      I will certainly vote against any constitutional change that gives any race preferential recognition.

      00

  • #
    auralay

    Jo, the “breaking a sacred taboo” link does not seem to work for us up here. Was his sin to talk rationally about positive discrimination as in the second link?

    70

    • #
      David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

      Nor here Jo.
      Cheers,
      Dave B

      20

      • #

        Hmm. Are there any genuises who know how to convert the ABC video to youtube so others can watch?

        61

        • #
          Andrew McRae

          ( TL;DR: the answer is on the last line. )

          • First goal is viewing it on iView.
          I don’t know if auralay and David have experienced a browser incompatibility with the iview player versus a regional limitation on viewing ABC content.

          If it is the latter problem there may be VPN providers which can offer a way around the region block by temporarily gaining an “Australian IP address” for web traffic, but I haven’t personally used them and can’t give guidance there.

          If the problem is just browser incompatibility, the problem may be solved more easily. I have found ABC iView’s player simply does not work in Firefox, but it does work in the Chromium web browser, and Google Chrome is the proprietary version of Chromium. Downloading and installing either one may be the solution.
          Chrome can be gotten from Google, it’s pretty easy to find.
          Chromium browser is the open source alternative, very easy to install on Linux through the built-in package manager, but Windows users have to download the installer from the project web site. I believe the link to the latest version is here:
          https://www.googleapis.com/download/storage/v1/b/chromium-browser-snapshots/o/Win%2F379468%2Fchrome-win32.zip?generation=1457168967355000&alt=media
          I have never installed that on windows, but I would be surprised if it were any more complicated than downloading that file, unzipping it, and running /chrome-win32/chrome.exe .

          • Your second goal was putting it on YouTube.
          Unfortunately that involves violating ABC’s copyright so, even if there were some way to do it, I could not possibly advocate doing it. (That’s my coy way of admitting I haven’t figured out how to crack the Adobe F4M streaming system that the ABC are using.)

          Luckily it turns out that all of the above skullduggery is completely unnecessary because Dr Jensen has placed the interview on his own YouTube channel.

          100

          • #

            The full interview on RN is important. It’s where the sound bites came from.

            More important than that is his parliamentary speech to the Appropriations Bill: 22 Feb 2016 (click to see the YouTube)

            60

            • #
              Andrew McRae

              Thanks, I didn’t even look at his channel to see what else he’s posted.

              It’s great stuff. Never thought I’d see a polly labeling Australia’s indigenous welfare programmes as… you know… “the R word”, but there he is. Hard to disagree with the argument he presented.

              He’s been relatively consistent on the negative externalities of “positive discrimination”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CN5JrMIxZCk

              You can see he’s far too level-headed and brutally honest to be given a cabinet position, let alone PM. Still, we live in hope.

              40

              • #

                UPDATE #1: For those who can’t see the ABC footage we have a copy at dropbox, thanks to Panda.

                UPDATE #2: This episode has now been pulled from the ABC website 13 days early. The ABC, with its billion dollar budget, has a website to show all its programs for 14 days after they run. But for no stated reason this one has been deleted after just one day? (H/t to Panda). Thank goodness we have a copy. [Screencap of current ABC page here.]

                How curious?

                70

  • #
    Ross

    The ABC staff should be given this piece as compulsory weekend homework reading

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/03/04/the-long-whimper-of-climate-alarmism/

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    • #
      Another Ian

      Ross

      And maybe this

      ” Frank
      March 4, 2016 at 8:45 am

      Science is a process that only makes sense in a modernist worldview. It assumes an objective reality that may be measured, manipulated, understood and where reality is allowed to falsify an hypothesis, regardless how cool the hypothesis is.

      Post-modernism, which dominates academia, is antithetical to that worldview. Reality there is merely a community created narrative not capable of being understood outside the community. Thus, post-modernists can say, without shame, that science should serve the narrative of their culture and community, regardless of the objective reality because reality is irrelevant outside the community narrative. They can say, without shame, that the science is settled because the narrative is settled. And, the science is not settled until it confirms the community narrative.

      Thus, torturing the data ’til it fits the narrative, running simulations until the simulations fit the narrative is to a post-modernist, genuine “science.” The science is settled when it confirms the narrative. At that point, they can say, without shame, that their opponents are anti-science deniers. Their opponent’s real sin though has nothing to do with science. It is sin because it suggests that the community narrative be tested against reality. That is not even a legitimate activity to a post modernist as the reality cannot be understood by anyone outside the community and any tests of their reality from the outside are, at best irrelevant and more likely comprise oppression. Post-modernists just don’t accept reality to exist outside the community created reality narrative.

      I think it helps sometimes to pick apart worldviews because what a modernist means by ‘science’ is different than what a ‘post-modernist’ means. And if we pretend (or believe) we are speaking about the same thing with them, no actual communication occurs.”

      From

      http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/03/04/not-so-friday-funny-science-is-turning-back-to-the-dark-ages/

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  • #
    AndyG55

    All I can say is.. BRILLIANT SPEECH from Dr Dennis Jensen.

    I can understand the far-left anti-humanitarians in the Greens/Labor/ABC not liking the speech, but the truth has always hurt those stunted-mind little children.

    The ABC has again proven that it has a massive far-left bias.

    It should be broken up, and sold off to the highest bidder.

    Under Mr Abbott, there would be no chance of any dis-endorsement, but the weakling worm that is Turnbull would have similar ideas to Green/Labor/ABC

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    • #
      Glen Michel

      Little children and naïve. The wall and halls of acadème are very dark when it comes to open-mindedness.I know.Insulated from reason they are the epitome of ignorance.Unfortunately,they have held sway for far too long.As a response I have slipped ALA (Australian Liberty Alliance) brochures under the doors of the Humanities department offices.Outrage and gnashing of teeth will follow.

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      • #
        Manfred

        It’s always revealing to press the button guaranteeing faux and reflexive outrage. Years ago some of us as students put up posters in response to the hysteria of CND and the general histrionics about the US Airforce using RAF Greenham Common as a staging post for their bombing of Muammar Gaddafi in Tripoli. College walls were already festooned with the usual anti-war, anti-nuclear paraphernalia. It was my first lesson in how the left brokers no discussion or disagreement. Our posters were rapidly torn down and we, ingenuous to the last, righteously cited ‘free speech’ etc… were merely laughed at derisively.

        90

      • #
        cohenite

        ALA have a good set of policies including being the only political party endorsing Thorium as far as I know (no 6).

        71

        • #
          AndyG55

          Would be good to see ALA pick up a good number of Senate seats.

          Perfect outcome from my point of view would be Shorten wins HOR by one seat.

          Turnbull FORCED TO RESIGN.

          Libs (under a returned Mr Abbott) and ALA control the Senate. 🙂

          102

  • #
    Rereke Whakaaro

    Those who do not study history, are doomed to repeat it.

    The supposed purpose of State-Owned Broadcasters, is to present a fair and balanced view of society, as it currently exists. Most State-Owned Broadcasters have a Charter with words to that effect.

    But from there, it is only a very small step from reflecting society, and the current views of the population, to directing society, and manipulating the current views of the population.

    In short, practically all State-Owned Broadcasters eventually become propaganda factories that answer to the people who pay them, i.e. the Government of the day. And of course the State-Owned Broadcaster will be biased towards the colour of politics that best supports the State-Owned Broadcaster. All Public Employees have strong motivations to keep their jobs.

    But that is OK, because the private sector does the same thing. The Media Empires’ reflect the views of its Editors, who are arguably selected because they reflect the views of the people who own shares in the Media Networks, or advertise through the Media Networks.

    In that way Truth (with a capital “T”) becomes a commodity, of dubious value, that seeks to direct and change society, rather than simply reflect society.

    The meme of the day, is to create the meme of tomorrow.

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    • #
      Pegasus

      I agree with you to a point, when I buy or subscribe to a newspaper, I knowingly subscribe to its slant, I know the views of the editors etc. In the uk, there were right wing (if you could call them that), such as the Mail, and very clearly left wing, such as the Mirror. A plethora of other papers such as the Express, The Sun, The People, The Telegraph, The Times all provided people with their various shades of politics. Not so the ABC/BBC. We have no choice in the matter other that to not watch. Not watching does not translate to lack of viewers or reduction in funding, it seems to give them funding for alternative attempts to for opinion on the populace, such as the Internet.

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    • #
      Ted O'Brien.

      Broadcasting is hardly yet 100 years old, state owned broadcasting less.

      Up until the early 1970s, Australia had a non partisan public service. The public service was well educated, which gave it a conservative bent, and the ABC was part of the public service.

      Whitlam and Wran changed all that, sacking anybody in the public service who did not subscribe to their left wing policies, and replacing them with party hacks. e.g. in the NSW public service under Wran, there was a level beyond which you could not rise without a party ticket. Boards generally were reformed to give government appointees a majority.

      They also dramatically lowered standards in education.

      The CSIRO was one of the last to come under this partisan control in 1986.

      The ABC and the CSIRO have not answered always to the government of the day, because balance of power issues in the senate prevented the Howard and Abbott governments from making necessary changes. The original changes in management have carried through. It has been curious to see the recent changes at the CSIRO, which, while a step in the right direction, I thought were very clumsily presented. It should have been possible to knock more sense into the media.

      As for Truth. For a Marxist, the truth is anything he/she can persuade you to believe that will increase his/her power over you. Sadly, non Marxists who for fear of some kind of retribution refrain from defending the truth might as well be lying too. The case of Dennis Jensen here is an example of what we are facing.

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    • #
      Bruce J

      Just a reminder of the original purpose of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (now corporation). It was formed to provide radio services not supplied by private operators, i.e a basic service to the capital cities and, in particular, to regional areas which could not sustain the private operators. In my long gone youth in Western Australia, there were 2 city stations, 6WN and 6WF (the latter taken over from Western Australian Farmers Co-operative -Wesfarmers), and multiple regional stations, such as 6WA (Wagin) and 6GN (Geraldton) which basically provided locally based programmes like reports on the local stock sales and football matches, virtually independent of the city stations. Early ABC TV was city centric, but slowly spread into rural areas with programmes the commercial channels would not show.

      Then, the name change to “Corporation”, but whether the commercialisation was before or after the change I can’t recall, with which came the gradual change to a propaganda outlet. To sell it off totally now would adversely affect rural areas who may still have limited media coverage, so let’s get rid of all those operations wherein the ABC competes with commercial operators. be it radio, TV, digital or retail marketing.

      Oh well, dream on!

      30

    • #
      OriginalSteve

      I’d agree with that, although I do take time with a variety of friends i have to have a “pub chat” with them to put out there the reality of The Big Lie ( CAGW ) and why its wrong.

      Interestingly enough, people are slowly waking up seeing The Big Lie for waht it is, and how badly people are being messed with. Once you put it in real;itic terms of removing peoples freedom of thought or expression ( normal people so hate PC, its palpable ), dumbing down the prospect of future jobs ( another big issue ) and the imposition of a failed socialists state – its gets their attention and directs teh anger and frustration they feel and ddirect it toward where its hsould be – aimed at the leftists who would be “Let them eat cake” Emporers if they could….

      Nothing fires up an australian like telling them they have been done over and now they are coming for their kids futures too….

      10

  • #
    Steve McDonald

    Jensen is Hayes by the a.b.c.for the same reason they hate George Pell.
    They Both are climate deniers (that is a person that believes that there has never been such a thing as a climate,isn’t such a thing, and never will be a climate).

    Or they are climate change deniers(these are people who believe that the climate has never changed isn’t changing and never will change.

    They are a threat to their money spinners using global non-?warming as a base.

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    • #
      TedM

      “that is a person that believes that there has never been such a thing as a climate,isn’t such a thing, and never will be a climate”

      Finally someone says it. Spot on Steve, and doesn’t show the assinity of the commentators that use the term.

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    • #
      Ted O'Brien.

      Good luck with it. Let us know when it produces something.

      30

  • #
    Roy Hogue

    Such seems to be the fate of those who fight City Hall, as it has been for my lifetime and probably forever. Sometimes I think civil disobedience is the only way to beat it. But it takes thousands who will stick to the purpose through thick and thin until you actually get somewhere. It take willingness to go to jail and maybe worse; determination to keep on no matter the price and no small amount of bravery. And you have to pick the right fights, the ones that count and not be distracted by peripheral issues.

    When your caravan from Perth to Canberra drove around Parliament Hall a few times and then went home, thinking it had accomplished something, I wanted to scream at you for quitting after that one display of discontent. But I held by tongue and said nothing because I thought I lacked the right to speak. But what it takes, as Martin Luther King so aptly demonstrated, is sticking to it until you get their real, actual attention because you’ve become something they cannot tolerate anymore, cannot ignore anymore and cannot stop.

    I do not relish the thought. Neither can I advise you to do it. And if you do it, I cannot help from half the world away. But the idea is more and more on my mind, not only for the sake of Oz but for the sake of the things that make us America here at home.

    All I’m really certain of is that we’re losing the battle. And with it, our two nations.

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    • #
      Ted O'Brien.

      Civil disobedience. The people who blocked the streets (except in Queensland) in the 1960s and 1970s got to be the people who ran the country from the 1980s till the 2000s.

      In Queensland where the Bjelke-Petersen government refused to allow them to block the streets, it took them another ten years to gain control, and another fifteen after that to squander the economic advantages that the efficiencies of the Bjelke-Petersen government bequeathed to Queensland. Joh didn’t tolerate saboteurs.

      As for the “caravan”. We should weep for them. These were people with a just cause, but who were already on the brink of bankruptcy due to bad government policy. For many of them it would have been a last gasp. Their worst enemy was and is the National Farmers’ Federation, and the educated fools in that office. The NFF has for 30 years pushed policies which, in a growing economy, have halved the number of farm businesses in Australia, and placed the remainder in the position where close on another half are due to retire with no successors because subsequent generations had to move away to make a living. They developed a policy which they later named Unilateral Trade Reform, founded in Free Market Theory and employing Economic Rationalism. All products of a badly flawed education system.

      They haven’t the intelligence to notice that their policies have, by halving the number of small businesses in farming, brought the Marxists half way home, gathering pace.

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      • #
        Roy Hogue

        As for the “caravan”. We should weep for them. These were people with a just cause, but who were already on the brink of bankruptcy due to bad government policy.

        I understand that very well, Ted. I read all the threads leading up to it. Unfortunately what they did had no more effect than a fly buzzing around the room. So all I can say is what I said above, I do not relish the thought of civil disobedience. As for the results of prior civil disobedience, yes, that sword cuts swinging in both directions. But where were the good people who should have made the difference and kept things on track in Oz instead of letting the government be derailed?

        I don’t expect that you have answers any more than I have. But it points out the difficulty of the fight we both face. It will be tough, very tough. But the founders of this country risked their lives, not just property or hardship. Can I do less than they did? No.

        The question for all of us may turn out to be, is the goal worth the risk?

        30

  • #
    TdeF

    The ABC/SBS giant media machine is operating illegally on at least two counts.

    It exists only because Australians want utterly unbiased reporting so the information presented is independent of government and the ABC is restrained totally by its legally binding charter which it now openly flouts. Secondly we have many laws legislating that the coverage of any media giant should be restrained and the ABC flouts this massively on the basis that it is unbiased and government. In fact there is no reason the ABC should be considered exempt as the fear of a biased media has been realised.

    So on at least two counts the ABC is operating illegaly. Everything Australia feared when the many limits were put on media coverage has been achieved in ‘their ABC’. However as the ally of the former Minister for Communications and enthusiastic ally in deposing our elected Prime Minister and his entire government, there is a very public conspiracy which is equally reprehensible. The fears of parliament have been realised.

    The SBS itself is absurd, a creation of the multicultural move of the time of Al Grassby in the 1970s. At $300,000,000 a year, a complete waste of money in the age of the internet and satellites. Now the ABC wants that cash too. The ABC/SBS media giant a monster, closing regional centres while massively overpaid but government suparannuated executives seek Sydney harbour views.

    The ABC is now illegal. As Mark Scott himself said, we are not North Korea and do not need government media. Our ABC is worse, an illegally operated totally political activist organization without any restraint and taking $500 every year from every Australian family to spend on their activism without restraint, $650 including the SBS. Everyone has to pay. No one has a say.

    Enforce the law. Break up the ABC now. Even more, give us back our elected Prime Minister and not their partner in parliament. We did not elect Malcolm’s disastrous government. It has no mandate. The Australian government is being run through legal loopholes and the ABC is flouting the many laws put in place to protect us from misinformation, bias and state funded political propaganda. Sell it. Now, before Malcolm bring in his ETS, the insidious and devastating carbon tax only a Merchant Banker could love and against which the whole of Australia voted. As Mark Scott warned inadvertently, we are becoming North Korea.

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    • #
      el gordo

      ‘Break up the ABC now.’

      In an election year that would be political suicide.

      ‘Even more, give us back our elected Prime Minister…’

      If Mal loses the election then Tony would be quite entitled to become Opposition leader once again.

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      • #
        TdeF

        Why should we wait for Malcolm to lose the election?

        So after an election, for a total of five votes, we lost our PM. What part of democracy is that?
        What about all those people who thought they just voted for an Australian government led by Tony Abbott?

        What was the reason for removing Abbott again? Despite a roadblock in the Senate, he removed the carbon tax, the mining tax and saved hundreds of lives. What has his smarmy banker replacement done? Anyone?

        So no scenario where the Liberal party decides to give us back our elected government and wins an election?
        Rudd should not have been sacked. Abbott should not have been sacked. Why should we go through it all again? Rule by a quarter of parliament. Most of Rudd’s craziness was Gillard’s work, especially the boat disaster. All of Abbott’s alleged unpopularity was Malcolm’s very own ABC. Sell the ABC. It is judged a threat to freedom by our national laws. Why should it be exempt from the media restrictions on every other company? Who runs it? Not the people of Australia.

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      • #
        TdeF

        Tony Abbott is entitled to be Prime Minister today.

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        • #
          philthegeek

          Tony Abbott is entitled to be Prime Minister today.

          No he’s not. That’s the way it works, we dont actually have direct election of the executive here. His party voted to dump him in favor of a bright shiny thing with greater electoral appeal.

          Not that its working out very well for them but im sure they will get some actual policies from somewhere….sometime……maybe???

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          • #
            TdeF

            So what does entitled mean? He can be put back in a single meeting of the Liberal party.

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            • #
              philthegeek

              He can be put back in a single meeting of the Liberal party.

              Yup, he could be, and that would make him PM again.

              It would also put their polling back to where it was last year, bring back 3 word slogan instead of Malsplaining, and lead to much popping of champagne corks in ALP branches.

              TdeF, i think Sava’s book (grubby as it is) will put paid to Abbott’s already remarkably slim chances of leading the Libs again. Not so much the “perception of an affair” stuff but how he as PM was just so dependent on Credlin, and the other comments from within the Libs about just how useless he was at the whole PM thing.

              Time to write him off and move on.

              07

              • #
                AndyG55

                Savva’s book…

                roflmao.. will only be read by the far-left.

                Meaningless ranting garbage to anyone else.

                61

              • #
                clive

                These polls are nothing but “Rubbish”They were saying that Abbott would lose the Canning bye election.That was shown to be a “Lie”There is an old saying “Never conduct a poll unless you know what the result will be”

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        TdeF

        As for break up and electoral suicide, so what? We are hopelessly in debt! Interest payments are about $1.5Billion a month and growing while we are borrowing $1Bn a week and our Iron ore and Coal are plummeting. Like Greece, half the population effectively pays no tax and this ‘tax the rich’ now means working couples are the highest tax bracket. 350 CSIRO scientists are found to be doing nothing much and they just get shifted?

        Mass unemployment is coming or we can all serve coffee to tourists but the governments are all spending like there is no tomorrow. Then we have to house and feed 50,000 people who landed uninvited and most of whom do not even have a job after five years.

        Remove the exemption and the ABC would be broken up anyway, under National ownership and reach rules. To be practical, budget for the ABC/SBS/CSIRO/BOM to be self funding after five years, putting at least $4Bn cash back in our budget. Besides, who in the ABC/SBS votes Liberal anyway? If they carry enough weight to influence an election, that is the very reason they have to be cut back.

        No wonder Trump is winning. People are sick of the machinery of the political parties, Labor or Liberal. They should not be the ones who decide our PM after the election. In the US they would let Trump be elected and replace him with Cruz anyway. That is not democracy.

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          el gordo

          According to Morrison we are outperforming all other OECD countries and Tony Abbott just said we should support Malcolm because he is preferable to a Shorten government.

          As I said before, the strike force lemons dwarf auntie.

          ‘Mass unemployment is coming…’

          Nope, nothing in my crystal ball on that.

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          • #
            TdeF

            Over even a decade, you get nothing from Auntie. A strike force is the point of government, not television. As for a crystal ball, something a bit more practical please. Logic for example.

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            • #
              el gordo

              People in the bush are dependent on the ABC for their news and current affairs, there is little value for the commercial stations to replace auntie out back.

              Submarines and strike force fighters would become irrelevant if we gave up the American alliance and sat under the umbrella of the Middle Kingdom.

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              • #
                sceptic56109

                Why don’t you just pay the commercial stations to replace “Auntie” outback? It would be an awful lot cheaper, and if you don’t like the job they are doing, put out for tender again.

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      • #
        TdeF

        You did not copy. ‘Enforce the law.’ Why not?

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  • #
    Michael Hammer

    An absolutely brilliant speech by Dennis Jensen. Over the last 2-3 decades we have seen a relentless growth of left wing political correctness. A political correctness that is slowly tightening its grip, morphing from verbal intimidation to outright coercion and even legal action. Certainly open racial hatred is to be abhored and strongly discouraged but it has gone way beyond that on so many fronts. This has been a world wide phenomenon not, just in Australia, and citizens are starting to openly rebel. I strongly suspect this is why Donald Trump is so popular. I know it sounds fanciful at first sight but in effect he is standing up saying I will take the barbs and criticisms so that you can regain the right to say and think what you believe. If so he has the right to claim the title of liberator.

    Yes he maybe too extreme on some issues (for example some of his racial and immigration views), although I wonder how much of that apparent extremism is just for show, a deliberate polarisation against the political correctness of the day. If he achieves office you may well find he is far less extreme and a far better leader than many think. Just maybe the republican mainstream is against him simply because they are also indoctrinated with left wing political correctness.

    To me it feels as though western society is on a path to suicide – deliberate destruction fueled by guilt at our success. Maybe people like Jensen and Trump are what it takes to save us.

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      AndyG55

      Dennis Jensen seems to have a good handle on many things..

      … which makes it all the more bizarre that he backed Turnbull !!

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        el gordo

        Jensen is outside the tent, doesn’t believe in the veracity of AGW, so he won’t be getting the science portfolio any time soon as most of the front bench are brainwashed.

        Jensen backed Turnbull because Peta kept him out of Abbott’s office and Malcolm wooed him with the promise of things to come.

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      Roy Hogue

      Yes, you are about right on Donald Trump. But he’s a disaster in the making because he makes bizarre off the wall statements, isn’t consistent and above all he picks fights far to easily. That he let’s his anger get the better of him may be alright for someone who is a;ready rich and powerful and trying to negotiate a deal in his favor. But it will not play well on the world stage.

      The worst of it is that he hasn’t much chance of beating either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders in November. Polls show him hurting if up against either one and I’m sure it’s because of the things I just layed out.

      There’s another problem too. The Republican mainstream may have its problems but it also knows how to get things done if it want’s to. Donald trump hasn’t the slightest idea about navigating his way through congress or international politics.

      So what I’m trying to say is this. Our capitol may be in need of a good cleaning out. But we’ll never get to an ideal situation. And in the meantime there is a candidate with a proven ability to do exactly what’s needed on the national level because he’s done it in Ohio. He also has extensive experience in DC. I intend to vote for him if he’s still in the race when the California primary rolls around. His name is John Kasich. He’s ignored because of his low poll numbers and he’s in that position because he’s arguing good sense instead of anger, instead of just about everything else the front runners are doing.

      Maybe my vote will be wasted but at least my conscience will be clean. I cannot tolerate Trump.

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      • #
        el gordo

        ‘…he makes bizarre off the wall statements, isn’t consistent and above all he picks fights far to easily.’

        He sounds like the North Korean leader.

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        • #
          Roy Hogue

          Not nearly that bad. Trump is at least intelligent. The top man in North Korea acts like a spoiled child all the time. And I’ve no doubt that he is exactly that.

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        Manfred

        Trump may lack the political savoir-faire that people have grown brain-dead used to and indeed expect, and as a result he sounds dissonant and unscripted. The contrast is obvious. Some people have forgotten what relatively unprepared, unscripted, unrehearsed performance sound like. The counter point is the soft soap smooth pomposity of the politically-correct. And then, if the words sound compelling and persuasive, the reality remains unfulfilled and we realise once again how we’ve been worked over and massaged by the political elite. In the case of Obama, he promised change and no one asked him in detail what he meant by ‘change’. They sure got it though, by the politically-correct spadeful.

        Trump on the other hand uses a shovel and a jack-hammer. He likely knows how to delegate, and where to find the know-how. His business acumen and management may have prepared him well for the top management job. Underestimating Trump is a common enough and easy mistake to make. The GOP made it months and months ago when they laughed at him. A similar error of estimation was made on a national scale years ago, when Obama was over-estimated.

        And now that the Republican Party publicly posture and threaten to override the wishes of the electorate after the grotesque GOP establishment Trumpesque parody by a stunningly hypocritical Mitt Romney, the GOP betrays itself. The lady doth protest too much! By placing himself in the arena Trump simply provided a foil to a huge number of people that have learned to abhor the stench of the mealy mouthed. “You might think that, I couldn’t possibly comment.”

        He is perhaps well placed to make a substantial difference. One watches developments with fascination as one watches the progressives and the politically-correct clamp their sphincters into clenched vices of self-righteousness and fear.

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        Michael Hammer

        You may well be right Roy. Certainly his outbursts do seem over the top at times. The trouble is that Hillary Clinton is almost certain to be “more of the same” (ie: continuing political correctness) so which is the lesser of 2 evils? Is the risk of possible damage with Trump worth the chance of ending the ever tightening noose? Lets not forget, as president he would have lots of advisers who may be able to prevent the worst of his excesses.

        Of course its all academic for me since I don’t vote in an American election but I cant help wondering what I would do if i did have the chance to vote. At the end it strikes me that change involves risk but sometimes no change involves an even greater risk.

        Is there a chance that some of Trump’s apparent excesses are actually a well planned act specifically designed to make him stand out against this political correctness?

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        • #
          Roy Hogue

          The trouble is that Hillary Clinton is almost certain to be “more of the same” (ie: continuing political correctness) so which is the lesser of 2 evils?

          Michael,

          Hillary gets even worse. What I’m going to say is documented by State Department internal correspondence obtained by Judicial Watch in response to a FOIA request. So it’s not idle speculation or off the wall remarks made by anyone. JW has the paper document in their possession. My source for this is the Judicial Watch newsletter for February, 2016. I can scan the relevant page and paste it into a comment if needed.

          It turns out that Hillary’s top aid, Huma Abedin, sent email to other personal who worked with Secretary Clinton on a regular basis, telling them to be careful because Secretary Clinton was,

          …often confused.

          I won’t say senility directly but confused… …not in someone who may end up sitting behind the desk in the oval office. Her politics are bad enough without confusion over what’s going on.

          I would sure like to know the extent of her confusion. But I will not be confused, she is a deadly mistake about to happen.

          00

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        clive

        The way I see it,you don’t really have much of a choice but to vote for him.He is the only runner who isn’t a “Career Politician”The rest are just the same as we have here,quite able to lie to your face and not even blink.Time for some new blood.

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      ianl8888

      The MSM deserve a good, hard, metaphorical punch in the nose – that includes the ABC of course, but does not exclude the Murdoch stable

      To a very small extent, Trump is attempting this. The umbrage displayed at this by the MSM is quite cheering. Jensen has tried it but typically, and predictably, the MSM has deflected onto lesser issues that they decide is appropriate

      I do not expect any lasting change to the status quo, though

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    TdeF

    Why not make the ABC/SBS user pays like the evil Murdoch Foxtel?
    We know no one would pay. Those who watch it free would absolutely refuse to pay.
    and those who do not watch it would not pay. So it exists, gobbling up our budget and metastising, now trying to gobble up the SBS.

    Radio started in 1923 and state ABC television in 1956.
    After sixty years and so much free to air, including all the BBC material, we have to ask why we should pay?

    The Australian government created it. Now it should decide whether we should keep paying for a very politically active organization which is clearly not accountable to anyone.

    Unfortunately, our worst fears have been realised. Our state funded media organization is so big that no politician dare do anything about it. In the media world, it is the elephant in the room, crushing all opposition and now looking to grab the SBS money. The only thing the ABC lacks is a newspaper, but they have the dying Fairfax and the Guardian anyway. Any politician with the courage to say anything is doomed, like Tony Abbott. It is ‘Their’ ABC. No one dare touch it. Anyone like Jensen will be ignored or destroyed and the savaging of Tony Abbott continues front page, in case he rises like Lazarus or Howard.

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      TdeF

      Metastasizing. Too many letters.

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        TdeF

        Why not.
        In the next Federal budget, give these bloated unaccountable publicly funded organizations five years to be self funding.

        The ABC, SBS, BOM, CSIRO. Now that would take $3.3Bn cash from the budget plus all the public servants who supervise all this and all the superannuation obligations like the CSIRO’s 14% super scheme. All these are creations since Federation and the Commonwealth should stick to defence, customs and excise, its original roles. Not news, weather, industrial research and get out of education and health and go back to the original roles at Federation.

        Sure the ABC/SBS would have to advertise. So? The BOM would have to work out how to make money with selling the weather (a no brainer) and the CSIRO would have to get some real work which society would buy, like the CSL, Telstra, Commonwealth Bank, all the State Banks etc. It would be wonderful to have these 10,000 public servants having to justify their own existence by doing things people actually wanted. Or get a real job.

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    I am a bit puzzled by your odd solution to this problem. Why sell the ABC? Of course it is failing part of its mission: to give impartial news, unaffected by commercial or political interests. Unfortunately it is not impartial these days. But selling it might lead to different and maybe worse problems. And we’ll never get it back.

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    • #
      TdeF

      So what’s the rest of the mission? Why should every Australian contribute to $1,300,000,000 a year plus the superannuation obligations, so $1.5Bn to have what exactly? Impartial news? What else? BBC like Peppa Pig? What exactly do we get for all this free unaccountable cash that we will lose? Regional stations and news? Going anyway. The ABC has given up all pretence of being Our ABC.

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        el gordo

        ‘Why should every Australian contribute to $1,300,000,000 a year plus the superannuation obligations, so $1.5Bn to have what exactly?’

        Its a pittance compared to the F35A strike force, its going to cost the taxpayers $17 billion and now that Canada has pulled out its going to cost even more.

        There needs to be a non violent revolution in the ABC and SBS newsrooms, to eradicate the red green blob and replace it with old fashioned reporters who go after the truth. The people need to be told that they have been seriously brainwashed and for obvious reasons its up to auntie to enlighten them.

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        • #
          TdeF

          A pittance? Over 15 years we get the most modern airforce in the world, along with many other countries including Canada. For the same money over the same time from the ABC we get memories of Peppa pig. Buying something is different to paying for nothing.

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      Retired Now

      I understand they have structured the ABC so that it will never have to be accountable and they can make up the rules as they go along as they have internalised all so-called checks and balances. That way they can claim to be impartial because their internal checks say so! As it can never be made accountable by the politicians again the only way to deal with it is to cut off the money supply. We will never get it back. Who wants an unaccountable money grabbing, career troughers for life pushing extremist socialism at the tax payer’s expense?

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        el gordo

        ‘…the only way to deal with it is to cut off the money supply.’

        There has been talk of a SBS/ABC merger to cut costs, sharing facilities and avoiding duplication in externals, such as competing for the same football game.

        Auntie is bloated and needs a better business model.

        ‘SBS was born frugal, is a lean organisation with flexible workplace arrangements, best-of-breed outsourcing, and has leveraged new technologies far more effectively than the ABC. The ABC has a lot, lot further to go.

        ‘For example, for every $1 that SBS spends to reach each TV audience member, the ABC spends $3; and SBS delivers double the amount of TV per TV employee compared to the ABC.’

        Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/media-and-marketing/abcsbs-merger-economies-would-be-dead-on-arrival-20160226-gn4doc.html#ixzz41zxaMYWl
        Follow us: @smh on Twitter | sydneymorningherald on Facebook

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          TdeF

          You miss the point and quote the SMH?. It is not about whether the SBS would be better under ABC management! It is whether Australians in 2016 should be spending $300Million on ‘ethnic’ media in the first place. The ABC agrees. What the ABC wants is the cash. They will close down the SBS. Why are we paying for ethnic media or any media? Why not pay nothing at all? Let the market supply the need and user pays.

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          • #
            el gordo

            ‘Let the market supply the need and user pays.’

            Okay, I’ll pay that, but what of the social and political impact of closing them down immediately or even over five years?

            ‘Why are we paying for ethnic media or any media?’

            As a growing multicultural society they thought it was a good idea at the time, but on reflection it may have reached its ‘used by’ date. The communications revolution has changed everything.

            There is no political will to crush the public broadcasters, its too much of a hot potato and conspiracy theories would be rife.

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            sceptic56109

            As I said upstream, it makes enormous sense to sell the public broadcaster and buy programming for rural areas.

            Tax-paying private broadcasters are being throttled by horribly partisan government broadcasters who have an obvious bias favoring anyone who likes bigger government. The endpoint looks a lot like North Korea.

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    doubtingdave

    Its a classic tactic of the political left and the media that they control, to indulge in “RACE-BAITING” tactics against their opponents , it happened here in the UK with constant racially themed denouncement of Nigel Farage before and during election time , and its a dirty tactic employed by the democrats against Trump in the American elections , and yet its a tactic that backfires most of the time , both Farage and now Trump have seen their popularity serge after these attacks ,because most people belong to a minority of one form or another and just want to be treated equally and get along with one another and be known first and foremost as fellow Americans or English or Australian’s , i’m sure that Dennis Jensen will also find his standing and popularity increase too in spite of , or even because of this race-baiting attempt from the Australian leftist media

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    Ron Cook

    Hi Jo/moderator,

    This is a bit on topic and a bit off so I’m happy for it to be transferred to “Weekend ???threaded”.

    The ABC ideology infiltrates all MSM (apart from the likes of Bolt who sadly might leave free-to-air and go across to Sky TV) right down to Local rags. I live in Warrandyte, Vic., the link below is to our town paper. There is a local group called “WarrandyteCAN” meaning Warrandyte Can affect “climate Change”. The article is an ad for the showing of the film “This Changes Everything” and a forum on Super Funds investing in fossil fuels. The headline “A Denier’s Nightmare?” points to the author’s belief that the Paris talks were a success.

    See page 30 of the paper.

    http://issuu.com/warrandytediary/docs/diary_feb16_digital/33?e=1

    But it goes even further. I’m an analytical chemist (inorganic) and a member of the RACI. I opened the March issue to find a 4 page article called “Busting Myths, A Practical Guide To Countering Science Denial” including a side panel called “Myth Busting climate change fallacies” authored by, guess who, one infamous John Cook.

    FYI I’m NOT related thank God.

    Dr. Jensen and the likes of us “rationalist” (refer the late Bob Carter) are up against the might of all “media” in their relentless left wing push to control our lives.

    R-COO- K+

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      Ron Cook

      Ooops March issue of “Chemistry in Australia”

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        bobl

        Ron,
        You really begin to wonder if it’s all a dream, when rationalist physical scientists such as chemists who know full well that melting a kg of water ice costs 334 kJ per kg will accept that papers claiming 300 cubic km of extra melted Antarctic ice P/A can be due to a mere 1/2 watt per square meter – IE a Christmas light worth of energy in a 1m x 1m x 10km 10,000 cubic meter volume of air free to convect. Or that same 1/2 watt can evaporate at 2257 + 85 X 4 = 2597 kJ/kg for water @ 15 deg enough water to increase rainfall by 20mm across the entire earth’s surface as the IPCC claims while still retaining the temperature differentials necessary to drive the melting. (let alone doing both of these things AT THE SAME TIME)

        I am just amazed that any science literate person can give this any credence at all.

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          bobl

          Or for that matter stay silent amongst the claims of ocean acidification!

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          OriginalSteve

          Well during WW2 , ( paraphrasing here ) if a russian soldier was found not to throw themselves directly at a machine gun to prove Soviet ideology was all conquering, they would be shot by the political commisars.

          It seems that science has been infiltrated and rotted out from within by the new commisars.

          Logically, once they have control of science, media and politics, the Communists’ mocking of deniers will take on a hard edge and political trials will start not long after that.
          [Snip. speculation that will take us far off thread.- Jo]

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  • #

    The latest jobs in Broome have actually just been filled, 5 supervisors and 45 Green Army participants, mostly planting trees with an economic and financial return, in a commercial orchard type of venture on leasehold, pastoral and native title land. This is ground-breaking and will allow outstations and communities to be free of government funding in the future.

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    Rod McLaughlin

    Climate science paper accepts hoax glaciology paper: http://cliscep.com/2016/03/03/a-feminist-glaciology/

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  • #

    I’ve always been a big fan of the ABC program Landline, a program with a 24 year history. It’s hidden away at around Midday Sunday, when no one’s watching, and then repeated on 24 at 11PM Sunday, also when no one’s watching.

    Each Sunday they have really good stories, and unlike the Current Affairs programs of 7.30 and Lateline, with 5 to 8 minute pieces from comprehensively leftist biassed presenters, Landline, which runs for an hour, will just do around three maybe four main articles.

    It’s hard not to recommend anything on the program, because most of it is good, but last Sunday they had two outstanding pieces.

    One of them was an interview with Barnaby Joyce, and I urge you all to watch the whole interview. Now this is indeed a man we might be able to have hope for, because he says what needs to be said, will actually answer questions, and has a no nonsense attitude, and no wonder the media keep trying to make him out to be a loose cannon, because he takes no cr@p from any interviewer.

    I’ll just link into the Barnaby Interview, (at this link) which runs for almost 15 minutes, but when that finishes, I also urge you to watch the main piece of last week’s program, the first piece for the show. To get to that, just click on the Home tab and when the page comes up, click on that top title Saltwater Drovers, which runs for around 20 minutes.

    Trust me, you will enjoy both pieces.

    Oddly, ….. THIS is what the ABC should be really all about.

    Tony.

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      Annie

      I used to enjoy Landline years ago before we moved back to England although didn’t manage to that often; difficult timing. Same now since returning here. Will try again after what you wrote Tony.

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      • #

        Annie,

        Because the ABC is now such a huge conglomerate, the show has its own website.

        The whole program is put up on that website, usually around Midday on Mondays, so if you don’t see it at the usual ridiculous timeslots for the first run and replay, then you can scan through the articles and watch them at your leisure.

        Incidentally, I’m sure some of you have noticed how the program ostensibly title The News is running ads during its half hour of news for upcoming programs, Monday, usually a 2 or 3 minute piece on what is on Four Corners, and on most nights usually an intro piece with the trailing sound bite from the News reader that you can see more on tonight’s 7.30.

        On Fridays, there’s an ad for Landline.

        Go to the ABC site right now and there’s two of the main articles there which are lead in ads for this Sunday’s Landline.

        Tony.

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    Retired Now

    What really irritates me is that we can’t have a conversation about the content of Jenson’s statement on the Appropriation Bill as linked above without incurring the wrath of lefties who would invoke the offense card and 18C. I guess Jenson can say what he needs to say in parliament but couldn’t say it outside and we cannot even discuss it!. Frankly I think that is bizarre.

    So apart from monthly emails to my MP and to some other MPs I don’t know what to do about it. Basically I didn’t vote for a leftie PM, nor a warmist, nor a do nothing person, but a I got a PM who managed to encompass all of thse qualities. And largely because of the media witch hunt. So I have told my PM that my vote is dependent on seeing him do something for conservatives in this country. Where does a centre right person go now the Liberals are so far to the left one cannot vote for them?

    I would have no problem bringing the budget under control – cut out all the jobs for the troughing leftie groups – ABC, SBS to go, CSIRO and all those groups paid to do “support and policy development (i.e. leftie policy development) in education, health, etc. Plus groups I’m not allowed to state because it might offend people. I think that all government departments should have to meet firm KPIs. This business of having reference groups rather than committees so they don’t have to actually achieve anything is just one example of massive waste of time, money and staff resources.

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    Turtle of WA

    Hang on, Jean Jacques Rousseau coned the term ‘noble savage’, and he was a lefty! Jensen is criticising leftist utopian ideology. Do they get that? Or are they just feigning offence? Or both?

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      Matty

      Methinks Dennis may have been pitching it more for the offendible lefties than at the lifestyle.

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    AndyG55

    OT, but isn’t it nice when papers come out that inadvertently show the utter stupidity of trying to curtail human CO2 release.

    https://eos.org/research-spotlights/characterizing-interglacial-periods-over-the-past-800000-years

    This one comes up with the old “CO2 is stopping the world going into another glacial period” idea. 🙂

    In which case.. more CO2 please !!! 🙂

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    pat

    for those who can’t watch the news item by ABC’s Jessica Strutt, here’s ABC’s Laura Gartry doubling down on the “outrage”, and also getting the entire story wrong, along with Robert Isaacs.

    Jensen DID NOT liken indigenous communities to “noble savages”, he criticised people (like many at the ABC) who see them as such.

    as for ***”idolised”, Jensen would have said “idealised”, but not to worry:

    4 Mar: ABC: Laura Gartry: West Australian of the Year says Dennis Jensen ‘not right man’ for Liberal Party
    The West Australian of the Year Robert Isaacs is calling on the Liberal Party to disendorse federal MP Dennis Jensen over his comments about remote Aboriginal communities.
    The Tangney MP sparked anger last month after likening remote aboriginal community residents to “noble savages” in a speech to parliament.
    Dr Isaacs said West Australia Aboriginal people were outraged by the comments…
    Mr Jensen has often courted controversy, particularly as a climate change denier.
    But his comments that taxpayers should not have to fund the “noble savage” lifestyle choices of those living in remote indigenous communities have been widely condemned…
    Mr Jensen said he would not apologise for using the “noble savage” phrase.
    “If people actually had an understanding of where noble savage comes from, it’s not a derogatory thing at all, it’s an ***idolised perspective,” he said…
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-04/dennis-jensen-robert-isaacs-noble-savages-stoush/7222708

    as an aside, whilst Rousseau has become associated with the phrase “noble savage”, he never used it in his own writings:

    Wikipedia: Noble Savage
    The phrase later became identified with the ***idealized picture of “nature’s gentleman”, which was an aspect of 18th-century sentimentalism…
    Contrary to what is sometimes believed, Jean-Jacques Rousseau never used the phrase noble savage…
    In fact, Rousseau arguably shared Hobbes’ pessimistic view of humankind, except that as Rousseau saw it, Hobbes had made the error of assigning it to too early a stage in human evolution…
    “If Rousseau was not the inventor of the Noble Savage, who was?” writes Ellingson…
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage

    it’s futile criticising the infantile nature of ABC journalism. they are no doubt writing about what they perceive as the next “outrage” as we sit here commenting on the above rubbish.

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    pat

    another ABC outrage:

    4 Mar: ABC: Patrick Wright: New York Times criticises CSIRO climate science cuts as ‘deplorable misunderstanding’
    In an editorial titled Australia Turns Its Back on Climate Science, the Times said the federally-funded science agency’s shift in focus made no sense.
    “To do this at the expense of research and monitoring — undermining the search for commercially viable solutions that CSIRO proposes to join — makes no sense,” the editorial said…
    “The decision … demonstrates a deplorable misunderstanding of the importance of basic research into what is arguably the greatest challenge facing the planet,” the Times editorial said…
    The World Meteorological Organisation released an unprecedented statement last month condemning the decision.
    “Normally as a UN agency we would never intervene or interfere like this, but this is just so startling and so devastating that we have to take this stand,” director Dr Dave Carlson said…
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-04/australia-turning-its-back-on-climate-science-nyt-editorial/7222830

    above links to the “Csiro”-filled NYT editorial:

    excerpts:

    Larry Marshall, a Silicon Valley technology entrepreneur and venture capitalist who returned to Australia in January 2015 to take charge of Csiro, explained the change in the agency’s mission by saying that climate change was now a settled question “and the new question is what do we do about it and how do we find solutions for the climate we will be living with.” The decision did not come entirely out of the blue: Australia’s national climate policy has been in political flux for more than a decade, and in May 2014, Csiro’s budget was severely cut and almost 1,000 positions were eliminated.
    But climate scientists were stunned by the severity and illogic of Dr. Marshall’s decision…
    Lead scientists from major United States organizations, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the NASA-sponsored Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment, have begun quietly urging the Australian government to reverse course. At the very least, the government should suspend the changes at Csiro and allow an independent review of whether they are in the best interests of Australia, the Southern Hemisphere or the earth.
    (A version of this editorial appears in print on March 4, 2016, on page A22 of the New York edition)

    lol.

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    pat

    an outrage NEVER reported on by the ABC, even though it would make sense to warn Australians of such scams:

    4 Mar: Irish Independent: John Mulligan: Revenue moves to have carbon credit trading firm wound up
    The Revenue Commissioners is seeking to have Dublin-based carbon credit trading firm Celestial Green Ventures wound up.
    The firm, which is headed by chief executive Ciaran Kelly, bills itself as being involved in rainforest preservation in Brazil. By preventing deforestation, it generates “carbon benefits” which can then be sold on the voluntary carbon market to entities that want to reduce or offset their emissions…
    The petition is due to be heard on April 4.
    Celestial Green Ventures moved to a larger premises in Dublin in 2012 and announced plans at the time to hire 30 staff. The telephone number at the office was not operating yesterday, while efforts to contact the office and Mr Kelly by email were unsuccessful.
    http://www.independent.ie/business/jobs/revenue-moves-to-have-carbon-credit-trading-firm-wound-up-34510119.html

    reminder:

    17 Feb: UK Mirror: Firms selling worthless carbon credits shut down for “one giant scam”
    The 19 companies were put into compulsory liquidation by the High Court after victims were fleeced by ‘boiler room’ cold callers…
    http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/firms-selling-worthless-carbon-credits-7389240

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    pat

    Fairfax shares the ABC “outrage”.

    hard to pick the funniest moment in the Ross Peake/SMH piece below. is it –

    the “anonymous” scientist speaking of mutiny;
    Spradbery who can’t find the staff at Black Mountain (were they hiding from him or down at the pub?);
    Hugh Tyndale-Biscoe of Hackett – “one of Australia’s most famous wildlife scientists” – channeling Donald Rumsfeld;
    Hamilton’s claim the cuts “caused great consternation in the global climate science community”; or
    Cribb’s “The climate people who’ve got the bullet are modellers, modellers don’t make you a lot of money.”

    4 Mar: SMH: Ross Peake: CSIRO risking international ridicule over cuts to water and climate research
    The atmosphere at CSIRO’s Black Mountain laboratories is “mutinous”, a current scientist says.
    “This is an attack on public good science and core CSIRO values.”…And the mood among staff will get much worse unless Malcolm Turnbull is prepared to reverse the cuts…
    “The organisation is in chaos and IT witch-hunts of staff ‘leaking’ or dissenting are in progress, apparently,” the scientist says, speaking on the condition of anonymity…
    Fairfax Media went to former heads of CSIRO and other long-serving and retired staff in Canberra to gauge the implications of the cuts.
    Former CSIRO senior scientist Dr Philip Spradbery says the Black Mountain site is “like a morgue”…
    The entomologist worked for CSIRO for four decades including 20 years at the Black Mountain site where he witnessed staff morale decline…
    Visiting the national insect collection recently, he was struck by the changes at the Black Mountain site.
    “The mood – quite honestly, the word I used to describe it to colleagues was, a morgue, not a nice word to use but it was very unpopulated, very few people around. It seemed to lack any vibrancy. In the old days you’d be bumping into people in corridors all the time,” he says.
    “I think it’s a function of the number of staff who have gone and the people who remain are few and far between.”…
    Hugh Tyndale-Biscoe of Hackett, one of Australia’s most famous wildlife scientists: “As a businessman, Larry Marshall thinks we now know sufficient about climate change and CSIRO must redirect its resources towards mitigation. He is wrong.
    “It is imperative that CSIRO continue to study what is happening in the Southern Ocean as profound changes begin in the Antarctic ice sheets and glaciers.
    “These are the great unknowns – even unknown unknowns – that we ignore at our peril. While mitigation is important, it is more the province of politics and law than first order science.
    “Since the business model for CSIRO has so comprehensively failed, the government should seriously consider restoring the structure that worked so well for so long.”…
    Nationally-recognised author Clive Hamilton who is based at Charles Sturt University’s Canberra campus, says the CSIRO cuts have been noticed around the world and have caused great consternation in the global climate science community.
    “People have been emailing me asking ‘What’s going on there? We thought things would change under Prime Minister Turnbull, but they are getting worse’,” he told Fairfax Media…
    Long-term CSIRO watcher Julian Cribb says the latest round of cuts is a tragedy.
    He was a journalist at The Australian before working in public affairs at the science organisation. “It’s a very hasty decision to cut a whole lot of public good science in favour of science that’s really just rats and mice, dollar-funded science, short term, low rent science basically,” he says…
    Cribb sees the cuts as an attempt to appeal to the anti-climate faction within the government.
    “I think they find it easy to sacrifice that part of science because it doesn’t have much of a political constituency within the government. There are no Liberal backbenchers springing to their feet, waving a sheaf of notes about it and protesting about it because they’re very poorly educated, they just don’t understand climate change, so it’s an easy decision to make.”…
    “The climate people who’ve got the bullet are modellers, modellers don’t make you a lot of money.
    “It’s for the nation and it’s for perpetuity, it’s knowledge that will be used one hundred and a thousand years from now, it’s got almost infinite value for Australia and here we are, cutting it off at the knees…
    As a member of the taxpaying Australian public who funds CSIRO, I say Larry Marshall has not the right to do that with our science.”
    http://www.smh.com.au/act-news/csiro-risking-international-ridicule-over-cuts-to-water-and-climate-research-20160301-gn826x

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      ianl8888

      … unless Malcolm Turnbull is prepared to reverse the cuts…

      Cassandra says …

      Larry Marshall is likely looking for action back in Silicon Valey now

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    Another Ian

    Jo

    Not from the ABC but news for Tony in Oz and others to marvel at

    “We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans”

    http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2016/03/we-dont-need-no-564.html

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  • #
    Peter Q

    Not a Youtube genius, but here’s that part of the ABC WA news – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oC_un-nmH4&feature=youtu.be

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    • #
      Random Comment

      Great job Peter. Thx.

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    • #

      Thanks Peter! All the more handy now that the episode was pulled early off the ABC site.

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        OriginalSteve

        SBS once pulled an episode off its web site for “fact checking” ( and never went back up…) after they realized that the recent ex-President of Indonesia said quite matter-of-factly that the Indon Intel Agencies ran the local “terrorists”….whoops….cat out of bag….

        That episode went down faster than beer in a dust storm…

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    handjive

    Armageddon Update:

    THREE DAYS LEFT: Freak supermoon, eclipse and asteroid on SAME DAY ‘signal end of world’

    “The looming event has sent online doomsday predictors into a frenzy, particularly as NASA admits it is uncertain of the orbital path and has given estimates as close as 19,000 miles away to as far as 11 million miles.

    The US space agency has also changed the DAY of the pass with the initial date being given as TODAY, March 5.

    Now NASA says it will be on Tuesday, March 8.”
    . . .

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      philthegeek

      The US space agency has also changed the DAY of the pass with the initial date being given as TODAY, March 5.

      ” The observations, from archived images provided by the NASA-funded Pan-STARRS asteroid survey, enabled scientists at NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, to refine their earlier flyby and distance predictions, reconfirming that the asteroid poses no threat to Earth. ”

      Nice what they can do with archive stuff in terms of tracking origins and orbits.

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      tom0mason

      My question for NASA is (and always has been) if an asteroid, meteor, any large extra-terrestrial body was predicted to actually hit the earth what would NASA announce and exactly when?

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      Annie

      Oh goody! I needn’t do the ironing.

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    The Backslider

    Shouldn’t we be looking at the latest UAH? The alarmists are gonna have a field day…..

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      • #
        Andrew McRae

        given that 2016 is likely to be the hottest year in the satellite record, the satellite trend — like the surface temperature trend — appears to be speeding up.
        The phantom slowdown in the last of the big global temperature datasets is gone.

        I said it before and I… don’t need to say it again.
        Is it a generally human foible that people are blind to their own hypocrisy but alert to it in others?

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        • #
          The Backslider

          Not sure how they can say it was a “phantom slow down” when the latest paper from their own side of the fence shows that it was very real.

          Now we only need a single month of data to prove we are all gonna fry.

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          • #
            AndyG55

            I’ve been wondering where the spike from this El Nino was. Well here its is.

            Let’s see what happens once it subsides.

            I’m reckoning that the “plateau” will return, longer and stronger, and if the current Sun is any indication, temps could just drop down to those around 1979, making the past 38 years just a small bump with a couple of spikes.

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    philthegeek

    ABC really dropped the ball on this one. Its not exactly news that Jensen’s career is on the skids is it.

    He’s pretty much done SBA as a parliamentarian and his local branch has been trying to dump him for years (grass roots democracy in action) but kept getting trumped by his connections to the fed machine.

    Good chance for them to do a bit of renewal.

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    • #
      Peter C

      ABC really dropped the ball on this one. Its not exactly news that Jensen’s career is on the skids is it.

      He’s pretty much done SBA as a parliamentarian and his local branch has been trying to dump him for years (grass roots democracy in action)

      Really! What do you mean?

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    ScotsmaninUtah

    Politicians do not understand people

    Having read the article and watched the video it seems
    that what Australia is experincing is parallel in many ways
    to the American Indian problem and to the German refugee issue
    where a seperate society has been created by legislators.

    The left seem to think that “everyone” is equal and we can all get along because the state knows best.
    The idea that you can make a person into a successful citizen whether they want to or not is very dictatorial and draconian

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    ScotsmaninUtah

    [snip repeat comment]

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    There is no correct language you can use on the ABC. They will simply pick up one something whatever you say and rip out the race card regardless.

    I got a little of my own back on their Facebook the other day where I called the ABC CEO and “unconscionable racist” who sought to “diminish or extinguish racially diverse views in the media”. For his proposal to merge with SBS. The most hilarious part, it took 17 likes before someone went…. hang on a sec, your being sarcy arnt you? Made my day to see them falling for it…. 😀

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    Peter C

    I have sent a request for an explanation from the ABC about removing this program from I-View.

    “”This episode is no longer available on iview.
    Programs are normally available for 14 days.”

    Published 4 Mar 2016. Withdrawn 5 March 2106.

    What was the reason? It was suggested that I should watch this program which contained editorial comments about Dr Dennis Jensen. It is not available on 5 march 2016.

    Could you give me an explanation?”

    Lets see if I get a response.

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    ScotsmaninUtah

    There are lots of similarities between the head of the ABC and the president of Turkey.

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    TomRude

    What is the most shocking here is the banal use of the term “climate denier” by the reporter.
    Very worrying…

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