It’s supposed to be order in the House, but last week it was chaos in the House.
Why, because an inarticulate Prime Minister resorted to signs, pictures and placards to try and get his point across.
The Government from Mr Rudd down seems to be rattled, so when not using props both the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister resort to personal abuse rather than just the usual political invective.
Whether its sloppy Joe, or mispronouncing Laming as Lemming or Patterson’s curse - or me in a yellow jacket.
The language certainly is not parliamentary.
Standing orders require the speaker when making a ruling to have regard to previous rulings of other speakers as well as the established practices of the House.
The House of Reps practice says he should give a completely objective interpretation of the standing orders and precedent.
Problem is one of his predecessors said no signs - and that was his dad, the former speaker Jenkins Snr.
What happened to working families, Mr Rudd?
By now you may have seen that 15,934 dead people (estates) received tax bonus cheques of up to $900.
But maybe you do not know that 17,907 people with an overseas with residential address also got one.
But a hardworking small business person, who because of the recession made a loss and paid no tax, did not. Nor did thousands of self-funded retirees.
But I’m sure they will all feel better knowing that prisoners did receive a cheque. Is this fair?
And of course you have the printing and posting costs. Would you have guessed a spend of $4.6 million plus a call centre costing $21.4 million to handle calls, including those to manage “unmet expectations”(disappointed non-recipients) and a further $15.06 million for marketing the splurge.
Who would have thought you needed “media management” to advertise a give-away.
Robbing Gillard to pay Wong is wrong
How fair dinkum is the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Education about her sincerity in pushing the education barrow?
We hear lots of bleating about how committed she is to education spending and the so called “education revolution”.
How is it then that she has agreed to $2.5 billion, yes billion, being transferred out of the Education Investment fund (which is simply the Howard Government’s Higher Education Endowment fund containing $6.2 billion).
That $2.5 billion was supposed to be transferred to the Education Fund by June 2009. This was the promised plan in the 2008/09 Budget, and legislation was passed requiring the amount to be paid.
But the budget for 2009/10 takes that same $2.5 billion and transfers it not to the Education Fund but to a Clean Energy Initiative.
Here we have the theft of money from the Education Investment Fund with the concurrence of the Education Minister Ms Gillard. This is a clear case of robbing Peter to pay Paul or should I say robbing Gillard to pay Garrett or perhaps I’m wrong it’s to pay Wong.
Thank God for the Salvos
The Salvation Army does a fantastic job and for the Red Shield Appeal I am pleased to wear the red apron and carry the white bucket with the Red Shield emblem.
There are more and more people hurting, unemployment is up and that includes in my patch, but people are incredibly generous.
And the comment “they helped me once and I’ll never forget” comes from the most unexpected people.
My patch for the Salvos is as Chairman for the North East Sydney Region and my thanks go to my zone chairman, many of whom come from Rotary and the hundreds of collectors who were out there doing a great job.
On collection day we banked $176, 000 with more to be banked. This was an increase of 16 per cent over last year. Across Australia the total banked at the end of collection day was $6.3m.
Thankyou fellow Australians for your generosity. It will enable the Salvos to continue to care for those of us who need a helping hand which comes willingly and without being judgmental.
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