The Hobart Mercury, 16 October 2010
A 12-year-old ward of the state was prostituted to over 200 men. Tasmania’s Commissioner for Children produced a report pointing out what you would think would be the self-evident catastrophic failure of the state to protect this child. The only person to lose their job? You guessed it, the Commissioner for Children.
Breathtaking.
The Australian, 15 October 2010
In many ways, working out how to avoid buggering up the Murray Darling is a microcosm of the climate change debate, from which we can safely conclude that the Murray Darling is most likely buggered.
The diabolical challenge in this instance is to stop taking more water out of the river than is actually in the river, which you’d think would be straightforward if it wasn’t for the perfectly reasonable Not In My Bottom Paddockism of the people who will actually be required to take less water out of the river.
Julia has attempted to put off the angry mob brandishing pitchforks and flaming reports by conducting various reviews of the situation to be ignored in due course. I do wish her and the Murray Darling Basin the best of luck.
The Australian, 13 October 2010
Perhaps it’s just me, but navispopulusphobia is so last paradigm. Nevertheless, the ALP is pushing ahead with Julia’s well thought out plan to process Australia’s asylum seekers in East Timor, which is legendary for its boundless plains to share and administrative expertise, not to mention being a very long way from the electorates of Western Sydney.
The plan is that if exporting people to East Timor goes as well as expected (it’s only people smuggling if there’s some sort of virtual queue involved, it’s a bit complicated) we’re going to franchise the concept out to all sorts of Pacific nations that are also better at assessing asylum seeker claims than us, which is pretty much everybody except Nauru who have had their claim for Asylum Seeker Processing Status rejected on the grounds that we’ve paid a lot of money to build a detention centre there already.
Look, I told you it’s all very complicated, which is why it’s probably the humane thing to send asylum seekers overseas at enormous expense to have their claims heard properly rather than subject the poor bastards to our clearly hopeless bureaucracy at home. I’m sure they’ll thank us for it in the long run.
The Australian, 12 October 2010
It turns out that jet lag and guns don’t mix and Tony copped a bit of friendly fire in the foot during his tour of duty in Afghanistan. I’m sure that low bastardry is strictly forbidden under the New Paradigm Conventions and Julia’s not one to set a political, er, ambush. Shut up Kevin.
The Hobart Mercury, 3 October 2010