AU VOLEUR! Lefty Newspaper Caught Stealing Stories From Opposition

Not only is The Age newspaper very committed to distorting its news in keeping with the enviro-politics of its "partners" like Earth Hour, it seems some of its most senior journalists are also very personally attached to recycling.

Recycling other people's stories that is.

A couple of weeks ago, we noticed the Australian's Rick Wallace do an interesting piece on how recent share market woes had impacted on the state's asset base given how much it is exposed to financial markets through the investments of government owned insurers, super funds and the like.

While the headline number was in the billions, Wallace noted that it didn't have much direct impact on the budget but was more a factor that influenced how much of a dividend some of the government insurers could pay back to consolidated revenue.

While yawning through yesterday's Age, we were jolted from our slumber by seeing state parliamentary press python Paul Austin's by-line above essentially the same story, without acknowledgement of the original.

Off his game, some his colleagues are saying of Austin's recent journalistic form. Indeed he's definitely got something else on his mind other than thoroughly and professionally doing his job if recent cut & paste jobs from Hansard/Liberal State Council speeches and this shameful act of plagiarism are any guide.

Game on.

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DEEPENING: The Age's White Flag Flutters On Port Phillip Bay Channel Deepening

Earlier this year The Age newspaper was tooting all available horns on the Port Phillip channel deepening project when the first ship arrived to commence work that is so vital to Victoria's export economy and to keep going the steady flow of plasma screen TVs arriving to replace those smashed by wild Wii controllers.

Patriots will long remember scabby Gabby Coslovich's purple prose at the height of dredging hysteria:

Their protest flags were the colour of fire, standing out red against a liquorice sea. But their dinghies, power boats and jet-skis were like gnats buzzing around an oblivious colossus.

Equally oblivious colossus Age Editor-in-chief Jaspan, a man clearly in touch with his inner latte or perhaps troubled about any potential impact of the project on the multi-million dollar value of his near beach-front property in West St Kilda, assigned an astounding number of indulged journalists to the yarn, dredging up a bizarre and irrational scare campaign against the channel deepening and repeatedly splashing increasingly sensationalist claims on the front page.

Clueless Liberal Leader Ted Baillieu even bought into it, writing a similarly fear-mongering op-ed which Jaspan gleefully published.

Talk was that Jaspan was eventually prevailed upon by concerned advertisers, employer groups and the government to take a slightly more responsible look at the issue.

Looks like whatever they did worked.

THE SURRENDER OF THE JASPANESE EMPIRE

Buried on page two in yesterday's Aged, snuggled under the muslim prayer times and the bible quote of the day which must surely be published ironically for the amusement of the newspaper's dwindling cadre of inner-urban baby-boomer and beret-wearing atheist readers, was a tiny "In Brief" two par story on the arrival of the Cornelis Zanen which will remove contaminated sediment from the mouth of the Yarra. Arguably this is the most sensitive part of the project. And it has scarcely been mentioned on the once enraged pages of The Age.

The forty-nine word story even correctly noted "dredging has been under way since early February and no breaches of environmental limits have been recorded."

Check out the biblical quote above the story:

The Lord has heard my cry for mercy; the Lord accepts my prayer.

If Jaspan has a God complex, or indeed truly believes he is God, then the Spencer Street Socialist deity has heard the prayers of the little people - like The Premier -  who wanted him to pull his universe sized ego in and report fairly on the project that was largely uncontroversial outside the ranks of the Greens party and virulent Marxist forces.

The bizarre beat-up channel-deepening fear-mongering story is now being presented in proportion to its real significance, buried where the sun don't shine.

Game on.

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ABUSING POWER: Government Ownership Is Jurassic Park Politics // Will NSW Labor Backbenchers Consign Their Party To Extinction?

State ownership of businesses is an idea that belongs to another time. A time when courts were much less liberal about tolerating government regulation and interference with business. A time before Milton Friedman pointed out the obvious in gender specific terms:

When a man spends his own money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about how much he spends and how he spends it. When a man spends his own money to buy something for someone else, he is still very careful about how much he spends, but somewhat less what he spends it on. When a man spends someone else's money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about what he buys, but doesn't care at all how much he spends. And when a man spends someone else's money on someone else, he doesn’t care how much he spends or what he spends it on. And that's government for you.

GOVERNMENT OWNERSHIP NO LONGER NECESSARY

The fact that we still have government owned business enterprises in electricity, water, postal services and a whole range of other areas is merely because of the indolence and inertia of those in charge. They are a legacy of another time.

If we started with a blank sheet of paper, would we design a government that owned airlines, banks, telecommunications companies, shipping lines, electricity generators, airports or postal services?

Of course not. And most of them - particularly those once owned by the Commonwealth - have been sold to private investors and run perfectly competently and to considerable public benefit without the need to be publicly owned.

People look at the OC like we've sipped Free Market Kool-Aid when we talk about privatising Australia Post. But it's run like a business, it competes vigorously in a very wide range of markets with private competitors. The traditional postal service is of course a natural monopoly, with a heavy cross-subsidy for country and regional people. I doubt many Australians would object to that cross-subsidy continuing to be made by taxpayer funds. That alone does not require public ownership, it merely requires a payment from government to the operator of that service.

IEMMA'S PLAN IS NOT RADICAL

It's in that context that Morris Iemma's relatively meek and mild plan to sell long-term leases to private operators to run the state's electricity industry must be seen.

It's not that radical.

And the fact that Iemma has been willing to be his own man on the issue, doing what he judges to be good for the people of New South Wales, will probably ultimately count in his favour.

He has stood up to a powerful lobby and withstood the attacks of many of those who would normally be his strongest supporters.

NOW THE POWER BATTLE BEGINS

The NSW Right of the ALP enjoys a powerful reputation for being pragmatic and tough. Their ALP avoided a split in the 1950s, as a result it is the ALP that all the other states could have been, centrist, inclusive and a default majority. Anyone who thinks the ALP is like that in other states is mistaking recent election results for a normal state of affairs. Where Labor's Left is strong, its electoral prospects are inevitably doomed.

If Iemma's brothers in the Right continue to undermine their elected Premier and help the Opposition drag out the electricity discussion and delay the leasing process, it will not only damage that reputation but will ensure that they will not be trusted with governing after the next state election.

This privatisation enthusiast understands very well that the cause is not a popular one, it was briefly when the assets were being nearly given away at deep discounts in public floats. But now government wants full value and rightly so. So it's not a popular cause.

But standing up to unions is almost certainly quite popular, sadly enough. And Iemma has already shown that he is made of particularly strong steel, forged of this hottest fire. If he hasn't backed off now, he won't be.

If managed well, this situation could improve for Iemma. The State Conference result against the sale was inevitable. So too will be a disastrous election result if government backbenchers don't suck it up and vote with a majority of their colleagues in caucus to support Premier Iemma on this issue. Their future is in their hands.

Game on.

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HE CAN'T BE SERIOUS: Victorian Legal Aid Bureaucrat Tony Parson Plans To Keep Criminal Rioter and Cop Bashing Thug Julia Dehm on Public Payroll

 

Julia Dehm, convicted of viciously assaulting and permanently injuring a police officer at the G-20 riots, is still employed by the Victorian Government, in Legal Aid. Its head says he plans on keeping her on too.

The West Brunswick lefty hot-head with a violent streak is not exactly rebelling against society's cruel imposts on her. Dehm has enjoyed a life of immense privilege, attending elite private school Mandeville Hall in Toorak where the fees run to $16,000 a year for the hard-working parents. It is said to be one of the most magnificent settings of any educational institution in Victoria, in a beautiful old Gold Rush era mansion.

TONY PARSONS PASSES JUDGEMENT

The Sunday Herald Sun has extracted a confession from Tony Parsons, employed by Attorney-General Rob Hulls to run the state's system of Legal Aid that he plans on keeping her in her position of privilege as an Articled Clerk at the government agency.

Parsons' reasoning was so outrageous as to be beyond comprehension:

"Firstly, while she has been found guilty and been punished for a serious offence, her criminal behaviour was not the kind of conduct that would automatically exclude her from the legal profession (such as) an offence involving dishonesty," Mr Parsons said.

Nor would mass murder or gang rape offences either apparently. This is not about rules of legal ethics, it's about how public monies are applied and the public confidence in Victoria's system of Legal Aid.

It employs a lawyer with criminal convictions of a very serious kind, with one of her offences attracting a penalty with a maximum of ten years imprisonment.

BUT SHE PWOMISED

"Secondly, she has given me a solemn undertaking that while employed at VLA she will scrupulously avoid any situation which might bring her into conflict with the law."

A solemn undertaking, eh? Is he taking the p*ss or what?

So she won't be doing drugs any more when clubbing with her fellow West Brunswick leftards? Won't be going to any more demonstrations? Whatever. It's not about what she'll do from now on, it's about what happened when she attended the G-20 protests, in which many thousands of stupid but non-violent lefties participated entirely peacefully, where she and her coterie donned masks and other clothing designed to obscure their identity and launched pre-meditated attacks with missiles on the working people of the Victoria Police. One police officer was permanently injured and left unable to work as a result of Julia Dehm's actions.

Is such a person deserving of a cosy job on the Victorian Government payroll?

It beggars belief.

SHE COULD BE BASHING OLD LADIES, RUNNING OVER DOGS OR STREAKING AT THE G AND STILL KEEP HER LEGAL AID JOB // NICE ONE

"Thirdly, she has been punished for her offence by the courts. It is not VLA's role to impose an additional punishment on her."

She was indeed very lightly punished with a non-custodial sentence for bashing the police officer, riot and related offences for criminal damage and causing injury. By the same reasoning if she was a Minister in the government, she would not be expected to resign from that position of privilege despite being involved in this serious crime. It's laughable. By the same reasoning, she could have committed any crime of violence and got away with keeping her job.

Can you imagine if Dehm had have been involved in Cronulla riots about which all decent Australians were very angry? Her feet wouldn't have touched the floor, she would have been suspended the moment she'd been charged and sacked and denounced by her politically correct boss when convicted.

Because Dehm's crimes of violence were directed at "imperialism" and "world finance" (it's all very German 1930s stuff they carry on about isn't it?) at protests against a meeting of the G-20 group of finance ministers at the Hyatt in Melbourne, then that's somehow different.

There was no difference to Senior Constable Kim Dixon who had a barricade thrown at her by Dehm, permanently injuring her and leaving her unable to work and unable to push her baby son's pram, hang out washing and other routine tasks without suffering from intense pain. She cannot drive a manual patrol car or use a keyboard, essential skills for any police officer.

Dehm has got away with costing the police officer her job while Dehm keeps hers. It's not right.

UNDERMINING AN IMPORTANT PUBLIC PROGRAMME

It is the Victorian Legal Aid's role to ensure that all Victorians can get the legal assistance they need, even if they can't afford a lawyer. That's why we have legal aid and it's one of the areas of public spending we can enthusiastically support. If the state is good enough to bring people before the courts and accuse them of crimes, it should also ensure funding is available for their defence if the defendants cannot afford it.

But this whole arrangement requires the maintenance of a certain amount of public faith and support. The public pay tens of millions of dollars a year to maintain Legal Aid. It needs to be apolitical, uncontroversial and quietly do its job of protecting those without the resources to hire sleazy mob lawyers like Leslie Glick. Employing convicted cop bashers and serial rioters is not consistent with that role.

What Tony Parsons is risking here is not just his reputation but the public confidence in Victoria's system of Legal Aid.

Dehm must go.

Game on.

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