Jew hating journalist quits rather than apologize

Few articles on the Gaza conflict could be as deliberately misleading as the one, by veteran leftist shill and apologist, Mike Carlton who launched into a quixotic diatribe under the cartoon (below, and since removed), which can only be distinguished from Nazi propaganda from the 30s and 40s by virtue of the remote control, which was not available back then.

The Sydney morning Herald has apologized for the cartoon after a week of criticism and complaints, however Carlton has engaged in a vulgar diatribe against readers who have complained.  Some have been told to f**k off, been called pathetic f***wits, likudnicks, and a variety of other abusive terms by him.

The ABC has referred to this as “strident debate with his readers.” 

After numerous complaints about this SMH apologized on his behalf, then decided to demand that he do so and accept a suspension.  Being too arrogant and self-righteous to accept this he has quit his position.  Good bye and good riddance.

Australian media coverage of the Gaza conflict has largely followed the type seen internationally with most of the journalists embedded with Hamas and reporting on the war from the terrorist side of the border.  Reportage therefore is one sided and gives a false impression of aggression by the Israelis against relatively helpless Palestinians.

Most Palestinians are helpless, but are ruled by the terrorist group Hamas which sees advantage in launching rockets into Israel from among the civilian population, who cop the consequences.

Among Carlton’s more hyperbolic rating is:

 … Yes, Hamas is also trying to kill Israeli civilians, with a barrage of rockets and guerilla border attacks. It, too, is guilty of terror and grave war crimes. But Israeli citizens and their homes and towns have been effectively shielded by the nation's Iron Dome defence system, and so far only three of its civilians have died in this latest conflict. The Israeli response has been out of all proportion, a monstrous distortion of the much-vaunted right of self defence. 

It is a breathtaking irony that these atrocities can be committed by a people with a proud liberal tradition of scholarship and culture, who hold the Warsaw Ghetto and the six million dead of the Holocaust at the centre of their race memory. …

Carlton neglects to mention the tunnels through which Hamas launched attacks into Israel, which along with rocket attacks were the primary source of the necessity to invade.

His defense of Hamas appears to be based on the argument that their barrage was largely ineffective, owing to Iron Dome, which intercepted many of their rockets, more than 300 of which were reportedly defective to the point where they fell on their own population.  Incompetence in offensive actions does not make those actions excusable, nor insulate them from consequences.

There will probably still be a position available for him at the public broadcaster, The ABC, which has no worries about offending subscribers as the taxpayer picks up the tab.

Jonathan Green blaming libertarians for Abbott screwups

Cartoon; By Bill Leak 

The ABC’s election guru, Antony Green has had a real problem with minor parties and libertarians since the 2013 federal election.  While tending to be a bit confused as to what libertarian actually means, he is still a man who knows what he hates, and hates libertarians with a venom.

There is no truth however, to the rumour that the ABC had to employ a new staffer to dry Antony’s eyes after the election of Liberal Democrat, David Leyonhjelm in New South Wales.
But the ABC doesn't stop with the irrationality of Antony, They have a right little nest of Greens, all lefties, and all batshit crazy about the right.  The best known of the others is Tony who is best known for Q&A, a sort of circle jerk of Jonathan Holmes groupies in which a rightie is matched up against three or four lefties, Tony himself, and the studio audience. He doubles up on Lateline.
Then we have Jonathan, from ABC Radio National with a background of Fairfax, Crikey, public radio,  and editor of The Drum, which basically says it all.  He shares the values of the others, to the point where he makes the excuse for Abbott of, 'libertarians made him do it.'

In ruing the influence of libertarians/classical liberals (if only) he begins by lauding his ideas of the Howard government’s virtues of:

(1)          Being big spending centrists;

(2)          Flexibility of principle, and;

(3)          Putting political expedience ahead of rationality;

Here are some examples:

… If John Howard was anything, he was a conservative pragmatist; or perhaps even a pragmatic conservative. He was nothing if not flexible. A man with a gift for acting in line with conservative ideology, but also populism: matching the pursuit of small(ish) government and market theory with the interests and aspirations of a politically expedient notion of the ordinary Australian. 

Sort of a big-spending, albeit Tory, centralist. He was certainly not a politician who put ideology before political strategy, which increasingly seems to be a hallmark of the Abbott administration. … 

… Remember, of course, that it was Howard who went to the 2007 election promising a carbon trading scheme ... a piece of pragmatic politics that may well have conflicted with personal instinct and belief. 

And that sort of decision, that capacity to bend ideology to accommodate political reality, is what seems to be eluding the Abbott Government. Which might be tricky for them: it was the gift that kept Howard in power for a decade. …

He then wades into an attack on classical liberals and libertarian thought, which he blames for the current budget machinations:

… Howard, of course, had the great benefit of governing before the recent fashion for bright young Windsor-knotted think-tankers who style themselves "classical liberals", and plead a no-prisoners libertarianism that insists that government should work with an almost anorexic enthusiasm for the reduction of, well, government, as the sworn enemy of individual effort, and the devil take the hindmost. To the concerned bystander, the tendency is to create confusion with more time-worn and gentler expressions of the Liberal brand. 

And that's Tony Abbott's problem, to be governing in a time of fervour and impatience, a time when many in conservative politics are sniffing long-unresolved opportunity while taking in their inherited world with the steely glint of the one-eyed ideologue. … 

… Abbott won his one-vote victory over Malcolm Turnbull on a "climate change is crap" ticket, rallying MPs ideologically disposed to accept blogging over research, and who read the political responses to climate change as a crushing of individual rights under the weight of the eco-socialist collective. …

It is a little difficult to see where Green is coming from, although it is reasonably simple to see where he is going.  In the old irrational style of the left, he is using the term ‘ libertarian’ as an acceptable alternative to the adjectival use of the f*** word in polite society, although it is difficult to understand why he feels the need to do that on an ABC forum like The Drum.

On the climate change issue, libertarians in the main accept that the climate is changing; it has been doing that for millions of years.  Most accept that there is a possibility that some of it may be caused by human emissions.   What they don’t accept though, is the contention of Green and his fellow authoritarian shills that government has the competency to change the climate, especially for the better, and are really skeptical of the suggestion that it can be achieved by a new tax.

While libertarians are comfortable with expenditure cuts, there seem to be little rationality in the ones that are being mooted by Abbott and his crew.  If libertarian thought were involved, all departments that duplicate state ones would be abolished, or be reduced to a mere coordination role.

The Abbott proposals nibble around the edges of excessive expenditure, while instituting new, or increased taxes in a futile attempt to claw something back in what appears to be a Rudd/ Gillard class warfare style budget based on the hoary old ‘soak the rich’ concept.  The proposed wealth tax is the second bite of the cherry for Abbott, as he already intends to levy a surcharge on the most productive companies in the land in order to fund his misbegotten parental leave scheme.

To suggest that by calling an increase a temporary levy or a surcharge makes it something other than a tax increase is nothing more than an exercise in semantics.  As for the temporary part, it is worth remembering the words of Milton Friedman; “There is nothing so permanent as a temporary government program.”

Worse still; the wealth tax will only claw back a couple of billion of a forty + billion deficit, which expends his political capital in an exercise in futility.  His dad really screwed up in failing to tell to young Tony about pissing into the wind.

There is so much wrong with the Abbott proposals from a libertarian or classical liberal perspective that even Jonathan’s rather jaundiced view on libertarianism must be indicating that Tony is a dedicated statist and they are both on the same side.

If not, then the question has to be asked, just what part of, “We would never vote for an increase in taxes, and would never vote for a reduction in liberty,” doesn’t he understand.

Palmer, libertarianism, you’ve got to be kidding

Cartoon: By Pope 

It would be difficult to come up with a word that causes more confusion as to its meaning than libertarian.  To actual libertarians it’s relatively simple; a belief in fiscal conservatism, social tolerance, individual freedom, and limited government.

Among outsiders it varies from a reasonable understanding of the above, to right wing fanatics, hopeless utopians, selfish pricks, right through to the left wing journalistic interpretation; a suitable alternative to the adjectival use of the F word in polite society.

Peter Van Onselen of The Australian though, appears particularly confused on the issue when referring to the politics of Clive Palmer: 

… Equally, Tony Abbott must contend with the newly formed PUP, which primarily challenges the conservative side of politics. 

Clive Palmer is an odd mix of conservatism, libertarianism, social liberalism (witness his advocacy for onshore asylum-seeker processing) and self-interest. 

Nevertheless, there should be little doubt that his supporters hail more from the Right than the Left, and with that Palmer becomes Abbott’s problem, not Bill Shorten’s. PUP picked up a senator last weekend, which takes its Senate total to three, four if you include the deal done with motoring enthusiast Ricky Muir. …

There isn’t much to be confused about in Clive’s positions if you consider his origins and history.

Clive is an old-fashioned rump National Party dropout conservative and crony capitalist, who has created a populist party based on telling every audience what it wants to hear.  There is nothing whatsoever that is libertarian in Clive.

PUP lists five policies on it’s website: 

(1)          That his party officials may not be lobbyists;

(2)          Abolishing the carbon tax.  Libertarians would give this one a tick;

(3)          A nebulous statement on refugees that says nothing substantive;

(4)          A bizarre statement on ‘creating mineral wealth’, and;

(5)          A feel-good statement on wealth flowing back to where it’s created.

In the case of (4) and (5) he reveals his statist, big government agenda.

In the case of ‘creating mineral wealth’, he wants to utilise the minerals of Qld and WA, but wants to send them to the southern states, far from their origins and process them there. Apart from increasing transport costs to get them there, typically, he then expects incentives from big government to do it,

Libertarians tended to support the Lang Hancock concept of a privately funded railway from WA to Central Queensland, with processing plants and ports on either end, with Qld coal going west and WA minerals going east.

In the case of created wealth, a libertarian would favour not taking it out in the first place, rather than Palmer’s idea of taking it to Canberra, churning it through the bureaucracy, then sending what is left back to where it came from.

For the patient with time on their hands, PUP also has a huge quantity of press releases from the party for perusal.  It’s actually fun to go through and find out how many are contradictory.  This is probably the result of a knee-jerk desire to get something, anything, out there in relation to any piece of information in the hope of sounding good, or at least concerned in relation to it without really thinking it right through.

Van Onselen is probably a little justified in being confused; Palmer does that to people.  There is however, no excuse for observing an odd position or two that may gain the approval of some libertarians and assuming that this qualifies as part of that philosophy.  A broken clock gets the time right twice a day.

Libertarianism is a consistent philosophy of liberty and as result all policy positions are consistent with that condition.  If this is not the case, then the person or party is not libertarian.

Australia at #28 in press freedom

There has been some commentary in the libertarian and right wing blogosphere over the US falling to #46 in press freedom rankings in the latest assessment from Reporters Without Borders.

While the US Constitution has a guarantee of freedom of the press in its First Amendment, the reality is that over the Bush and Obama Administrations, there has been a considerable drop in rankings.  The depredations of the NSA and Obama’s ‘war on Fox’ are glaring examples.

Australia cannot feel too comfortable though.  While press freedom lacks a constitutional guarantee here and we are considerably ahead of the States, we are well down the rankings at #28: 

In Australia, the lack of adequate legislative protection for the confidentiality of journalists’ sources continues to expose them to the threat of imprisonment for contempt of court for refusing to reveal their sources. No fewer than seven requests for disclosure of sources were submitted to the courts in 2013 alone. …

This is not really much of an improvement on our #30 ranking during 2012 while Conroy and Gillard were pushing media controls including licensing journalists and a ‘fit and proper’ person test for media owners and a ‘super regulator to oversee the industry including bloggers.  It is also a decline from last year’s #26.

New Zealand currently sits at #9 and there is little reason why as a fellow liberal democracy with a similar geographic position and much in common, why we shouldn’t have a similar standard of freedom.

Gillard most productive PM?

Government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it 
got out of its way. – Henry David Thoreau

The fact that the article in the Guardian, “Was Julia Gillard the most productive prime minister in Australia's history?” was written at all is something of an indictment of the attitudes of the press, or at least some of it.  Productivity and government are mutually exclusive, as those nations that have adopted state control of their enterprises have found out to their dismay.

The Guardian not only argues that there is such a thing as a ‘productive government, but doubles down on a stupid idea by suggesting that it can be measured by the amount of legislative acts passed per day in office.  Given that such acts tend to be regressive to productive enterprises, or increase the cost of doing business, the conclusions reached are the complete opposite of what is desirable: 

How do we measure the effectiveness of a government? There are polls, both of opinion and at the ballot box, but these don't really offer us any measure of effectiveness. You can look at the economy and measure the health of the populace - and these are both good indicators - but are not wholly under the influence of the government of the day. 

One way might be to look at the ability of a government to pass legislation. Admittedly this is a quantity over quality approach, but it does offer us a quantitative measure of a government, political party or prime minister. Someone that gets a lot of legislation passed might be considered to be good at getting things done. 

I took all of the Commonwealth of Australia Numbered Acts and assigned them to a prime minister, political party, and parliament based on the date of assent of the act. This isn't entirely exact, as some legislation may be introduced under one PM and passed under another, though I believe it is a good proxy. 

From this dataset, I counted the total acts for each PM, party, and parliament. Then, I determined the number of days in office for each PM, and the number of days each parliament and party governed. Using these figures you can calculate a rate of acts per day, which accounts for different lengths of prime ministers' or governments' terms. 

The results? 

Julia Gillard had the highest rate of passing legislation with a rate of 0.495, followed by Bob Hawke at 0.491: ...

This is fairly indicative of the overly cozy relationship between the media and big government and the way in which the former has become the cheerleaders for the latter. 

These creatures of the state not only fail to understand the stifling effect of massive regulation on the economy, business, and the liberty of the people at large but actually mistake legislative over-reach for productivity, except when done by governments whose politics they disagree with.

Bring back George Reid and give him a hung parliament to make legislation more difficult than that which allowed him to pass a bill every 40th day. 

The Boston bombing and reactions

Our hearts go out to our American cousins over the terrible events at the end of the Boston Marathon, especially to the families of the dead and the injured.  It would be difficult to imagine any real motive for such a shameful and senseless act, other than a deep hatred of the American public at large.

There was no targeting of the authorities or any other group; rather the target seemed to be whatever random Americans and visitors happened to be in the way at the time.  9/11 made more sense than this.

The worst aspect of the event other than the casualties and grief entailed has to be the disgusting attempts to politicize it by the Democratic Party echo squad in the press.

 The injured were still being picked up off the road when New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof leapt onto twitter to claim that the Republican Party was to blame for blocking the appointment of the acting director of the BATF to director.  He seems to be indicating that the bureau would function more efficiently if the person currently in charge of it is promoted to being in charge of it.  Go figure.

If as he is claiming the organization screwed up and allowed the bombing, then the acting director should be fired, not promoted.  As he is the guy who oversaw Fast and Furious, he should probably be fired anyway.

Perpetual Obama shill, Chris Matthews has come up with the startling statement that domestic terrorists are from the far right: 

During live coverage, the Hardball host highlighted a possible explosion at John F. Kennedy's presidential library and thought this could be a personal attack on the Democratic Party: "...But going after the Kennedy Library, not something at Bunker Hill, not something from the Freedom Trail or anything that kind of historic, but a modern political figure of the Democratic Party. Does that tell you something?" (Police are now considering the incident at the JFK library to be fire-related.) One can only guess what it tells Chris.

This will come as quite a surprise to Billy (Boom Boom) Ayers and the remaining members of the Weather Underground.  Chris and Co though, tend to regard Billy as a 'student activist', or perhaps a 'social justice advocate' rather than a terrorist.

Media personalities for want of another more appropriate word, too numerous to mention have drawn attention to the fact that it was Patriots Day, tax day, the anniversary of Waco etc, and drawing the conclusion that it had to be a home grown home grown terrorists, preferably from the right.

The fact they seem to be missing in all of this is that that day happens to coincide with the running of the Boston Marathon, which happens to create a large number of people in a concentrated area, ideal for the purpose of causing maximum mayhem.  Perish the thought, but it is just possible that the idea was to bomb the finishing line of the marathon, rather than to pursue some political agenda.

In any case, a politically motivated operative would work with the objective of attacking the establishment to the maximum, while keeping civilian casualties to a minimum in order to keep the people on side.  Primary targets would tend to be government orientated, such as the IRS, BATF, FBI, police, etc, away from the possibility of causing civilian casualties.   Even Billy Boom Boom did that.

Then you have the conspiracy theorists such as Alex Jones.  Alex predictably thinks that it is an inside job. 

Added to this, there is Cynthia McKinney, who is shaping up into a nice montage of the political acumen of Maxine Waters, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, combined with the deep and incisive thoughts of Alex, to come up with the theory that it was something to do with the police department’s controlled explosions drill.  Apparently she has the view that the police bombed the crowd in order to practice the procedures involved in a real bombing. 

Palin, Al Jazerra Story; you can make this stuff up

Most of us are acquainted with the odd story about various press commentators using The Onion or other satirical sites as sources for their stories, something that causes considerable embarrassment to them.  Washington Post has just done the same thing with a post from the Daily Currant claiming that Sarah Palin had joined Al Jazerra as a host: 

The former vice presidential nominee confirmed today that she has signed a multi-million dollar deal to host her own shows and to provide commentary on United States issues for Al Jazeera, which is best known for its news coverage of the Middle East.After leaving Fox News, Palin said she was hoping to reach a broader audience with her message. 

When contacted by phone, Palin said Al Jazeera - with its extensive international network - offered her the best opportunity to broadcast to millions of people.“As you all know, I’m not a big fan of newspapers, journalists, news anchors and the liberal media in general,” Palin said. 

“But I met with the folks at Al-JaJizzraa (sic) and they told me they reach millions of devoutly religious people who don’t watch CBS or CNN. That tells me they don’t have a liberal bias.”

The Post has since pulled the item.  It seems that it was just too good a story to screw up with fact checks.

Meanwhile, Business Insider has labeled Palin’s tweets in response (above) a ‘rant.’

Former Alaska Gov. and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin ranted at The Washington Post and reporter Suzi Parker this afternoon, after Parker reported that she was joining Al Jazerra based on a fake story from a satirical website. 

Palin recently parted ways with Fox News, where she has been a contributor for three years with the network. The Daily Currant, a satirical website, published a piece on Feb 4 that said she was headed to Al Jazeera. Parker fell for the piece, which the WaPo later updated with a correction at the top of her post.

Reading through them gives the impression that she was having a little fun at the expense of the correspondent.

Quadrant Online slams journalistic bias

Cartoon: by Chris Muir (Day by Day) 

Julia Gillard’s announcement of an election in September has tended to increase the aggression of ABC current affairs hosts in interviews with coalition figures. To their credit though, they have been a little less obsequious towards the PM and Labor figures during the last week.  The latter is possibly designed to give some appearance of balance.

The ABC, being the bought and paid for government broadcaster tends to be the voice of big government and the left, inhabited by ideologues and creatures of the state.  Doubling down on this is the Fairfax media, once a great institution but on its knees both financially and intellectually, which has become little other than Labor shills.

Merv Bendle over at Quadrant Online has made a good case as to why these need to be confronted and possibly overthrown before we slip irrecoverably into welfarism and authoritarianism: 

The media gatekeepers in the ABC, Fairfax, etc, will fight tooth and nail to retain the dominant role they have usurped over the past 40 years. Nevertheless, they must be overthrown if Australia is not to decline even further into the authoritarian welfare-state morass within which the ALP and the Greens so joyfully wallow. 

As a Coalition victory in the upcoming federal election becomes increasingly probable, and with conservative governments in the major states, the time will shortly be ripe for a showdown with the leftist media and the institutional infrastructure that supports it. Senior and influential conservative parliamentarians need to recognize and effectively support a campaign to restore balance and objectivity. 

This will be a campaign that must be fought on several fronts and may become bitter, but it must be undertaken. Otherwise the next coalition government risks being merely an interim administration, keeping the seats warm while the ALP spends time constructing some ‘values’ around which its various factions, apparatchiks, and opportunists can coalesce before returning once again to rort and sack the country.   

As has been repeatedly observed by numerous commentators, the media in this country are dominated by an extremely well-entrenched elite that long ago embraced a radical environmental, authoritarian, and statist ideology. This extremist worldview has become the default setting for much of what passes for thought amongst journalists and media operatives in the ABC, the Fairfax press, government spin merchants, and academic journalism courses. …

The Fairfax problem is well on the way to resolving itself, with the company going out backwards.  It will either go broke and be sold up or be taken over by someone else who has the business acumen to understand that a media group that only caters to one side of the political spectrum will lose the entire other side and be a loss maker.

The ABC on the other hand with its rivers of taxpayers money to support it needs to be addressed in the near future.  Given the wide availability of alternative media, both in the free to air and cable networks, there is little reason or need for a government propaganda network.  There is no reason why the public at large should have to provide a free service to those who are too damn snobby to accept the offerings from commercial networks.

It should be sold off.

Mark Stein, Krugman, and the trillion-dollar coin

Mark Stein has an amusing take on the news on arriving back from a trip out of the country.  This includes the media falling for a story about a football player’s imaginary dead girlfriend, 23 executive orders designed by kids, and the rather ludicrous call for the minting of a one trillion dollar coin.

Back in the Reagan era, a Doonesbury strip was published in which Duke has arrived back from one of his mysterious trips away and was being brought up to speed on the Iran Contra affair.  After hearing of illegal arms sales to Iran with the proceeds diverted illegally to fund the Contra militants in Honduras, he rings his PA and asks her to check what medication he is on.

Stein reads it like this: 

While I was abroad, a Nobel Prize–winning economist, a Harvard professor of constitutional law, a prominent congressman, and various other American eminencies apparently had a sober and serious discussion on whether the United States Treasury could circumvent the debt constraints by minting a trillion-dollar platinum coin. Although Joe Weisenthal of Business Insider called the trillion-dollar coin “the most important fiscal policy debate you’ll ever see in your life,” most Democrat pundits appeared to favor the idea for the more straightforward joy it affords in sticking it to the House Republicans. … 

The trillion-dollar-groat fever rang a vague bell with me. Way back in 1893, Mark Twain wrote a short story called “The Million Pound Bank Note,” which in the Fifties Ronald Neame made into a rather droll film. A penniless American down and out in London (Gregory Peck) is presented by two eccentric Englishmen (Ronald Squire and Wilfrid Hyde-White) with a million-pound note which they have persuaded the Bank of England to print in order to settle a wager. One of the English chaps believes that simple possession of the note will allow the destitute Yank to live the high life without ever having to spend a shilling. And so it proves. … I always liked the line Mark Twain’s protagonist uses on a duke’s niece he’s sweet on: He tells her “I hadn’t a cent in the world but just the million pound note.” 

That’s Paul Krugman’s solution for America as it prepares to bust through another laughably named “debt limit”: We’d be a nation that hasn’t a cent in the world but just a trillion-dollar coin — and what more do we need? As with Gregory Peck in the movie, the mere fact of the coin’s existence would ensure we could go on living large. Indeed, aside from inflating a million quid to a trillion bucks, Professor Krugman’s proposal economically prunes the sprawling cast of the film down to an off-Broadway one-man show with Uncle Sam playing every part: A penniless Yank (Uncle Sam) runs into a wealthy benefactor (Uncle Sam) who has persuaded the banking authorities (Uncle Sam) to mint a trillion-dollar coin that will allow Uncle Sam (played by Uncle Sam) to extend an unending line of credit to Uncle Sam (also played by Uncle Sam). 

This seems likely to work. As for the love interest, in the final scene, Paul Krugman takes his fake dead girlfriend (played by Barack Obama’s composite girlfriend) to a swank restaurant and buys her the world’s most expensive bottle of champagne (played by Lance Armstrong’s urine sample). …

In fairness to Krugman, he is a witty satirical writer for the New York Times, who’s rather quirky and off the planet ideas are sometimes taken seriously by political pundits, possibly due to his Nobel Prize in economics.  He is great for filling the gap when The Onion or The People’s Cube don’t post. 

His endorsement of the trillion dollar coin should not be taken too seriously, given the terms he uses to argue for it: 

“It’s easy to make sententious remarks to the effect that we shouldn’t look for gimmicks, we should sit down like serious people and deal with our problems realistically. That may sound reasonable — if you’ve been living in a cave for the past four years.Given the realities of our political situation, and in particular the mixture of ruthlessness and craziness that now characterizes House Republicans, it’s just ridiculous — far more ridiculous than the notion of the coin.”

In other words, he is claiming that the very idea of Republicans opposing the will of President Obama (All heil the great leader) is absolutely ridiculous, and it is therefore sensible to do something ridiculous in response to this.

Government media gag opposed by New South Wales

Cartoon: By David Pope 

Freedom of speech is under sustained attack by the federal government in Australia.  Despite widespread public concern about section 18C of the racial discrimination act, under which columnist Andrew Bolt was prosecuted last year, the Attorney General has foreshadowed further legislation under which virtually any language including political discussion may be subject to legal action if it is deemed to cause offense.

Under this legislation, the burden of proof will be reversed so that it is up to the accused to prove innocence, rather than the plaintiff prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt.  If despite the law being loaded against the accused, the case fails, then the plaintiff is not to be required to pay costs.  It seems that the government does not wish to discourage frivolous complaints.

Meanwhile, the ongoing war against freedom of speech in the media is being stepped up, with a plan to strip newspapers of privacy protections unless they submit to ‘self regulators’.  The NSW Premier, Barry O’Farrell has put the federal government on notice, that this will be resisted: 

Premier Barry O'Farrell has revealed proposals expected to go before the federal cabinet next week could be in conflict with current NSW laws, and would be scuttled by the state government if they were sought to be introduced. 

Mr O'Farrell, in a letter to News Limited CEO Kim Williams, said he would reject any attempts by the Commonwealth to water down existing NSW media shield laws, which among other things protect the identity of sources, claiming such a move would be an "insidious assault on the freedoms of Australians". 

"I am alarmed and disturbed that these freedoms, which I believe are fundamental to a strong liberal democracy and robust free market economy, are under threat from Commonwealth actions," Mr O'Farrell said. 

"Plans by senior Commonwealth ministers for regulators with 'more teeth' in association with the context of proposals by the Commonwealth government's reviews are, in my view, antithetic in a liberal democracy and an insidious assault on the freedoms of Australians. … 

… Shield laws provide newspapers certain privacy protections under the Evidence Act in the pursuit of news stories and news gathering. They allow journalists to protect the identity of sources, which is invaluable in news gathering and exposing, in particular, the activities of government. 

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy's latest plan is believed to contain a threat to remove this protection unless newspapers subject themselves to a ministerial veto on who regulates their editorial complaint systems. …

With virtually all of the media giving coverage to the possibly illegal and corrupt, or potentially, reprehensible legal malpractice by the PM in the past, it is easy to see what this is really about.  It dovetails in nicely with Roxon’s attempts to control the internet and social media to help deal with those ‘internet nut jobs’ (the type of people who write blogs.)

Governments everywhere, would like to avoid any form of scrutiny, but the efforts that this one is making rival those of China, Russia, Iran, and most other dictatorial shitholes.