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Which film do the experts acknowledge ‘kick-started’ the revived Australian film industry twenty years after Menzies effectively abolished it, in the early 50s? Which two great iconic male film stars were in it, one old, one young, at, respectively, the …

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ANDREW LEIGH MP
ACTING SHADOW TREASURER
FEDERAL MEMBER FOR FRASER

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP INTERVIEW
SATURDAY, 19 APRIL 2014
CANBERRA

SUBJECT / S: Tony Abbott breaks yet another promise on pension cuts; Kevin Rudd; Climate Change.

It’s possible the Liberals don’t know yet what damage they’re in, but I suspect they do.

Consider the figures, or the figures we thus far know about.

In an age of tightening of belts, Campbell Newman charges Di Girolamo five thousand dollars for a mere conversation, and Sinodinos charges him, and the taxpayer, twenty MILLION dollars for…let’s see…persuading O’Farrell to sign a deal, which involves the portage of sewage, and half a BILLION dollars gratefully received.

Attorney General George Brandis thinks he is Voltaire, but actually he is a hypocrite. When he wants to, he uses authoritarianism to shut down a debate on the way the Tony Abbott government deals with asylum seekers. And then, when he wants to, he accuses the Opposition and others of using the same authoritarianism to shut down debate on climate change. Both The Guardian and The Age carry a report of an interview George Brandis […]

It is very, very probable Abbott has met Di Girolamo more than once. He is a major Liberal donor and money-raiser. And to say he never met him, though he met me a dozen times, and dined with me thrice, goes against all common sense.

And it is moreover certain, quite certain in my view, that Nick Di Girolamo will become, henceforth, the Brian Burke of the Liberal Party.

Anyone seen eating with him in the past five years, or standing on a wharf with him, or on a boat deck with him, or accepting, as Campbell Newman did, money from him, money in thousands from him, or, like Sinodinos, millions from him, will be toast.

I suspect the underlining of the word ‘all’ in O’Farrell’s letter to Di Girolamo, a self-incrimination that no sensible politician would contemplate, is in different ink to the handwriting.

I ask a forensic expert to look into this.

(From Drew Forsythe)

Ralph Fiennes’s film about Dickens’ affair with the actress Ellen Ternan (involving, as the Claire Tomalin book revealed, a public separation from the wife who bore him ten children; a denial in The Times that sex was involved; a born-dead bastard child, quickly buried and covered up; periods of depressive madness, his and hers; a knighthood foregone; chill glances over cigars at the Club) can be compared, as the work of an actor-director, with Citizen Kane.

The Guardian has judged him as ‘’politically incorrect to the point of dementia’’

New Statesman said Abbott represents ‘’politics at its most crass, exploitative and disturbing’’

UK Labour MP Paul Flynn called him ‘’a bigoted airhead’’

It is possible what happened was this. O’Farrell signed on to Gonski, enraging Abbott, and signed on to NDIS, enraging Brandis, and refused as well to sell off state assets, enraging Hockey, and these three power-wielders intrigued against him. He favoured gay marriage also, and they wanted him gone. He was a crablouse in their pubic hair and they wanted him gone.

The tradition of Easter, including it pagan antecedents, does not make any real sense here in the Southern Hemisphere. We are in Autumn, heading toward Winter.

Our seasons are out of joint with their cultural underpinnings. Still it was interesting, I thought, to hear that the Anglican Archbishop of Melbourne espousing the importance of culture by suggesting that it was a good thing that Aussie Rules, unlike the other football codes had not scheduled a match for Easter Friday. This can be fixed, the real prevailing materialist cultural imperative will see to it.

Can someone please explain why WordPress would bring out a new version the day before Easter? Would it not have occurred to them that if something was wrong there would be no one around to fix it? Apparently not. Version 3.9 has at least two sets of bugs: The much vaunted improved visual editor does not work on many themes and when you change something, the widgets in the sidebar disappear. Visual editor This is […]