My time writing in this column and others has made me aware not to be led by rumour and innuendo but I think its time to call out for clarifications before the cancer of propaganda and cronyism is allowed to flourish.
I have been informed from a series of sources that Yammanto and Cosco and other projects are delayed because of the removal of Councillors.
Im sure the present administration would like to give their side of the case but what really concerns me is who is generating these accusations and their agenda.
Councillors are paid employees by us the ratepayer exactly as is the road fixer, the garbo truck driver, the dog catcher, the administration staff, and attain their positions with probably less qualifications that the ones mentioned but have the happy knack of populous approval of the part of a community.
So when I see snd here accusations of our city being held back , one can only assume the source is by the supporters of reelecting present councillors and keeping divisional representations.
I look forward to the Administration response but this type of strategy reeks of the cronyism that has flourished within divisions and must be cleared for the new administration to clear a way in 2020.
Go After the Shysters in Suits.
Get the Shysters in Suits
#bankingRC #letterstoQT #equality #justice
If Joe orJane citizen wander in to a business and steals we expect the common law to apply justice delivered.. Not so the higher you go up the socioeconomic ladder, it’s who can afford the best barristers and call on influential mates and call in a few favours.
That culture has continued with the Banking Royal Commission report with not one being held to account. Proven theft from pensioners, disabled, people looking for truthful advice, the dead, to name just a few all conned by shysters in suits and not one recommendation for the of true justice that applies to us mere working class punters.
We cannot allow two justice systems in this country and simply seeing the contempt the NAB top brass had to the Commission and participants demonstrated they were convinced they thought were above any accountability socially or legally, similar to James Hardy had to asbestos victims.
Don’t expect the present government to act as they identified where they stood 26 times until some within their ranks indicated they would cross the floor, but it’s not beyond average expectations that rule of law should apply to all identified as knowingly committing fraudulent actions.
The Unrecognised Aussie of the Year
By the time this goes to press The Australian of the Year 2019 would have been named and celebrated and well deserved. Some excellent nominations from all walks of life representing diverse parts of our great Australian culture.
But.. could we pause for second and look at the how we come to selecting the nominees and the criteria of those nominees.
I totally support the nominees but maybe we could extend the range of qualifications outside the professionals who get paid to promote their selected causes and give a chance to those who are not as high profile, the quiet achiever, the unknown Australian who looks after the elderly, the nurse or the emergency worker, the tradesman, the volunteer, who delivers the patients or food to outside venues who just does his or her thing often for a lifetime but will never get a chance at the big gig.
Yes I know we have local/state awards but that should not exclude a nominee just because of his or her personal status profile. We are at last considering the balance of men and women across our society so maybe we could look at rebalancing the nominee process.
And yes I do not want to be on the selection Panel
Our Women Set the Standard
Tis the time of the year to review 2018 and in sport no one could deny womens sport and sportswomen have carried the banner for our youth to follow.
The male contribution across most codes has been less than admirable and although the press may choose to overlook the facts but our papers and reports are littered with cheating, domestic violence, drug abuse, corporate deception, and general grubby behaviour from our so called professional athletes and clubs and yet not one life ban imposed.
The fact is, compared with professional players worldwide our lot has far too much time on their hands. Overpaid and overrated compared with players who compete overseas where 3 games in 11 days and sometimes less times is common. Imagine the cry’s of our prima donnas if their schedules similar, and just maybe they would not have the time to misbehave as they would be under constant scrutiny publicly and privately.
Secondly of greater concern is the influence of betting organisations are having on our sporting culture. Codes are selling their souls to these parasites with scant regard to what message they are sending to our future sportsmen and women inviting corruption into the sanctity of developing minds.
We have a lot of work to do to tidy up the shop in 2019 if we want to meet standards our women have set on the world stage don’t we?
Upholding Journalistic Standards
Maybe I’m one who should be honoured to get a run occasionally in this forum but I actually think public debate is good for democracy. To be honest I was one of the first to burr up about taking Courier Mail copy and pasting Bolt and Murray in my QT.
Over time I have realised it’s important to have them there as it allows the masses to judge where the benchmarks of journalism are set in Australia and it’s becoming quite clear those columns make people aware of the lower end of the debate.
When people aspire to take this country back to the Menzies era of white Australia, coal burning, climate ignorant, society and try and spin that as the good times do not have Australia and our grandkids future at heart.
The light has finally fallen on the conservative ranks that climate change is not a political football and the right wing nutters like Bolt And Murray are so far out of step with real Australians views their opinions will only add the present to governments struggle for credibility, so keep it up.
In regards to our ABC every government regardless of ideology has bellowed bias from its inception and that’s great for our democracy and the cries from the crackpots from the right who want to silence it highlights its importance of a broader perspective, on political and social issues which is not on the media barons agenda who desire to claim the entire debate on their networks and engineer it accordingly.
Merry Christmas and let’s get to the polls.
Less Overheads better for Ipswich Ratepayers.
As our Council administrators get on with their jobs and we see basically nothing has changed in regards to day to day life of ipswich ratepayers.
Council staff are getting on with what they do best, so the question at the end of the day is “are we over governed” when it comes down to this extra layer of divisional councillors and the costs involved.
Remember please Local Government is facility of State Governments, not a seperate level of government.
In a world where we everybody has to qualify with qualifications to make a living under and directly overseen by superiors daily, I think the days of people being given massive wages on a popularity vote is well out of step with current society standards.
We cannot revert to any part of previous administration practices or culture or nothing has been achieved out of this dissolution process as it will re infest.
Ipswich is blessed with people of exceptional talent as we have seen by the top 100 run by QT, all of which I’m sure many have the skill sets required from hands on experience to sit on a board or take responsibility for facets of our great city.
No they may not be good at giving ratepayers money away to boost their own popularity come election time, or grabbing microphones or headlines at look at me rags, as true managers of our great city need to be business and socially focused on the city as a whole, not just 10 little patches each with if we are to believe the spin each like Shiltz and no nothing about the rest.
Less overheads would be better for ratepayers and qualified not popularly Appointees would serve our new beginning better come 2020.
One Law for All
Keating said LAW IS LAW.
Australia went to a plebiscite on Gay Marriage and endorsed it overwhlmly and it was passed int Law accordingly. Agreed not all accepted the law but that’s democracy.
Im sure some people incarcerated disagree that robbing from the rich and giving to the poor is also conflicts with their faith in human equality but I’m sure any calls for special treatment would be totally rejected, the law is the law.
So, calls from faith based entities calling for the special right to discriminate in schools is similar to reclassifying the laws of theft into categories justified theft for those who honestly believe they are doing the right thing and illegal theft for the rest.
People choose to follow faith, some choose not to have faith, the law should apply to both regardless and none should have a divine right, or above common law.
Time for our Youth To Shine.
Oh dear, the older we get the more wiser we are supposed to become.
We will always get those who think the old days were the best, the lifestyles were simple, so that’s good enough for us today, why change, and Now that group has become a political movement.
I’m a 50’s kid and we lived a dream compared to our parents, but ask our parents now if they lived a dream you will get a completely opposite response.
I’m yet to see those pushing the Trumpian ideology of protectionism, anti climate, anti migration, anti equal women’s opportunities, racial and religious divide, provide one forward thinking policy. They see our countries future is to go backwards to the way it was.
The hate youth involvement because it shakes the foundations of what is your place in society , your too young to understand, the cry, forgetting that youth today has 1000 times the access to information that was only available when a newspaper was finished being read or when the radio TV was turned on.
At 21 I could not have a beer in a pub but I could go to war at 19. Only the well off could go to university regardless if you had the talent, as long as you had the money, while the state school kids had to fight for a single grant, and the trades were regarded as the lower end of the class divide., and the shop assistants and labourers were servants.
They will have you believe they were the good times, and they were for the privalaged.
I see a case in today’s world for the voting age to be dropped to 16 as those young people today know and are aware and mature as much as some of the so called adult punters that go to the polls and vote informal deliberately, or turn up just to avoid fines.
We’ve run our race, started wars, split nations, invented weapons, diseases to destroy the the planet, yet say to our youth your too young.
What utter rot.
The LNP’s Trump Faction hard at work.
I would be the last person to tell the LNP how to do their business, however putting that aside I do take issue with the media description of them having a “female” problem within their ranks.
The truth is they have a “male” problem and if you look at their team sheet the line up speaks fo itself. People like Abbott, Abetts, Dutton, O’Sullivan, supported by the Kroger’s support fed by Jones and Hadley and Sky after Dark no wonder the boys club mentality sets a very slanted platform for any person who wishes to contribute let alone a female.
Personally,politically, I hope they don’t change, dig coal, close the borders, deny climate change. Reject renewables, and bully women out of the way, but that’s not good for our nation, any nation, and Victorians agreed, Saturday.
We need to install a government/governments that will look to our future, provide adequate and timely infrastructure and jobs with plans for our kids and elderly that will accommodate our growing population, and stop the scaremongering and fabricating excuses for ideology incompetence, and the real question is the LNP prepared to pay price of keeping the Trump faction worth loosing women’s participation at the ballot box..
The baseball caps have it Scomo.
Our Lingo is Precious.
Since the last round of musical Prime Ministers I have noticed a number of suttle image and cultural changes that trouble me.
Firstly it’s the new baseball capped advertising billboard PM mirroring Trump, then comes the lingo where our Returned Service Men and Women referred to as Veterans, our Emergency Workforce of Police and Ambulance, Fire Fighters and support are blanketed with the term of First Responders, all lazy American terms or lazy English..
Lets not hand over our culture and language and reject Americanisation or we will be left with that word “bunch” as a description for anything plural instead of a bouquet of flowers.
It starts with the little things that are important if we are to remain who we are.
The Lateral Hazard 