The Final Pacific Solution

Heard an interesting interview with Kevin Andrews on AM this morning:

ALEXANDRA KIRK: So, is your preferred option then to send them back to Indonesia, rather than say even the Pacific solution of sending them back to Nauru?

KEVIN ANDREWS: What we want to do is this, and that is to send a very clear message to people who are wanting to jump the queue and to, particularly, people engaged in people smuggling operations, that it’s simply not on.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: So, do you believe there’s a clearer message if you send the Sri Lankans back to Indonesia rather than to Nauru?

KEVIN ANDREWS: We want the greatest deterrent effect possible. If they were able to go back to Indonesia and therefore be processed under the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, that obviously sends a message to the people smugglers in Indonesia that this is not something that’s going to work. But if that’s not possible, then we’ll look at the other options.

Who exactly are we deterring here? Most refugees probably haven’t even heard of Australia – they’re just trying to get away from some of the most oppressive governments in the world.

The smugglers then? We give them a free trip back to Indonesia. They’ve already been paid by the refugees. No charges are laid, not even a slap on the wrists.

If there’s anyone out there who actually supports this ridiculous policy, please have a listen to Richard Fidler’s interview with Mortezza Poorvadi.

Verity Firth vs Rochelle Porteous

I got off the rails a bit with the NSW election project, but all is forgiven now as we head into the final 25 days of the circus. I was mistaken earlier in thinking that I resided in the district of Drummoyne – after the recent redistribution, the electoral office hasn’t updated their maps, and I am in fact located in the slightly-more-interesting seat of Balman.

The last sitting member of which was one Dawn Fraser.

The district of Balmain was abolished in 1991 to form the all-new district of Port Jackson, which was in turn abolished to make way for the all-new district of Balmain. Make up your bloody minds. No wonder 25% of the people casting absentee votes at elections have no idea what district they are enrolled in.

Anyway, back to the politics.

Ms Fraser retired from politics after Balmain was abolished, and the new seat of Port Jackson was won and held by Sandra Nori for 16 years. With her retirement, and the subsequent name change, the seat is up for grabs.

Candidate #1 is Verity Firth, current City of Sydney councillor. Now the City of Sydney council has a lot of ugly people on it, but Verity really takes the cake here. Plus, she’s a lawyer and a member of the NSW Labor Party. I think she’s gonna struggle to get my vote.

Candidate #2 is Rochelle Porteous, and she is no portrait either. She is a councillor on Leichhardt Council, and is married to an Italian man, which will probably get a lot of the Haberfield/Leichhardt vote. Rochelle needs a 7% swing to become the first NSW Greens lower house member.

Candidate #3 is Peter Shmigel, a loud-mouthed New Yorker who is the ugliest of the three front-runners. His policies include criticising the Labor Party, and putting up posters of himself all around town. On the plus side, he’s a supporter of cyclists in the area.

Now, I’ve been running the numbers from the last election, and I have noticed an unusual phenomenon. 89% of electors who put the Libs above either Labor or the Greens failed to distribute their preferences. That is 8,415 Liberal votes which ended up in the bin, in an election which was won by 5,037 votes. Given that of the Lib voters who did nominate further preferences on their ballot paper, 84% gave their preference to the Greens, all Rochelle needs to do to win the election is to teach Liberal votes how the preferential system works!

There’s still hope for a hung parliament.

Victorian police go 2 from 2

Seeing as though none of the officers involved in last week’s axe-man shooting were charged, the Victorian boys in blue decided to have another go, this time notching up Australia’s first confirmed capsicum-spray kill.

Police are investigating the death of a Bendigo man after police used capsicum spray on him to quell a domestic dispute on Friday night.

Bendigo police were called to the 48-year-old man’s home in Energetic Street, Long Gully, a suburb of Bendigo, at about 9.40pm (AEDT) on Friday following a report of a domestic dispute, a Victoria Police spokeswoman said.

The man was sprayed with OC foam when he confronted police but was administered care by police and left in the company of a neighbour, who later left the house.

The same neighbour found the man dead in his bed when she returned about 9am the following day.

Of course, the fuzz are claiming that the guy was on the way out in any case, and besides, he started it.

The death made it 2 kills in just three days for the Victorian police, who are doing their best to reduce crime by reducing the population. hey, they just might be onto something there. Keep up the good work.

Lock up your children, Cheney’s in town…

Or, don’t bother, as the NSW Police will be doing it for you.

What kind of a state are we living in? On the one hand, it is illegal to express your dissatisfaction in a public forum, without first filling in an application. On the other hand, state pollies rushed through laws to allow foreign secret service goons to walk around the streets carrying weapons.

Meanwhile, more protesters were arrested this morning, followed by (no doubt) further arrests for the remainder of Cheney’s stay.

Go home!

Downer paid blogger 50c

Talk of our friend Mr Downer paying a Weekend Australian journalist to write speeches for him reminds me of an incident several years ago when I myself wrote material for Sausagepants. I still have a transcript lying around:

Mr Aziz, if we give you this big fat cheque, will you continue to support the Australian Wheat Board? If you do, I’ll put my fishnets on and do a dance for you.

Zombie drivers invade Sydney

The dead man was driving towards the city along the M4 at Eastern Creek, in Sydney’s west, at about 9am today, when he apparently began to move onto the M7 exit ramp, police said.

He was then reported to have attempted to return to the M4, but his Ford Falcon slid sideways across the busy freeway before hitting a four-wheel drive Nissan Patrol and coming to a stop against the centre guard rail.

Police said the accident had caused extensive delays on the M4 eastbound and motorists were urged to delay their travel or avoid using the motorway.

As reported in the SMH today, zombie drivers are causing traffic chaos on our streets. The State Government have been caught completely unprepared yet again, prompting a further decline in support for Morris Iemma’s team in the leadup to the state election.

Tuesday saw traffic reach a standstill as punters flocked to see the arrival of Australia’s own soon-to-be-Queen Mary of Denmark, only to find instead 148,528 tons of steel floating in Sydney Harbour. The disappointed commuters were then forced to wait for hours to leave, as an accident on the Harbour Bridge and the closure of the Cross City Tunnel (or the Harbour Tunnel if you watch Channel 7 news) locked up the city.

Yesterday Morris Iemma pledged that “never again” would a traffic jam of this magnitude occur in the city. Less than 24 hours later, zombie drivers have again thrown our transport system into chaos.

To add further to Iemma’s woes, it was revealed that the zombie was driving unlicenced, as his former licence was revoked when he died. At this stage no charges have been brought against the zombie, and the RTA is refusing to comment, although the 131-500 info line issued the following statement:

Welcome to the transport infoline. Please make a selection from the following options:

For timetable and fare enquiries, press 1.

For latest service interruptions and planned trackwork, press 2.

For special events transport, press 3.

For T-card enquiries, press 4.

For other call types, including feedback calls, press 5.

To repeat menu, press 8.

Sydney faces it’s biggest challenge yet when Dick Cheney hits town tonight. Not only will the city be closed down every time he wants to go out to order a pizza (or a pie, as he likes to call it), but he has also reportedly brought his shotgun collection, and plans to go hunting. The inrush of casualties from any such outing is predicted to drive more zombies onto out roads, as hell starts to fill up with lawyer friends of Cheney’s.

My advice? Get out now, while you still can.

Axe man gunned down (in the prime of his youth)

The Victorian police are at it again.

An axe-wielding man was shot dead by police officers when a neighbourhood dispute turned deadly in Melbourne this morning.

The man was gunned down on a property in Frank Street, Sunshine West, about 9.15am.

It is understood the man, believed to be in his 30s, suffered multiple gunshot wounds to the upper body. The Metropolitan Ambulance Service said he died at the scene.

Homicide squad detectives are investigating.

We can only assume that the man was carrying out a bit of DIY smash repairs on behalf of his neighbours, when the overzealous trigger-happy boys in blue decided to put into action the motto of the Victorian Police: shoot first, ask questions later.

The questions flowed fast and furious, and when the dead man refuse to answer, we can only assume that the two officers beat the shit out of him with their telescopic batons.

But what gives with this? Surely our police are trained to “shoot to maim”, not shoot to kill? A couple of bullets in the kneecap would stop all but the most dedicated axe-wielding maniac. What do these dickheads do? Give him half a dozen bullets to the chest!

Why the hell do we even give these guys guns? They should have a basic test at Police Academy – incapacitate someone without killing him, or you have to make do with a baton and a Cockney accent, The Bill style.

What’s the bet that the dead guy was part of some kind of ethnic minority?

Polls, schmolls

Another round of Newspolls proclaiming Rudd as the new messiah have just been released. The media has gone into its usual hype circus mode. The question has to be asked: how accurate are these polls?

Everyone knows that when it comes to politics, the most important thing is to get people talking about you. Why else does Mr Howard bother committing a handful of extra troops to Iraq? To polarise the community and stimulate debate, obviously. Of course, the media is always happy to play along – after all, it’s how they make money.

But who is really winning in the political discussion stakes? Thanks to our good friends at Technorati, we can now get a live, up-to-the-minute idea of what people are blogging about, which is, at least, some indication of how well the pollies are getting their faces splashed across the country. Let’s check the stats of Mr Howard vs Mr Rudd.

Mr Howard

Mr Rudd

Mr Howard is clearly ahead by a long way – and this is where Mr Rudd needs to make up a lot of ground. Incumbency is a powerful thing, especially in a nation burdened with plasma tv-related debt, and controlled by the conservative empires of Murdoch and Packer. Also, to be fair, the actor John Howard could also be contributing to Mr Howard’s tally.

It’s not all bad news though, Mr Rudd is still outperforming Damien Leith, winner of the 2006 Australian Idol competition.

Damien Leith

Beer and Sympathy

I’ve decided to opt for a name change. Welcome to the all-new, all-action Beer and Sympathy website. Cheers must go to Wombat for his inspired idea.

By the way, the name change is in no way a guarantee that there will be any kind of increase in the quality of this site. Sit on it.

** EDIT **

I’d better also place 1 item of kudos for Joel, for his excellent photography which I have yet again stolen. Notice that I worked out where the “antialias” button is Joel?

History repeating?

Now, anyone that knows me knows that most of my knowledge on history was gleaned from the undersides of beer caps. I just stumbled on a recent article which rings a little too true. I won’t reproduce it here, you can perouse it at your leisure. A little chillling, given the recent goings on in this country. Maybe I’m not paranoid after all.