Is Graham Richardson clever?
I am aghast at the asinine article:
Hard for Greens without Brown and for the PM without an ETS
The Australian Commentary 20/4
Come to think of it - is The Australian's sub - editor acting with due acumen in pasting Richardson's visage as the major page one banner advertisement for the commentary section of your usually excellent newspaper?
LO!
Look at Richo's article: ''The PM needs to cut the price of carbon to survive but will her new partner let her ''
Editor: you should have helped Richardson. BY REJECTING THIS UNALLOYED TRIPE OF AN ARTICLE.
In his regular TV spot on Sky News - his lame efforts are sometimes not noticed. But the written word is different, editor.
Richo now has nowhere to hide!
There are perhaps 25 discrete self - contradicted absurdities and worse in the article's corpus.
Here is only one - and only one tangent of one!
When GR attests to Senator Brown's ''absolute truthfulness'' on one line - only to add the amazing modifier that he was only ''generally speaking'' and ''he has tried to deny things he has said and written.'' - one wonders what GR had that so influenced him to lack any congruence!
And this is merely one! Who wants to didactically check his article for the other 24? Believe me - even the above is worse than what I cryptically describe here in a few words.
But the main gem: is Richardson the political neophyte - or is it wilful blindness? He demonstrates no acumen when he tries to give an incipient excuse for Gillard in not being able to cut the carbon tax.
''....but will her new partner let her?'' [cut the price of the carbon tax
This is a real paradox for me.
Is Richardson aware of how disrespectful he is to his readers by merely pretending to be stupid?
The reader will have no trouble with the logical dichotomy!
''....but will her new partner let her?'' [cut the price of the carbon tax]
I have never understood why the left make the same easily discreditable trite comments. Repeated ad nausium. They have a inability in realizing that writing requires more skill than their mothers' and teachers taught them about crossing the road and the great Betty and Jim series.
None of them ever bother thinking through that no matter what - the greens will never support a Liberal government.
SO THE ABOVE IS AN IDIOCY!
Gillard plainly is not being held to ransom by anyone - especially the Greens - of whatever hue.
If this is published - and Richardson sues me - will it be laughed out of court if I can demonstrate only 24 errors of syntax and clear thinking?
GS
Betty and Jim mathematics. Year 3 / by A.A. Parkes ... [et al.] - Details ...
nla.gov.au/anbd.bib-an4715667
Betty and Jim mathematics. Year 3 / by A.A. Parkes ... [et al.] Creator: Parkes, A. A. (Aubrey Arthur); Subjects: Mathematics - Problems, exercises, etc. Audience ...Hard for Greens without Brown and for the PM without an ETS | The ...
www.theaustralian.com.au/.../hard-for-greens-without...pm-without-a...
17 minutes ago – Over the past couple of decades he has steered the Greens from nowhere to a real ... Hard for Greens without Brown and for the PM without an ETS... That 12 per cent will be hard enough to hang on to, let alone to grow.
The balance of power in the Senate, a member in the lower house, a de facto coalition with the government and real influence within that coalition. There are several Green members in state houses upper and lower. When Brown went into the Senate 16 years ago this would have all seemed a pipe dream.
Much of that rise has to be put down to Brown himself. I wrote last year that he was just about the cleverest politician in the country. He has what most politicians can only envy.
While most Australians don't vote for the Greens very few dislike Brown. He has integrity and he fights for what he believes in. Generally speaking he is absolutely truthful -- I say generally because in the past 12 months he has tried to deny things he has said and written.
I first met him in the mid-80s. I went up into the forests of Tasmania with him and a colleague of his, Geoff Law. I ate sandwiches by a mountain lake. While I looked at the magnificence of some of what Brown was trying to save. I listened to his passion and I was won over in a flash.
The great chunk of Tasmania put in World Heritage just a few years later would still be being logged if it were not for the fact that Brown turned a right-wing NSW senator into a fan and even more importantly, a believer.
Brown has a presence no one in the Greens even comes close to. He is more than a figurehead. He is the heart and soul of an entire movement. I wonder how well the Greens will do without him.
He has always been, however, too reluctant to compromise. In the aftermath of the publication of the Helsham report into logging in Tasmania it fell to me as the new environment minister to have to knock that report over.
That was a big ask given that the Helsham inquiry had been set up to independently advise the government. The report heavily favoured logging in some very sensitive areas. The cabinet met for three days on this issue. The arguments at times were quite bitter and the outcome did not become clear until right at the end of those three days when both Bob Hawke and Paul Keating came down on my side.
When I rang Brown to tell him the extremely good news of that victory he told me how disappointed he was that not every forest glen in Tasmania had been saveed. More than 20 per cent of the state went into World Heritage and he couldn't even manage to say well done.
Nonetheless he was a force to be reckoned with and the questions now is can Christine Milne hold on to the 12 per cent vote which the Greens consistently poll.
I have never been a great believer in the personal vote factor but I can't believe that some part of the Green vote does not belong to Brown personally. Time will tell but Milne's task is huge.
I first met Milne over the Wesley Vale pulp mill in northern Tasmania. She was a school teacher who came as a delegation of locals opposing the mill. She was pretty shy then, a vast difference to the woman you see now. Even then, before she was in parliament, indeed even before many people had heard of her, she was formidable. It came as no surprise to me that she rose through the ranks.
After Brown she is the best of what's left.
The Greens caucus over which Milne must preside is a somewhat disparate lot. Some are genuine greenies in the old sense they want to save the environment. The rest have much broader social and economic agendas that take the party into areas it has barely touched on until the past few years. Now it is Australia's party of the Left. The Labor Party long ago abandoned the title. Today, Labor and the Coalition have fairly similar beliefs. It now comes down to the public choosing who is more competent and more likely to keep their promises. That leaves the Greens out there on their own.
Brown talked the other day about them one day being in government. I can't see it myself. That 12 per cent will be hard enough to hang on to, let alone to grow. Without the man who actually brought them the growth they have enjoyed it may well be a task beyond the new leader. The question of the relationship with the government is fairly easy to resolve. It will no doubt continue intact unless the PM actually understands what she must now do.
Julia Gillard cannot win the next election with a $23 carbon price. It is almost three times the world average and it makes her unelectable. She must announce a reduction in price to the $8-$10 range or move to establish an ETS in the next 12 months.
If the Prime Minister has the stomach to do it, how does Milne handle it? She can reject it and make the election of Tony Abbott, who doesn't even believe in global warming, more emphatic and certain. Being leader is a privilege. But it can bring awful dilemmas along with the glory.
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