I'll post this up for our Australian friends here at MNE for the record, story at Sydney Herald.
Seems the voters in Australia have changed over to the previous opposition party and replaced the "left" Labor party PM with one from the "right".
The story and the British PM Cameron seem eager to depict the newly elected Tony Abbott as distant from a 'far right' position.
A "compassionate conservative" in the tradition of George W Bush, ....
UK Prime Minister David Cameron called to congratulate Mr Abbott following the election before taking to Twitter announce his delight at working with "another centre right leader".
"Whereas some Western conservatives seem to be entirely motivated by the desire to win (Romney, Cameron), Abbott has a philosophy and – almost unique in our materialist age – a theology," he wrote. "This puts him in the George W Bush, Stephen Harper compassionate conservative tradition – the tradition that tends to attract the most votes."Key excerpt here: "attract the most votes.." Ya think!? Here in the US our GOP can never again expect to win as long as the Democrats hold the high ground with their much better messaging wrt "social justice"...
But that apparently didn't stop embattled Rupert Murdoch from weighing in with his own far right tweet (I don't know if the Herald is one of his papers....), here he does not fail to disappoint as if right on cue:
Australian born media mogul Rupert Murdoch also took to Twitter on Saturday night to offer his analysis of why the Labor party had been tossed from power.
"Aust election public sick of public sector workers and phony (sic) welfare scroungers sucking life out of economy. Others nations to follow in time," he wrote.LOL! Murdoch is dreaming if he thinks this is what is going on out there... and the GOP is nuts if they believe this guy has any insight in this regard.
Good luck to our friends in Australia as they enter into this new political period, sounds like Abbott is going to propose to cut some taxes which if passed may help the overall economy a bit.
Big change in Oz?
ReplyDeleteIt depends from your point of view. As I see it, it's like falling from the frying pan and into the fire.
But judge by yourself: from Kevin Murdoch... huh... sorry, Kevin Rudd... to Rupert Abbott. Gosh. I'm confused: it's Tony Abbott.
Both guys were put there by Rupert Murdoch. Rudd was a fiscal conservative; Abbott is the SORE+ man.
The thing is that Rudd actually believed he could swipe his own ass without asking Murdoch's blessing. That was his big mistake.
PS. The Sydney Morning Herald does not belong to Murdoch. It (and The Age) belongs to Gina Rinehart...
Murdoch only owns all the other newspapers in Australia (+ radio and TV stations).
BTW, Abbott made his name during the John Howard government as the official head-quicker: he was the guy to go to with dirty jobs, like abusing terminally ill people asking for compensation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Banton
Came across this jaw-dropping interview with Abbott, where he is being asked about reports that he responded to news of the death of an Australian serviceman by saying "shit happens".
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyY-xI6zgfk
Hang in there Magpie...
ReplyDeletebtw Murdoch seems to have peaked and is rolling over.... he's in big trouble in the UK with the 'spying' and sounds like it is taking a toll on his personal life also... he may have to deal with those things first...
This is going to be interesting to see if Abbott perhaps 'ran to the center' and now perhaps will 'govern from the center' and we'll see how that goes for him...
If so and it goes well for him imo it would be a big tip-off to the US' GOP who right now is run by crazies...
rsp,
@alittleecon
ReplyDeleteYup, that's our Tony.
You have no idea how proud he makes me feel...
@Matt
The thing is that he is like this when trying to appeal to the centre...
Or, let me put things this way: in Australia, provided you are not (1) goose-stepping, (2) all dressed in black, with (3) your right-arm outstretched, (4) all of those at the same time, you qualify as moderate, centre-right...