Mind set
Labor wants to know who leaked the secret volume of the Cole commission’s findings. Given the Government’s usual reaction to leaks (ie, instigate a witch-hunt) and the recent controversy over the leak of Wilkie’s ASIO report, Tony Abbott certainly needs to explain why he hasn’t sought to find out what happened. His response?
This volume, it never came into my hands, it’s never been in my hands and I think dealing with this subsequent leak is really out of my hands but I’d be happy to see an investigation if that’s what the relevant people want.
That is quite bizarre. The Minister for Workplace Relations calls a royal commission into the building industry, but doesn’t read the chapter containing the most serious allegations — yet he manages to develop a drastic overhaul of the entire building industry.
There is no doubt about it — Abbott’s reforms are not about fixing the building industry, they’re about union bashing. If he can respond to the commission’s findings without even reading them, his mind was clearly made up in advance.
UPDATE: An excellent comment from Manas: “It all sounds a bit children ‘not’ overboard… Do Ministers in the Federal Government get to see any document of importance?”
Yes but do you seriously think he didn’t get to see it? It all sounds a bit children ‘not’ overboard…Do Ministers in the Federal Government get to see any document of importance?
In other news Edward Said is dead at 67. This is a pity as he was a man of great integrity and the most eloquent advocate of a democratic independent Palestine.
I didn’t agree with him on everything. (I’m a two-stater myself) but he wasn’t a crook like Arafat and he wasn’t a fundamentalist crank who believed that the answer to the Palestinian Question was killing all the Jews. A “democratic independent Palestine” could, in theory, be the one state Said talked about, but the theory wouldn’t work.
“You’re right Marge… in theory. In theory, Communism worked. In theory.”