Mark Dreyfus QC continues his slide - defending the indefensible and siding with the unspeakable
Thursday, 30 May 2013
I'm told that the staff and attitudes in the office of the Attorney General during Robert McClelland's time as AG were open and easy to deal with. Much of that persisted during Ms Roxon's reign. Now the diminution in the stature of the office with the martinet Dreyfus makes even routine interactions unpleasant and unproductive. He really has chosen some terribly bad company, in particular the world's 3rd highest paid politician Julia Gillard who isn't in it for personal gain at all, really.
Government dumps funding increase plan after Liberals withdraw support
This report was published by News Ltd late last night, Philip Hudson is the author
THE controversial plan to increase taxpayer funding for politicians by $58 million has been shelved after a voter backlash.
The Gillard Government has abandoned plans to put the legislation to a vote on Thursday in Parliament after the Liberals withdrew their support.
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus was trying to resurrect the deal, which he said had been negotiated over "many months'' with the Coalition.
"We relied on very firm commitments from the Coalition,'' he told ABC'sLateline.
''This is a political compromise."
Mr Dreyfus is still hoping it might be voted on next week but admitted Labor "won't be proceeding'' if the Opposition walks away from the changes which have sparked voter anger.
Independent MP Tony Windsor said it ''puts a smear and a slur on all of us'' and Labor Senator John Faulkner said he was "ashamed".
Various Liberal and Labor MPs said it was a toxic decision for MPs to give themselves more money after a Budget that cut spending and put up taxed by $43 billion.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has avoided giving any public support for the plan and is being heavily lobbied by MPs to abandon it because it contradicted his claim there was a "Budget emergency".
Victorian Liberal Russell Broadbent said a large number of Coalition MPs opposed it and were disappointed by it.
The Opposition will discuss the policy in its shadow cabinet on Monday and party room on Tuesday.
Some Labor MPs said the timing of the deal was another example of Prime Minister Julia Gillard's poor judgment. "This is just putrid and has been handled badly,'' one senior Labor MP said.
We don't build communities and generate ideas by all the extra spending. It's used to fund social media data-mining techniques and to import US IT-evangelists to bombard us with targetted Facebook posts.
Politics is fundamentally about people getting together to advance the ideas that unite them. It's the physical togetherness, in branch meetings, in shopping centres, railway stations and in particular on polling days when earnest people look you in the eye and ask you to take their "how-to-vote" card.
Beyond filling the urn and the ladies bringing a plate, that doesn't cost very much. I don't know that we're a lot better off for all the extra spending that finances the smarties' Porsches.
But that is the crowd that Gillard and Dreyfus have aligned themselves with. The highly paid "ideas people". Once the invoices are paid and the fees repatriated, do we ever look back and ask what we actually have to show for the dough?