Cando - Australia's Voice's Posts

Lady Thatcher (1925-2013), who has just passed away in London, made a particular point of attending the central event of the Australia Week celebrations in 2000. It is said of Lady Thatcher, that she of all politicians was known for exactly what she believed in and that moreover that she unswervingly followed those beliefs. Her attendance indicated her strong belief and appreciation of our country, our traditions, our values, our institutions and our successes, as well as our great contributions to the Commonwealth, the English speaking countries and indeed, to freedom itself. This is short anecdote concerning the event relayed to 2GB's Alan Jones.

On Foxtel's Sky News programme "Richo" on 3 April 2013 Opposition leader Tony Abbott faced tough questioning from Graham Richardson and 2GB's Alan Jones, ranging over renewable energy and CSG mining on prime agricultural land as well as superannuation changes.

Why is NSW Liberal Premier Barry O’Farrell siding with the Gillard government and Attorney General Nicola Roxon in proposing further restrictions on free speech? Why is Alan Jones to be called before the inquiry Premier O’Farrell set up? To find the answers, Andrew Moore interviewed Alan Jones on 2GB on 16 January 2012.

In an interview with Alan Jones broadcast on 2GB on 12 December 2012 the NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell, the Premier said he was bound by coal seam gas (CSG) licences and exploration rights on prime agricultural and urban land and even near major dam catchment areas granted by the previous Labor government. If he did, he says, the government would be liable to pay massive compensation. Now in this interview broadcast on 14 December 2012 Alan Jones speaks to CANdo’s Professor David Flint. Flint argues that there is no constitutional or legal barrier to stop the Premier from acting in the way the voters at the last election expected. Parliament, he says, could stop these activities. Indeed he wonders why Parliament did not enact immediately after the last election a Protection of Prime Agricultural and Urban Land (including Water Catchments) Act, 2011 It will be said that if such a law empowered the government to act acts, investors would lose confidence. Some CSG miners who are lusting afte

You think you own the dream property you scrimped to buy? That if it has to be taken for some public purpose, at least you will get fair compensation. Only Marxist, communist states take property without compensation. And that doesn’t happen in Australia . Not in our democracy. Well it does. Beware – governments can effectively steal your property, and give you nothing in return. Not only can they do this, they are doing it now along the New South Wales coast. Another reason why the people must be empowered to make our politicians accountable more than only once in every three or four years. They have to be made accountable on every day, of every week, and of every month. As they are in some other countries. All this is happening in the twenty first century in New South Wales as local councils rezone land as E2 and E3 zones under Local Environmental Plans (LEP’s)authorised by the NSW Parliament under previous Labor governments. The Coalition government has not been in a hurry to reverse this.

Caught out trying to stop the funding of troops flying home for Christmas – while ministers fly the world first class going to nothing more than photo opportunities - the Gillard Government has worked out a new way to run down our defences. Now they’re putting the boot into those patriotic school boys and school girls who have volunteered as cadets. There are around 14,000 of them. Now among the core functions of government are the defence of the realm and securing our borders. On both counts this Gillard government has failed. They’ve reduced defence spending to the disastrous levels which prevailed when we went, unprepared, into the Second World War. They’ve thrown the borders open to illegal immigrants who are housed by the taxpayer, who invite in their relatives and most of whom are unemployed and on welfare even after five years here. Among some groups the employment rate is less than 10%. The Gillard government has showered the world with so called “aid” to buy a next to useless seat on

Four polls came out today and Labor is celebrating. Prematurely I think. Of the four, Newspoll alone gives Labor any comfort. Perhaps Mr. O’Shaughnessy should have run it again. Newpoll puts the two parties equal at 50:50. This is an improbable - but not impossible jump from last time. This result was 45: 50 in favour of the Coalition. What makes it look like a rogue poll is that all the other polls say the Coalition would win at least comfortably, although there is a warning in one aspect of Morgan. Newspoll says Julia Gillard is easily preferred as prime minister, rising from 39:38 to 46:32. Her disapproval rating fell 5 points from 57 to 52, and her approval rating rose similarly from 31 to to 36. Tony Abbott’s hardly changed – falling one point to an approval rating of 30% and rising up one on his disapproval rating to 60%. Nielsen says the Coalition prevails comfortably in the two party preferred 53:47. Worse for the government, Labor friendly Essential agrees but at 55:45. Roy Morgan com

Congratulations. People power - including the petition many of you signed on this site - has worked. The government has taken notice of your message to stop kicking our soldiers, sailors and airmen in the guts. They've given in – they've reinstated free flights home for single defence personnel over 21. Opposition spokesman Stuart Robinson MP says it's an embarrassing back flip for the government. He moved a motion in the House to disallow the regulations, and the government caved in. Now, he says, Australian sailors, soldiers and airmen and women can plan their leave While the budget measure was aimed at single defence personnel over 21, it was clear from what was being said that the Gillard government had younger and married personnel in their sights. This was decided while ministers and bureaucrats were happy to fly the world in first or business class, staying in five-star accommodation for talkfests, the communiqués for which have been written in advance. These important meetings are too

I might expect my accountant, my lawyer, or even my web hosting company to refer to me as a client. Why? Well, they all have one thing in common - they are professionals for whose services I have paid. So what's with politicians, bureaucrats and now even the media elites referring to asylum seekers as "clients". Remember, doesn't a client pay you? Since when do you pay your clients? In my confusion, I sought clarification from the dictionary. But you could have knocked me over with a feather when I discovered that a client now includes "a person being dealt with by social services". I know that dictionaries must reflect the usage of a word, but surely not when it's only by the political class? This is an entirely new phenomenon, certainly not reflected in earlier editions of The Oxford English Dictionary. However, I shouldn't discriminate, this isn't restricted to asylum seekers - even Centrelink refers to its new breed of welfare dependants as clients! This is a transparent device use

Christians are subject to shocking persecution in Muslim countries, as the following report from Raymond Ibrahim of the New York based Gatestone Institute reveals. At the same time Muslims are paying criminal people smugglers to come here from a safe Muslim country, Indonesia, claiming refugee status. Most hide their papers presumably to make misrepresentations to the Australian authorities. So why is the Gillard government still so half hearted in taking the necessary measures to stop illegal immigration? Raymond Ibrahim says that several reports appearing in July indicate that Christian minorities all around the Muslim world—especially women and children—are being abducted, tortured, raped, forced to convert to Islam, and/or enslaved. . In Egypt, at least 550 such cases have been documented in the last five years. They have increased since the revolution. He says Christians who manage to escape back to their families often find the government siding with the Muslim abductors. One young mother who r

The Australian Building and Construction Commission, the ABCC, was well armed and tough. This was especially so for the bully-boy unions in Victoria and Western Australia, where builders had to pay for peace, says Andrew Bolt. KPMG says that as a result the community was $5.9 billion a year better off. Labor promised to get rid of it in the 2007. Kevin Rudd didn’t move fast enough for the union bosses. Money talks. At the last election the Electrical Trades Union gave a $325,000, not to Labor, but to the Greens. You see, the Greens had opportunistically promised to help abolish the ABCC. Its failure? It had brought peace to the construction industry. The union bosses - and the Greens - didn’t like that. Presumably the ABCC was doing terrible things to the environment. Or do the Greens support thugs punching police horses? As Andrew Bolt says, Julia Gillard understood this unsubtle message. She delivered.. The powerful ABCC was wound up . Almost as soon as this happened, the thugs wer

Is what has happened in Sydney the same across the country? As an example – just one example - of the absence of law and order on the streets of Sydney, you’re not even safe on the footpaths in the CBD broad daylight. When a correspondent complained in the Sydney Morning Herald that despite extreme caution, she and her dog nearly became “road kill” cyclist when crossing the infamous Bourke Street, Surry Hills, cycleway, one of the cyclist associations quoted statistics suggesting bicycle pedestrian collisions were extremely rare. But as Donald Urquhart of Rozelle replied (27/8) “many pedestrians have simply given up on reporting such incidents....” He says “.. the chances of identifying the offender are almost nil in light of the lack of ways of readily identifying the cyclist” . He says the bicycle apologists “.. should spend some time in Sydney's CBD on any weekday...” He complains about cyclists “riding through red lights, riding the wrong way on one-way streets and, most annoying and

Australians will be amazed that taxpayers are actually spending $150 million dollars a year on a veritable battalion of government spin doctors – about 1600, according to The Australian (14/8). But that’s not all. There are also more spin doctors in the parallel public service that governments now surround themselves with, the so-called ministerial advisors. Among the Prime Minister’s, there is her chief spin doctor, John McTernan. He was imported -no doubt at great expense from the UK. He had gained -shall we say - certain notoriety when he spun for the Blair government. He became better known here when he phoned 2GB’s financial commentator, Ross Greenwood, who described the call as an ''absolute tirade'' laced with incessant use of the ''F bomb.'' And you the taxpayer are paying every cent of this. But not content with this, and with a curious readiness of some in the media to report these spin doctored press releases as fact, the Prime Minister and her Communications Minister Sen

There are still hard questions to be answered to put the AWU scandal to rest. As Michael Smith has explained on a series of videos on www.cando.org.au , a sham AWU non-profit entity was set up in the nineties. Its purpose was to siphon funds to two AWU organisers, Bruce Wilson and Ralph Blewitt. Bruce Wilson was romantically involved with Julia Gillard, then a partner in a Melbourne law firm. Vast sums were withdrawn in cash. The sham entity was even used buy a house. Ms. Gillard’s firm acted without charge. They even arranged a first mortgage. And when the solicitors asked for a bank cheque to pay for the balance, this was actually paid by a cheque on the sham entity. But when the fraud was exposed, Ms Gillard denied knowing anything about Wilson and Blewitt’s illegal activities. She said that she was young and naive. Although she had said that she was not going anywhere, she soon left the law firm. When she is asked about this, she says her answers are on the public rec

Is there anything the Gillard government cannot handle competently? That socialist monopoly, the NBN, was born on the back of an envelope when communications minister Stephen Conroy managed to obtain an audience with Kevin Rudd on the prime ministerial jet . There is no cost benefit study and the billions - over $40 billion - are all off budget. They could pour $100 billion into the NBN and it wouldn't appear in the budget. It would have no effect on the surplus or deficit. What an appalling scam. The initial NBN plan was released in December 2010 by Julia Gillard. Kevin Morgan, who was the ACTU member Kim Beazley's advisory committee on telecommunications, says that plan is now in tatters. At the time, corporate advisers Greenhill Caliburn reported that “that, taken as a whole, the corporate plan for the development of the NBN is reasonable." That report cost $1.1 million. But the NBN has achieved only 9 per cent of its rollout target for homes passed by fibre and 3 per cent of the planned conn

Intercepted? The people smugglers boats are not intercepted. They are welcomed. With open arms. According to the Encarta dictionary, to intercept is “to prevent people or objects from reaching their destination or target by stopping, diverting, or seizing them.” Encarta gives this example “The contraband was intercepted by police at the dock.” The Gillard government doesn’t intercept smugglers’ boats. The smugglers clients are welcomed, given government homes and put on welfare. So far 1278 clients have been welcomed this month, 6535 this year. Ms. Gillard and her ministers have welcomed 91 boats this year. The government’s spin doctors won’t tell us, but 2GB’s Ray Hadley revealed on 24 July that once again, smugglers’ clients at the Villawood detention centre have jammed blankets into smoke alarms and set their more than ample taxpayer funded accommodation on fire. Meanwhile, moving smugglers’ clients from the crowded facility on Christmas Island to the mainland is costing up to $1

Something strange and rather ominous is happening in Australia. The Gillard government plans to do something no democratic government should. It's trying to work out how to gag the media. They are especially targeting one newspaper-The Australian. Now for most of history, a national daily newspaper was a pipe dream for such a large country. But back in ‘64, Rupert Murdoch decided to start a national newspaper - even before the technology was ready. He kept the newspaper going at a loss for decades. The Australian took on causes even before they were fashionable. Such as aboriginal disadvantage. They ran with others, like the republic, which turned out to be a dead loss. Most importantly The Australian has given both sides a go. And thrashed each side when they believed they deserved it. But the Gillard government can't take it. Just as they can't take the daily exposure of their failings by talkback radio - especially by 2GB’s Alan Jones and Ray Hadley. This is dangerous stuff. The governmen

They are intent on stealing your property. But they don’t have to actually take it. But the politicians can- at the stroke of a pen- make your property worthless. And they are doing it. In so many ways. That’s why we are campaigning to ensure the politicians become the servants of the people. And not the masters. We say this people’s power should be in the constitution. In the meantime here’s one example of the people winning over our politicians. Gosford City Council on Monday night agreed to withdraw a message on planning certificates saying: "This land has been identified as being potentially affected by sea level rise of up to 0.9m by the year 2100''. And now Jacques Laxale of the Consumer and Taxpayer Association has called a rally this Saturday at 2pm against the nearby Wyong Council. It’s at the Frank Ballance Memorial Park 20a Margaret St Wyong. This rally will highlight the issues of sea level rises and the carbon dioxide tax. According to the Daily Telegraph the Gosford decision