Well Qualified For The Job

There's a wicked irony in this:

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd will come face to face with indigenous leaders today as he prepares to deal personally with the "challenges" confronting the Commonwealth intervention in Northern Territory communities amid the growing outrage over the gang-rape of a 10-year-old Aboriginal girl on Cape York.

Rudd was Queensland Premier Wayne Goss's chief of staff when the State government shredded evidence of another Aboriginal child gang rape and cover-up:

A YOUNG Aboriginal woman has confirmed claims by several former staff members of a Brisbane youth detention centre that she was gang-raped while being held in the centre as a 14-year-old. The woman, now in her mid-twenties, said she was gang-raped twice on a supervised outing from the John Oxley Youth Detention Centre in the late 1980s. Former members of staff at the centre also have claimed the matter was "swept under the carpet" and "hushed up".

Further:

THE former Children's Court magistrate who conducted the aborted 1989 inquiry into the John Oxley Youth Detention Centre was told of claims that a 14-year-old Aboriginal girl in care was gang-raped. But the inquiry by former magistrate Noel Heiner was terminated by the Goss government whose cabinet directed that all of Mr Heiner's materials be shredded in 1990.

Allegations that the centre's management knew of the rape, for that it had been covered up for 12 years, were raised in The Courier-Mail on Saturday.

A former centre youth worker... When asked if he had volunteered information about the rape claim or had been questioned about it, the man said; "He (Mr Heiner) asked...he knew about it already." The man said everyone in the centre knew about the rape allegation.

A former minister in the Goss cabinet, Pat Comben said on television in 1999 that "in broad terms" the cabinet had been aware that the shredded documents had contained information about child abuse.

One supposes Rudd is well qualified for dealing with the latest cover-up in The Midnight State.

-- Nick

End Justifies Means

Labor's media cronies are - incredibly - still trying to sell a vicious con job as the truth. The Herald-Sun's Peter Jean and Ellen Whinnett:

PRIME Minister John Howard has been forced to come to the defence of Tony Abbott after the Health Minister appeared to publicly acknowledge that the Government's WorkChoices laws had stripped protections from workers. Excerpts from an amateur video taken at a community function early this week featured comments from Mr Abbott, a former workplace relations minister, on the effects of the controversial laws.

What Labor did to the footage has already been revealed as nothing short of a dirty little fit-up:

This video, which Labor gave to the ABC, was doctored, removing some qualifications Abbott gave and splicing two quotes together...

Here's what Abbott was seen on the ABC saying:

I accept that certain protections, in inverted commas, are not what they were. I accept that that has largely gone. I accept that.

Here's what he actually said:

I accept that certain “protections” - in inverted commas - are not what they were. That whole raft of regulation expressed in awards that sometimes ran into hundreds, even thousands of pages, I accept that that has largely gone. I accept that. I accept that the Industrial Relations Commission doesn’t have the same power to reach into the nook and cranny of every business that it used to have. I accept that.

But in the end, the best protection for the worker who feels he or she might be under pressure at his job is the chance of another job, the chance of a better job. That is the best protection. Not going off to some judge or Industrial Commission that might order your employer, who you don’t like and he doesn’t like you, to keep you in an unhappy partnership forever.

So that is the best protection that we can give people, the protection of an abundance of jobs, the protection of an economy which is crying out for more workers. That is the best protection and I think that has been delivered in spades locally and nationally.

-- Nick

Questions Asked

Australia's looming pick for Prime Minister is questioned overseas:

"The question is whether a man with so little savvy for the cameras is fit to hold his nation's highest office."

The Washington Post columnist described Rudd's caught on camera earwax pick-and-eat snack as a "stomach-turning display".

No wonder teenagers love him.

Well, not all of them.

-- Nick

Lies Are All You Need

Freedom of Information reveals that the BBC, currently embroiled in a scandal over phone-in competition fraud, has been lying to the public for years:

The Beatles' performance of All You Need Is Love for the world's first-ever, live satellite transmission in 1967 drew condemnation from viewers... (but the BBC) wrote to Brian Epstein, the band's manager, to say that the performance had been highly regarded by the BBC and the audience.

Amusingly, the documents also revealed:

American television networks refused to join in because they regarded Europe as a boring irrelevance

-- Nick

Vertical Integration

As Agence France-Presse reports that the next mayor of Dallas could also be:

...the first openly gay man to be elected mayor of a major US city...

...it comes as no surprise to learn that the candidate in question is:

...Democratic party-endorsed...

The Democrats like to put 'edgy' leaders into local government, such as crack cocaine smoking Washington DC Mayor Marion Barry who returned from a six month Federal prison stint to get re-elected mayor and busted again in 2005 for testing positive for cocaine and marijuana and failing to pay federal and local taxes.

Or:

Neil Goldschmidt - Democrat - Oregon governor. Admitted to having an illegal sexual relationship with a 14-year-old teenager while he was serving as Mayor of Portland

Or:

Lee Alexander - Democrat - Mayor of Syracuse, N.Y. from 1970 to 1985. Was indicted over a $1.5 million kickback scandal. Pleaded guilty to racketeering and tax evasion charges. Served six years in prison.

Or:

Bill Campbell - Democrat - Mayor of Atlanta. Indicted and charged with fraud over claims he accepted improper payments from contractors seeking city contracts.

Or:

Walter Rayford Tucker - Democrat - Mayor of Compton, California from 1991 to 1992; U.S. Representative from California from 1993 to 1995. Sentenced to 27 months in prison for extortion and tax evasion.

And that's just those heading up local government. (Source)

-- Nick