Can a photograph be any more contrived than this one?

Photo: Andrew Meares

Prime Minister Tony Abbott appearing to 'console' treasurer Joe Hockey during a prearranged and very posed photo shoot promoting 2015-16 budget papers preparation.

Tony Abbott's latest budget pork pie

Tens of thousands of wealthier retirees will lose access to the age pension under changes targeting what Prime Minister Tony Abbott has described as "liquid assets millionaires".

Excuse me?

Every single one of these people receiving a part aged pension will continue to do so – it will just not be in the form of cash into their bank accounts.

Under Abbott’s sleight-of-hand the announced changes will lose them the small fortnightly cash transfers some currently receive, but they will all retain the highly financially lucrative seniors health card – a benefit worth thousands of dollars a year to the average retiree.

If you want proof of this just look at the paltry savings the Abbott Government is supposedly garnering from the this measure – a total of est. $177.7 million each year over the next four years.

An estimated 91,000 of those independent retirees (some of them millionaires) who structured their post-retirement assets, tax-free superannuation lump sums and income streams to allow themselves a regular federal government welfare payment and/or benefit, will lose their Centrelink cash transfer, but retain the right to bulk-billed medical services, heavily subsidised pharmaceuticals, subsidised public transport travel, telephone account concessions and, energy supplements etc via retention of the seniors health card.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott, Treasurer Joe Hockey, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann and the rest of their far-fight rabble must think Australian voters are fools if they expect them to swallow this politically convenient stop-gap measure aimed at neatly sidestepping the need for superannuation tax status reform.

Is Abbott living in a perpetual political phantasy land unable any longer to distinguish truth from lies?

This was Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott altering political history on a whim on 28 March 2015:

Mitch Fifield, the architect of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, who will deliver a genuinely insurance-based scheme which will benefit a half a million Australians with disabilities and everyone who cares for them and which will have its head office in Geelong.

Perhaps someone should remind Abbott that the Australian Parliamentary Library clearly identifies who set the National Disability Insurance Scheme in motion and laid out its basic structure:

On 30 April 2012, the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, announced that the Government would fund its ‘share’ of the cost of the first stage of the NDIS in the 2012–13 Budget.[10] The Government’s NDIS media release accompanying the Budget states that its share includes ‘the total administration and running costs for the first stage of an NDIS’.[11] In addition the media release says that ‘states and territories that host the initial locations will also be required to contribute to the cost of personal care and support for people with disability’. At this stage, it is not clear what the Government has in mind as ‘locations’ for the first stage of the NDIS but the Commission’s proposal was for ‘regions that each contained a modest number of people who were likely to be eligible for the scheme (say, around 10 000 per region)’.[12] Commencement of the NDIS in 2013 is one year ahead of the timetable proposed by the Commission.

The $1.0 billion to be provided by the Australian Government includes:

* $342.5 million over three years from July next year for individually funded packages for people with significant and permanent disability

* $154.8 million over three years from July next year to employ Local Area Coordinators to provide an individualised approach to delivering care and support to people with a disability

* $58.6 million over three years from July next year to assess the needs of people with a disability in the launch locations

* $122.6 million over four years to start preparing the disability sector for the new way of delivering disability services

* $240.3 million over four years to build and operate an NDIS information technology system and

* $53.0 million over four years to establish a new National Disability Transition Agency to coordinate implementation and manage the delivery of care and support to people with a disability and their carers in the initial launch locations from 2013–14.[13]

During the final days of the Gillard Labor Government ABC News reported on 3 June 2013:

...the regional Victorian city has been chosen as the headquarters of the new DisabilityCare agency.

All states and territories - except Western Australia - have signed up to be part of the scheme, formerly known as the NDIS.

Once DisabilityCare is fully rolled out, the national headquarters in Geelong will employ 300 people, in addition to 150 people in the regional office......

The Barwon region of south-west Victoria, which includes Geelong, was chosen last year as one of the sites where DisabilityCare would be trialled. The trial will start on July 1 and involve 5,000 people.

Tony Abbott and his attempts to degrade scientific research in Australia

It is well known that Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott believes that climate change science is absolute crap, but even he has exceeded expectations of what his passive-aggressive brand of climate change denialism will bring forth when he appointed self-described climate policy sceptic, Bjørn Lomborg*, as an adviser to federal government on foreign aid delivery and arranged for the Australian taxpayer to fund Lomborg to the tune of $4 million now that the Danish Government has defunded his pseudo-scientific approach to research and American donors are not enthusiastically supporting this 'homeless' think tank the Copenhagen Consensus Center Inc.

BRIEF BACKGROUND

Excerpt from one of the Lomborg Errors documents:

3. The Working Party's reproduction of the professional published critique of "The Skeptical Environmentalist" prior to the complaints to DCSD

"The Skeptical Environmentalist" has given rise to extensive public discussion and debate, both in Denmark and internationally. There have been enthusiastic reviews in some of the world's top newspapers such as the Washington Post and the New York Times, and in The Economist.

The magazine Scientific American asked four leading experts to assess Bjørn Lomborg's treatment of their own fields: global warming, energy, population and biodiversity, devoting 11 pages to this in January 2002.

Stephen Schneider: "Global Warming, Neglecting the Complexities"

Schneider is a particularly respected researcher who has been discussing these problems for 30 years with thousands of fellow scientists and policy analysts in myriad articles and formal meetings.

Most of Bjørn Lomborg's quotes allude to secondary literature and media articles. Bjørn Lomborg uses peer-reviewed articles only when they support his rose-coloured point of view. By contrast, the authors on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were subjected to three rounds of audits by hundreds of external experts.

Bjørn Lomborg employs no clear and discrete distinction between various forms of probabilities. He makes frequent use of the word "plausible" but, strangely for a statistician, he never attaches any probability to what is "plausible". IPCC gives a large "range" for the majority of projections, but Bjørn Lomborg selects the least serious outcomes.

Stephen Schneider then provides a specific criticism of Bjørn Lomborg's four main arguments:

1. Climate Science: Bjørn Lomborg quotes an article in Nature (from the Hadley Center, 1989), uncritically and without the authors' caveats. BL quotes Lindzen's controversial "iris effect" as evidence that IPCC's climate range needs to be reduced by a factor of almost three. BL either fails to understand this mechanism or else omits to state that the data stem from only a few years' data in a small part of a single ocean. Extrapolating this sample to the entire globe is wrong. Similarly, he quotes a controversial Danish paper claiming that solar magnetic events can modulate cosmic radiation and produce a clear connection between global low-level cloud cover and incoming cosmic rays as an alternative to CO2 in order to explain climate change. The reason IPCC discounts this theory is "that its advocates have not demonstrated any radiative forcing sufficient to match that of much more parsimonious theories, such as anthropogenic forcing."

2. Emissions scenarios: Bjørn Lomborg assumes that over the next several decades, improved solar machines and other new technologies will crowd fossil fuels off the market, which will be done so efficiently that the IPCC scenarios vastly overestimate the chance of major increases in CO2. This is not so much analysis as wishful thinking contingent on policies capable of reinforcing the incentives for such development, and BL is opposed to such policies. No credible analyst can just assert that a fossil-fuel-intensive scenario is not "plausible" and, typically, BL gives no probability that this might occur.

3. Cost-benefit calculations: Bjørn Lomborg's most egregious distortions and feeblest analyses are his citations of cost-benefit calculations. First, he chides the governments that modified the penultimate draft of the IPCC report. But there was a reason for that modification, which downgraded aggregate cost-benefit studies: these studies fail to consider so many categories of damage held to be important by political leaders, and it is therefore not the "total cost-benefit" analysis that Bjørn Lomborg wants. Again, BL cites only a single value for climate damage - 5 trillion dollars - although the same articles indicate that climate change can vary from benefits to catastrophic losses. It is precisely because the responsible scientific community cannot rule out catastrophic outcomes at a high level of confidence that climate mitigation policies are seriously proposed. For some inexplicable reasons, BL fails to provide a range of climate damage avoided, only a range for climate policy costs. This estimate is based solely on the economics literature but ignores the findings of engineers and does not take into account pre-existing market imperfections such as energy-inefficient machinery, houses and processes. Thus, five US Dept. of Energy laboratories have suggested that such a substitution can actually reduce some emissions at below-zero costs.

4. The Kyoto Protocol: Bjørn Lomborg's invention of a 100-year regime for the Kyoto Protocol is a distortion of the climate policy process. Most analysts know that "an extended" Kyoto Protocol cannot deliver the 50% reduction in CO2 emissions needed to prevent large increases at the end of the 21st century and during the 22nd century, and that developed and developing countries alike will have to cooperate to fashion cost-effective solutions over time. Kyoto is a starting point, and yet with his 100-year projection BL would squash even this first stage.

Bjørn Lomborg's book is published by the social sciences side of Cambridge University Press. It is no wonder, then, that the reviewers failed to spot BL's unbalanced presentation of the natural science. It is a serious omission on the part of an otherwise respected publishing house that natural-science researchers were not taken on board. "Lomborg admits, 'I am not myself an expert as regards ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS' - truer words are not found in the rest of the book".

John P. Holdren: "Energy: Asking the Wrong Questions"

Bjørn Lomborg's chapter on energy covers a scant 19 pages and is devoted almost entirely to attacking the belief that the world is running out of energy, a belief that BL appears to regard as part of the "environmental litany". But only a handful of environmental researchers, if any at all, believe this today. Conversely, what they do say about this topic is that we are not running out of energy, but out of environment, i.e. the capacity of air, water, soil and biota to absorb, without intolerable consequences for human well-being, the effects of energy extraction, transport, energy transformation and energy use. They also say that we are running out of the ability to manage other risks of the energy supply, such as overdependence on Middle East oil and the risk of nuclear energy systems leaking weapons materials and expertise into the hands of proliferation-prone nations or terrorists. This has been the position of the environmental researchers for decades (e.g. from 1971, 74, 76 and 77).

So whom is BL so resoundingly refuting with his treatise on the abundance of world energy resources? The professional analysts have not been arguing that the world is running out of energy, only that the world could run out of cheap oil. BL's dismissive rhetoric notwithstanding, this is not a silly question, nor one with an easy answer.

Oil is currently the most valuable of the conventional fossil fuels that have long provided the bulk of the world's energy, including almost all energy for transport. The quantity of recoverable oil resources is thought to be far less than coal and natural gas, and those reserves are located in the politically volatile Middle East. Much of the rest is located offshore and in other difficult and environmentally fragile areas. There is, accordingly, a serious technical literature, produced mainly by geologists and economists, exploring the questions of when world oil production will peak and begin to decline, and what the price might be in 2010, 2030 or 2050 - with considerable disagreement among informed professionals.

BL seems not to recognize that the transition from oil to other sources will not necessarily be a smooth one or occur at prices as low as the price of oil today. BL shows no sign of understanding why there is real debate about this among serious-minded people.

BL offers no explanation of the distinction between "proved reserves" and "remaining ultimately recoverable resources", nor of the fact that the majority of the latter category is located in the Middle East, but placidly informs us that it is "imperative for our future energy supply that this region remains reasonably peaceful" - as if that observation does not undermine any basis for complacency.

BL is right in his basic proposition that the resources of oil, oil shale, nuclear fuels and renewable energy are immense. But that is disputed by only few environmental researchers-and no well-informed ones. But his handling of the technical, economic and environmental factors that will govern the circumstances and quantities in which these resources might actually be used is superficial, muddled and often plain wrong. His mistakes include apparent misreadings and misunderstandings of statistical data, the very kinds of errors he claims are pervasive in the writings of environmentalists. By the same token, there are other elementary blunders of a type that should not be committed by any self-respecting statistician. Thus, it is wrong that measures in the developed countries have eliminated the vast majority of SO2 and NO2 from smoke from coal-burning facilities: it is only a minor proportion. Other examples are given, and when it comes to nuclear energy, plutonium is such a great security problem as regards the potential production of nuclear weapons that it may preclude use of the "breeding" approach unless a new technology is invented that is just as cheap.

BL uses precise figures, where there is no basis for such, and he produces assertions based on single citations and without detailed elaborations, which is far from representative of the literature.

Most of what is problematic about the global energy picture is not covered by BL in the chapter on energy but in the chapters dealing with air pollution, acid rain, water pollution and global warming. The latter has been devastatingly critiqued by Schneider.

There is no space to deal with the other energy-related chapters, but their level of superficiality, selectivity and misunderstandings is roughly consistent with what has been reviewed here.

"Lomborg is giving skepticism - and statisticians - a bad name."

John Bongaarts: "Population: Ignoring Its Impact"

Bjørn Lomborg's view that the number of people is not the problem is simply wrong. The global population growth rate has declined slowly, but absolute growth remains close to the very high levels observed in past decades. Any discussion of global trends is misleading without taking account of the enormous contrasts between world regions, where the poorest nations of Africa, Asia and Latin America have rapidly growing and young populations, whereas Europe, North America and Japan have virtually zero, and in some cases even negative, growth. As a consequence, all future growth will be concentrated in the developing countries, where four-fifths of the world's population lives: from 4.87 to 6.72 billion between 2000 and 2025, or just as large as the record-breaking increase in the past quarter of the (21st) century. This growth in the poorest parts of the world continues virtually unabated. The growth has led to high population density in many countries, but BL dismisses concerns about this issue, based on a simplistic and misleading calculation of density as the ratio of people to land. In Egypt this would make 88/km2, but deducting the uncultivated and unirrigated part of Egypt, it makes 2,000/km2 - no wonder Egypt has to import foodstuffs! Measured correctly, population densities have reached extremely high levels, particularly in large countries in Asia and the Middle East. This makes demands in terms of agricultural expansion on more difficult, hitherto untilled terrain, increased water consumption and a struggle for the scarce water resources between households, industry and farming. The upshot will be to make growth in food production more expensive to achieve. BL's view that increased food production is a non-issue rests heavily on the fact that foodstuffs are cheap; but BL overlooks the fact that it is large-scale subsidies to farmers, particularly in the developed countries, that keep prices artificially low.

Appreciably expanding farming will result in a reduction of woodland areas, loss of species, soil erosion, and pesticide and fertilizer run-offs. Reducing this impact is possible but costly, and would be easier if the growth in population were slower.

BL overlooks the fact that population growth contributes to poverty. First, children have to be fed, housed, clothed and educated - while economically non-productive - then jobs have to be created once they reach adulthood. Unemployment lowers wages to subsistence level. Counteracting population growth has fuelled "economic miracles" in a number of East Asian countries.

BL overlooks the fact that the favourable trend in life expectancy is due to intensive efforts on the part of governments and the international community, but despite this, 800 million are still malnourished and 1.2 billion are living in abject poverty. Population is not the main cause of the world's social, economic and environmental problems, but it is a substantial contributory factor. If future growth can be slowed down, future generations would be better off.

Thomas Lovejoy: "Biodiversity: Dismissing Scientific Progress"

In less than a page, Bjørn Lomborg discounts the value of biodiversity both as a library for the life sciences and as a provider of ecosystem services (partly due to the general absence of markets for these services). When he does get round to extinction, he confounds the process by which a species is judged to have been made extinct with estimates and projections of extinction rates. In contrast to BL's claim, the loss of species from habitat remnants is a widely documented phenomenon. A number of factual errors are highlighted. BL takes particular exception to Norman Myer's 1979 estimate that 40,000 species are being lost every year, failing to acknowledge that Myer deserves credit for being the first to point out that the number was large and at a time when it was difficult to do so accurately. Current estimates are given in terms of the increases over normal extinction rates. BL cynically spurns this method, because such estimates sound more ominous. Instead, he ought to acknowledge that this method is an improvement in the science. These rates are currently 100 to 1,000 times' the normal, and are certain to rise as natural habitats continue to dwindle.

The chapter on acid rain is equally poorly researched and presented. BL establishes that acid rain has nothing to do with urban pollution, though it is a fact that nitrogen compounds (NOx) from traffic are a major source. Errors are pointed out in BL's view of acid rain on forests.

The chapter on forests suffers from BL not knowing that FAO's data are marred by the weight of so many different definitions and methods that any statistician should know they are not valid in terms of a time series. There are errors in the figures from Indonesia in 1997. BL confuses forests with tree plantations, and asserts that the only value of forests is harvestable trees. That is analogous to valuing computer chips for their silicon content only.

It is important to know that while deforestation and acid rain are reversible, extinction of species is not.

BL entirely overlooks the fact that environmental scientists identify a problem, posit hypotheses, test them and, having reached their conclusions, suggest remedial policies. By focusing on the first and last stages in this process, BL implies incorrectly that all environmentalists do is exaggerate.

Source Watch:

Dr Peter Raven, President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2002 said of Lomborg: "...he's not an environmental scientist and he doesn't understand the fields that he's talking about so in that case, if you have a point to make and you want to get to that point, which is: everything's fine, everybody's wrong, there is no environmental problem, you just keep making that point. It's like a school exercise or a debating society, which really doesn't take into account the facts". 

"Raven said that the success of Lomborg's book 'demonstrates the vulnerability of the scientific process -- which is deliberative and hypothesis driven -- to outright misrepresentation and distortion.'"

Newsweek 21 February 2010:

Lomborg opens Cool It with a long discussion on polar bears, arguing that no more than two (of 20) groups are declining in population, that their numbers are not falling overall, and, in places where they are, that it is not a result of global (or Arctic) warming. In fact, polar-bear populations in warming regions are rising, he argues, suggesting that a warmer world will be beneficial to the bears. As Friel shows, Lomborg sourced that to a blog post and to a study that never mentioned polar bears. But he ignored the clear message of the most authoritative assessment of the bears' population trends, namely, research by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. It found that bear populations are indeed declining where the Arctic is warming. In fact, concluded the IUCN, polar-bear populations "have declined significantly" where spring temperatures have risen dramatically. It also offered an explanation for Lomborg's claim that numbers are falling most where temps are getting colder: that area happens to be where there is unregulated hunting.

For his claim that the polar-bear population "has soared," Lomborg cited a 1999 study (scroll down to the paper by Ian Stirling). But that study described declining birthrates and other threats to the bears, blaming warmer spring temperatures that cause the sea ice to break up. Overall, since the mid-1980s polar-bear numbers have fallen, which experts attribute to global warming. The source is thus not exactly the solid endorsement of Lomborg's claim about thriving polar bears that one might assume.

Climate Council14 April 2015:

The Australian Government today announced they would contribute $4m for Danish climate contrarian Bjorn Lomborg to establish a new “consensus centre” at the University of Western Australia.

In the face of deep cuts to the CSIRO and other scientific research organisations, it's an insult to Australia’s scientific community.

As the Climate Commission, we were abolished by the Abbott Government in 2013 on the basis that our $1.5 million annual operating costs were too expensive. We relaunched as the Climate Council after thousands of Australians chipped in to the nation’s biggest crowd-funding campaign…

It seems extraordinary that the Climate Commission, which was composed of Australia’s best climate scientists, economists and energy experts, was abolished on the basis of a lack of funding and yet here we are three years later and the money has become available to import a politically-motivated think tank to work in the same space.

This is why the work of the Climate Council is so important - to counter this continuing ideological attempt at deceiving the Australian public.

Mr Lomborg’s views have no credibility in the scientific community. His message hasn’t varied at all in the last decade and he still believes we shouldn't take any steps to mitigate climate change. When someone is unwilling to adapt their view on the basis of new science or information, it's usually a sign those views are politically motivated. 

 * Bjørn Lomborg stateshe is a director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, adjunct professor at University of Western Australia, and visiting professor at Copenhagen Business School.

He further states that he has an M.A. in political science (University of Aarhus) and a Ph.D. in political science (University of Copenhagen).

His degrees are in social science and not in any of the scientific disciplines which inform credible climate research.

It took some time for Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki to understand that the 2015 Intergenerational Report was always a politically partisan document created by the Abbott Government

Screen shot from www.challengeofchange.gov.au

On 5 March 2015 Abbott Government released its 2015 Intergenerational Report

“Dr. Karl” begins to voice doubts about the report in The Canberra Times on 14 April 2015:

The man appearing on television screens across the country promoting the Abbott government's Intergenerational Report - science broadcaster Karl Kruszelnicki - has hardened his stance against the document, describing it as "flawed" and admitting to concerns that it was "fiddled with" by the government.

Dr Kruszelnicki, widely known as Dr Karl, has previously revealed that he had not read the full report before he agreed to front the taxpayer-funded campaign, which is expected to cost millions.

The Intergenerational Report - a snapshot of Australia's economy and society in 40 years - was criticised by Labor as a "highly political document" for, among other things, downgrading climate change from its own chapter in 2010 to three-and-a-half pages in 2015.

"As far as I can see, it's a flawed report," Dr Kruszelnicki told Fairfax Media.

He singled out the reduced focus on climate change in this year's report for criticism. "In no way am I endorsing the government's stance on climate change. I think it is incredibly short-sighted," he said. 

Dr Kruszelnicki - who has appeared in advertisements for the report running prominently on commercial television, news websites and social media - has also tweeted comments criticising the government for cutting funding to the CSIRO. The report emphasises the value of scientific research and innovation. 

Dr Kruszelnicki said: "The only reason I agreed to do it [promote the report] is because I was told that it would be independent, bipartisan and non-political.

"If it turns out to have been fiddled with or subject to political interference from one side of politics I would deeply regret playing any part in it whatsoever."

Dr Kruszelnicki said he agreed to front the campaign after reading extracts on the ageing of the population and the changing nature of work.

He said the independence of the document is now unclear.

Unfortunately at that stage he still appears to believe that the report was created by the Australian Treasury and public servants. Hence, the idea that it may have been “fiddled with” once it left their hands.

The Abbott Government did not have to fiddle with the report – the entire document was assembled at the direction of government ministers.

Thirteen days after the report’s release the Deputy Secretary, Fiscal Group, from the Dept. of Treasury made it clear to the Senate Select Committee Into The Abbott Government’s Budget Cuts that it was not a treasury document:

Mr Ray : The document is the government's document. We work with the government to prepare it. Generally, this is the government's document, not ours.

By 15 April Dr. Karl had become blunter in his assessment of the situation when quoted by ABC News:

Dr Kruszelnicki blames himself for trusting the Government. He turned to Aesop's Fables to explain himself.

"The scorpion says to the frog, 'can you take me across the flooded river?' And the frog says, 'No, you'll stab me and kill me.'," he said.

"And the scorpion says, 'No, I won't do that because I'll drown myself." And the frog says, 'Yes, you'll drown.' So the frog says, 'hop on my back', takes him half way across the river and then the scorpion stabs him.

"And the frog says, 'Hey, you stabbed me, I'm going to die! And so are you! Why'd you do that? Are you crazy?' And the scorpion said, 'I can't help it. It's my nature.'

"It was my fault for not realising the nature of the beast that I was involved with.

"I really thought that it would be an independent, bipartisan, non-political document."

However, Dr Kruszelnicki said he had not asked for the ad campaign to stop.

Finally that night, Dr. Karl must have realised that his participation in government advertising was an issue with the potential to damage his own reputation and, this was the result:

Unlike the good doctor, The Guardian had the measure of this intergenerational report early and on 9 March 2015 pointed out its glaringly obvious partisan nature:

Every intergenerational report is only as good as the assumptions on which the predictions are based – especially those pertaining to demographics. And while some of the predictions about the ageing population and the implications that will have on employment participation and economic growth are worth considering, the assumptions about government spending over the next 40 years are pretty much a farrago of idiocy.

For no good reason whatsoever, Hockey has decided for the first time to include in the report projection based on policies of the former government. But he takes as the ALP’s “previous policy” that represented in the 2013-14 mid-year economic and fiscal outlook (Myefo) – a document produced by the Abbott government and which saw the 2013-14 deficit increase by $10.26bn due to “policy decisions” taken by the Abbott government.

The 2013-14 Myefo was itself designed to make it appear the ALP had blown the budget, and thus using that as the starting point to predict budget deficits over the next 40 years is a fairly dodgy exercise.

Australia’s international standing sinks to a new low under Prime Minister Tony Abbott

The United Nations reacts.

International Coordinating Committee of National Institutions for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights (ICC) letter to Prime Minister Tony Abbott concerning his government's treatment of the President of the Australian Human Right Commission, Prof. Gillian Triggs.

This letter was copied to the United Nations Commissioner of Human Rights.

International Coordinating Committee of National Institutions for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rig...

http://www.ishr.ch/sites/default/files/article/files/the_prime_minister_of_australia.pdf

On 26 February 2015 the ICC Chairperson spoke to ABC News Radio about his letter to Prime Minister Abbott and expressed his concerns about the federal government's treatment of the President of the Australian Human Rights Commission. 

The next ICC Bureau Meeting will take place on 11 March 2015 at the United Nations Palais de Nations in Geneva and, I suspect that the Australian Government will be discussed at some point.

The truth about Tony Abbott's war on terror?

From time to time snippets of truth concerning Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s expensive war on terror, estimated to cost at least $400 million a year, appear in the media. 

This is one example.......

The Canberra Times 17 February 2015:

Iraq. The diggers are carrying diplomatic passports because Baghdad's government won't sign a "Status of Forces" agreement. Our troops are cooped up inside bases watching from the sidelines as Iranian Quds revolutionary guards prosecute the fight against ISIL (and whoever else gets in their way). Oh, and the Iraqis don't even want our aircraft based in their country. Abbott's like the boyfriend who can't understand a polite brush-off.

Looking for the chastened and transformed Tony Abbott

Word cloud created from Tony Abbott’s public utterances on 9 February 2015

On Monday 9 February 2014 Anthony John ‘Tony’ Abbott declared he had become a new version of himself – a chastened and transformed Australian prime minister.

In the space of a day he made a statement, called a press conference and took part in a televised interview.

I looked for this changed man in the many hundreds of words he spoke, but there was no true self-awareness on display, no empathy or understanding shown, no genuine acceptance of responsibility and no indication of a real intention to change.

The one positive was that, after years of fiscal scaremongering, he finally admitted that in essence, we are a strong economy.

However, his punitive and unfairly targeted first budget he repeatedly described as bold and ambitious.

Abbott continued to blame Labor for the entire budget black hole. The billions that have been added to the public debt bottom line, and the growing cash deficit,  since he took the reins of government apparently don’t exist for him.

He told us all that I've never been a skite as a preface to his favourite mantra; we said we'd get rid of the carbon tax. It's gone. We said we'd stop the boats. They've stopped. We've said we'd build the roads… the roads are going ahead.

He was silent on what might happen concerning the higher education ‘reforms’, new unemployment regulations and cash transfer payment cuts contained in the 2014-15 Budget.

He has not forsaken the latest version of Medicare co-payments for visiting a GP – all he promises is that there will be no new Medicare policies without the broad backing of the medical profession. Not a mention of seeking a mandate from the electorate.

In a strange turn of phrase, Abbott promised that we will socialise decisions before we finalise them and that way we're more likely to take the people with us.

There was little mention of other government policy except for a couple of sentences on small business tax cuts and child care payments. Instead, the ‘old’ Abbott (who appears to believe that political pugilism trumps policy development every time) was in full view as he boasted; I am a fighter. I know how to beat Labor Party leaders. I beat Kevin Rudd, I beat Julia Gillard, I can beat Bill Shorten as well.

Sorry is the hardest word for (an unrepentant) Tony Abbott

The tone of Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott's 2 February 2015 National Press Club address was quite frankly unrepentant.

He refused to own his personal mistakes - preferring to prefix mention of them with an "our".

The rejection of Liberal and National Party policies at state level he preferred to attribute to "absentmindedness" on the part of voters.

The waning electoral support for Liberal and National Party MPs and Senators was someone else's fault by the time his speech came to an end.

There was nere an I'm sorry or I apologise in sight. Not a hint that he understood that he was THE problem for the Coalition.

These are the words that dominated his speech to varying degrees:

Is this the road Tony Abbott is taking to make the poor pay more for food and other essentials?

The Drum 11 January 2015:

It appears Tony Abbott will try to expand the GST by replicating the campaign blueprint used by John Howard to introduce the tax in the first place. But what worked then might not work now, writes Paula Matthewson.

More than a decade after the Howard Government introduced a goods and services tax, political pundits remain divided over whether the accompanying GST campaign was effective.

Some point to Howard's re-election after proposing the new tax as proof of the campaign's success, while others claim Howard almost lost because of it.

Despite the lack of consensus it appears the Abbott Government is using the same campaign blueprint, this time in an attempt to create public acceptance for increasing or broadening the GST.

Back then, Howard was saddled with an earlier promise to "never, ever" introduce a GST but was being pressured to introduce one. According to one account, senior members of the business community were openly questioning Howard's economic reform credentials, while the press gallery were asking why he wouldn't lead (or at least follow).

So the then PM created a situation where journalists and economists, business and welfare organisations and even voters called for him to "reverse" the never-ever promise for the good of the nation. Howard did this by focusing the numerous fragmented commentaries into one national discussion: one that centred on Australia's "broken" tax system and how it could be "fixed" by scrapping a bunch of inefficient taxes and replacing them with just one.

The mechanism Howard used to focus the conversation was a taxation taskforce (incidentally chaired by Treasury official and former Keating adviser, Ken Henry). It was established to prepare options for tax reform, and recommended that a consumption tax be part of the mix.

A year later, following much public discussion, the Howard government presented voters not only with a proposed GST but an entire package of tax reforms. The package included personal income tax cuts, increases in the tax-free threshold and pensions, and the scrapping of wholesale sales tax. Nine other taxes imposed at the state and territory level were also slated for elimination. Most importantly, all the money raised by the GST was to be provided to the states and territories, supposedly ending their dependence on the federal government's largesse.

Howard then blitzed voters with a controversial advertising campaign before immediately plunging the nation into a moderately early federal election, which he either cleverly won, or foolishly almost lost, depending on whose analysis one finds more convincing.

PM Abbott is clearly banking on the campaign having been a success for Howard, because his "increase the GST" campaign looks eerily familiar.

A bevy of Treasury boffins is currently developing a tax reform paper, while the general public's awareness is slowly being raised through discussion in the media about the need to broaden or increase the GST.

Comments such as those made last week by government backbenchers and ministers serve to kick along the public discussion while keeping the PM's hands clean of the debate until the Treasury report is released later this year…..

Tony Abbott's waving a daughter in front of voters - have his poll numbers dropped again?

Because no media opportunity generated by or with the co-operation of Tony Abbott's family is spontaneous and unscripted, this snippet below is an obvious attempt to get him in the media without overt mention of politics during the Queensland state election period and perhaps boost his flagging opinion poll numbers.

The Daily Mail 11 January 2015:

She relocated from Sydney to Melbourne a year ago and on Saturday, Frances Abbott got to enjoy a Melbourne rite of passage.

Appearing at the Jeep Portsea Polo at Point Nepean National Park in Victoria, she had her boyfriend of one-year Lindsay Smith in tow at the event.

‘It’s my first time [at the Polo]. It’s very nice to be here and experience such a Melbourne tradition,' Frances told Daily Mail Australia at the event…..

Frances spoke candidly about her relationship with her father, Prime Minister Tony Abbott, admitting that just like any daughter she constantly worries about him, and despite living in another city they are always in touch.

‘My standard text message is: “You’re doing an amazing job.”’ And he’ll reply: “Thanks angel,”’ she explained to Daily Mail Australia. 

Adding: ‘I’m always thinking about him, especially with everything that’s happened recently with terrorism.’

While Tony is based in Canberra and Sydney, in between travelling across the world, he still finds time to visit his daughter in Melbourne. 

‘I don’t see him as often as we would like. We try schedule it so we can all catch up,’ Frances mused.

The Whitehouse Institute Of Design graduate credited her mother Margie Abbott to spearheading the family and bringing them all together.

‘Mum holds it all together, she is the one that keeps the family ship afloat. We’re all apart all the time and she pulls us back together.’ 

So how are the opinion poll numbers playing out for the prime minister? His unpopularity continues.

Essential Report 13 January 2015.

53% of respondents disapprove of the job Tony Abbott is doing as Prime Minister – down 2% since the last time this question was asked in December – and 37% approve of the job Tony Abbott is doing (up 5%). This represents a change in net rating from -23 to -16.

83% (up 8%) of Liberal/National voters approve of Tony Abbott’s performance, with 10% (down 5%) disapproving. 81% of Labor voters and 89% of Greens voters disapprove of Tony Abbott’s performance.

By gender men were 40% approve/51% disapprove and women 34% approve/55% disapprove.

35% (up 4% since December) of respondents think Tony Abbott would make the better Prime Minister and 37% (up 1%) think Bill Shorten would make the better Prime Minister.

37% of men prefer Tony Abbott and 37% prefer Bill Shorten – and women prefer Bill Shorten 38% to 33%.

Morgan Poll 14 January 2015:

Is Prime Minister Abbott so desperate to control the message and lift his flagging polls that he risks alienating Australian mainstream media?

This was how The Australian commenced its 5 January 2015 article about Prime Minister Abbott’s latest public relations misstep:

TONY Abbott’s office has triggered frustrations with the media by excluding a TV crew from the Prime Minister’s sudden visit to Baghdad, limiting access to his speech to Australian troops and joint statement with his Iraqi counterpart.

A camera crew sent by the major TV networks was left in Dubai when Mr Abbott flew into Iraq with his personal staff, forcing the media to rely on footage provided by the Prime Minister’s office.

This is how individual journalists reacted to the unannounced Iraq trip on Twitter:

What Iraqi News knew on 29 December 2014:

(IraqiNews.com) On Monday, the official government spokesman, Saad Hadithi revealed that the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott plans to visit Baghdad in the coming days, while noting that Abbott will discuss with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi the support and the equipment of security forces to confront the organization of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Hadithi said in an interview for IraqiNews.com, “Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott will visit Baghdad in the coming days to meet with President Minister Haider al-Abadi to discuss military cooperation between the two countries.”

He added, “Abbott will discuss with al-Abadi the subject of development, training and equipping of security forces with weapons and ammunition,” adding that, “Australia has shown its willingness to provide military support to Iraq to face the terrorist gangs of ISIS.”

This is part of the 5 January speech Australian journalists were not allowed to hear as it happened:

This is my first visit to Baghdad. It is my first visit to Iraq.

Iraq is a country which has suffered a very great deal. First, decades of tyranny under Saddam Hussein. Then, the chaos and confusion that followed the American-led invasion. Most recently, the tumult, the dark age, which has descended upon Northern Iraq as a result of the Daesh death cult, but Australia will do what we can to help.

These are some of the images of varying quality which Team Abbott appears to have released to the media and/or posted on Facebook:

These are the poor quality propaganda videos his personal media crew created:

http://youtu.be/XCrDn8j812Y  http://youtu.be/Ba4XP0rhWL0

However, the Prime Minister's attempt to control the media message was not successful as one can see from this interpretation of that 5 January speech in The Sydney Morning Herald later the same day - which contained only one mention of 'death cult' and opened with this message about a war of which he approved and agreed to Australia's participation in:

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has blasted in his strongest terms yet the US management of Iraq following the 2003 invasion, branding it a period of "chaos and confusion".

It seems the days when Abbott just had to don a helmet and flak jacket to have the media treat him like a hero have long since passed and his latest attempt to reverse the public relations situation is only making matters worse.

I imagine Jane McMillan is thankful she is on holidays and not returning to the the prime minister's office as his media chief. 

To quote Bruce Hawker writing in The Age: When a Prime Minister is on a collision course with public opinion there can only be one result.

UPDATE

Political cartoonist Alan Moir sums up what appears to be the general response, to the Prime Minister's visit to Iraq, in his latest effort for The Sydney Morning Herald on 6 January 2015: