Mug the frugal, turnbull teaches shorten

The standing of politicians has never been lower. They’re widely regarded as self-interested, incompetent, hypocritical liars. And yet, there are still many who are honourable and endowed with courage and common sense. That said, both sides stand guilty of needlessly transforming this country from one with the cheapest electricity to one with the most expensive. Even if the unproven theory of man-made global warming were correct, stopping all Australian emissions would have absolutely no effect on the world’s temperature. Disguised as scientific with impenetrable terms like ‘dispatchable energy’, yet still better than Labor’s, the  Liberal’s National Energy Guarantee is doing serious damage to the economy. This is only one of a series of hopeless policies which demonstrate the depths into which the political class has fallen. It’s all very well to dissent on boutique issues like same-sex marriage but Liberal politicians should come out on the really important issues and deal with them according to the principles expounded by Menzies. Little wonder the Turnbull government is ineffectual against Bill Shorten’s plans to steal the savings of the frugal, the self-funded retirees. This is because Turnbull, Morrison and O’Dwyer showed them how to do it.  To justify this theft the political class have demonised frugal citizens as bludgers who pay no tax. The fact is that the overwhelmingly largest part of any SFR’s pension is merely a return of their meagre capital scraped together over a lifetime and already taxed. The blatant lie is that the Howard government’s decision to stop taxing these pensions is overly-generous. First, accumulating a large fund has long been impossible as governments limit the size of contributions. Second, the paltry amount of tax recovered wasn’t worth the cost of administering a complicated formula to work out what was taxable and what wasn’t. Just take the current median balance of a SFR’s account, $362,000. Invested in a term deposit, the interest would be a little over $10,000, well under the $18,200 tax-free threshold. Following Turnbull, Morrison and O’Dwyer, Shorten plans to  steal the small refunds of tax on dividends already paid at source, while leaving those funds run by union bosses exempt. And the politicians will of course continue to enjoy their own gold-plated or, for the older ones, platinum-plated superannuation. As well, they’ve granted themselves a licence to enjoy the rivers of gold which flow from contacts they’ve made in office, especially Beijing communists.

Were intelligence services wrong about Saddam’s WMD, or did he get them out before the long-delayed invasion? People are understandably doubtful about intelligence findings. Greg Copley from the Washington-based ISSA think tank casts doubt on the curiously firm British intelligence finding that the Russians poisoned double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter. Copley has a track record, predicting last May the apparent North Korean-US breakthrough. Noting that several countries have access to the identified poison, he doubts that having released Skripal in 2010, the Russians had any discernible motive to silence him. Pointing out that he was secretly working for the British at the same time as MI6 agent Christopher Steele was ensconced in the Moscow Embassy, he asks whether Skripal was the source for much of the material in the Steele Dossier. This was the ‘dirt on Trump file’ funded by Mrs Clinton and then misused by the FBI to wiretap Trump’s campaign. As Copley points out, other people would have far more interest in Kripal not talking than the Russians.

Once again, the importance of the Crown providing leadership beyond politics has been demonstrated. When a Johor laundromat announced a Muslim-only policy and the politicians retreated into silence, Johor’s Sultan Ibrahim Ismail declared this ‘totally unacceptable’. Malaysia’s other nine rulers, including the King, agreed.

Celebrated lawyer and strong Democrat Alan Dershowitz is right. Without even prima facie evidence, there was never any justification in appointing Rob Mueller special counsel to investigate Russian collusion. Time to scrape off this barnacle on the good government of the USA.

The improper use of almost $400,000 of taxpayers’ funds by the Victorian government to win the last election should result in their dismissal. Proving how dangerous it is to leave constitutional amendment to politicians, when they introduced four-year terms they made it impossible for a governor to order a new election in a case like this. The governor could still dismiss the premier, but the new one couldn’t advise an election.

South Africa is going down exactly the same path as Zimbabwe, horrendously persecuting white farmers. This has been going on for years and has been mostly ignored by the world’s media. Minister Dutton is absolutely right. The farmers should be recognised as the persecuted refugees they obviously are and welcomed into Australia. To those who would accuse me of racism, I would remind them that my grandparents and their children scraped into Australia by all passing the White Australia test in a language they weren’t expected to know. When Lady Thatcher was railing against immigration, I told her this story. She replied that she strongly believed in dictation tests — she had told her minister of education to keep them.

Judges should apply the constitution and fully compensate all those whose farms have been rendered useless by politicians turning them into useless ‘carbon sinks’. According to Barnaby Joyce this has cost farmers $200 billion. Dissuaded from suiciding on a tower on his farm, Peter Spencer a decade later is still waiting for justice. To help, go to Support Peter Spencer & Australian Farmers on Facebook.