Costello row with Kroger

Michael Kroger Slams Peter Costello Over Nasty Rants:
 Costello Hits Back!

VICTORIAN Liberal Power broker Michael Kroger, has told media outlets his friend and political ally of 35 years Peter Costello, their friendship hangs in the balance, due to Costello's continuing rants over his party colleagues. 

In a blatant and staged attack on Costello, Kroger reveals his most private conversations with Costello. In an interview on ABC radio Melbourne, Michael Kroger says Peter Costello needs to make amends with all the former Liberal leaders he has maligned. Mr Costello has dismissed the story as a lie, calling his old friend "irrelevant".

This now public and bitter feud, has former high profile liberal leaders and front benchers in a media frenzy. The debate has taken to rumours of Costello asking Kroger for a support of a political comeback. Former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett, told Melbourne radio 3AW that he finds it hard to believe that Costello would mount a comeback, as he has never mentioned in any discussions that he would challenge, and that he can't as there is no opening for such a position.

Former Senator Nick Minchin, told ABC NEWS 24 Latika Bourke, his disappointment of Michael Kroger's report and timing of his report. Minchin says he denies Kroger's allegation of Costello's leadership rants. "The inner workings of the Victorian liberal party have been a mystery to me for the 30 years I've been a member of the Victorian liberal party", says Minchin. When asked if Kroger is making Costello claims up, Minchin replies that he doesn't know what the motives are for this bitter feud, but can only hope that this can be kept private and not battled in the public arena.

Craig Thomson claims he was set up

NSW Fraud Squad 
Likely To Charge 
Thomson With Fresh New Charges

Inspector Col Dyson who headed the NSW fraud squad, is said to have gathered enough evidence to prosecute Thomson with at least a dozen new charges relating to improper use of a credit card.

Thomson's lawyer Mr. McArdle is also under investigation for falsifying a statement which stated Mr. Thomson had no way of paying for his legal fees all while Thomson's lawyer Mr. McArdle, had forged an agreement with NSW Labor power brokers, to foot Thomson's legal bills in exchange for propping up Govt.

Below is a televised interview Thomson did with Laurie Oakes last year before his house was raided by Victoria Fraud and Extortion Squad Detectives.


Craig Thomson has today told Laurie Oakes, in an extraordinary Nine interview on weekend today, that he was set up by a current union official, in a very dysfunctional union at that stage. Thomson claims that a union official made threats against him,  in company of several people back in 2004, and made enemies because he told union officials that his "successor not being his successor". The threat according to Mr. Thomson was a fabricated story to implicate him to "hook up hookers". When asked to explain the credit card transactions made between 2004 and 2007, Mr. Thomson argued that all expenses were accounted for by himself, and that there wasn't any sufficient evidence that could be used in court. Mr. Navaros chief investigator, says police were also investigating several transactions that were made prior to 2004/2007, back in 2002. When asked to explain these transactions by Laurie Oakes, Mr. Thomson denied any wrong doing and said in 2002, it was a union that was bitterly divided, and closed down it's main office and opened HSU-east. However, Mr. Thomson notes, that there may have been fraudulent use of credit cards, but at the hands of disgruntled union officials.

Budget 2012 - Editorial's View

Editorial - editor-in-chief: Paul S McAuley
  

While I might lack the economic credentials to deliver a federal budget, let alone a surplus, I think it is clear that this year's budget is lacking its own true economic credentials. Now call me cynical, but with all the hysteria of leadership tension, bad polls, dismembered mp's, more bad polls, sex, lies now video tape, it strikes me it is more than coincidental that there were more pre-budget leaks than Rudd on a leaky boat. So why were the political journo's and economists forced in a budget lockout? Could it be for the same reason level 1 of members hall was off limits to former mp's and current presiding officers? I don't recall quarantining media at the galleries of parliament house a requirement of Finklestein's report. Was there something I missed?

This budget was never going to be a popular one for treasurer Wayne Swan. He committed his government to returning the economy to the black, by installing a surplus of less than $2b for 2012/2013 financial period. You see what's interesting is, anyone that's ever run a business or attempted book keeping, will know that in order to achieve a positive output, you simply jiggle the books. You just remove funding or negative output by copying and pasting selected entry fields from one area to another. In the case of this budget, re-allocating projected funds from 2011/2012 budget over to 2013-2016 budgets. 

I guess like many budgets, labor or liberal, there will always be areas that are sugar coated down to divert attention from black holes or budget cuts to critical govt departmental units. But unlike this one, there's more sugar than butter, so to speak. 

The part of the budget that I personally found disappointing and insulting was,  the announcement of $7b to IMF to help out Europe's spiraling debt problems at the detriment of our struggling economy. Since when was Australia part of the European Union, and multi- empires like France, GB, Germany, and Italy? While I sympathise with our European counterparts, I sympathise more with Australian people that are being dudded by our own govt, for the sake of their ego driven madness on the world scene. That $7b is instant, it's in their account right now, while Australians continue to borrow $133 million dollars everyday to pay for bad policies unfunded and unwarranted. 

Think about the pensioners and people in aged care who have to wait another year before they see any real funding. Then there's the NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) that will have to wait four years to get their $1b funding off the backhand of nothing more than a disgraceful publicity stunt by prime minister Julia Gillard, who knows this money won't reach the accounts of the NDIS while her govt hold office.

The most unpredictable financial problem for this govt is the uncertainty of increasing numbers of illegal boat people. I refuse to refer to illegal boat people as refugees, as I have met genuine refugees who have come to our country to escape their war savaged countries, and one bloke in particular lost his whole family. The sorts of people that are arriving illegally by boat are nothing more than economic refugees. They pay smugglers the big money to travel to at least two countries before finally arriving in Australia. Indonesia or Malaysia is the first or second point of refuge, so that should be there place of asylum. While this govt sit on their hands and knees and blame the opposition for their own inaction, I mean, after all, they don't need the coalition's vote if they formed an unofficial coalition with the greens. This problem won't go away, and it's clear that given there is no funding allocation in the budget for the 2012/2013 period, just what is this government's expectation for their formulated budget costings? 

With the installation of Bob Brown's replacement, Christine Milne, it shall make for interesting times ahead for the business relationship between the greens and labor. The highly anticipated budget surplus divides these two mainstream players, where the only numbers that are concerned would seem to be more focused on that of the executive govt, as opposed to a balance sheet or budget white paper.

What this budget does prove is that where's there's smoke, there's fire. Strictly as a political observer, the govt's attack on the mining sector and its cashed up bosses, seems like a last minute cash grab from the govt's oldest enemies but newest political opponents. Hmmm, sounds like a defeatist attitude to me.  

Overall, this budget will affect different people in different ways. For good, for bad. Some will lose, some will pay. Although while I don't have a problem with cuts to some areas to make ways in others, it's the dishonesty and deceit that I can't handle. Just one day, it would be nice to see a politician that actually believes in what he or she is doing, and thinks of the people that put them there to represent us, not themselves. 

Time may not be on our side right now, but only time will tell what lie ahead, as only time may make the wounds heal in due time.

 

Budget 2012: Special Edition

This is treasurer Wayne Swan's fifth consecutive budget, and as expected, has proved to be a hit among struggling workers and families. With the troubling gloom of Slipper and Thomson dominating most of the headlines the past weeks, the budget wasn't going to be immune from such controversy.  Today in question time, speaker Peter Slipper formally stood down from the position of speaker, handing the speakership to his deputy Anna Burke until the surroundings of his allegations are wrapped up. The coalition failed in two attempts on standing orders for former speaker Harry Jenkins to take on the speakership, and for Thomson to withdraw his services from parliament for 14 days. All independent cross benchers sided whole heartedly with the government.


TREASURER Wayne Swan has used his 2012 budget as a platform to shut down his critics and challengers from the wealthy mining sector, by launching an all out assault on mining magnates, by taking from them and giving to the needy battlers.
 Up-to-date coverage of budget 2012

Exert from Herald Sun:- Upping the ante in his so-called class war with mining billionaires like Andrew Forrest, Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer, the federal treasurer announced a $3.6 billion "spreading the benefits of the boom" package to share the proceeds of the mining tax with low and middle-income earning families and small businesses.
The package's core measures are:

• $1.8 billion in extra family tax benefits, helping 1.5 million families, with more than half taking home an extra $600 a year;
• $1.1 billion in supplements of up to $210 a year for students, job seekers and parents with young children on income support. 

Savaging the Coalition and the Greens for rejecting Labor's proposed one per cent company tax cut, he said funds for the cut had instead been redirected to families.
Mr Swan, as expected, announced a small $1.5 billion surplus, Labor's first in 23 years.
Following last year's $44 billion deficit, this represents Australia's biggest fiscal turnaround in half a century - and more is on the way.
"The surplus years are here," Mr Swan declared.
The treasurer announced a bonus of $820 for secondary students and $410 for primary, a $1 billion disability insurance scheme, $515 million for dental care and a tripling of the tax-free threshold to $18,200 to help compensate for the new carbon tax.
To pay for it all he has taken the axe to cut $17 billion off government spending, with defence hit to the tune of $5.4 billion and 3000 public service jobs cut.
With GDP expected to grow at over three per cent, and unemployment remaining low at 5.5 per cent, he pronounced Australia's economy "streets ahead" of every other major developed country.

 Key independent MPs Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor say Labor's budget for 2012/13 should pass through parliament


The minority government led by Prime Minister Julia Gillard relies on the support of the two NSW country independents to help pass its legislation in the lower house.
Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan handed down the budget on Tuesday, forecasting at least four years of surpluses with the first of $1.5 billion due in 2012/13.
Mr Oakeshott said it was a tight budget in a "tight parliament".
"Personally, I think it will pass," he told Sky News.
"I will be really interested to see the coalition's response to some of the measures in there."
Mr Windsor also said he believed the budget bills would progress through the parliament.
"I don't think there will be much risk in doing that - maybe some minor modifications," he said.

(source- Nine News)