So, the government wants us to work longer because Australia's population is ageing.

I 'twittered' this morning that a Newspoll performed specifically for The Australian, and not published on the Newspoll site, can hardly be taken with anything other than a grain of salt.

Here's an interesting quandry for those so inclined. Have a gander at the graphed stats for crude oil and MOPS95 - Singapore Unleaded Petrol - and see of you can spot the inconsistency. Here's a hint:
The A$ last week was at US$0.92, today it's at US$0.8907. Why then is the price of unleaded petrol at my local up to 6 cents/litre cheaper today than last week? I'm allowing for the furphy which is the so-called 'weekly cycle'. Yet more evidence that the consumer is being played for a mug? I reckon.

Let's take a quick look at Mr Abbott's so-called 'Direct Action' climate change policy.

The appointment of machine-man Mike Kaiser, by machine man Stephen Conroy to the position of government relations and external affairs chief of the National Broadband Network Company, frankly, stinks. It stinks of nepotism, the odious 'jobs-for-the-boys' ethos Labor is so often accused of by it's detractors.

Kaiser, a known and self-admitted corrupt Labor Party apparatchik is the Dennis Ferguson of non-conservative politics. Where-ever he shows up, there's a hue and cry to force him to move on. At $450,000 per annum - more than Kevin Rudd is paid by the people, and let's not make any mistakes, this is a publicly funded role - what is the man expected to be doing other than rubbing shoulders with the Labor inner circle. Something he's been doing non-stop since outing himself as a ballot rorter in the mid-eighties.

Not a good look, yet another possibly fatal faux pas by Conroy which adds more tension to the noose he's placed around his own neck with the internet censorship legislation. If Rudd is such a control freak, why isn't he controlling these machine men??

Robert Gottliebsen reiterates something that I, as an aircraft enthusiast and follower of advanced aircraft design & development have also be writing about for a long time now. The risks of resting Australia's air defence capability wholly and solely on the development of the much-vaunted, yet unproven F-35 or Joint Strike Fighter program.

The stench surrounding the Kaiser jobs-for-the-boys debacle seems to be growing stronger by the day. Mind you, reports are only appearing in known conservative mouth-piece media outlets like the Oz, so how much credence one places on the actualities of the issue is dubious at best. That said, regardless of who Kaiser lobbied, or how the appointment process may or may not have been rorted, it's clear that conservative politics under Abbott and his minions is slipping well and truly into the well worn rut where the mud is plentiful and the hurlers numerous.

As is the case with attacks, which I regard as purely political and unfounded, on Peter Garrett. As he stated quite succinctly this morning on ABC Radio National, regulation of installation is a state issue not within his purview. Of course, we mustn't allow salient facts get in the way of a good rogering of a political opponent, which strangely many conservative pollies are enjoying, yet their leader appears reticent to be involved with to the same level. Yes, the deaths of installers is a serious issue, as Abbott stated, but how is that situation pertinent to Garrett's portfolio? Clearly, it's not.

But that's the theatre of politics, isn't it. Slime, sludge and slur. Incite the acolytes, enrage the converted and you achieve little other than lower your own standards. Isn't that conservatism all over?

It's patently clear from reading through Tony Makin's Op-Ed in the Oz today, that as a supposed economic Professor at Griffith University he is most definitely NOT in the Keynesian camp.

It's an election year. We all know this because in the far-too-short Parliamentary cycle, this year of 2010 is year three of the current government.

I was alerted to this article by a blogger friend on another medium. The stats quoted are factual. Yet another set of obvious facts which confirm the decline of the American Empire.

Y'know, I get really, really tired of the shrieking, wailing and gnashing of teeth which occurs everytime Iran thumbs her nose at the West's demands that she not explore nuclear energy. Here's that Ameri-centric Australian pundit, Greg Sheridan, yet again touting the line promoted almost exclusively by some in America, that Iran having nuclear energy is tantamount to the next global military conflict.

These fear and loathing spruikers, like Sheridan, conveniently ignore the fact that the right to explore nuclear energy is sovereign to every nation on the face of the planet, as decreed by the Nuclear Arms Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a signatory. Any nation is free to explore nuclear energy, as long as that exploration does not evolve into weapons development, which to date, Iran's program has not. We know this because the International Atomic Energy Agency - the watchdog - tells us so. The IAEA inspects such program developments, and providing there is deemed to be no weapons development going on, there is no issue.

Frankly, I believe Sheridan and his ilk merely flap their virtual jaws to the American tune because they're sycophants unable to think logically about such issues. That, and the fact that deep down inside, it's the done thing to be anti-Islamic in every aspect of criticism of any nation-state which isn't the US of A.

For those of you who missed QandA on Monday evening, can't face watching Bananaby Joyce embarrass himself yet are still interested in how the government Finance Minister answered the questions about government debt, salvation is at hand.

Simply pop over to Lindsay Tanner's blog on the National Times for a succinct but informative version of what Lindsay had to say in response to Bananaby's bumbling accusations.

Further to yesterday's post regarding the hype being fostered by vested interests surrounding Iran's nuclear program, I came across this small piece in today's Oz, of a much longer article apparently sourced from AFP.

The witchhunt of Peter Garrett is really becoming rather tiresome.

Are our pollies just a little too precious?

If you've missed the bi-sected interview with Malcolm Fraser on 7:30 Report over the past couple of nights, you'll be pleased to discover the entire interview is available on the 7:30 Report website. I missed last nights edition, which is on the site now as I type, but from what I saw tonight, it would appear that Malcolm Fraser has as low an opinion of the man we all love to hate as the majority of Australians who voted him out in 2007.

Maybe it's the maturity which comes with age, maybe in the period 1975 to 1983 I was too young or even disinterested to pay a whole lot of attention. I recall being incensed by the dismissal of Whitlam, and remain to this day a carrier of the flame lit on that day. Fraser seemed, to me then, and to some degree even now, a political conniver, an opportunist and just another of the long, seemingly unending line of politicians seeking power and glory.

Watching and listening to him over the decades since his retreat from political life, his role with Care Australia and the times when his opinion makes good media copy in response to social issues of import, I can't help but draw the conclusion that this man IS a genuine liberal. Something from the machine begun by Robert Menzies which isn't conservative in the far-right, big 'C' sense of the word fostered by Howard. I even find myself admiring the man, at least for his openness and honesty in a post Parliamentary life.

Form your own opinions, as any rational thinker will, but I don't believe I'm wrong in my assessment of John Malcolm Fraser. It's just a shame the current incarnation of so-called liberals aren't just a little more like him.

It's been a long road for Mamdouh Habib, and he's received very little in the way of moral support from Australian society, but it seems that the evidence which had him suddenly and mysteriously released from Guantanamo Bay in 2005, is soon to see the light of day. Justice might finally be able to unwrap herself from the bureaucratic bindings she's endured since the dark days of the Howardian era.

Clive Hamilton - author, academic and ethicist - writes again today in the ABC's Unleashed pages for the fifth time on the rise and substance of Climate Change denial in the media. A damn good read it is too, but nothing new to those of us who follow these quasi-cultural wars between Climate Change realists and Climate Change deniers.