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Senator Robert HILL — That is the basis of it, otherwise the Minister might as well not be going down this path, the path that he seems now willing to abandon. What step does the Minister intend to take then? The legitimacy of the Khmer Rouge is enhanced by the process; there is no doubt about that. Once they get a position on the SNC, they get national legitimacy as a result.

During the year - this is the year of the Minister’s program - their military activity has increased. Most experts seem to accept that their influence in the countryside has extended. They are now exerting influence over a much greater proportion of the country as a whole, having moved away from just the mountainous and border areas. The strategy is the encirclement of Phnom Penh with guerillas fanning out from Kompong Thom in the north, to Kampot in the south and Kompong Chhnang in the north-west of Phnom Penh - a process of expanding influence. I mention the practice now of attacking trains, with three trains having been attacked in the past year and ever extending signs of influence - still principally a terrorist exercise, not seeking to take and hold large tracts of land.

We have been disturbed by the allegations that they have now been provided with tanks by China. I see that the Minister in his statement today refutes the fact, indicating that Australian intelligence sources now doubt whether tanks have been supplied. That is interesting - it is the first I have heard of it - because it was reported not in any rag but in Jane’s Defence Weekly—

Senator Gareth EVANS — For fuck’s sake.

Senator HILL — For what?

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Terry AULICH) - Minister!

Senator HILL — For what?

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT — Order! I ask the Minister to withdraw that.

Senator EVANS — For goodness sake.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT — I ask the Minister to withdraw that comment.

Senator EVANS — It is not on the record.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT — I am afraid it is, and I ask the Minister to withdraw it. The speaker responded, it was most disorderly, and I ask you to withdraw any intemperate statement.

Senator EVANS — Of course I withdraw it.

Senator HILL — I think it is probably unprecedented in the history of this place.

Senator EVANS — Well, what a monstrous piece of nonsense—

—

The first recorded use of the word ‘fuck’ in the Australian Senate, December 6th, 1990. Liberal Senator Robert Hill was responding to Foreign Minister Gareth Evans’ statement on the prospects of a peace settlement in Cambodia, which was reached the following year under Evans’ stewardship.

Evans is pictured above in his Parliamentary office in 1978. Among his contemporaries, he was infamous for his casual (0:44) use of profanity.

A national newspaper, headquartered in another city, thinks that you, fellow Canberrans, are imbeciles; too prone to dangerous ideas to be allowed to govern your own affairs.

The Australian declared yesterday that, because the values of the ACT’s ”tertiary-educated, public sector-dominated electorate” don’t always match the wider community’s, we must be muzzled. That neither we nor, by extension, Northern Territorians, should have the right, through our parliamentarians, to write and live by our own laws.

Over the years, we’ve grown accustomed to a certain level of Canberra-bashing that favoured hobby of lazy thinkers and political oppositions particularly around elections. If ignorant Australians, and the editors who pander to them, repeatedly confuse Federal Parliament with the people of this city, there’s little we can do about it.

But this week’s insults go too far.

We can be certain that The Australian would never tell readers in Queanbeyan, Sydney or Hobart that they cannot be trusted. Nor would the quislings within Labor led by a trio of right-wing senators, Don Farrell, John Hogg and Steve Hutchins dare snatch away the political rights of voters in their home states.

By yesterday, however, Prime Minister Julia Gillard effectively caved in to their campaign.

Those who fear democracy in the ACT and the Northern Territory invoke as a bugbear the prospect of the territories becoming leftist social experiments engineered by the Greens. The irony is that their fears - euthanasia and gay marriage - are issues championed by those who believe governments have no right to interfere with individuals’ private affairs. It’s no coincidence that only conservative governments - those of Marshall Perron in the Northern Territory and Kate Carnell in the ACT - have sponsored debates on euthanasia laws in this country. The Greens, on the other hand, are not even close to majority government in any Australian jurisdiction.

Our federal parliamentarians should know better than to take part in moronic ”anti-Canberra” lynch mobs. They share our city. For at least four months of the year, they live with us.

Perhaps you see them regularly. You might make their coffee, sell them groceries, pass them by with a pleasant greeting while walking around the lake. Perhaps you thought they seemed like nice people, whatever you thought of their politics.

But, clearly, those who oppose this Bill are not our friends. They think we are less than citizens; mere half-Australians who cannot be trusted.

If you see them, be sure to tell them what you think.

“

—	The Canberra Times: Federal politicians must let us live by our own laws (Source: canberratimes.com.au)

John Howard’s new book! I’m guessing the dust jacket’s some kind of self-portrait. [h/t Sasha]

EDIT: Came from Crikey.

“Congressman Rob Portman knows how to grow the economy… in CHINA.”

“…and I’ve rid myself of two cancers.”

Further to what I wrote last night about the parallels between the Coalition election campaign and the Tea Party movement in the US, Possum Comitatus has a cracking article in Crikey today, analysing Coalition supporter attitudes to the prospect of a minority Government and possible developments in both the party and the sections of the media baying for a Coalition election win. I’ve just noticed that old mate Alan Jones has refused to have Rob Oakeshott on 2GB again because he backed Labor. Possum busts out the Tea Party metaphor in a paragraph of optimism, albeit optimism that’s probably unwarranted by early indications:

“Yet the Great Unhinging won’t be a one way street. The forces of good within the Liberal Party – the Malcolm Turnbulls, the Simon Birminghams, the Greg Hunts of this world – will, must, start to push back against the tawdry politics and tea party style behaviour that the Coalition will ultimately pursue under Tony Abbott. Someone will take a rhetorical step too far, and the tinder box that has been the Coalition will ignite with a fury.”

An even greater cause for celebration, especially after watching Barnaby Joyce moving from outside the tent and pissing in to, well, inside the tent and pissing in, would be if the long-heralded existential threat posed to the Nationals by the Independent MPs actually came to pass and this country stopped rotting from the inside out:

“The National Party – the political group that has done more to piss the living standards of rural people up the wall than any other – now face rural independents that for the first time have real power. The Nats ultimate weakness threatens to be publically exposed in their heartland – that they are impotent, do nothing ratbags that rely on the ideological patronage of their constituents and give them three fifths of five eighths of sweet fuck all in return. When, later this term, the fruits of Windsor and Oakeshott start rolling out through regional electorates – from health upgrades to the NBN to a plethora of inevitable policy programs – the National Party will start to be seen by their own constituents for exactly what they are, and the fallout will not be pretty.”

Tony Windsor, you are the King of Hearts.

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John-Michael Howson doesn’t believe in climate change. 3AW Sunday Mornings, 29/08/10.

They just call us clients now.

You’ve gotta wonder why every News Limited paper in the country calls for a fresh election the day after the Independent MPs demonstrate that the Liberal Party’s policy costings were bullshit. “Would it not now therefore be easier to dissolve the people and have the Government elect another one?”

Oh jeh, looking forward to some good old-fashioned Al Grassby style graft in the Parliament again. Not to mention the sartorial genius of rural politicians. Show these Slater and Gordon / St John’s College / Australian Workers Union / Clayton Utz douchebags who’s the Big Daddy, o crazy cowboy hat-wielding maverick!

Bob Katter in the 1980s, via The Australian website.

Bob Katter in 2001, via The Australian website.

He might’ve said some crazy shit in the past, but right now I think Bob Katter’s a champion. It’s a shame that what he’s just said here will never get a proper run in the media.