Tom Switzer on the election and Labor’s climate change
Tom Switzer, editor of The Spectator Australia, returned from a three-week stint in the US and went straight on to Monday night’s Q&A – as the lone conservative. There wasn’t a hint of jet lag in his performance.
Switzer’s co-panellists were former Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull, Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, the Greens’ senator Christine Milne and ALP power broker Graham Richardson.
The first question put to the panel was: Beyond the superficial motherhood statements, is there any real difference between Labor and the Coalition this election?
TOM SWITZER: Well, on the issue of the real difference, well, I think there is a difference. Tony Abbott is sincere about his conservative credentials, whereas Julia Gillard is trying to be a conservative. She is. She’s running as a centre right candidate. She quickly distanced herself from Kevin Rudd’s unpopular mining tax. She’s gone way out of her way to toughen up or try to pretend to toughen up the nation’s borders. In many respects she’s browner than John Howard. She’s completely distanced herself from the emissions trading scheme and she’s talking a very muscular, hawkish language about the war in Afghanistan. So I think that the difference between the two is in the sincerity. They’re both running as centre right candidates. Abbott is sincere. Gillard, she’s a lady of many masks. Who can say they’ve seen her real face?
The next question attacked Labor from the Left on climate change: Why has the Government abrogated its leadership responsibility on climate change action – an issue on which it had a clear election mandate – to a “citizen’s assembly”? And what is it you expect these citizens to tell you that the IPCC, Ross Garnaut, Tim Flannery and others can’t?
A clearly uncomfortable Penny Wong waffled on.Tom Switzer nailed it with this:
TOM SWITZER: The problem with this lot in the Labor Party is they rang this scare campaign for two whole years, saying the delay was denial, that people like Brendan Nelson and Nick Minchin and Barnaby Joyce were deniers and radicals and extremists and that they must sign up to the climate change legislation by 3.30 on a certain Friday afternoon or else double dissolution. But when Tony Abbott called their bluff, what did they do? They went to water. They lacked leadership. Gutless, weak and hypocritical.
Read the transcript or watch the program in full at the Q&A website.
Spitzer is in fine form nailing Gillard and her gang of Bureaucrats.
Absolutely bloody marvellous.
That’s good stuff; telling like it is. The others are just frauds.
Didn’t he stand as a candidate in Neilson’s seat pre-selection?
He is good.
Bravo Tom, and hear, hear, The only true voice of reason and sense on the panel that night, but who is surprised by that. The audience was OBVIOUSLY heavily stacked with Greenies and the appearance of Malcolm Turncoat was nothing less than a strategic stab in the back for true conservatism. Talk about stabbing the back, Turncoat might as well have signed up for the Greens there and then after he put his Rudd inspired knife in the back of the Abbott on the ETS. Wrong Wong, well what can you say, a robot and like a bunny in the headlights just on script as always. Mr “Whatever it takes” Richardson was clearly there to hold her hand incase she lost the plot and was definitely her bodyguard in the end as he jumped down the throat of an audience question about gay marriage and her (Wong a lesbian) and the PM’s anti stance on the subject ( on this Julia and I do agree, who’d have thunk that!!!). Again the ABC has proved once more that they are as objective and as fair and old Joe Stalin was when he said, “hey that Hitlr guy, he’s not such a bad bloke!”
Zeg…..Richo must have taken a leaf out of Saul Alinsky’s book, Rules for Radicals! Funny how the instructions from that book continue to show up in the radical left for which it was published, even after forty odd years.
What is wrong with our lefty retards, can’t they learn from the lessons of history that socialism does not work!
NO they can’t, unless there is a collective consensus there is no way that an individual thought can take seed and grow into an idea. This is the conditional symptom of the socialist ideology and that is why we must cut off the heads of this Communist Hydra so as to destroy the entire body. Attacking the radical leftist youth ( the spawn ) will only fire up the beast, it’s the top end of the animal that must be tackled and that end sits insidiously in all government and institutions, especially the eduction department.
Good on Tom Switzer!!
We are increasingly able to witness the fact that more and more people are beginning to wake up to the Labor rort.
Incompetance, negligence and bungling are all part of the Liebor landscape.
Honestly; giving Liebor any access to the nations’ wealth is like giving the Taliban access to arms – a sick and twisted bunch of left-wing misfits, hell bent on destruction and destabilisation of our great nation.
We need politicians with the guts and fortitude of Switzer!!
Good link.
Nailed it!!!
hear hear
Tom Switzer was a lucid voice that even brought out the more rational side of the duplicitous Turnbull. In fact the panel seemed almost balanced. Even the ALP claquers brought into support Penny Wong and Graham Richardson were roused to applaud Switzer’s sensibility. But that did not stop the bullying Richardson from doing his best to browbeat any ‘non-believers’ or ’sceptics’ who had the temerity to question the religion founded on faith in anthropogenic global warming.
Wong’s sexual orientation is as expedient as her stance on climate change, and neither is not as inscrutable as she thinks. The world knows of her sexual orientation, which until recently, and through most of history was, and in most cultures is, regarded as a perversion. Her current stance lacks conviction, but like her view on climate, is not her view at all, but merely the best way to keep a sinecure. In any case, she can never utter an independent thought. If the sinecure ever requires an occupant with a capacity for thought, she will lose it. She is the Minister for Climate Change because of her inability to do anything but mindlessly parrot the catchphrases her betters programme into her memory bank.
The opprobrious vitriol you lavish on Penny Wong, particularly with regard to her sexual preference belies a very simple truth Mr Deane; you are an A Class hypocrite! Your moralistic chastisement of Ms Wong’s homosexuality fails to account for the fact that you yourself engage in what was until recently, and through most of history was, and in most cultures is, regarded as a perversion. Until quite recently visiting brothels in Australia was an illegal activity. Fortunately, left-leaning political parties and social progressives decriminalised prostitution benefitting not only those who chose to work as ’sex-workers’ but their clientele as well. You now have the privilege of living in a socially progressive country that pemits your predilection without the smear of criminality attached to it.
Furthermore, to promote and espouse Judeo-Christian ethics is somewhat disingenuous isn’t it? I wonder how many modern Christians hold the view that prostitution is permissable, and indeed to be promoted enthusiastically? Can you seriously demonise Islam and simultaneously uphold the virtues of Christianity and ‘Australian Culture’ with a clear conscience? I doubt you can.
Before you assume that I have done anything illegal or subversive in obtaining this information about you, it should be noted that your blog is publically accessible and openly and freely provides this information about you. So, you’ve no cause for the creation of any paranoid fantasy.
I note too that you list Mein Kampf as a favourite book, and you, an English Tutor! It can’t be the literary majesty of the work that attracts you, it is only barely literate as a piece of prose, so it must be the politics. In fact, given the proximity of your own views, as expressed in this forum and other reactionary and alarmist fora, it’s clear you favour a Fascist paradigm in preference to the liberal social democracy we enjoy today.
There… I’ve added my own ad homenim, just to make you feel at home and to score a point for Ms Wong, who has yet to be defended on this reprehensible forum of the malcontented and ill-informed.
Do enjoy your day Mr Deane, and when you next feel inclined to proffer an attack on an individuals sexual orientation, remember to reveal your own tangental preferences and deviations from what most conservatives view as ‘the norm’.
The Hypocrisy Detector
Hypocrisy Detector….what a laugh! Why not take a long hard look in the mirror before commenting on this site. I see Greg has beat me to the punch with a reply, and so be it, after all your rant was directed at him. Funny how someone underlining a politicians sexual preferences gets to be called a hypocrite, when the targetted person, in this case Wong, makes no bones about her public admission of homosexuality, after all, it’s almost a holy badge these days, isn’t it!
How perverse! But of course you in your lefty twisted world would never agree to that labelling, would you!
‘Stop hiding Nemesis….you continually talk about ‘political correctness’, but carefully and demonstrably, hide behind euphanism and deceptive semantics to hide your real political beliefs,’
Really! I wasn’t aware I was doing this. Maybe only in your mind Hypocrisy Detector!
’state what you actually stand for.’
If you can’t work that out from our website at: australianprotectionists.com then I really can’t help you!
HD, congratulations; you are the first cant humbugger to accuse me of hypocrisy who knows how to spell the word. But you have trouble with ‘ad hominem’, a term that does not apply to your good friend, the Wong, as she is not homo in the Latin sense.
A big laugh there Greg! And what a ratbag commentor HD is!
Hear, hear Greg
Tom Switzer should be the foreign minister in the incoming Abbott Government.
Oh what a shame Switzer is not running for election!
How is Darrin Hodges these days Nemesis? Is he still celebrating the Cronulla Riots? Perhaps he’s still of the view that he is, “…interested in the purer form of fascism… and while I don’t subscribe to the whole ‘worship Hitler’ thing, his comments on multiculturalism and politics in general are still just as relevant today as they were 70-odd years ago.”
Anyone interested, even peripherally in the Australian Protectionist Party (APP), needs to be aware that Darrin Hodges has a past, and not a pleasant one at all. His neo-Nazi leanings are more than evident and the APP is his newest vehicle for the promotion of Fascism. Anyone who disbelieves this should begin to investigate the people associated with the APP. Draw your own conclusions…
Stop hiding Nemesis… You continually talk about ‘political correctness’ but carefully, and demonstrably, hide behind euphemism and deceptive semantics to hide your true political beliefs. The mendacity of the maladjusted is well and truly evident in APP material and the nonsense posted on sites like this. Stop the hypocrisy and state what you actually stand for!
The Hypocrisy Detector.
You are temeritous, HD, of accusing others of hiding behind sobriquets, given the pompous, self-inflated mask you apply to your own identity.
What’s more you presume to embarrass others by restating things they openly admit. The things you regard as unacceptable are only so because of the doctrination that has destroyed your mind. They are not regarded as embarrassing by those who acknowledge them. But egocentric fools can’t grasp that others take pride in the ideas you mindless disapprove.
I pity you, HD.
Hypocrisy Detector…..instead of haunting this site with your drivel, which really has nothing to do with the APP site, why not visit http://www.australianprotectionists.com and ask the man himself, that is Darrin Hodges?
Or are you just trying to taint a name without providing any real evidence?
How the hell did he get on Q&A on the ALPBC??! More to the point, how was he allowed to say what he did? The Jones clown must be mellowing!