ZEG

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG notes that insulting speech is OK if Clive Palmer says it





Clive Palmer, the ultimate loose cannon

There will now be NOBODY who takes him seriously

Palmer United Party senator Jacquie Lambie has stuck her foot in it — again.  Tasmania’s PUP member today emailed a media statement and “opinion piece” regarding her boss Clive Palmer's tirade on Chinese “mongrels” on QandA last night.

In an inflammatory statement, Ms Lambie writes, “If anybody thinks that we should have a national security and defence policy, which ignores the threat of a Chinese Communist invasion — you’re delusional and got rocks in your head.  “Today China is controlled by an aggressive, anti democratic, totalitarian government. We need to double the size and capacity of our military right now.”

Meanwhile, the one politician Australia really wants to hear from this morning has chosen to keep his opinions to himself, as Clive Palmer continues to cop it after launching a tirade against the Chinese last night.  A spokeswoman for the Palmer United Party’s Chinese born senator, Dio Wang, who holds a seat in Western Australia, told news.com.au Mr Wang had “no comment”.  According to the spokeswoman, Mr Wang was “preparing for upcoming back to back Senate sittings”.

Mr Wang was born in Nanjing, China, and emigrated to Australia in 2003. He has been an Australian citizen since 2009. He earned a Postgraduate Diploma in Planning and Design (Urban Planning) and Master of Engineering Structures at the University of Melbourne.

Wang was Palmer’s top candidate for PUP’s 2013 Western Australia federal election campaign.  He was initially caught up in the recount scandal, eventually winning with 12.3 per cent of the vote. He joined the Senate on July 1 this year.

Meanwhile, former One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has shocked Australia this morning by giving a measured and thought-provoking interview regarding Clive Palmer’s explosive tirade against the Chinese on the ABC last night.  In an interview alongside former radio shock jock Derryn Hinch on Channel 7’s Sunrise program, Ms Hanson criticised Mr Palmer for his tirade against Australia’s biggest trading partner.

On Q&A last night, Mr Palmer likened the Chinese government to “mongrels” and called them “b*stards” who wanted to “take over our country”.   In a broad spray the maverick MP accused the “communist Chinese government” of trying to take over Australia’s ports to steal the nation’s natural resources. “I don’t mind standing up against the Chinese bastards and stopping them from doing it,” he said on Q&A.

Treasurer Joe Hockey this morning said Mr Palmer’s comments are “hugely damaging”, arguing he is a big beneficiary of China’s investment.  “I would say to Mr Palmer please do not bring down the rest of Australia because of your biases.”

Mr Palmer has since attempted to defuse the situation, tweeting this morning that his comments were not in reference to “Chinese people”.

Yet in an unexpected twist, Ms Hanson criticised Mr Palmer, telling Sunrise he should “stick your nose out of other people’s business”.  “I never said what Clive Palmer said, and Tony Abbott thought I was his biggest headache,” she said.

“Maybe Clive Palmer should take a position over in China in Parliamentary seats.  “I’ve always said clean up your own backyard before criticising other people.  “It’s not up to Clive Palmer or anyone else. It’s not for us or Australia to get involved in that.”

Meanwhile, Julie Bishop said it was not appropriate for Mr Palmer to “vent his bitterness” on a television program over a business deal.  In an interview with 3AW this morning, she said she would be speaking with the Chinese embassy to explain that the comments were from just one member of parliament, but would not be contacting Mr Palmer.

The Palmer United Party leader is embroiled in a legal battle with Chinese state-owned company CITIC Pacific, which has accused the mining magnate of siphoning off $12 million in funds.  Mr Palmer has strenuously denied accusations his company Mineralogy misused CITIC Pacific’s cash to finance PUP’s federal election campaign. He said the matter was before the Supreme Court this week and he’d keep up the fight against the “Chinese mongrels”.

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Dropping bombs and stoking feuds: the other side of Noel Pearson

He writes sensibly.  A pity his conduct does not match

Shortly after 11 am last Friday, Noel Pearson, chairman of the Cape York Group and a nationally prominent Aboriginal leader, walked into the newsroom of The Sydney Morning Herald and approached a senior editor. He proceeded to berate the editor, loudly, obscenely. He took off his jacket and told the editor he would “beat you to a pulp”. He also mentioned throwing him off the balcony. He dropped the “c” bomb repeatedly.

All in the middle of a metropolitan newsroom.

This is the other side of Noel Pearson, the unelected, unaccountable bridge-burner who has left a trail of damage and division that offsets and undermines his efforts to break the cycle of social dysfunction in many indigenous communities.

Tony Abbott is having a shocking run with his inner sanctum. He’s been putting out fires lit by his Treasurer, his Attorney-General, his Minister for Employment, his Treasurer, again, and now his personally appointed special adviser on indigenous affairs.

Abbott’s appointment of Pearson now looks well-meaning but obtuse. If Pearson were to ever appear in court in a defamation action over being called a bully, the court would be presented with voluminous evidence of his foul temper and self-indulgent rages, some of which have been recorded on tape.

One of his tirades was recorded by a former federal minister. Even after Pearson was advised he was being taped he continued a long, expletive-laden soliloquy of abuse and invective. The current Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Nigel Scullion, is also reported to have been subject to one of Pearson’s rages, repeatedly being told to “f--- off”.

The trigger for Pearson’s rage on Friday was an old sore, a profile published in Good Weekend  two years ago, on August 25, 2012, by Jane Cadzow. The profile was rigorously researched and crafted, a trademark of Cadzow’s work. She has won two Walkley Awards for feature writing and been a Walkley finalist four times.

Cadzow's request for an interview with Pearson had been turned down. Yet on the morning her profile appeared he was on the phone delivering a long blast of outrage. He was aggrieved that it had been written while he was receiving treatment for cancer and that Cadzow did not go up to Cape York when researching the story.

But Cadzow was not going to Cape York without an interview with Pearson. She also felt his rage over the phone vindicated her portrayal of his anger, based on many sources.

“His call went on so long,” she told me, “and I had so little chance to get a word in, that I even made a cup of tea … It was ironic that while he was complaining about the story his behaviour fitted exactly with the pattern I had reported.”

Her profile began with this confronting scene:

The meeting began cordially enough. A Queensland government delegation was in Cairns to confer with Noel Pearson, the most influential indigenous leader in the country. Pleasantries were exchanged as people took their places around the table, then the room fell silent while everyone waited respectfully for him to speak.

What followed, according to former parliamentarian Stephen Robertson, was "a tirade of expletives and abuse", including, more than once, the phrase "f---ing white c---s"...  starting very slowly, very deliberately, and speaking quite softly, then over the next 15 or 20 minutes reaching a crescendo".

Among those present was state environment minister Kate Jones, whose female adviser was dismissed by Pearson as an "arse-wipe". Robertson says his own chief-of-staff, an indigenous man, was called a "sell-out c---". Another member of the group sums up the rest of the diatribe: "'You f---ing white c---s', scream, scream, scream. Full on, for half an hour. Nobody could get a word in.”

The story presented a troubling portrait of a charismatic bully who has extracted millions of dollars of funding for indigenous programs from governments and corporations, via persuasion or browbeating. The portrait of Pearson’s older brother, Gerhardt, was also troubling. The profile was balanced with the many positives for which Pearson is famous - his intellect, his lucidity and his commitment to practical improvements for Australia’s poorest communities.

I’ve interviewed Pearson, seen him speak, seen a room captivated by his eloquence, and  written in his favour. But his positives are offset by his negatives, the feuds, the disdain, the costly demands on the public purse.

And his bullying is often premeditated. Cadzow interviewed many people including a former close associate of Pearson who became an adversary, Lyndon Schneiders of the Wilderness Society. He described how Noel and Gerhardt Pearson planned their intimidation: "They called it 'bombing'. When they were going to go in and make their views forcefully known to government, they were going on a 'bombing raid'. I watched them do it to advisers, to backbenchers, to ministers, to journos. It wasn't pretty."

Even the journalist who did more than any other to push the Pearson mythology, Tony Koch, came to regret his long silence about Pearson’s dark side. In a column for The Australian in April 2012, he wrote: “Instead of drawing people into his orbit, Pearson has succeeded in pushing almost everyone away.”

This does not augur well for his role as Abbott’s emissary. Pearson’s story forms just a fractional part of the tens of billions of dollars of government funding that has been funnelled into indigenous communities and programs with little impact on measurable improvement. The public’s exasperation and cynicism is rampant. It pays the bills.

Pearson’s most recent explosion, on Friday, is emblematic of a man who cannot control his anger or curb his ego. This does not serve his cause. It also damages the cause of the Prime Minister he is supposedly helping.

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Qantas flies a flag for Labor with Recognise livery

QANTAS has for the first time in its 94 years turned its aeroplanes into political billboards. Worse, it’s doing it in a racist cause.

The national airline this week painted a giant Recognise slogan on a new QantasLink Q400, and all 31 aircraft in its Q400 regional fleet will soon sport the logo, too.

“As an Australian icon, Qantas is proud to lend its support towards ensuring the first chapter of Australia’s story and the people who forged it are recognised,” said Qantas group executive Olivia Wirth.

But Recognise is not just a campaign to change the Constitution to recognise Aborigines as the first Australians, which is supported by the Abbott Government.

The movement, whose joint campaign director Tim Gartrell is Labor’s former campaign director, wants even more.

It wants not just to divide Australians by “race” but to accord the Aboriginal “race” different rights.

It wants the Constitution changed to allow Parliament to pass “laws for the benefit” of indigenous Australians, to recognise Aboriginal “ languages were this country’s first tongues” and to ban racial discrimination.

These changes could actually mean different laws for different “races”, Aboriginal culture given special rights, and activists getting new weapons to shut down debates they define as racist.

And mind you: this stupid division is happening when many people identifying as Aboriginal actually have many non-Aboriginal descendants.

It is bad enough that Qantas backs something so racist. Worse is that it’s promoting a recognition campaign closer to Labor’s position than the Liberal one set by Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

Abbott wants only a minimalist change to the Constitution — little more than a simple recognition in the preamble that Aborigines were here before other “races”.

But Labor demands something much closer to the Recognise demands.

A week ago, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten declared “symbolic change is not good enough”.

Any change to the Constitution should be “substantive and substantial”.

So Qantas is not just helping to set Aboriginal Australians against non-Aboriginal. It is also helping Labor against the Liberals.

How useful that is for Qantas, after all its fights with Labor’s most powerful unions. Its real reconciliation is with Labor.

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Cancelled: proposed speech by Muslim activist Uthman Badar at UWA

A speech by a controversial Muslim activist planned to be held at UWA has been cancelled by organisers, who claimed they were misled by an outside party.

On Tuesday morning, UWA's Muslim Students Association cancelled the speech by Uthman Badar after Vice-Chancellor Paul Johnson declared the activist had to renounce his alleged view that honour killings were morally justified.

Mr Badar attracted significant media attention earlier this year when he was booked to speak on morally justifying honour killing at Sydney's Festival of Dangerous Ideas.

Negative feedback forced the seminar to be called off.

Now the Australian spokesman for Hizb Ut-Tahrir - an international Islamic group that advocates sharia law - Mr Badar had been invited to speak at a forum at UWA held by the university's Muslim Students Association titled "Gaza Crisis".

The university's Muslim Students Association cancelled the forum, shortly after Mr Johnson said he required a written undertaking that Mr Badar abide by the university's code of ethics and conduct and renounce his views on honour killings "in all contexts".

Muslim Students Association executive officer Nazim Khan, an assistant professor at UWA’s Department of Applied Statistics, said the association had been misguided by a party outside the university.

He refused to name the man who booked Mr Badar but said they would not deal with him in the future.

“When we organised it, it was organised through one of our partners. We didn’t know who the speaker was, we just knew the topic,” he said.

“When it came to light who the speaker was, I didn’t recognise the name but once we discovered who he was, as an association we took the steps to cancel it.

“We have had some dealings with [the booker] before so we took it in good faith but we weren’t told who the speaker was, although this person did know.

“We trusted his judgement to get a speaker on the topic but when it came to light he had misguided us...we will be more vigilant in the future.

“We took the steps to make sure we didn’t damage our reputation within the university or the reputation of the university”

Vice-Chancellor Johnson had earlier labelled Mr Badar's purported views to be incompatible with UWA principles.

"Mr Badar has been reported to hold the view that so-called honour killings are morally justified," he said in a statement.

"This view is completely incompatible with the university’s principles.

"[Mr Johnson] requires Mr Badar to give an explicit, written public assurance that he is opposed to the cowardly and barbaric act of so-called honour killings."

Although Mr Badar was booked to speak at the Sydney festival, it was unclear if he held a view that honour killings were justified.

Mr Nazim said the Gaza Crisis forum may go ahead at a later date with more moderate speakers.

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