Recent attempts to frighten the gullible into believing the world was melting and rivers were drying up have been ridiculed by the big freeze in Europe and record floods in Australia.

Their latest bogy is Gina Rinehart’s investment in media enterprises.  According to Greens Senator Christine Milne, these investments ‘are an assault on our democracy’.

She neglected to explain how large media investments by Wotif founder, Graeme Woods, are OK.

Wood is the wealthy global warming alarmist who made the single biggest individual political donation in Australian history – to the Greens. A whopping $1.6 million.

Such doublespeak is straight out of the little red book issued to Communist sympathisers during their Cold War heyday.

One would think the Greens, those great supporters of equal opportunity for women, would be trumpeting the success of a female in charge of our biggest mining company.  Unfortunately Gina Rinehart is not a member of the sisterhood, is a capitalist, and probably votes conservative.

The Greens have a collective paranoia about any media outlet that dares question their extreme Left agenda, particularly the greatest hoax of our time, Global Warming.  They label their detractors as deniers who are influenced by ‘hate media’.  Their political goal is to introduce curbs on their criticism by limiting their right to free speech.  This is a common trait in communist countries.

The issue that irks the commentariat more than any other is the fact that the majority of readers, listeners and viewers ignore their favoured outlets such as the ABC and the Fairfax media which provide a ready platform for issues such as global warming, indigenous welfare and gay marriage. These might be of concern for the inner-city chattering class but they don’t register with struggling families and businesses about to be saddled with a crippling Carbon Tax.

Media organisations are no different to any other in a competitive free enterprise economy.  They have to provide a return for shareholders by responding to market needs.  Only those subsidised by taxpayers, such as the ABC, can afford to ignore ratings.  Others such as the Fairfax media will see their share-price decline as their readership diminishes.

Perhaps Senators’ Bob Brown,  Christine Milne and Lee Rhiannon could seek an investor for their ‘Green Left Weekly’ to counter Rinehart’s raid on Fairfax.

Australians of all political persuasions were stunned as our Prime Minister’s security contingent had to activate emergency measures to extricate her and the Leader of the Opposition from a baying crowd of ferals.

Moments of stress in the face of imminent danger can trigger the good, the bad or the ugly in a person.  Julia Gillard’s reaction was exemplary.  Her concern for Tony Abbott’s welfare during the emergency evacuation and her calm and dignified demeanour after the incident should make us all proud of the quality of our political leadership. It won’t of course.

Julia didn’t go far enough in sacking the spin doctor who triggered the incident. If she is to have any chance at the next election she should sack them all and just be herself.  We all liked what we saw in her instinctive reaction to danger from the welfare warts of our national underbelly.

It was not the media’s proudest moment as they deliberately misinterpreted Tony Abbott’s remarks. Truth seems to be the first casualty in the competition for a headline amongst the Canberra pack.  The fact that Tony Abbott didn’t call for the Tent embassy to be closed was never going to get in the way of a good story for wannabees on the hunt for a media scoop.

Fortunately the other 99.9 percent of Australians had a most enjoyable family day.  Dr Charlie Teo presented a wonderful oration.  We applauded Geoffrey Rush, Laurie Baymarrawangga, Marita Cheng and Lynne Sawyers as our Australians’ of the year.  The Tamworth Music Festival was a hoot and we watched with pride as our immigrant cultures cheerfully participated in ceremonies, waved flags and enjoyed the fellowship of the day.

It was a pity the media decided to focus on the .01 percent of political parasites who hate Australia but love our welfare.  Maybe Tony Abbott should have been more specific and say it’s time the media moved on from the Tent embassy. It would soon become an irrelevant humpy if they left it alone and chose to focus on our aboriginal role models and their achievements instead.

As for the ferals – black, white, brown, brindle and Green – they would be well advised to keep their smelly, grubby selves away from the people we elect to represent us.

The benefits of the new wave are beyond the dreams of earlier generations. They have irrevocably changed the way we live, work, love, fight, learn and play. The technologies are affordable, accessible, universal and instant.

Whilst baby-boomers are daunted with every instruction book accompanying new devices pre-schoolers accept them as a natural accessory.

‘I saw you at the supermarket’ said the teenager daughter of a friend on Facebook.  ‘You should have come over and said hello’ was the posted response.  A grandmother checking her grandson’s Facebook page chastises him for a message he posted to his friends.  She is ‘unfriended’. 

It’s hard to appreciate the implications of the dehumanising of our social relationships in this way.

It’s equally as hard to anticipate the longer term consequences on what we might say to a friend, colleague or protagonist in fit of bother.  It wasn’t a problem in the past – we could just tear up the letter or nick the carbon copy and move on.  Not any more – every word, phrase and missive we send is captured by big-brother and will remain tattooed within our DNA forever.  They will be read by future friends, lovers, work colleagues, bosses, your kids and their kids.  It’s enough to make one want to reach for the biro and notebook – the old-fashioned paper one.

Rebellious teenagers – and they all are at some stage –  don’t often think of these implications when dealing with the pressure of their peers.  But we can be sure there will be some embarrassing job interviews for some in a few years time!

Whilst the technology is certainly affordable the sacrifice of our personal privacy may not be.

Cyber-bullying is emerging as a dark side of social networks.  Teen suicides have recently been reported as the result of the invasion of their privacy.  Exposure to scams, cyber-stalkers, pornography and other sinister activities are as big a threat as drugs to vulnerable young minds.

Parents and teachers face a daunting challenge in communicating the need to communicate responsibly in the new cyber era.  They not only have to worry about the impact of junk food on the physical condition of their children – they now have to worry about the negative effects of junk information and junk relationships on their wellbeing.

It’s almost a relief to be a luddite who is satisfied with the odd Google after reading the papers.

Our geographic location as a Pacific Rim nation; an abundance of natural resources; a parliamentary democracy; a free enterprise economy; an egalitarian society based on Christian values; our temperate weather; and our social welfare systems combine to make us the envy of the troubled world we live in.

We have freedom, fresh air, clean water, breathtaking landscapes and the opportunity to be whatever we want to become and do whatever we want to do.  All we have to do is set our goals, study, commit to hard work and go for it.

The year ahead will therefore be whatever we want it to be – and the outcomes we experience will reflect the choices we make. 

Our physical health will depend on decisions we make in regard to the food we eat and the amount of exercise we do.

Our mental wellbeing will depend on the books we read, the programs we watch and the self-improvement courses we attend.

Our financial situation will depend on how hard we work, how we invest and whether we choose to save or spend.

Our family situation will depend on the degree of love and respect we show to parents, brothers, sisters, relatives, friends, colleagues and neighbours.

The state of our psychological wellbeing will depend on whether we choose to live by our inherited Christian values or live on the fringe.

There will certainly be no shortage of things to whinge about in 2012.

The potential for another global financial crisis; the nuclear threat from Iran and North Korea; the war on terror in Afghanistan and Pakistan; likely war in the Middle East; corrupt dictatorships in Africa; creeping communism in the form of enviro-evangelism and a host of others.

Closer to home we have illegal immigrants; drive-by shootings, skyrocketing electricity prices; the carbon tax; politicians, fat cats, celebrities and a host of negative things to whine about.

The common thread about the negative events that will dominate our conversations in 2012 is that, whilst they are certainly within our circle of concern, none are within our circle of influence – until the next election!

In the meantime we should focus on the issues that we do have influence over – our health, our education, our families, our jobs and our local communities.  These we can control, and if we do, 2012 will be a great year.

It certainly has been a bad year for Global warmers and climate change soothsayers.  Dire warnings by their High Priest, Tim Flannery, never happened. Brisbane did not run out of water as he predicted – the city had it worst floods in decades.  Sydney didn’t melt as he warned – it is currently experiencing its coldest summer for half a century.   Damn.

It has also been a bad year for enviro-evangelists in the Labor-Green movement as the fallacy of their concocted ideology was exposed as a subterfuge for wealth redistribution.  The Left have never accepted the day communism died with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

The fall of Labor in NSW has similar portents for the once great party of the working class.  Labor has been hijacked by intellectual spivs, bleeding hearts, the chattering class and radical Left wing activists in GetUp and Occupy.  They have perfected the art of living out of other people’s wallets. If they had to put their hands in their own pockets there wouldn’t be a single wind farm in the country.

2011 will be remembered as the high-water mark for the Greens.  They forced a Carbon Tax on the Gillard Government and dismantled our border security. Their achievements have far exceeded the proportion of their voting base but they know Julia Gillard needs them to stay in power so they are able to extract the highest political price for their support.

The year also saw the emergence of another powerful political block – the Goons.  This squad comprising Rob Oakshott, Tony Windsor and Andrew Wilkie exposed the fallacy of voting for independents.  They are a pox on politics.

The 2011 euro zone crisis threatening the world economy burst the bubble of the Left’s solution to a better life for all through big government stimulus packages.  These are designed to subsides the unproductive class and their loony feelgood scams. Governments in Europe are about to pay the piper for stifling individual enterprise in favour of bureaucratic zealotry.

 Notwithstanding the dead weight of the Labor-Green-Goon alliance Australia continues to punch above its weight.  Our resources are fuelling massive growth in Asia and the sub-continent.  School graduations reveal an enormous multi-cultural talent pool destined to drive innovation and enterprise to new levels.  Our geographic location as a Pacific Rim nation will ensure an abundance of opportunity for young Australians entering the workforce with the right work ethic.

These brave Australians sacrificed their lives to protect our borders from invasion against a fanatical Japanese force who had reached our front door in the island chain to our north. They died to protect their families and our Australian way of life.

As I walked amongst their graves in Rabaul last week I felt they could be forgiven for thinking they might have died in vain.

Their sacrifice has now been sacrificed on the altar of political expediency by the left wing Labor-Green Alliance now running the country. They have been betrayed by the generation they fought to protect.

The collective sacrifice of our pensioners who built our nation has also been betrayed by the current generation of political spivs, legal parasites and bleeding hearts from the left. Whilst the Gillard government pours billions of dollars of our taxes to support illegal immigrants and carbon taxes our pensioners have to swelter and freeze in their homes because they can’t afford electricity.

Polls suggest that Australians now rue the day they voted the Howard Government out of office.

John Howard respected our heritage and the sacrifice our servicemen and women made to protect it. Increasing numbers voters are now regretting their rejection of his commitment that a Liberal Government would decide who comes to Australia and the circumstances under which they come.

The situation is more depressing in view of the fact that there are realistic options available to prevent illegal immigrants from gatecrashing our generous welfare system.

Papua New Guinea – our closest neighbour, former mandated territory, wartime ally and fellow Commonwealth Member – would welcome the opportunity to establish offshore processing facilities in their island provinces of Manus and East New Britain. More than a million Papua New Guineans survive on less than $1 per day, almost three million are illiterate and they have the highest infection rate of HIV/Aids in the Pacific.

Offshore detention facilities could therefore be used for schools and health centres when the flow of foreign welfare gatecrashers stopped as it did when the Howard Government slammed the door shut on foreign people smugglers.

Unfortunately the Gillard Government would rather waste billions and ignore the plight of pensioners and low income earners rather than admit that John Howard was right.

Whilst Environmentalism has replaced Communism as their new ideology their core belief remains rooted in their hatred of democracy and capitalism. It is not surprising that their hate for the leading country that espouses these values, the United States of America, is palpable.

Greens leader Bob Brown and their ‘leader-elect’ Lee Rhiannon will do all in their power to establish an appeasement policy with China and will continue to undermine our sovereignty by opening up our borders to illegal-immigrants hostile to our Western way of life. If they can screw our economy with a Carbon Tax that is a bonus for them.

Our Australian sovereignty is more vulnerable than ever before. Our left-wing  commentariat will gladly set the table for any illegal anti-Western immigrants and there is no shortage of inner-city Doctors wives to demand they be served the full menu of welfare benefits on arrival.

Anybody who dares express a concern is immediately branded an ignorant, xenophobic, racist redneck.  Dissent is not something that is tolerated within the framework of their communist ideology.

The big question is what can we really do to protect ourselves against the influence of a hostile nation in the Asia-Pacific region?  The answer, in view of the size of our land-mass, population, and level of defence spending is . . . very little!

We therefore have to rely on a strategic alliance with a ‘big and powerful friend’. If we are not prepared to invest more than 1.8 percent of our GDP towards defence spending then we need to align ourselves with a like-minded nation that is.

The Unites States of America, who saved us from defeat by Japan in 1942-45 is the obvious and only choice we have. Whilst Australia has been their most loyal ally in all conflicts since WW1 we must appreciate that nations do not have permanent friends, they only have permanent interests.  In this regard America’s interests will be based on the strategic need to reposition itself against China’s potential political and military capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region.

We should welcome an American base in the top-end as a form of insurance for our security however it is also important for us to continue to develop strong diplomatic, cultural and economic relationships with China and other nations in our region.

Unions have been waging an industrial terror campaign against Qantas to force them to accept their demands for more pay, less work and security for jobs that won’t exist with new technology.  Union leaders have boasted that they intend to do Qantas over slowly to get their way.

By calling short strikes at short notice they have been able to provide maximum disruption to the airline with minimal impact to their own pay packets.  So far this industrial terrorism has cost Qantas $70 million in losses at the rate of $15 million a week.  The international arm of Qantas is already losing $200 million a year because archaic union work practices prevent management adapting to meet challenges imposed by their competitors.

Emirates, Qatar, Singapore Airlines and a host of others have access to flexible management, skilled labour and high technology in the world’s most competitive marketplace. They are cutting edge commercial enterprises as opposed to Qantas which Labor wants to operate more as a union welfare fund than a competitive airline.

This is not sustainable in the modern era.  Asia is now the world’s biggest market for international airlines and Qantas needs to secure market share otherwise it will go the way of former great airlines such as Pan Am, TWA and Ansett.

The dispute was the first real test of Julia Gillard’s ‘Fair Work Australia’ which is code for creeping union influence in the workplace.  Julia Gillard is a product of the union movement.  She developed the ‘Fair‘ Work Australia legislation in her former role as Minister for Industrial Relations and stacked it with union hacks and Labor lawyers.  The odds were heavily weighted against Alan Joyce and Qantas in this environment.

Labor were in an invidious position. If they elected to support their own thugs in the union movement they would destroy the viability of our flagship carrier.  If the thugs got their way Julia would have had to proclaim that ‘there will be no national airline under a government I lead?’

The tragic victims in this avoidable brinkmanship were the thousands of Australians stranded at airports around the world.  There was certainly nothing ‘fair’ about the situation they were forced to face as a result of the Government’s reluctance to take on their mates in the union movement.

Democracy is indeed a major impediment to the republican cause.  At the 1999 referendum more than a million Australians voted to retain our constitutional monarchy. The highest proportion of votes for a republic came from the inner-urban areas of Sydney and Melbourne.  The only area that registered a majority vote for a republic came from the People’s Republic of Canberra. All other states and territories rejected it.

The referendum provided the best ever opportunity for Australians to switch to a Republic.  The issue was driven by Prime Minister Paul Keating and high-profile merchant banker, Malcolm Turnbull.  It was supported by most of the commentariat as well as high profile actors, writers and artists.  It was bankrolled by the Keating Government and the wealthy influential republican movement.

Unfortunately they began to squabble over the spoils of victory before the votes were counted.  They couldn’t decide whether we should have a President elected by popular vote or one appointed by the Prime Minister. A popular vote would most likely have delivered a celebrity President whilst one appointed by the Prime Minister would most likely have resulted in a ‘mate’ getting the job.

It could also have been offered to a politician to buy him off.  Imagine Kevin Rudd, Bob Brown, Rob Oakshott, Andrew Wilkie or Tony Windsor being offered the job!

Fortunately ordinary Australians can spot a dodgy deal at a thousand paces.  They saw through the self-indulgent rhetoric of the commentariat and voted to keep the system that has served us so well for more than 200 years.

Australians generally don’t suffer from the collective self-image problem of inner-city elitists.  Those with a British heritage don’t harbour any guilt about being white.  Migrants from other cultures came here because of the opportunities available in their adopted country.  Our constitutional monarchy provides them with an enduring political system that was not available in many of the countries they fled.

And they all love the tradition and pageantry of a royal romance and wedding.

The Queen has been a model monarch during her reign over the past 58 years.  She is revered and respected by all.  We should be proud to have her as our Queen of Australia and be just as proud of the system that has delivered stable government, freedom, independence and prosperity.

One can only wonder what was going through Kevin Rudd’s mind as he kissed Julia on the floor of Parliament after the historic vote. Was his tongue in his cheek? Could he feel an election coming on? Julia, it seems, not only had her eyes closed for the joyous moment but she obviously has her ears closed to what working voters are saying about her carbon tax.

Whilst Julia, Kev and their coalition of clowns (Oakshott, Windsor, Wilkie and Bandt) were kissing, whooping and giving self-congratulatory high-5s, most working Australians were bracing for the cost of their indulgence.

The vote, by a slim majority of Labor’s coalition of clowns highlights the growing divide between the elite in Canberra’s climate change industry, and working Australians.

Australia’s ideological elite have almost perfected the art of profiteering from our income generators – the army of small businesses who often risk all they have in trying to build a better future for their families. They are the backbone of our traditional economy.

Unfortunately the emerging freeloading class – faceless fat-cats, Green legislators, academic thought police and politically-correct watchdogs are sapping their profits at an alarming rate.

Failure is no disincentive to the freeloading class now plundering our public purse. Witness the litany of failed Labor-Green schemes that have wasted billions – the home-insulation scheme, desalination plants, the NBN network, ‘cash-for-clunkers, solar panel rebates, exorbitant rorts in Julia’s school hall program, free television ‘set-top box’ rorts for pensioners, wind farm electricity generators, aboriginal housing, illegal immigration, etc etc.

Most Labor – and all Green – politicians who berate us for not working hard enough, smart enough or long enough have perfected the art of putting their hands further into taxpayers pockets and pilfering their profits to pay for their largesse.
Proper tax reform should make taxes lower, provide more incentive to work harder, and generate more profit. The carbon tax will do the opposite.

In 2050, according to Treasure modelling, Australia’s GDP will be $100 billion less, in today’s dollars, with a carbon tax than without one. Between now and then, Australia will lose $1 trillion in production thanks to the carbon tax, or about $40,000 for every man, woman and child. It will lead to a wealth transfer of 1.5 per cent of our GDP to overseas countries and will have zero impact on global emissions.

All it will do is ease the guilt of the sanctimonious inner-city set represented by the coalition of clowns now running the country. The big question now is whether Julia will allow Kev to have another election?