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.

As Deputy Opposition Leader she needs to stop trawling through the political entrails of Labor’s rotting carcass and raise her head above the smoking wreck she and her fellow rorters left behind.

Burney’s comments are deliberately misleading. My letter to the judge in charge of the Parliamentary Remuneration Tribunal was to seek clarification of their rationale that led them to declare that Campbelltown (which is 50 km from Sydney on the city side of the Nepean River) is now country, and Camden (which is 70 km from Sydney on the country side of the Nepean River), in now city.  Not even Alice could explain this judicial anomoly to the Mad Hatter!

Linda Burney’s pathetic attempt to re-ignite the embers of Labor’s class war is symptomatic of their position in the polls.  It might well be part of the cafe conversation amongst her inner-city elites but it doesn’t wash with battlers trying to keep their heads above water after Burney, her factional mate, Ian McDonald, and their Ministerial mates rorted and trashed our economy.  Burney was right up the front of Labor’s gravy train without a single squeak about their waste and mismanagement.  What a hypocritical grubette she is!

Linda Burney is not only out of touch with voters beyond her inner-city pad – she is also out of touch with her former working class colleagues who lived west of the Nepean River.  She has obviously not yet learned the reality of life beyond the tinted windows of her taxpayer funded limosuine.

Burney’s revelation that ‘Camden is not exactly Narrabri or Broken Hill’ is hardly news.  Members who live further west in those areas have always received a higher allowance to compensate them for living in Sydney during Parliamentary sitting periods as they should.  It beggars belief that she was not aware of that.

Labor deserves better than Linda Burney in a leadership role.  The Liberals can only hope she stays in the job.

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.

On reflection it is clear that the purpose of these regulations was to ensure the high ideals of military service were not compromised by poor behaviour within the ranks, or in the wider community.

The custodians of our National Parliament would be wise to reflect on their ideals in view of the shenanigans that led to the appointment of a serial rorter of the public purse to the position of Speaker in the tradition of ‘whatever it takes’ to maintain political power.  

The Opposition attack on the appointment was blunted by the memory of the Howard Government’s appointment of a previous serial rorter, Labor Senator Mal Colston, to the Deputy Leadership of the Senate to secure his vote in 1997.  The appointment backfired when the extent of Colston’s rorts was revealed and 28 criminal charges were laid.

On the surface, Peter Slipper MP may be well qualified for the position of Speaker of the House. He was first elected as a National Party Member in 1985 and later contested his seat as a Liberal in 1993.  He is a barrister, an Anglican Priest . . . and a serial rorter!

Slipper’s expenditure on mobile telephone calls, chauffer driven limousines, taxis, office expenses and overseas business class travels across Britain, Morocco, Gibraltar, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam are legendary. His snout is firmly embedded in the taxpayers’ trough.

There is no doubt that Slipper’s elevation to the Speaker’s Chair gives Julia Gillard breathing space as Prime Minister.  She now has a cushion against Kevin Rudd’s white-anting, Andrew Wilkie’s dummy-spitting, Tony Windsor’s incoherent mumblings, Rob Oakshott’s naive gibberish and Bob Brown’s demands to shut the planet down.

Public respect for our highest democratic office has been greatly diminished with Peter Slipper’s elevation, as a serial rorter, to the third highest position in our nation.  Perhaps the new Parliamentary Speaker’s motif should incorporate the Scales of Justice representing Slipper’s legal profession, a black halo representing  his position in the Anglican Church, a bloated pig representing his mastery at rorting taxpayer funds’ and a king rat representing his value system.

Julia might be proud – the rest of us are gobsmacked.

But imagine the noise if John Howard and George Bush had made the announcement.  Julia would be demanding her Socialist Soviet friends be given equal opportunity to establish a base – preferably in the ACT!  Ageing rocker Peter Garrett would have resurrected Midnight Soil to rant against American nuclear submarines. Bob Brown would have confidently predicted Armageddon the next day. The ABC and Fairfax press would have been inundated with endless hysterical rantings from the commentariat.

However the silence has been deafening since Julia and Barak broke bread over the issue. Obama’s charm turned outspoken anti-American commentators into compliant pussycats. They will no doubt find reason to rage again if Tony Abbott is elected as our next Prime Minister and agrees to continue the policy.

Changing power shifts in the Asia-Pacific region are of great concern to our defence planners.  Seventy years ago the Japanese military were well aware of our large land mass; our abundance of natural resources; our relatively small population and our geographic isolation.  They were also aware of the significant advantages we provided for America as a base for operations in the South West Pacific area.

The Japanese war strategy was therefore based on isolating Australia by controlling the island chain to our immediate North – the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia which includes West Papua), Papua, New Guinea and the Solomons.

Today this island chain remains just as relevant for our strategic planners. It is often referred to as our arc of instability with each one on the brink of breakdown due to endemic corruption in the region.  The most worrying of these States is Papua New Guinea with seven million people and enormous natural wealth in the form of gold, silver, copper, oil and gas.

Chinese influence in this region is growing by the day and their modus operandi is not restricted by the niceties of patronising political correctness which underpins our Australian aid programs.

The decision to rotate American marines through our training bases in the top end is almost a re-run of the strategy adopted in 1942 and provides a welcome reassurance for our strategic planners. Whilst our economic development is tied to our diplomatic/trading relationship with China our strategic security relies on our relationship with America.  There could even be a ballad in it for Midnight Soil with Julia and Bob in the chorus line.

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.