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d was an active member of everything from the masonic lodge to meals on wheels long inured to crozzle he explained to wide eyed locals that his name was pronounced crossly and that the accent over the e was irish not french crosslé never sidled into a room he made an entrance and he was happy in spotlight jobs such as compering a dance at the armidale tennis club azzz the gentlemen have been back ward in coming forward the next dahnce will be ladiezzzz choice his wife had a business in the main street roma crosslé frocks and she made the costumes for the school s annual gilbert and sullivan production for which crosslé did everything including a memorable night on tour in inverell where he began as a prompter and ended up singing a duet does every school have a crosslé a teacher whose influence and inspiration extended way beyond classroom progress and occasionally impeded it if so then that must be a large part of its soul at the funeral graham delivered the euology and described crosslé as a larger than life character he was also larger than fiction being much more rambunctious than mr chips or the crock in the browning version another play with an educational background opened in sydney a week before crosslé died it is about a dedicated history teacher and is called appropriately life after george there will in fact be life after george crosslé as he has endowed the ulster bursary and he leaves roma son rob and daughter louisa plus two grandchildren who knew him as grandpa patch alex buzo alex buzo is the author of big river and armadillo posted by paul barratt at 4 27 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels armidale tas tributes 27 august 2010 the real tony abbott it did not take long for the real tony abbott to re emerge just a day after talking about a kinder gentler polity and asserting that a consultative and collegial culture was in the coalition s dna there was the commonwealth parliament s champion headkicker fulminating about julia gillard trashing the westminster conventions and her desperate attempts to cling to power all of this because she is indicating a pre disposition to respond to the perfectly reasonable requests of the regional independents to be given access to the policies and costings of the policy portfolios of the two main political contenders for government meanwhile in support of abbott s position his sidekick andrew robb was intoning about the importance of public servants being able to give free frank and fearless advice after the way the howard government cowed and bullied the public service and the private sniggering that went on at the very notion of free frank and fearless that is more than somewhat rich i think several attributes of the real tony abbott are on display here 1 apart from the combativeness he is like his political mentor and hero john winston howard a very slippery and tricky fellow able to say one thing one day and quite another the next and believe each of them implicitly at the moment of utterance as groucho marx once remarked sincerity is the most important thing in life if you can fake that you ve got it made 2 the howard government traduced the reputation of andrew wilkie when he resigned from the office of national assessments a fact which tony abbott has belatedly recognised by apologising to him scant regard was shown also for the reputation of mohamed haneef who was treated in a manner that is unconscionable in any society that has a regard for the rule of law now the coalition s leading spokesmen are justifying withholding their costings on the grounds that the process is corrupt code for the treasury is corrupt a phrase which they cannot quite bring themselves to utter 3 during his time as a minister in the howard government tony abbott had a reputation for submitting sloppy and poorly thought through cabinet submissions but being indulged by his mentor john howard i have no doubt that the costings he is so anxious to protect are dodgy in the extreme cobbled together for the purposes of the election but never intended to see the light of day or withstand any professional scrutiny if he were defeated they would go into the shredder if he won they would likewise go into the shredder and any blow out would be based on a confected budgetary black hole left behind by the departing government 4 tony abbott has a short attention span and is bored by detail he loves combat and needs constant excitement in an op ed piece in today s edition of the australian financial review senior political columnist laura tingle says that abbott s behaviour reeks of the intent to force another election and she is probably right if abbott does win government it will be like the howard government a government of alarums and excursions a government of constant confected crises it will not be a period of the sort of stability the regional independents are looking for if abbott does not win government this time around expect behaviour like that of the coalition during the whitlam government intent from day one on causing such disruption that the government is forced back to an early election none of the above is to be taken as a statement of admiration for julia gillard and the creatures who hover around her desiring political power as an end in itself it ain t see a plague a both their houses posted by paul barratt at 12 38 pm 8 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels politics 25 august 2010 tony abbott on the coalition s political dna in his increasingly manic attempts to persuade the three regional independents by loud hailer that they ought to put the coalition into government tony abbott has said some truly remarkable things of which by no means the least is the following as reported in yesterday s edition of the age see here only the coalition is capable of offering the country a consultative and collegial political culture he said this is very much in our political dna this would be the same coalition that lied to us from at least july 2002 until the invasion of iraq in march 2003 about whether or not a decision had been taken to accompany the united states into an illegal war never had an honest debate in parliament about why we were at war in iraq and afghanistan or what we were trying to achieve opposes the parliament having any say in decisions to commit the australian defence force to warlike service overseas a position it shares with the labor party over rode the northern territory euthanasia legislation vetoed the act heroin trial after all the arrangements were in place reduced the senate committee system to meaninglessness once it gained control of the senate in 2004 ruthlessly guillotined debate in the house of representatives and the senate throughout the howard years and made a farce of question time a farce that labor has been happy to perpetuate and harness to its own purposes apart from the shamelessness of his claim along with the claim from one of the most combative people in parliament that the coalition he leads could show us the way to a kinder gentler polity does he really believe that stuff no one could call tony abbott quick on the uptake on this matter these preposterous claims came just a day after one of the three independents rob oakeshott the member for lyne told the abc s lateline presenter leigh sales see here that these sorts of interventions were unhelpful unwelcome and unnecessary posted by paul barratt at 3 23 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels politics 23 august 2010 governing for all australians on the evidence of the last fourteen years when john howard and kevin rudd assured us that they would govern for all australians what they meant was that they would govern for the people in the western suburbs of both sydney and melbourne now horror of horrors they have discovered that there are people outside those hallowed regions people in the leafy suburbs doctors wives etc and people in rural and regional australia who think they should have a say as well and that their say should be listened to rather impertinent of them but there it is posted by paul barratt at 3 48 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels politics in praise of mavericks election day 2010 produced exactly the result i had hoped for a greens dominated senate and a hung parliament in which whoever formed a government would have to deal in the house of representatives with the three country independents and now as it happens greens adam bandt in the seat of melbourne and perhaps andrew wilkie as an independent in the tasmanian seat of denison see a plague a both their houses i wanted neither side to be able to claim victory and press on with a business as usual approach in the grotesquely deformed caricature of a parliamentary system which currently graces the nation s capital the focus is now on the three rural independents bob katter kennedy far north queensland rob oakeshott lyne mid north coast of nsw and tony windsor new england taking in tamworth and my old home town of armidale where i cast my first vote in a nsw state election this is not an entirely welcome development amongst the urban commentariat on the front page of today s edition of the age michelle grattan worries about the fact that a few mps decide who should be pm see here on the same front page a headline writer adorned national affairs editor tony wright s sensible and balanced piece see here with the title mavericks saddle up for some old time wrangling mavericks these are experienced political practitioners who are deeply in touch with the communities they serve otherwise they wouldn t be in parliament they have no parliamentary machine backing them no party elders dropping by to help raise their profile and no party budget to help finance their campaigns they do it on their own and at their own risk they are fighting for their jobs every day of their lives and they all command very solid majorities the benefit they bring to our parliament is that they are beholden to no one except their electors as tony wright commented in his piece these are very independent independents if this is maverick behaviour consider the deal that is on offer from the political mainstream the deal is in effect if you elect me i promise you that i will always vote the way my party tells me to and that i will always put the interests of my party first even if i think that they are contrary to your interests the national interest or common human decency where this strictly disciplined approach to party politics leaves us all is that bob windsor is a maverick but the deplorable mark arbib fresh from helping to reduce nsw to what it is today and secure in a senate seat bequeathed to him by his nsw right faction never having to face the electorate in any meaningful way has the queen s commission to be a commonwealth minister i ll take the maverick any day my sentiments are much more in tune with those of the sydney morning herald s lenore taylor who writes here that at last everyone might have a say after three years of a government where even the full cabinet wasn t let in on policy debates the prospect of ideas being debated with independents in the lower house and with the greens in the senate is tantalising instead of everyone even ministers finding out about major reforms after the arguments have been had and the brochures printed non kitchen cabinet members might actually get some say instead of the executive imposing an idea upon the government and parliament it might have to make a case think about alternative views accept some of them even saying a policy had tested well in focus groups or had been promised to a special interest group or was sure to win over a particular demographic at the next election might not pass muster as a convincing reason to implement it any more after an election campaign in which both major parties ran largely negative campaigns with bits and pieces of policy rather than any coherent vision it could even mean politics went back to being a contest of ideas rather than a battle of multimillion dollar budgets for scary attack advertisements by men with deep voices who knows it might even bring on reform of the parliament so that it is lively and informative and engages in actual debate rather than being bone numbingly boring most of the time let us hope so posted by paul barratt at 1 30 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels politics 21 august 2010 milestone 25 000 page loads australian observer reached a new milestone a couple of days ago there have now been 25 000 page loads since i started this blog on 25 february 2009 thank you followers thank you regular and occasional readers and those who have found my posts through google and other search engines and thanks to those running other sites who have marked my contributions as worthy of their readers attention posted by paul barratt at 1 22 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest 20 august 2010 a plague a both their houses the choice that faces the australian electorate tomorrow is a dire one neither of the major parties deserves to win government we are offered a choice between 1 a man who thinks of himself as prepared to take tough decisions but runs away from most of them and is a classic political weathervane who has a short attention span and lacks the basic general knowledge about economics critical technologies foreign affairs and defence to even know what questions to ask and 2 a woman who has a touching faith in the redemptive power of her own personal narrative and thinks that running for the highest political office in the land is a matter of running 150 local government elections at the same time the best outcome that we can hope for is a hung house of representatives controlled by the independents and a senate in which the greens have the balance of power the more people that whoever forms government is obliged to negotiate with the better off we will all be and we cannot afford to have either party emerge from the low rent campaign of the last five weeks feeling vindicated look in more detail at the offering the main points of agreement are that we should treat asylum seekers harshly that we should give reflexive obedience to the wishes of israel and that we should all share in the cost of redeveloping the afl stadium in geelong julia gillard mischievously conflated the asylum seeker question with the propositions that the western suburbs of sydney are overcrowded and that therefore the whole country should suffer a reduced migration intake tony abbott matched this squalid line of argument so we have a commitment to reduce immigration without any thought for the long term consequences julia gillard has dotted the landscape or at least the margina...