awesome scare campaigns aplenty

mood: whatever.
state i'm in: avoiding study.
tune: stan getz & astrud gilberto "it might as well be spring".


the nervous and bumbling words of government ministers continues.


industrial relations minister joe hockey regarding the campaign being run by the ALP and ACTU against the government's archaic industrial relations laws:

"unfortunately, we're facing the most awesome scare campaign i've ever seen in australian political history."


clearly, mr hockey is being at least a little amnestic.

why, who could forget election 2001 and "children overboard" when the government, amid a fascist-like ban on military personel speaking out truthfully about the scandal, used false claims of refugees throwing their children overboard from a vessel in order to vilify them, polarising public opinion against accepting "queue jumping" refugees in australia, and affording legitimacy to fear and intolerance among the broader commmunity to asylum seekers.

and how about election 2004 and the campaign of fear waged by the government based on the claim that interest rates would rise under a labour government. there have been eight straight rises in interest rates in the last five or six years under the howard government, four of which have come since that election campaign, underscoring how little effect a government has on current interest rates.