Is this the first sign of weakness in the new Howard Government

pazza

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Thread starter #1
Been keeping a very close eye of House of Reps proceedings the last 2 weeks.

The issue of the Regional Partnerships program and the allocation of funds from it seems to have a minister out.

The new minister for Veterans Affairs, De-Anne Kelly, appears to have been caught with her hands in the till so to speak. It all centres around a letter received by the member of Capricornia, regarding a grant allocated for a horse place in Rockhampton, which was sent just last Thursday and received on Monday. Kelly was until the 26th of October, the Parliamentary Secretary for Transport and Regional Services, but, it seems she is still guaranteeing funding for regional partnerships, even though she is now no longer responsible for such an act.

This is going to get messy.
 

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Fire

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#2
pazza said:
Been keeping a very close eye of House of Reps proceedings the last 2 weeks.

The issue of the Regional Partnerships program and the allocation of funds from it seems to have a minister out.

The new minister for Veterans Affairs, De-Anne Kelly, appears to have been caught with her hands in the till so to speak. It all centres around a letter received by the member of Capricornia, regarding a grant allocated for a horse place in Rockhampton, which was sent just last Thursday and received on Monday. Kelly was until the 26th of October, the Parliamentary Secretary for Transport and Regional Services, but, it seems she is still guaranteeing funding for regional partnerships, even though she is now no longer responsible for such an act.

This is going to get messy.
Forgive my ignorance here, but how is this overly sinister? How is she benifiting from this? From what you have written it just seems like she is acting outside her job description...
 

pazza

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First of all the letter was sent of Official letter-head and secondly, by Commonwealth order on sworn ministers, that unless the person is carrying out PERSONAL business, a Minister for one department cannot allocate funds from another department.

The issue goes to conduct of a minister and how that conduct is to be carried out...given the twist of what Mrs Kelly was previously and what she is now..and the funds attributed to it..would seem to be fairly dishonest to carry out such behaviour.

What makes this worse is that in Question Time today, the Speaker thought it would be best for the question in regards to this not be asked, which would defeat, in part, the purpose of Question Time itself..as in Government and Ministerial accountability.
 

Fire

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#4
WHile i dont think this is eath shattering activity, I would be a little concerned if the speaker actually cencored it.
Does anyone else get the feeling that the new speaker is crooked...
 

Mr Q

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#5
Fire said:
WHile i dont think this is eath shattering activity, I would be a little concerned if the speaker actually cencored it.
Does anyone else get the feeling that the new speaker is crooked...
The current term will see a virtually lame duck parliament as pretty much every decision will be made behind the closed doors of the Coalition party rooms.

Control of both houses = houses are irrelevant. To some extent members from non-Coalition parties might as well not even bother turning up.
 

Fire

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#6
Im aware that controll over both houses by any party is not good.

However, this doesnt mean that the government can lead a dictatorship. Its kind of scary to think that a ligitimate allogation against a member of the government can be labelled as 'out of order'.

This is shaping up to be a very bad term indeed.
 

pazza

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Thread starter #7
I think you have spotted something there Fire..pure accountability of Government processes could be the big victim of having the ruling party having control of houses of parliament.
 

Qsaint

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#8
pazza said:
The new minister for Veterans Affairs, De-Anne Kelly, appears to have been
Ms Kelly as made a few stuff ups previously up here, she's a QLD National which basically says it all. The nationals get so many ministers and I bet she wasn't the first one picked. It might be just because I live in Queensland, but the agricultural socialists always hand out disproportinate funding to the country seats.
 

Tim56

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#10
The big winner if De-Anne Kelly was forced to resign as a minister would be the Australian people, with the federal government a close second. Veterans Affairs seems to be the dumping ground for duds.
 

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Qsaint

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#12
Tim56 said:
The big winner if De-Anne Kelly was forced to resign as a minister would be the Australian people, with the federal government a close second. Veterans Affairs seems to be the dumping ground for duds.
Anderson doesn't want her, she was pushed on him by the Queensland party.
 

Rodion

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#13
Fire said:
.
Does anyone else get the feeling that the new speaker is crooked...
Not crooked, exactly. Just an arselicking sycophant. The Liberals don't appoint anyone but Liberal yes-men and lickspittles to high office, just ask the Governor General. I mean, it doesn't make sense for them to hand someone the power to impede them from saying and doing just as they please, if they didn't feel that person was completely and totally their creature.

Whitlam should have done the same.
 

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Rodion said:
Not crooked, exactly. Just an arselicking sycophant. The Liberals don't appoint anyone but Liberal yes-men and lickspittles to high office, just ask the Governor General. I mean, it doesn't make sense for them to hand someone the power to impede them from saying and doing just as they please, if they didn't feel that person was completely and totally their creature.

Whitlam should have done the same.
He did, and look what happened.
 

crocodileman

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#15
Rodion said:
Not crooked, exactly. Just an arselicking sycophant. The Liberals don't appoint anyone but Liberal yes-men and lickspittles to high office, just ask the Governor General. I mean, it doesn't make sense for them to hand someone the power to impede them from saying and doing just as they please, if they didn't feel that person was completely and totally their creature.

Whitlam should have done the same.
Finally, some sense on these forums!
 

Rodion

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#16
Tim56 said:
He did, and look what happened.
I think Whitlam misjudged Kerr badly. You should never give a guy with a mind of his own the power to bring you down, no matter how closely allied you might be at the time. Whitlam should have picked a spineless stooge for the job.
 

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#17
Rodion said:
I think Whitlam misjudged Kerr badly. You should never give a guy with a mind of his own the power to bring you down, no matter how closely allied you might be at the time. Whitlam should have picked a spineless stooge for the job.
as Howard does, Kerr was an alcoholic who could be bought off with a case of scotch
 

pazza

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After another quite rowdy session in the House today, a frank admission came from Howard in that a Minister had breached the code of conduct, because as it turns out..a staffer of Kelly's was involved in a meeting with a company and a QLD Minister, lobbying for funding, which this company ultimately received from the Federal Government...ERR..OOPS!
 

Goldenblue

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#19
pazza said:
After another quite rowdy session in the House today, a frank admission came from Howard in that a Minister had breached the code of conduct, because as it turns out..a staffer of Kelly's was involved in a meeting with a company and a QLD Minister, lobbying for funding, which this company ultimately received from the Federal Government...ERR..OOPS!
Looks like another thread on its way. :)
 

Rodion

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#23
MGREG said:
That is because he was a Labor prick.
A prick he may have been, but I would prefer an alcoholic prick with a spine to grovelling invertebrate sycophant who has his head so far up Howard's arse it's hard to believe the two were not joined at birth.
 
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