"sensitive govt installations"

You have to be joking ? ;)

It's not Pine Gap !


I just noticed all the bags on the pier, they all look very new
but I don't think are owned by the customs crew ?

It becomes sensitive when pics are being taken of things you're not meant to see....:E

They shouldn't do it in plain sight then :O

That's the problem with using a public space !

Having a look at those pictures again, they remind me of
Infantry Soldiers dressed for a BBQ.

Fit, healthy, some muscled.

SWT, unless Shaz is in a Customs Controlled area I don't think there's a lot they can do. The AFP can probably make something up if they feel like it, but the question is whether they'd care. Even if they did...do they know who "Shaz" is? :suspect:

Unlike a lot of other places, it's not normal for Australian governments to restrict photography. I imagine that there'd be quite an uproar if they decided to start with this person.

They're not exactly wasted away by famine, are they...:hmm:

Rudd has been unmasked :O

At last, someone who will call a Spade a spade !!!

In todays smh.com.au

Kevin Rudd unmasked in Devil's Island plan

"The mask has dropped. We now see the real character of the man who leads Australia, a man so overbearing, so dysfunctional, so self-obsessed that his own government sacked him in his first term, unprecedented in Australian politics, and a third of the cabinet departed rather than serve with him when he returned.

There is no new Rudd. There is only the Dear Leader who, on Monday, expects the federal Labor caucus to approve measures he has proposed that would make it almost impossible to remove him from the leadership if he wins the election.


On Friday, Rudd revealed that he will do anything, say anything, trash any principle, if he thinks it will keep him in power."

There was a touch of facetiousness in my post, comparing Shaz's photography in PNG to the jumpy African despots who restrict folks from taking pics of publicly funded excess.:}

All those riots in the detention centres are now explained - 'roid rage.

I can see most of them getting immediate jobs as bouncers at Kings Cross (that's of course, after they come off their bridging visas).

How long before they start flying them out of Nauru because there's nowhere 'suitable' to house them? And how long before the new tents they're currently erecting get torched?

Or the locals get sick of it. There were some pretty grumpy Naurans on telly the other night, and I don't blame them.

Likewise the New Guineans interviewed on the ABC who'd like to see a bit more government money (ours or theres) spent on their own crappy infrastructure rather than on a bunch of foreign blow-ins.

Sorry SWT, I took you seriously. Asperger moment! :\
They'll do it if they think it gives them a chance of winning the election. As was pointed out in the Australian by a former Labor pollie (can't remember his name, sorry) they can always unvote it after the election with a simple majority.

I've just been reading the comments following Paul Sheehan's article in the SMH.

Kevin Rudd unmasked in Devil's Island plan

Most of the comments by loyal Fairfax readers leads me to despair.

Funny you mention Fairfax.
A Tory friend is a devoted Australian Financial Review reader, and he claims it's been relentlessly anti-Liberal lately. I don't read it regularly (being more from the 'pay the mortgage and phone bill' end of the investment spectrum :\) but if it's true, and the Herald is going the same way (I'm sure the newspapers both screen and stack their comments threads) that's a bit interesting. :suspect:

Wasn't the Herald traditionally conservative?

Interesting article in the Age re can just changing the leader make
such a difference ?

Polls have changed, but Labor hasn't

The Herald-Sun used to be Left wing & The Age was right wing when I grew up. Somehow, it all got mixed up along the way.

Fair enough.
I thought this article was interesting; I know many of you have PNG experience and probably knew this already, but like many Aussies I don't know all that much about the place.
Rudd's hard-line approach will be disastrous

Manus Island camp construction - insider trading or just uncanny timing?

To explain, DCG is the ASX code for Decmil Pty Ltd, the company that will be constructing the Illegal Immigrant housing on Manus Island. Some person or organisation started acquiring shares on June 13, five days prior to the date noted on the contract with the government and a lot earlier than July 19 when the market knew of the deal. Their fortuitous purchase has made them a cool 500K, but only if the get away with it - or it could be a stretch in the slammer.

It's all here at Michael Smith News Uncanny timing?

The people behind the Decmil share buy were probably the same ingenious individuals who repeatedly stole and returned Craig Thomson's credit card and mobile phone.

Oh... wait a minute... his fanciful story regarding that has now changed, hasn't it? Now his defence is: "I was authorised to use the card in any way I wanted to, so I've done no wrong using it for porno movies and '(very) personal services'."

Which makes his impassioned speech to Parliament where he declared his total innocence and declared he never employed the services of providers of 'personal services' rather... (what's the right word?) ... "problematic", doesn't it?

Not holding my breath for anyone on the Labor/Greens side to take him to task for misleading Parliament, which I understand is considered to be a rather serious matter.

On to another more current matter: reports in the news today that up to 50% of Indians who have come to Australia under student visas, 457 visas or skilled migrant visas have done so using falsified qualifications. (Anyone with even passing knowledge of the way things are done in India would be gasping in surprise (not!), saying "Whoodathunkit?")

So the question is: what will the Rudd government do about it? Will these people be told their visas - and residency - are revoked? Has anyone thought for one moment about the local job seekers who missed out on jobs that went to imported 'skilled immigrants' from India whose qualifications came out of a cornflake packet?

There is one group that may have come here with dodgy qualifications, but without them we would be in big trouble. Send them back and you'll never get a taxi when you want one or be able to pay for petrol at the local gas station.

:)

Student visas have long been a bit of a racket.
Many 'Japanese' ladeez-for-hire in Oz are rumoured to be Koreans on dodgy student visas. :suspect:

The boats keep arriving. Bob Carr says that 90% of arrivees are economic refugees, i.e., not refugees at all. The two page PNG document says that PNG will accept only genuine refugees, and the Immigration Minister says that of these, only single males will go to PNG.

So really, for everyone else, women, kids, males accompanying women and kids, any single male found not to be genuine (before his first appeal), it's business as usual, the only difference being a verbal threat (not set in law yet and guaranteed - after the election - to be the subject of a High Court challenge) that they won't be able to settle in Australia permanently.

So basically, all we have is yet another Kevin Rudd promise, and frankly, he hasn't kept too many of them, so my guess would be that after a day or two to suss out the new situation, the people smugglers and their clients will shrug their shoulders and say "let's carry on; this isn't going to change anything in the long run. The detention centres will soon overfill and they'll have to put us somewhere."

Those photos of propr arriving on Christmas Island are incredible. The looks, the body language , the arrogance....refugees? my arse:ugh::ugh: