Caretaker looks promising

Steady as she goes. When you start thinking about it, this caretaker type of government fits in pretty well with the promises of the two major groups. Neither promised during the election campaign to actually do anything of substance. Most of the talk was about what should not happen rather than what should. That is precisely what we now have — an administration that just keeps chugging along doing what has to be done without worrying about investing new things. A bit longer of that won’t do anyone any harm.

Perfect for cost cutting. Just imagine what Fairfax could do with no news continuing to come out of Canberra. Declare two thirds of the staff redundant and then amalgamate the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age bureaus. As things are at the moment, all we are learning is how little news actually comes out of Canberra other than reporting the huffing and puffing of politicians.

What the indicator indicates. The Crikey Election Indicator is having a merry old time as the market tries to work out what is going to happen about our government.

Australian troops for Somalia? If fighting international terrorism really is the vital matter that both Australia’s potential governments maintain then over in the Defence Department they should be drawing up the plans to send our troops to Somalia. Afghanistan, it is now clear, is no longer the centre of the evil al-Qaeda’s activities but that does not mean the terrorist threat has disappeared. It has simply moved elsewhere.

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, John F.Kerry, summarised the situation outlined in the report in this way:

Two stories in the Washington Post over the weekend confirm the foreign relations committee warning.

Gunmen kill eight soldiers in southern Yemen: ADEN, Aug 28 (Reuters) – Al-Qaeda’s regional wing asserted responsibility for an attack on a checkpoint in southern Yemen on Saturday in which eight soldiers were killed. The attack on the checkpoint occurred in Zinjibar, capital of the flash point Abyan province.

The AP report went on to refer to this posting on the US embassy website:

The second Post story gives details of how never before have the radical al-Shabab militiamen attacked so near Somalia’s halls of power as they have last week, bringing them closer to their desire to create a Taliban-like Islamic emirate from which to export jihad abroad.

If our politicians are not simply hypocrites, presumably they will now be wanting to tackle these latest outbreaks of international terrorism.