Free Republic

IS there anything Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will not sacrifice to his manic vanity? Take his decision this week to expel an Israeli diplomat - a reckless over-reaction that has privately outraged key figures of the Labor Right. And see who, in capitals around the Middle East, is cheering Rudd most, having dangled before him the bribe of a vote his ego craves, but which this country cannot afford. It is beyond serious doubt that it was Israeli spies who used forged Australian passports in Dubai in January when assassinating the leading weapons buyer of Hamas and co-founder of the...

RETAIL chains were reporting an unprecedented rush on cigarettes last night ahead of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's 25 per cent price rise, with some doubling their daily sales within a matter of hours. One woman was refused service at a Woolworths in the Canberra suburb of Belconnen after trying to buy $5000 worth of cigarettes before the midnight deadline. She was knocked back because Woolworths imposes a limit of five cartons per person. Another Canberra Woolworths store reported sales of $23,000 by 6.30pm yesterday - the supermarket's average daily tobacco turnover is $10,000.

SMOKERS may pay an extra $6.50 for a packet of 30 cigarettes to help foot the bill for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's $18 billion health reforms. The Government's National Preventative Health Taskforce has called for the tax rise in next month's Budget and the soon-to-be-released Henry tax review also examines the option. A tobacco tax rise could raise two-thirds of the $3 billion Mr Rudd needs to fund the sweeteners he has offered the states to endorse his healthcare reforms. Up to three million smokers would be hit if the price of a pack of 30 cigarettes rose from about...

When Kevin Rudd was elected Prime Minister he promised to end the blame game between the three tiers of government. But the states' reaction to his health and hospital funding reform plan suggests he still has a fair way to go. A new poll of Australians' attitudes toward the federal system shows there is a clear and growing mood for change in the way the nation is governed. In particular, there is an increasing number of people who would like to see state governments replaced with regional bodies, or removed altogether. The Australian Constitutional Values survey polled over 1,000 people...

Furious Alabama residents have hit out at Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and demanded he issue an apology for his "redneck" comment. US media organisations, including the New York Times and FOX News, picked up Rudd's remarks, which followed US comedian Robin Williams joking "Australians are basically English rednecks". Alabama newspaper, the Birmingham News, ran an "Australia vs Alabama" headline on the most prominent section of its website and asked readers to comment. They did not hold back, with one accusing Rudd of making a "racial epithet" while another wrote "if it weren't for some Alabamians fighting in the war,...

Few are laughing in Australia following Robin Williams' joke that its people are "basically English rednecks". His remarks, made on The Late Show with David Letterman, prompted Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to respond on a Sydney radio show. "I think Robin Williams should go and spend a little time in Alabama before he frames comments about people being particularly redneck," said Mr Rudd.

KEVIN Rudd has pledged to tackle hospital waiting times with his $50 billion takeover of the nation's health and hospital system. The Prime Minister kicked off a media campaign this morning to sell his health reforms, telling the Nine Network it was important to put a maximum limit on waiting times for emergency and elective surgery. "What we need through new tough national standards is for patients to have confidence that there will be maximum waiting times, that there will be absolute maximum waiting times for elective surgery and for treatments of accident emergency,'' Mr Rudd said. "We don't have...

Kevin Rudd says Australia's ailing hospitals are in need of serious surgery, and he's planning to bribe the states to give him the power to get on with the job. Under the federal government's health plan the commonwealth would fund public hospitals and locals would run them. Under the plan, the federal government will take $90 billion over five years - $50 billion over the first three - in GST revenue from the states for a new National Health and Hospital Network. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says it is the biggest change to health care since Medicare. In exchange, the...

The Federal Government will claw back one third of the GST revenue it gives the states so it can take over 60 per cent of the funding of the nation's hospitals in a major health reform plan announced by Prime Minster Kevin Rudd today. Canberra will no longer give the states any money to fund their hospitals and will instead directly fund regionally based Local Hospital Networks that will have to meet strict standards on waiting lists and infection control to get the money. Instead of handing over block grants for hospital funding the Rudd Government will in the future...

TEACHERS will be forced back to school to learn how to deliver the Federal Government's new national curriculum. Experts who have designed the back-to-basics curriculum, which has heavy emphasis on grammar and phonics, said yesterday many teachers would have to be re-educated before they were competent to teach it from next year. It is expected that primary school teachers will need training in basic grammar. High school teachers for the first time will be required to teach literacy basics such as grammar and text types to children who may not have fully understood the concepts in primary school.

THE Federal Government will move to seize control of hospital funding from the states in a provocative reform of the nation's health system to be announced this week. The states will no longer be given any federal money to run their public hospital system. Instead Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's government will directly fund regional health authorities, who will be in charge of running public hospitals in their regions. The states currently manage about 60 per cent of hospital funding and they will be forced to hand over that funding to a new central national health funding pool so it can...

POLICE are baffled how they did it but the Prime Minister definitely has a problem in Rose Bay - with a large illuminated traffic sign sending the message: "Kevin Rudd sucks". The sign, which dramatically appeared overnight on New South Head Road, has proven a traffic stopper.

VISITORS from about 10 countries such as Somalia and Yemen will face tougher visa scrutiny under a stricter security regime aimed at protecting Australia from terrorism. The government has not revealed the countries on the list but security experts believe that Indonesia may also be a country of concern. The counter-terrorism white paper unveiled today by Kevin Rudd also reveals the growing threat of home-grown terrorism, a threat that will be tackled through a counter-terrorism control centre to increase coordination across government agencies. Despite fears the new visa arrangements could trigger diplomatic tensions, the Prime Minister said it was in...

THE Rudd government has restated its opposition to the death penalty, after Tony Abbott said it could be justified in some cases. The opposition leader said execution was the only fitting sentence for some mass murderers, like terrorists, but had no plans to reintroduce the death penalty. "I have always been against the death penalty," Mr Abbott said. "(But) There are some crimes so horrific that maybe that's the only way to adequately convey the horror of what's been done," he said, adding that any policy change would happen with a conscience vote. The Rudd government says it has no...

KEVIN Rudd has promised to take Japan to the International Court of Justice if it doesn't agree before November to stop Antarctic whaling, but a behind-closed-doors deal with the Japanese could blow a big hole in the Prime Minister's case before then. A proposed compromise deal in the International Whaling Commission that would allow Japan to continue its so-called scientific whaling, though on a more limited basis, could wreck Australia's core claim that the practice is illegal under international law. A tough talking Mr Rudd yesterday demanded Japan reduce to zero its Southern Ocean scientific whaling quota. "If we don't...

An internet protest group has launched an attack on Government websites in a protest against the proposed internet filter and censorship of some pornography. The attack, dubbed Operation Titstorm by the group known as Anonymous, brought down a number of Government websites this morning, with the Parliament House site remaining offline well into the afternoon. Anonymous claimed the attack was to highlight moves by the Government to ban the import of films featuring female ejaculation (which was classified as urination) as well as films featuring small-breasted women, over fears such films were simulating child pornography. "More importantly, Anonymous does not...

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says he'd personally like to see the legal drinking age lifted to 21 years. But there would have to be rigorous debate and evidence that the policy could reduce binge drinking before the government would consider it, he says. What do you thinks about the legal drinking age? Should it be raised to 21? Leave your comment below. "If the evidence is there and it is capable of being proven that it works, then we (will) look at these things and make a decision," Mr Rudd said, when quizzed on ABC Television's Q&A program on Monday...

THE Rudd Government will press ahead with its plan to put a price tag on carbon pollution even though the leaders of other nations refused to reach a legally binding agreement on reducing global warming in Copenhagen. Treasurer Wayne Swan said the controversial emissions trading scheme that would push up the cost of electricity and power was "just as relevant now as it was before Copenhagen and we need to pass the bill for business certainty". The ETS was rejected by the Senate earlier this month and the Government planned to re-introduce the scheme for parliamentary approval in February next...

KEVIN Rudd's climate change agenda is under fire from three fronts this morning with India, the G77-China bloc and former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton attacking Australia's approach. Lumumba Di-Aping, the chief negotiator for China and G77 group of developing nations at Copenhagen, said today that what Australia had done so far was “simply not good enough”. “The message Kevin Rudd is giving to his people, his citizens, is a fabrication, it's fiction,” he told ABC radio. “It does not relate to the facts because his actions are climate change scepticism in action. All that Australia has...

Warming Scandal: The architect of climate fraud steps down, the creator of the infamous "hockey stick" is investigated, and Australia's parliament defeats cap-and-trade. We love the smell of truth in the morning. As the high priests of what Czech President Vaclav Klaus has called a "religion" prepare their pilgrimage to worship the earth goddess Gaia in Copenhagen, complete with humanity being sacrificed, the heresy of climate truth is finally being heard. The gospel of climate change, once expressed with the messianic fervor of an Elmer Gantry by Al Gore, is now expressed with the stammering incoherence of an Elmer Fudd...