Paul Sheehan must stop the perks to retain authenticity, while poor old Greg Hunt must deal with theological climate alarmism ...

(Above: shocking, astonishing revelatory expose of snouts in trough and perks by a twittering Paul Sheehan. More twittering here, and the wondrous GIF here)

The fierce, stern Paul Sheehan blathering on in Tony Abbott must stop the perks to retain authenticity:

Authenticity is the greatest asset a politician can have. Yet Tony Abbott and his staff are wasting no time dissipating Abbott's authenticity. It's only taken them three weeks. Abbott has a problem. He's a perker.

And so on and so forth, as Sheehan righteously berated Abbott and other politicians for having their snouts in the trough:

In short, Australian politicians are overpaid, over-pampered, over-numerous and over-insular. The public understand this, hence its structural cynicism.

Oh it was a fine old righteous rant, building to a resolute climax:

If Abbott could make an immediate move against lobbyists seeking to use the party as a cash machine, his next step should be to admit that a culture of junketeering exists and has to end. No more overseas study tours. No more non-urgent charter flights. No more weddings. No more sporting events. That would be authentic. 

Indeed, indeed.

So who footed the bill for the junket, the collective snout in trough of the conservative commentariat, off to indulge themselves courtesy Tony Abbott, and faithfully recorded in Tony Abbott's private function an affair for the conservative media faithful?

Sorry:

Guests were asked to keep details of the evening strictly confidential. 
"We do not release details of the Prime Minister's private functions," a spokeswoman from the Prime Minister's office said. 
She declined to comment on whether taxpayers would foot the bill.

Oh they went in roaring like lions about extravagance and waste and long-suffering cynical taxpayers, and they came out smirking and silent, like well-fed lambs without a bleat in the world ...

Sssh, no mention of the bill, puh-lease.

A few of the commentariat had the good taste and/or the discretion not to attend such a shameless, blatant, nakedly pandering gathering.

But not Sheehan.

But then he's always enjoyed his junkets, along with magic water and the very best Paddington breads ...

So let's not have any more idle chatter about snouts in trough.

Remember all animals and junkets are equal, but some animals and junkets are more equal than others.

This morning Sheehan maintains the rage with Investors become like bulls in a China shop, and your heart is meant to bleed for hapless high income executives:

A friend of mine, a high-income executive, and her husband, also on a good income, want to buy a bigger home on Sydney's north shore. They've had another child and need more room. But the search is dragging on as they have trouble finding something they can afford. When they see Chinese buyers turn up, their hearts sink. It usually means doom. 
''When we encounter more than one Chinese buyer interested in a house, we know we are not going to get it,'' she said. ''We get priced out.''

Now there's a genuine first world Sydney problem!

The Chinese, as usual, are ruining everything:

A Sydney property developer who is working with Chinese investors told me that if Chinese stopped buying in areas that are popular with Chinese home buyers, the value of these local markets would fall by about 25 per cent. These local bubbles are having a ripple effect, pushing buyers into other areas of the Sydney market. 
The same is happening in parts of Melbourne, where segments of the market are booming thanks to Chinese demand.

Yep, there's impeccable research for you. A friend and a property developer, and the entire Sydney real estate market put under the microscope and given a thorough forensic examination, and the conclusion that it's the Chinese wot done it given impeccable proof.

On the other hand, you might conclude that Sheehan is just up to his old trolling tricks, as demonstrated in this par:

Given the healthy relationship between the two countries, which Prime Minister Tony Abbott is committed to improve after problems emerged with Mandarin-speaking Kevin Rudd, China is projected to become Australia's biggest foreign investor as it shores up strategic reliable sources of raw materials.


But, but, but didn't Julia Gillard ...

No, billy goat but, between the Ruddster and the Abbott there was a vast, invisible vacuum, the time we now talk about as "the missing years".

Oh sure, Gillard might have claimed to scored improved relations with China - even the reptiles at the lizard Oz grudgingly noted it, as pompous Paul Kelly did in Julia Gillard deserves credit for belated success in Beijing, but it's only a start (inside the paywall but you know how to google)

But we know, because the deviant Chinese are now swamping Australia, that first daughter is nowhere near as important as first son (or even second or third son), and somehow they've managed to mindwipe Sheehan's brain.

The rest of the piece is the usual xenophobic fear-mongering, based on tenuous statistics, and a fear of the horde of filthy rich middle class Chinese - why there's a hundred million or more of the buggers - and bleating and moaning:

The impact of immigration is also considerable and cumulative. More than 400,000 people born in China or Hong Kong have become permanent residents in Australia. The number of immigrants from China continues to exceed 30,000 a year. The number of Australians who speak Mandarin or Cantonese is more than 600,000. The number of people in Sydney who identify as having Chinese heritage is now more than 360,000, or 8 per cent of the population. 
This is a significant cultural bridge to an emerging giant economy and a culture of investment. It is having an impact on the de facto religion of Sydney - real estate. 
It is a more delicate area than investing in businesses. Home sellers might love to see Chinese buyers turn up but home buyers might have a different feeling - trepidation. This would apply especially to local first-time buyers, who are finding it increasingly onerous to break into the market. 

See how it is? Trepidation, and to do that, you must skip from highly paid, home owning double income north shore folk to local first-time buyers, with a skip and a jump.

It so happens that for personal reasons, these past six months, the pond has been out and about looking at property in Sydney, in and around the heartland, which is to say Surry Hills, which is a mere hop and a skip from Chinatown, and there were Chinese buyers, and sometimes they won and sometimes they lost, and sometimes you could go to an auction and see a bunch of local buyers, all sharks circling in the water, driving up the prices in a way that made it way too hot for the hapless Chinese.

Well it's as anecdotal and as meaningful as the xenophobic paranoia trotted out by Sheehan, which concludes with this rousing par:

The Foreign Investment Review Board looks carefully at the culturally sensitive areas of farming and housing. If changes being made by Chinese governments to cool their property markets are causing market heating to spread to Sydney and Melbourne, it shows just how integrated Australia is becoming with China and the Chinese, which brings a new set of complications - the complications of intimacy.

So in the end for all the tub-thumping and hysteria, that's all it is? The complications of intimacy?

Funny, intimacy isn't usually that complicated, unless one of the partners is a paranoid xenophobe with memory lapses. Then things can get tricky ...

Meanwhile, what a pleasure to note that the chief trough feeder, our dear leader,  is once again in trouble abroad, as you can read in Tony Abbott's ALP criticism could affect US links:

Tony Abbott's use of a Washington Post interview to brand his Labor predecessors as ''wacko'' and ''embarrassing'' could set back his working relationship with the Obama adminstration, a leading US commentator says. 
Norman Ornstein, an author and political scientist with the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said he ''winced'' when he read the interview in which Mr Abbott put the boot into the Rudd-Gillard government in unusually strong language for a foreign interview. 
''It really does violate a basic principle of diplomacy to drag in your domestic politics when you go abroad,'' Dr Ornstein said. ''It certainly can't help in building a bond of any sort with President Obama to rip into a party, government and, at least implicitly leader, with whom Obama has worked so closely. 
"Perhaps you can chalk it up to a rookie mistake. But it is a pretty big one.''

Abbott still thinks he's in election mode.

Someone should tell him to stop the simplistic, mindless, boofhead point scoring and head-kicking, and get down to the business of governing.

The trouble of course is that now people have had a chance to look at his policies, and deemed they come up short, as you can read in Tony Abbott's new direct action sceptics.

Now there's a tidy pair of headlines for a Monday morning:

Of course you won't find any of this in the bloated columns of the sated, gorged commentariat, still recovering from their Kirribilli House junket.

But the news about Abbott's direct action plan keeps flowing the wrong way, not helped by Greg Hunt already being revealed as a lightweight out of his depth.

Abbott was at it again in that notorious American interview:

I’m not one of those people who runs around and says every time there’s a fire or a flood, that proves climate change is getting worse. Australia has had fires and floods since the beginning of time. We’ve had much bigger floods and fires than the ones we’ve recently experienced. You can hardly say they were the result of anthropic global warming.  
So do you believe in climate change or are you skeptical? 
This argument has become far too theological for anyone’s good. I accept that climate change is a reality. And I support policies that will be effective in reducing emissions, but I do think there is too much climate-change alarmism.

The language is straight out of the Bolter playbook.

Downplaying "AGW", talking up the science as "too theological" - as if science is routinely a matter of faith - and dismissing all the chatter as "climate-change alarmism".

Abbott is always dog-whistling, and while he claims that he accepts that climate change is a reality, each time he talks he refuses to accept that climate change might have actual physical impacts on or practical implications for the planet ...

And meanwhile hapless poodle Greg Hunt has to deal with the dog whistling, and explain why we intend pissing "direct action" billions against the wall on theological climate-change alarmism.

No wonder he's confused ...

(Below: click to enlarge, more Weldon here)