A Monday pot pourri for those who love the stench of hypocrisy on a holiday Monday ... with bonus Dame ...

Or stoking the flames, part twenty five.

It turns out that the idle chattering class has little to do but idly chatter, and the chatter about leadership is now a handy column filler, in much the same way as compound chocolate was a handy filler at the bottom of Xmas stockings. And as healthy and as useful ...

Look, everyone knows Tony Abbott is going down. Let's not get bogged in the petty details of timing and manner. If there's one thing history teaches us, the rooster always gets turned into a feather duster, and soon enough is turning up at old fart gatherings declaring mutual love and respect ...

The pond always marvels at the way the Murdochians round on the idle inner city 'leet, yet here's Troy Bramston and Amanda Vanstone - why their names almost rhyme - yodelling for their 'leet suppers like common gossips ...

Meanwhile, is there another irony afoot?  Of course there is.

Just as the poodle Pyne schemes to vastly increase the debt level of students - you know, so the bright young folk and future generations can enjoy a debt free future - there's Obama feeling the need to take executive action to ease the crushing debt levels now endured by US students, as you can read in the NY Times in Obama Plans Steps to Ease Student Debt.

About $1 trillion in federal student loans or loan guarantees is outstanding, on top of more than $100 billion in outstanding private student loans that are not federally guaranteed, the Congressional Budget Office reported. While economists argue that a postsecondary education is an investment that pays off, average tuition at four-year public colleges has more than tripled over the past three decades, according to the administration, and 71 percent of those who graduated with a bachelor’s degree carried debt, which averaged $29,400.

Yes, it's ruined lives, fucked futures, possibly harmed the economy, certainly demeaned education. Some of the poor US possums interviewed on the matter compared it to taking out a home mortgage repayable over twenty years.

What a dream, what a goal, what an aspiration. Keep the paw to the tiller, poodle, who knows what might be achieved in terms of a ruined future ....

Meanwhile, on another planet, known to its devotees as Planet Queensland - watch out Planet Janet, there are even more eccentric worlds than yours spiralling through the Milky Way - the matter of the buffoon v the military martinet is heating up.

Mr Palmer said last night: “No documents are written on my behalf.” 
He has previously strenuously denied claims he ever sought favourable treatment from either Mr Seeney or Premier Campbell Newman, who he is suing for defamation. 
“If I had done anything wrong the Premier should have reported me to the CMC or to the police, but that didn’t happen and it hasn’t happened over the last two years,’’ he said at the weekend.
Yes, the Derelict Quail is agog with excitement in Documents allege Clive Palmer sought favourable treatment in return for support to LNP. (warning, warning, danger, danger Will Robinson, forced Bolter editorial at end of link)

Say what?

Clive Palmer allegedly issued the Newman Government with a documented list of political demands concerning his Queensland projects during ill-fated peace talks with the LNP. 
The Courier-Mail can reveal the document, provided to the Government before the eccentric federal MP formed his own party last year, will be handed over tomorrow to the Crime and Misconduct Commission.

Say what? The alleged document is allegedly over a year old? Maybe a couple of years?

Oh dear:

Senior lawyers, who have reviewed the CMC Act in light of the explosive allegations levelled by Campbell Newman against Mr Palmer in court documents, say the law is explicit in requiring public and elected officials to notify the commission of suspected official misconduct. 
Implicitly, the reporting to the CMC had to be “timely’’, said one senior legal figure familiar with the legislation. 
Mr Newman yesterday stepped up his attacks on Mr Palmer by claiming that the wealthy PUP leader had entered politics for personal and financial gain. 
“Mr Palmer is in it for himself, his personal and commercial interests,’’ he said. “It’s all about power and money. It is not about the best interests of Queenslanders.’’ 
But the Premier brushed aside questions on why he had failed to blow the whistle earlier on the alleged attempt by Mr Palmer in 2012 to “buy’’ government support for his coal project in the new Galilee mining field in the state’s central west. 
“It is a matter before the CMC, it is also before the Supreme Court of Queensland,’’ Mr Newman said. 

Do go on. The pond can never get enough of a whiff of a stench of hypocrisy on a holiday Monday morning:

Mr Seeney said he regretted not alerting the CMC two years ago, explaining that Mr Palmer was at the time a “senior figure’’ in the LNP with whom he had wanted to “attempt to try to work with’’.

Uh huh. Regrets? The pond has a few ...

So no need to make any fuss when the alleged camel trader was inside the tent with some handy camels, and some tidy donations of dates and unguents and maybe some frankincense and myrrh, and a 'senior figure', a jolly japer amongst chums, but when the time is right, all the recovered memories come pouring out:

 Mr Seeney also told the ABC that he had informed Mr Newman of Mr Palmer’s alleged effort to influence government decision-making. 

Uh huh. So the military martinet knew at the time, and only now has he experienced the same recovered memories. Do go on:

Mr Palmer has denied the allegations and said yesterday he welcomed the CMC’s investigation. He hit back at the government, threatening to sue Mr Seeney in a separate defamation action. 
Mr Palmer said about Mr Seeney: “He’ll have a chance to go on oath before a judge and weigh what he thinks, and then we will be able to produce evidence to show he is a liar.’’ 
A spokesman for Mr Newman said last night the Premier had nothing to add to his comments yesterday and to those of Mr Seeney on Friday. 
Section 38 of the CMC Act, 2001, stipulates that the requirement to notify kicks in if a public official suspects an incident of official misconduct. This duty is “paramount’’, the law says. 
Official misconduct is defined under the act as a criminal offence or disciplinary breach requiring the dismissal of the person ­responsible. 
 However, it does not set out a time frame in which the CMC must be notified or the penalty for breaching that requirement. (and the rest behind the lizard Oz paywall here)

Of course cockroaches can't gloat too much about the hapless feuding toads.

NSW endured the bizarre sight of the opposition leader explaining to anyone who listened that he didn't think a matter of an offer of a $3 million bribe amounted to much hay:
Mr Robertson issued a statement over the weekend saying in 2007, in his former capacity as head of Unions NSW, he was approached by Mr McGurk over the sale of the union holiday retreat Currawong. He said Mr McGurk offered him a $3 million personal windfall if he helped with the tender. 
Mr Robertson has said in a statement he was shocked at the offer. "I immediately rejected the offer outright and made it absolutely clear that all offers had to go through the tender process and therefore I was satisfied that was the end of the matter," he said. 
But the NSW Government is questioning why it has taken five years for Mr Robertson to report the alleged bribe. 
NSW Attorney-General Greg Smith will be writing to the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) over the new information.

Yes Robertson recovered his 2007 memory in October 2013, as you can discover at the ABC in NSW Labor leader John Robertson's claims of $3m bribe offer referred to ICAC.

Those were the days, because the state government itself had yet to recover all its sordid memories about corruption and illegality in sundry matters of fund-raising, and other camel-dealing, and both sides of politics were tainted even more, and the Liberals carelessly lost a leader, and so it goes ...

And now Campbell Newman wants to use the CMC to take down Clive Palmer, and never mind that he forgot all about the matter until it became politically convenient to remember? And politicise the CMC in the process?

What is it with Queensland?

Cue the quivering Quail:

Well good luck with all of that, the whole box of tricks, and a pox on all their houses ... but at least the pond has had its fill of the smell of cane toads in the morning ...

Meanwhile, was it only yesterday that the pond was speculating on what might happen in a smack down between Obama and the bully Abbott?

In the US, Mr Abbott will hold his first talks with President Barack Obama, where he is expected to discuss issues from the strategic - tensions in the South and East China seas for example - to the economic, with the White House still keen to see climate change policy reinstated on the agenda of the G20 meeting in Brisbane in November. 

Fairfax Media understands the issue is likely to get formal recognition on the agenda after all, but probably under a mutually agreeable heading such as ''energy efficiency''. (and the rest here, as the MAMIL tries to do a cash deal with the oil sand luddites).

It hasn't taken long for the bully to show his tail, with the leaking of "understandings" and "mutually agreeable" abuse of the meaning of words ...

And finally, where would a holiday Monday be without yet another Tony Abbott folly, and this time he's dragooned poor hapless old Marie Bashir to help him out:

Of course she's been a vice regal and an eastern suburbs type for yonks - why the pond was over there just yesterday reading LattéLife - it being free, though you can twitter with the twits here - so you can't expect her to grasp that being called a Dame brings back fusty memories of Adventure Island and Brian Crossley (and more here):

Ah well, that dame has gone, and so has vaudeville, and English seaside pantomines, but it's a holiday Monday, so it's time for a rousing chorus or two, thanks to the evil empire's 20th Century Fox (ad precedes song):