Latham's cat is out of bags

Not doubt octopuses worth of newsprint will be spent analysing the ALP's umming and ahhing over a free trade agreement with the US. Despite the politicking of it, the FTA will be passed, and passed soon.

Here's the logic:

1. The FTA, as do most free trade agreements, provide a net benefit to both parties.
2. The ALP knows that most Australians recognise the benefits of the FTA.
3. The ALP know that the FTA is benefitial to Australia, although it may harm the short term interests of some ALP supporters (ie, Doug Cameron).
4. The ALP knows that in order to keep ALP supporters who are cold on the FTA (see 3, above) on side, they will need to give the impression of standing against some part of it, hence the grandstanding on local content rules and patent rules.

Bottom line - the ALP will grizzle for a bit, and then support it.

And more importantly, what the hell is Latham on about with his mysterious Kilkenny Cats? They made an appearance on Lateline a fortnight ago:

MARK LATHAM: Well, the right wing never give power away easily, that's for sure.

They always fight like Kilkenny cats to hang onto it and they do some pretty crazy things to that effect.


And then they got a run on PM last night...

MARK LATHAM: Our step is to urge the Government to adopt these good amendments to the enabling legislation and then fight and fight and fight in the Senate to make sure that that happens.

CATHERINE MCGRATH: And…

MARK LATHAM: We're going to fight like Kilkenny cats to ensure that those amendments go through.


So is Latham going for the Irish Catholic vote? Or perhaps the feline vote?

UPDATE (7 August, about 12:20am): A dedicated member of the Ariontheweb army has gone straight to the source and has flicked the original Kilkenny Cats poem to me. Thanks Tim:

There were once two cats of Kilkenny,
Each thought there was one cat too many:
So they fought and they fit,
And they scratched and they bit,
Till, excepting their nails
And the tips of their tails,
Instead of two cats there weren't any.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thanks for all the fish

After 13 years with Blogspot, I've shifted blogging platform. So (drumroll, please), you can find my new blog here . Ari on the Web will stay online, so you can scroll through the archives for all sorts of embarrassing tidbits. To make it easier to find some of my writing on particular themes, I've grouped some pieces together under a few labels: Cancer Fatherhood Indonesia travels North Korea travels United States travels Undergraduate days   So as they say here in my new home of Japan, so long, and thanks for the all the fish.
Read more

Welcome to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

North Korea is a place that is shrouded in mystery and conjecture, much of it of its own creation. For so long it has chosen to close itself off from the rest of the world that little information flows in or out of the place. In the absense of hard facts, rumour and speculation run rife. I plead guilty as one who has engaged in plenty of rumour-mongering in the past (and, let's be honest, will probably try my hand at it in the future), but to really come to grips with the place it is necessary to see it first hand. Much of the speculation is not meant in a harsh, negative way - although there are elements of that - but is instead meant in the same way that people watch the bearded lady at the circus. Curious, but not necessarily critical. Perhaps they could but those on the number plates - DPRK: The Bearded Lady of Asia. Since there are so few who have seen the place but so many who speculate, I think it is worth publishing a few thoughts after my trip. It's important
Read more

Can conspicuous consumption save the news business?

Image
It’s a dire time for the news industry. Readers are flooding to social media for content, advertisers are moving with them and costs are being cut at a brutal rate in a desperate bid to meet falling revenue. It is increasingly clear that business models that depend on amassing large audiences in order to provide a forum for advertising will always struggle against the “niche of one” audience that social media platforms can provide for advertisers. There’s been lots of talk lately about ways to fund public interest journalism. One idea is to tax the online aggregators – Facebook and Google, primarily – that sell advertising against the news content of others to support news organisations. Another is to make news subscriptions or donations to its producers tax deductible.  Both ideas are worth considering, but they do not abrogate the need for news organisations to seek better ways to draw revenue from consumers.  (It is alarming that discussion of efforts to build a
Read more