Tuesday 29 November 2022

Early blog this week, I have finished my EO & CTL duties with the VEC for at least the next four years and as I have a few things to attend to tomorrow I thought I would prepare and publish this week's blog early.

As most of you would already know the once proud state of Victoria has elected itself a Socialist Left Labor government for the next four years.  

So four more years of big spending, poorly costed over budget over time multibillion dollar projects, bloated ineffective public service, bloated government media departments full of spin doctors, labor party branch stacking, corruption a la "red shirts", loss of collective ministerial memory a la "covid hotel deaths enquiry", misfeance in office - refer to at least five ongoing IBAC enquiries into the Labor government's activities and there will be more.

The unions will be lining up demanding their pound of flesh, you don't pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into the Labor party's election coffers and not expect special treatment in return.  If you want to see an example of this look at the contortions that he Federal Labor government is going through at the moment to please their union masters.

Is it coincidence that the Workcover proceedings against the Victorian Health Department (VHD) started on Monday, after the election.  This is the case where Workcover is claiming the VHD committed numerous breaches of OH & S requirements during the disastrous covid hotel quarantine disaster.  If found guilty the VHD could be liable for fines of $98 million - yes you read right $98 million!  If this has to be paid $98 million will come out of the VHD's coffers.  So where does this money end up, does the fine go back to Workcover or is it a fine paid the Justice Department?  Will this mean that working Victorians miss out on $98 million of health care?  So many questions so few answers!

As you can see I am possibly a little disappointed with the election result but I will admit that the Liberal and National Party opposition did not deserve to win.  Matthew Guy was no match for Daniel Andrews and the Liberal organization was no match for the hardened Labor party machine.  You would have thought with all the disasters that the Daniel Andrews and his government have been involved with over the last four years that a Liberal victory was a given but Matthew Guy wasn't able land a punch.  

The Liberals need to come up with a new leader who is as hard and ruthless as Andrews and set up an organization that is disciplined and effective and work towards putting forward true conservative policies and give voters a genuine alternative at the next election.

And now for something lighter.  I see that the Atari video game of "Pong" turned 50 the other day.  Who can remember being amazed by this technology and playing the game initially at bars and pubs and then even more amazingly at home on an Atari home game machine.  

How exciting does this look, or how easily were we amused.

Another matter of interest is the that cruise ships are again cruising Australian waters and delivering their covid riven passengers back to Australian waters.  The cruise ship Grand Princess is due to shortly dock in Melbourne to disembark it's passengers at the end of their cruise. It is reported that due to the presence of covid on board the ship was prevented from docking at Newcastle in NSW for shore excursions, although I wouldn't have thought that being prevented from docking in Newcastle would necessarily be a bad thing.  No covid numbers for the ship are available as yet but sounds it could be quite a few.

The Queen Elizabeth on a cruise to Bali has been diverted to Fremantle WA due to more than 200 (more than 10%)  of its passengers being infected with covid.  Bali authorities have prevented the ship proceeding there.  A warning to my many FNQ readers, the QE has recently been to Cairns and Mission Beach.  Of course all these covid sufferers are going to be offloaded on Perth, which probably isn't their city of origin, so where do they go from there?

Another item to add to the long list of why I do not intend to go cruising any time in the near of distant future.

Another reason to avoid cruises, bottoms up!