It’s not a satire. All the statements are true. It is only the drawings that are not real life.
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Umm, that is what I said.
Possibly, even including the goat.
You’ll find they had fairly extensive and brutal campaigns in bits of what’s now Namibia, Rwanda, Congo, Tanzania and a bit of Mozambique. All of which are fairly stuffed still.
You could argue all night about which colonial power was worse for Africa, but they were all pretty atrocious.
And I have a nagging feeling the Germans were involved in a bit of unpleasantness in Europe itself at some point but I can’t quite put my finger on it.
Surely Rwanda and the Congo was the Belgians.
Mozambique was mainly Portuguese.
Germany had some Pacific islands too, and a fair whack of New Guinea. They certainly had some of East Africa. Wilbur Smith’s Shout at the Devil covered battles between the English and Germans on a big lake there.
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Georgina “born to rule” Downer at work.
Hang on a moment. That’s a federal grant.
She’s not even the local member!
You’d be forgiven to think she donated that money or the liberal party came up with the funds.
Obviously she’s forgotten the 1988 Court of Disputed returns ruling where the winning candidate was disqualified for handing out of government cheques to community groups; the court said this amounted to electoral bribery!
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Mostly, but they all swapped bits of territory like footy cards.
Germany swapped a bit of what is now The Republic of Congo, along with a chunk of Cameroon, for a bit of morocco.
Which is why I don’t think it’s fair or logical to blame just one colonial power and absolve the others for these problems. They all used Africa to get one up on the others. And they all treated the locals like ■■■■.
Plus all the royals were cousins.
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Always wanted to pay for something with a novelty over sized cheque.
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Nothing bent or shifty about her.
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No, not at all, … 
Still, she would look much better in High heels and fishnets than her Old man, … so she does have that going for her, … 
My African history isn’t fresh but, I know the Germans had a presence, and waged a rather effective Guerilla campaign in East Africa during WWI
Does literally zero LNP people, aspiring or otherwise not understand that the country is feed up with the lies and corruption?
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I can’t get angry about this.
I understand that she broke the rules, but compared to people not breaking the rules for an actual personal monetary benefit, it’s nothing.
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I have no political allegiances. That said I consider the current Federal LNP government to be the worst collection of incompetent, lying, self serving toss-pots with over inflated senses of self entitlement ever to walk on Australian soil.
Most should be lined up and shot, or if leniency is preferred, permanently re-settled on Manus Island.
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It’s that even before they enter the party they are willing to bend the truth for the optics.
The whole party is rancid
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News Poll 53-47
It pleases me to see that the desperate and extremely loud refugee fear mongering of the past couple of weeks hasn’t really had an impact. It feels like Australia might finally be growing up a little.
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Very relevant to your post
Colonialism at its finest (worst) - absolutely disgusting.
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ATO whistleblower faces six life sentences, roughly the same as Ivan Milat
ATO whistleblower Richard Boyle faces charges of 161 years in prison.
There’s something radically wrong with a society that allows mass murderer James Gargasoulas to be eligible for parole in 46 years, locks up serial killer Ivan Milat for 181 years and then has an Australian Taxation Office employee facing 161 years in prison for blowing the whistle on a poor culture inside one of our most powerful agencies.
Richard Boyle has been charged with 66 offences including telephone tapping and recording of conversations without the consent of all parties and making a record of protected information, in some cases passing that information to a third party.
The information and summons sheet lists ATO Commissioner Chris Jordan as the informant, which includes his signature. The move will send chills through staff in the ATO who might’ve thought about following Boyle to become whistleblowers.
The former tax employee hit the headlines in April 2018 when he turned whistleblower in a joint media investigation with The Age,_ The Sydney Morning Herald and ABC’s Four Corners titled Mongrel Bunch of Bastards_, which blew the lid on abuses by the ATO against small business and individuals.
His hearing, scheduled for March 1, comes after the bipartisan House Standing Committee on Tax and Revenue on Friday released a scathing report into the ATO, referring to it as an “annus horribilis” performance report.
It makes 37 recommendations for reform.
“As the committee commenced its annual report review in March 2018, there was an acceleration of bad press as the ATO fought off allegations of systemic unfairness to small business, and performance-driven debt action, which were televised,” the committee said.
“The recommendations made in this report intend to adjust the imbalance of power perceived by taxpayers in their engagement with the ATO, and to ensure that, under the ATO’s Reinvention [agenda], willing engagement will be the test for fair treatment.”
Some of the recommendations are profound, including a new ATO charter, an appeals group headed by a second independent commissioner (as also pledged by the federal Labor opposition), the transfer of debt recovery functions into the ATO’s compliance operations and a restructure of compensation processeses.
It called for the tax regulator, the Inspector General of Taxation (IGT), to be given more resources, renamed the Tax Ombudsman and tasked with conducting a broad review of the role of outsourcing in changes to its performance and culture.
Several of these recommendations were proposed by the former IGT Ali Noroozi for years and some of them shortly before his departure late in 2018.
“In the committee’s view, the Tax Commissioner should strike a note for fairness and respect between the ATO, tax agents, and taxpayers in all his public statements, and this guarantee should be consistently extolled and consolidated in all ATO vision documents,” the parliamentary report said, putting the responsibility for implementation at the feet of the Treasury and the ATO.
There are already changes afoot a new Small Business Tax Tribunal appeals body will start operating on March 1.
The body is an initiative of the federal government to make life easier for small businesses battling the ATO. Its establishment was sparked by revelations from Boyle and others in the joint media investigation.
In a twist of irony March 1 is the same day Boyle’s court hearing is set down in the Magistrates Court of South Australia.
Boyle, who had worked for the ATO since 2005 revealed that his area in the ATO had been instructed to use more heavyhanded debt collection tactics on taxpayers who owed the ATO money.
He said they were told to start issuing “standard garnishee” notices to meet ATO revenue targets.
A garnishee is a tool that allows the ATO to seize funds from the bank accounts of taxpayers who had been assessed to owe the ATO money, sometimes without their knowledge.
In one internal email, supplied to the media investigation by Boyle, an ATO officer tells staff “the last hour of power is upon us… that means you still have time to issue another five garnishees… right?”
The explosive allegations triggered a series of investigations into the ATO which resulted in both sides of politics announcing policies to improve the lot of small businesses when they are dealing with the ATO.
But the lot of Boyle is a timely reminder of the risks whistleblowers take.
Days before he went public his home was raided by the AFP and the ATO which alleged in a warrant he had illegally taken copies of taxpayer information, photos of ATO computer screens or emails.
Weeks earlier he had declined a settlement with the ATO on the basis he didn’t want to be gagged from exposing questionable behaviour inside the country’s most powerful institution.
His fate is now in the hands of the courts.
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