Like most Aussie voters I am very sceptical about all things political, particularly promises made on the hustings in the lead up to an election.
The looming national election is shaping up to become one of the closest fought in many years and is already producing an overwhelming array of expensive and unfunded initiatives from an entrenched government who have previously claimed the high moral ground and made a much vaunted virtue out of paring back essential services and paying off debt.
It seems not unreasonable to ask: if all these last minute proposals are so urgent why weren’t they undertaken anytime over the last 11 years?
My personal radar went on ‘red alert’ when federal politicians rushed through literally hundreds of pages of legislation in a single sitting and committed over half a billion dollars to save the Aboriginal children at risk in the Northern Territory.
Now, protecting vulnerable children has to be the most motherhood of motherhood issues so I won’t even consider questioning anyone’s motives here, but even the most one eyed Liberal supporters must have felt a ‘lost generation’ or ‘Tampa’ moment when they saw on national TV an army of public officials with hundreds of support staff being convoyed to the outback in an unprecedented, unplanned, unfunded but paradoxically well orchestrated media event.
But unilaterally taking over control of a state run hospital in Tasmania is probably the most suspect of the recent centralist initiatives and shares one of the main positive characteristics of all these adventures, i.e. there is an over arching need.
Frankly that is about the last consideration the present government would accept as the reason to grant unbudgeted funds at any other time on the government benches.
Let’s face it, if need were to be the sole criteria we wouldn’t have literally thousands of people without basic dental care in this country just to mention one of, I suspect, hundreds if not thousands, of deserving cases.
So why is the $45 million bail out of Devonport’s Mersey Hospital different?
Well for starters it’s situated in the marginally held Liberal seat of Braddon.
In addition, the Federal Health Minister quickly declined other would-be bail out propositions and, when questioned, Tony Abbot maintained that Mersey was an experiment only, but quickly added it could in fact become the model for more interventions – presumably well after the current election.
In common with the planned Commonwealth takeover of water management in the Murray-Darling Basin, which the Federal Treasurer Peter Costello says is inevitable, the Tasmanian intervention was not prompted by the State directly affected and in fact little or no discussion or co-operation was actually involved.
It defies credulity that these much publicised moves are anything other than a crude exercise in pork barrelling notwithstanding the obvious benefits to those directly involved. What’s more, it’s difficult to believe most punters will not see it for what they are – out and out election ‘bribes’.
Our Prime Minister may be viewed as many things positive or negative, usually coloured by personal political persuasion, however one thing universally agreed is that John Howard is one of the wiliest politicians to come our way for many years so I suspect he is in fact acting true to form in the sense that he honestly believes that if he can persuade enough voters to put their personal or local interests ahead of the national ‘big picture’ ones he’ll get over the line once again in November.
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What will the hackers do next?
An unprecedented increase in spam of 12% in a single week is being attributed to the latest, in the seemingly unstoppable procession, of viruses to infect the internet.
Storm Trojan was first detected at the beginning of the year and is being spread by the ubiquitous e-greeting cards which seem to turn up regularly, if not daily, in everyone’s inboxes.
Rather than hiding behind a small number of untraceable host servers the new worm utilises a network of pre-infected or ‘zombie’ Windows PCs to spread their unwanted messages at a rate previously unknown on the web.
Technology market analyst IDC reported in April that of the nearly 97 billion daily email messages being sent around world over 40 billion were now spam.
Leading virus protection provider Symantec claim on their website the virus usually arrives as an attachment to an email claiming to contain a video of one of several different recent news stories. The email itself has no message but will have one of the following subject lines:
• A killer at 11, he's free at 21 and kill again!
• U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has kicked German Chancellor Angela Merkel
• British Muslims Genocide
• Naked teens attack home director.
• 230 dead as storm batters Europe.
• Re: Your text
• Radical Muslim drinking enemies's blood.
• Chinese missile shot down Russian satellite
• Chinese missile shot down Russian aircraft
• Chinese missile shot down USA aircraft
• Chinese missile shot down USA satellite
• Russian missile shot down USA aircraft
• Russian missile shot down USA satellite
• Russian missile shot down Chinese aircraft
• Russian missile shot down Chinese satellite
• Saddam Hussein safe and sound!
• Saddam Hussein alive!
• Venezuelan leader: "Let's the War beginning".
• Fidel Castro dead.
Symantec also strongly urges users to be cautious of any unsolicited email that contains attachments that claim to be legitimate or interesting. The technique of using interesting subject lines or attachment names in emails in order to distribute malicious code is known as "social engineering". This technique has been used by threat writers for many years and, unfortunately, is often successful against unprotected users. The usage of recent news events as part of the email is especially common among these techniques.
The file attachments include the following .exe files:
• FullVideo.exe
• Full Story.exe
• Video.exe
• Read More.exe
• FullClip.exe
• GreetingPostcard.exe
• MoreHere.exe
• FlashPostcard.exe
• GreetingCard.exe
• ClickHere.exe
• ReadMore.exe
• FlashPostcard.exe
• FullNews.exe
Symantec also point out that given the changing nature of this threat it is likely that additional subject lines or attachment names are likely to appear. Let SSOL know if you have spotted any new subject lines or attachments s and we’ll spread the news.
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