Questions of Malcolm Turnbull's suitability for the top job apart, anything would be better than John Howard and his front bench mixture of cowards, syncophants, incompetents, and right-wing bible bashers. Conspicuous wealth does not detract from ability - the days of financially strapped prime ministers are well behind us.

I think we would be safer with King Midas in charge of water. As for putting the patron saint of Wizard Home loans in charge of this country, why, he would have it mortgaged away in an instant and all of us in chains. He isn't much different from those in charge currently, except he is a larger than life dangerously wealthy power-mad idiot.

Our democracy is being so trashed and commercialised here, with no reverence or even commonsense displayed towards looking after soil, water, trees and citizens' welfare, that I am thinking of emigrating to Venezuela. Seriously mate. And I love this country. I can't stand watching while it is destroyed for fists full of dollars.

I do not trust the rich. They are selfish and unprincipled. The excrutiatingly rich all strike me as psychopaths.

"I do not trust the rich. They are selfish and unprincipled."

And the rest of the world isn't?

Hey Dresdener,

Well.... at least the others haven't PROVEN they are the nasty, avaricious and self-serving bastards that the wealthy are.

How would I know? I have known some VERY wealthy people in my time (quite well and quite wealthy). I wouldn't p*ss on any of them to put a fire out. (Not like Gulliver did).

How do you think they all got so wealthy? Simple, by stealing it from everyone else !!

"I do not trust the rich. They are selfish and unprincipled. The excrutiatingly rich all strike me as psychopaths."

"Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? 7Are they not the ones who are slandering the noble name of him to whom you belong?" (James 2:6)

James 3:1 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? 2You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. 3When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

13Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." 14Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." 16As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. 17Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins. (James 3:13)

Comment:

Good to see so many of you are on the 'same page' as James the brother of Jesus :)

There seems little difference between "All hail ...", as the author presently exhorts us, and "Seig Heil", as certain bully-boys in another place and time exhorted 'their' population, as exhortations, and the backgrounds against which they tend to be made, go.

There ought be no need for such exhortations in a functioning indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown of Great Britain and Ireland.

The author makes the point that Malcolm the would-be Second is principled. He is indeed! Here, for example, is one of the principles he has set forth before all Australians, in his role as Federal Environment Minister: under the provisions of Clause 2 of the National Water Initiative Agreement he sponsored, it is asserted that rights to the rainfall that falls on my roof vests in the Federal government.

Section 100 of the Constitution says:

"100. The Commonwealth shall not, by any law or regulation of trade or commerce, abridge the right of a State or of the residents therein to the reasonable use of the waters of rivers for conservation or irrigation."

Since the waters of rivers only get there by virtue of the natural water cycle, it is difficult to see how the collection of rainfall off the roof of a dwelling could be anything other than reasonable use for conservation or irrigation. It is to be noted that the residents within a State are separately and expressly recognised in their own right as having protected access to rainfall runoff in Section 100, not just the State concerned as a (corporate?) entity. The Constitution thus effectively recognises the personal right of an Australian resident to rainwater collection. It would seem any legislation, State or Federal, that purports to constrain that right would be unconstitutional.

Readers will observe that I have placed Malcolm the would-be Second's principle in relation to rainfall collection above the principle set out in the Constitution. That has been deliberate, as I consider it accurately reflects his view of the relative significance of his principles and our rights.

Malcolm the Second? Not a closet absolute Monarchist, by any chance?