Queensland’s Biggest Political Problem? Stephen Miles Nails It – And Himself In The Process.

During a waffle-a-thon in Townsville during the week, Labor’s Stephen Miles (remember him? remember them?) led by example in defining one of the basest dishonesties of Queensland … indeed, Australian … politics. But he was blissfully unaware of the enlightenment of his words. So was – of course – the Bulletin.

But the paper wasn’t shy in using race baiting in a deliberately deceitful,  beat-up story for another tedious ABC-bashing load of flapdoodle.

All in all, just a standard week for the Astonisher, with the obligatory headline cock-up,  alternative spellings of the name of someone who appeared in two seperate stories, and a majorly subediting lapse sure to get  our headkicking deputy premier offside.

Plus a few laughs from around the place,  including the week’s in America through the eyes of its cartoonists.

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You Said It, Mr Miles –  Smiley’s Spectacular Self-Own

There must surely be a few minders wondering ‘What the hell was he thinking?’ when they read this story this week.

Clever – just what victims of crime wanted to hear, you’re going to make a list.  FFS.

The gist of this gossamer thin load of horsefeathers was this in the story about Miles Budget Reply speech in Townsville.

Mr Miles accused ministers of exploiting crime statistics for political spin and promised to strip ministers of their control over crime data.

“I think the public’s really starting to tire of being told crime is fixed when their experience isn’t that,” Mr Miles said.“We’ve caught the government three times now manipulating statistics to try to make it look better.

“That’s why we announced we will create an independent community safety statistics bureau that reports to the parliament that everyone can trust, and that we can be sure isn’t being manipulated by one side of politics or the other.” 

Mate, are you listening to yourself?  If you’re so indignant  about crime statistics being used for political spin, why are you doing EXACTLY that with this announcement –  without any evidence, challenging crime statistics for political spin?  Especially when you’re calling out the government only ‘on suspicion’, without a shred of supporting evidence . (Hey, you might be right, but you actually need to prove it for credibility. Anyway, that’s beside the point here.)

Being a gormless dunce is one thing, but making an even bigger dunce of yourself takes you into deeper territory of goofdom.  And just to bolster that blunt assessment, just how did you work out that people who have their homes broken into, cars hijacked,  and store staff threatened by mostly drugged fuelled losers want to hear that -by gum, you’ve got the answer –   we’ll make a list of these neer-do-wells, that’ll show ‘em.

FFS, mate, seriously?  People are hurting, alarmed, dismayed, frightened and above all, feeling abandoned by politicians of all stripes with their spin, lies and their ineffective, self interested  political cowardice. Why don’t you, instead of your little listicle – or better still in addition to it –  tell us just what you would do to sort out this low class of mongrels infesting and destabilising our society.? Maybe promising mandatory NO BAIL for certain crimes, and buy and build places like the Covid-era Wellcamp facilty in Toowoomba (built is record time by the Wagner Family along with their airport). Solution to the crime epidemic is never going to be cheap, but balanced against that is the existing social and economic cost this thugocracy s is causing us – so it would possible to priortise a program to build places like Wellcamp  and put out the welcome mat for ALL these cretins, who don’t leave until they’ve had their day in court.   Or how about passing laws to keep soft cock magistrates and judges in line with community expectations?

In any parliamentary democracy – there’s a few left – it is always the Opposition’s duty to oppose – but at a guesstimate,  at state and federal level, 80% of useful and what could be productive even cooperative effort is sacrificed to sniping, bitching, lying and clever put-down slogans dissing the policies and personalities of the other side  and never once having any reasoned argument of alternatives.

No wonder the simple-minded unworkable solutions of One Nation have attracted so many, and make it a disaster-in-waiting of a very different kind.

This Is Just Stupid

The first rule of politics is to learn how to count. And you do your  basic maths through surveys, polls and data about voting intentions and the reasons behind those intentions so you can find policies that can move the numbers in your favour. 

It is this immutable rule that makes this story last Tuesday one of the most inanely stupid and crass bits of beat-up bullshit to ever be invented by the current reigning champions in the field. 

Quote: A prominent North Queensland community leader has blasted the ABC and southern politicians for treating migrant communities like cheap political pawns instead of individual Australians.

Multicultural Queensland Advisory Council member Nick Attam warned against treating new Australians as a monolithic block, arguing political parties must engage with individuals rather than cultural groups.

Mr Attam, who is also the editor of national publication The Indian Sun and a driving force behind India Fest Townsville, launched the blistering attack following an ABC Insiders broadcast in which panellists appeared to reduce more than one million Indian Australians to a mere electoral strategy.Unquote.

Not only is the basic premise utter codswallop – that polling researchers, political parties, and ergo sociologists should ignore known and proven voting tendencies in ethnic communities in favour of some impossible Quixotic notion of ‘individual treatment’ for polling purposes  –  but it turns out this rot is driven by a barely hidden News Ltd agenda of carefully targeted and – as usual – unfounded ABC bashing.

So first let’s look at the thin gruel on which this nonsense is based …  apparently based entirely on a single question by Insiders host Patricia Karvelas about Albanese’s election strategy – “He wants to make all of those Indian Australians his voters, right?”  And it’s a foundation that the Bulletin story itself makes even more flimsy, with the next sentence …

” This was followed by a discussion about how the diaspora was being targeted for political gain.”

A lively give and take which any reasonable viewer would expect. 

But reporter Andrew Mackaysmith isn’t in the reasonable realm, so he rounded-up Mr Attam to have a go at ‘em, so as to speak, with some well rehearsed sophisms to paint the one million Australians of Indian heritage as victims of an uncaring political system. (Oh, if only there were a Modi in charge, eh?) And his impossible demand of individual treatment for them all.

Now,  while Mr Attam’s idealistic bromides  could be accepted as obvious universal truths about equality, dignity and so forth, they actually had absolutely no bearing on the ABC matter. And when Mr Mackaysmith asked the ABC for comment (apparently no one anywhere else was even mildly interested),  a spokesperson sent him away with the flea in his ear that ‘ analysing migrants by their background was completely normal. Analysis of voting trends across different migrant communities is a common part of political commentary in Australia.”

Bit fuckin’ obvious, isn’t it, Andy?

But Mr Mackysmith (is that really a name?) lives by the mythical motto never fuck up a story with facts,  and breathlessly described Mr Attam’s mild inanities as a ‘savage backlash’ and a ‘blistering attack’.

Oh, purleeese, mate. The outrage, of this Townsville Bulletin special,  far from being a national cause du jour, would’ve spread all the way from maybe the Upper Ross to … hmmm … maybe as far as the Lower Ross.

Mr Attam’s contrived bleatings are all the more laughable when it is from a man who is editor of the Indian Sun, a monthly print and digital e-magazine  catering to in its own words  – ta da – Indian Australians. 

… and this ….

‘ … leading voice for the Indian community’?!?  What, just one voice for a whole community? What happened to the individual treatment you demand of pollsters, that’s hardly treating your targeted audience as individuals free of group think and self-interested solidarity. Or voting intentions.

But as a budding Mumbai Murdoch,  Mr Attam is on the right track with what look like massaged readership figures. 

But hey Nick, in the spirit of journalistic solidarity, here’s a idea for a story from The Magpie.

Not so long ago, there were some difficult questions asked – but unanswered – around the TCC table about annual grant money for local events, and prominent among the big ticket items was the Townsville IndiaFest. Seems much of the grant – what was it, $25,000 of ratepayers money  – wasn’t properly accounted for and a big chunk inexplicably was missing. Some councillors were concerned that ratepayer funds had ended up in – err – improper places. You could use your resources at the India Sun to launch an ‘blistering’ investigation into the alleged missing rupees, creating a ‘savage backlash’.

This should be a shoo-in scoop for you, the Bulletin won’t be touching it.

And besides, you have a head start, being, as the Bulletin says’ the driving force behind Townsville’s India Fest’. You’d be able to get to the bottom of this pretty quickly. If you ever wanted to.

All In All, Another Floundering Week For The Bulletin

Oddly enough, it was the Bulletin’s Weekend edition which cast some doubt on Mr Attam’s identity. In a story promoting the colourful fun of India Fest,  they published this pic of pollies, VIPs and organisers, with the caption giving one of the organisers a nuclear aspect of ‘Attom’.

Bombed out again, Astonisher. Funny how we trust all that word salad of names are correct but the one you got wrong was the shortest and simplest. Oh. well.

But that was small potatoes in the cockup area.  Iditor Jill Poulson might have got a please explain from the chief headkicker and Brutus-in -waiting Jarrod Bleijie over a matter reported in comments during the week.

The Magpie email hidden; JavaScript is required 14.1.95.221

Submitted on 2026/07/31 at 11:55 am | In reply to OED. How the following came about is somewhat of a mystery, beyond sloppy inattention. Especially the use of the ellipsis (the three dots) used to indicate some words have been removed. Ellipses are used to shorten lengthy sentences but always done in a way that the missing words are understood from context. But enough Magpie, you old tease, you’re doing in the heads in the Bulletin newsroom trying to work out what the fuck you’re talking about with all this grammar stuff. So here is the story and the sloppy subbing.

Iditor Jill Poulson probably got a gruff ‘please explain from Brisbane … if anybody reads the Bulletin down there.

But getting it wrong … and obscure … in headlines is the Bulletin speciality, so locals might have wondered about this strange headline. Was it a drive-in brothel sold for a poultice?

Probably a victim of spellcheck, since the required word is Belrowes, well known to The Magpie and has never been, to his knowledge,  in the running to be beloved.

Well, at least they didn’t call it iconic.

Meanwhile, Victoria Gets A New Premier

Jacinta Allen was turfed out by her own Labor Government, in light of polling numbers ahead of a November election suggesting  she was about as popular as a Vegemite pizza in America. Her downfall was fuelled by spectacular cost blowouts of major infrastructure projects in the billions, and the repeated extension of completion dates going from next year now into the 2030s.

Maybe not of great interest anywhere else much, but it did give those lads at the Shovel a couple of golden moments of hilarity.

Talk about scathing backlashes!! 

But Extensions And Cost Blowouts Are Also Problems For Another Leader.

Americans now live in fear of Vietnam revisited, another ‘forever war’ with the Iran inanity now firmly in bloody stalemate. One of the reasons The ‘Pie increasingly hates Iran is that their dogged resistance to the attacks from the world’s biggest terrorist regime is making him barrack for them.  Trump’s chickens really are coming home to roost, but it looks like its a roost he shares.

…………….

Enough now, The ‘Pie is retiring to his virginal couch, as Mills and Boon are fond of calling  the old farter.  Jump into comments anytime you like about anything you like – or don’t like.  The donation link for much needed financial support for the Nest is below. Til next week.