In the doghouse
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On the Pulse was very pleased to see the NSW government announce an inquiry into the puppy factory industry on Wednesday.
On the Pulse considered it long overdue and whole heartedly supported its aims of preventing animal cruelty, and ridding respectable breeders of the ‘black market’ characters who must be costing the fair dinkum breeders dearly in both reputation and income. But On the Pulse could not help notice who would be chairing the inquiry. Coincidentally, our very own Member for Northern Tablelands Adam Marshall will get that honour, but that’s what had On the Pulse doing a double take.
It seems our MP has an affinity with animals. Last time it was bats (though Parks and Wildlife probably may have given him a low score on that one), so it just had On the Pulse wondering, perhaps Adam might not need a puppy.
Drought or not
There are some occasions when On the Pulse takes a furtive glance at politics in Australia, winces, gives a rueful shake of its head and mumbles the worn out, rhetorical question about where all the good advocates have gone.
It happened again this week with a media release from Labor’s Joel Fitzgibbon. Now, Fitzy’s the Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Minister for Rural Affairs. So by default that makes him Minister for the Limitation of Barnaby Joyce as well. Naturally BJ often features in his media releases, and to find out what BJ might or might not be up from an Opposition perspective, On the Pulse sometimes skims through them.
“Barnaby Joyce also talks about more people being on Farm Household Allowance to assist them with drought. Well, guess what - there wasn’t any real drought when they first came to office,” Fitzy thundered on Thursday. Then he either had second thoughts or forgot the script, when he stated in the same media release, “The assets write-off program … It’s a sensible move to improve cash flow. The problem is that many farmers have now been in drought for three years...” Ah. So has there been a drought or not? Seems many farmers have experienced it for the last three years, even though there was not any real drought 18 months ago. Oh dear.