Unfalsifiable hypotheses are always a bit silly, and this blog generally tries to steer clear of falling for that trap but, hey, it’s Friday and salacious gossip is fun.
Sometime ago, we brought you the Canberra insider news that has never made it into the mainstream; Julie Bishop enjoys/has enjoyed a full and busy private life and sent a fairly unsubtle shot across the bows of the free press to not go prying into MPs’ private lives.
This week, we learn that China a foreign power power has hacked into the parliamentary computer systems (by which they probably mean the email server).
And now Julie Bishop has announced an end to what was a promising political career that, by any objective view, probably still had greater heights to reach.
Curious.
Ok, let’s suspend our usual reliance on logic, reason and requirement for evidence and just have a complete punt at what’s going on….
There’s plenty of embarrassing personal information on everyone’s email history, none of us would appreciate it being opened up to the public, that’s why we don’t share our passwords.
A prominent politician is no different, particularly if they’ve been a little indiscreet in the past.
If you had evidence that your email was one of the hacked ones and you had something to hide, or at least feel a little regretful about, a simple solution might be to drop out of the public eye. It doesn’t completely prevent the leaked information making it into the news but yours wouldn’t be the most pressing for the media to report on at that point.
Bill’s Opinion
China seems a little less-enamoured with Australia these days. The best we can hope for is a Wikileaks type data drop of all the naughty little secrets about politicians’ petty personal lives.
Unfortunately, blackmail and coercion is more likely.
No export dollars for you Australia. The Chinese stock pile of Coal and Iron ore was being built up for a purpose.
Do they have most of the resources they need for the next 10 years? From the western countries probably, yes.
The other countries like venzuela, brazil, russia, kazakhstan will be relatively easy for China to get their oil, gas, iron ore, uranium from. These countries don’t buy a shit tonne from China (comparative to the west) so it’s an easier deal.
Oh and how about the Chinese exodus of real estate cash from the western countries? It’s just starting
Coal is worth about $30-40bn, isn’t it?
That’ll be a bit of a drag on the economy if the ban is real and long term.
China only takes 20% of our coal. Not insignificant though.
The tip of the wedge has only been lightly tapped into the log. It didn’t exist 6 months ago
Fascinating.
There’s not going to be much of an uptick in the Australian economy (=the housing market) for a while yet, eh?