We had a wonderful response to our bumper post-Budget quiz and we thank everyone who entered. The winner was Jan Juc of Jan Juc. And our congratulations go to you Jan. For the record, the answers were as follows:
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True. The picture shows Treasurer Joe Hockey picking up his parliamentary entitlements. This is an example of heavy lifting. Note that he bends at the knees.
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False. There is no plan to privatise HECS debt. The reason Christopher Pyne is shifting universities to the ‘interest-free for six months on all white-goods’ model, is simply a concern for quality in tertiary education.
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False. The fact that Tony Abbott has promised something does not mean it will definitely not happen. Try to remember whether the promise was written down, whether it was a ‘solemn’ promise, whether it was ‘fair dinkum,’ whether he has ‘moved on’, whether it was ‘fundamentally honest’, whether it was a promise he was ‘determined to keep’, whether it was broken ‘temporarily’ and whether or not there was an election on.
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True. Joe Hockey and Mathius Cormann were given the task of leaking the budget and marketing its underlying agenda. The cigars were a masterstroke.
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True. The national audit of Australia’s fiscal position did not include a discussion of the government’s income.
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True. Joe Hockey’s response to the state of the Australian budget when he came into office was to give $9b to the Reserve Bank and announce an inherited liquidity crisis.
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True. Tony Shepherd is a corporate leader with particular expertise in running businesses which used to be government infrastructure. His recommendations included the sale of more government infrastructure. This was completely unexpected.
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False. When the National audit was announced, Joe Hockey, Tony Shepherd and Mathius Cormann were not laughing at the content of the report and the effect it would have. They were remembering a very amusing story which they’d been told some days previously.
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False. It is not true that when Arthur Sinodinos remembered his name during the ICAC hearing, the NSW Bar Association rose to its feet and sang the Hallelujah Chorus.
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False. The photograph shows Clive Palmer. Jupiter is a planet.
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True. In the city of Melbourne, the streets are available for use by the public provided this wouldn’t cause any inconvenience for property developers, crane operators or construction companies.
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True. The finding of the International Court at The Hague was that the Port Adelaide football team is not using opposition sides for scientific experiment. They are simply killing them.
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False. It is not possible to obtain results from next season’s cricket fixtures by calling Cricket Australia.
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False. Barry O'Farrell still cannot remember being the Premier of NSW. He stressed that it’s quite an important job and if he’d ever done it, he’s pretty sure he would have remembered it.
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False. The photo was not taken during a school outing. The person grinning in the cockpit of the Joint Strike Fighter aircraft is the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott.
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False. George Pell has not been put in charge of re-arranging the tables of the money-lenders at the Vatican. He’s gone there to help clean up their finances.
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False. There is no connection whatever between the involvement of Denis Napthine in anything and his connection with anything else. He has never met anyone and did not know of his own involvement or that of anyone else in whatever it was.
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False. ‘You know nothing Jon Snow’ is a line from ‘Game of Thrones’. It is not the advice of Mr Snow’s barrister at the ICAC hearings. There is no Mr Snow at the ICAC hearings. If there were, he would know nothing, although the blood would drain from his face slightly when the documents were tabled.
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You were asked for the next name in the following sequence: Aristotle, Copernicus, Galileo, Issac Newton and Albert Einstein. The answer of course, is Cyril Rioli.
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False. The photograph shows a Sesame Street puppet called Beaker. Christopher Pyne is the Education Minister.