General Australian Politics Thread

Shaun Micallef's Mad As Hell starts its third season tonight at 8.00. Give 'em hell, Shaun.

edited 11th Feb '14 11:35:57 PM by Frogger5

And it's one the Coalition will always win.

"Sustainable Australia" sounds reasonable to anyone that understands the fragile Australian environment, but it also says "I will keep out brown people."

Leading to Fiona Nash in the 2013 election arguing that boat people were an issue to Western Sydney because "congestion is already bad." I hate this country.

Dismantling the Pacific Solution in 2007 was obviously not part of a 'race to the bottom', it was dismantling Howard's signature 'Border Protection' policy. That was a positive step. It could have been a starting point for more general reduction of punitive nonsense.

But Gillard came in and went straight back to Howard-style rhetoric and policies.

Yes.

edited 12th Feb '14 12:57:45 AM by editerguy

Man I should really watch the show, shame I'm normally out wensday evening.

Care to give any examples of sustainability being used in like that?

So that pamphlet was a genuinely endorse by the Australian government? That's the message they want to send? Fuck that just that's depressing

edited 12th Feb '14 6:24:55 AM by joeyjojo

I'm so fucking angry right now I just... Gah.

-Bashes head against the wall so hard the bricks fall out-

...You know, that reminded me a lot of "educational" pamphlets the South African government produced during Apartheid. -_-

Congrats: I didn't know I remembered the "don't waste the police's time" one. Or the "scare them into not moving beyond the Bantustans without papers" one. Until now. <_< (To be fair, there were also classics like the "scare people into taking TB treatment and shots seriously, and not going just for muti or the head in the sand approach" one, too. But, hey.) Well done, Rudd and Abbot. The National Party of 1982 would just love you guys.

I wonder... what does the Australian arm of the South African diaspora make of all this? It'll be... rather familiar.

edited 12th Feb '14 7:00:02 AM by Euodiachloris

You can search for some of the speeches on youtube, but I won't inflict Gillard on you.

Saying 'sustainability' is code talk for 'the hell to brown people' is a load of Hyperbole however. What about economics and environmental sustainability?

edited 12th Feb '14 5:10:32 PM by joeyjojo

What about a news article?

Or maybe a book?

From Julia 2010: the caretaker election, available on Google Books.

Well if you make it that simplistic, sure. But when people talk about population growth and a "Sustainable Australia" specifically, their focus always seems to be drastically reducing migration (foreigners, now largely non-white) as opposed to the Baby Bonus and other incentives for white-majority Australia to have more babies. So to me, it just seems like a PC way to express xenophobia and fears about increasing racial and cultural diversity.

edit

In other news, Australia's unemployment rate has jumped to 6 per cent for the first time in more than a decade.

edited 12th Feb '14 8:20:31 PM by editerguy

Meanwhile on Cracked...

-Sees the fucking comic book again-

I want to go back in time to a world where that doesn't exist.

Hockey is talking about increasing the pension age to 70. That's good, it's unsustainable, we're expected to pay for our retirement...

...and then he says it would only apply to people aged 30 and under.

sjgkksjgskgdsjghsjfeigharaaaaaaahhhhh!!!!!!!!!!

Gotta coddle those baby boomers as long as possible, right? Gotta keep those votes coming in!

This is the worst government in Australian history. The. Worst. I thought Stanley Bruce's government was the winner, trying to cut the minimum wage and led Aus into the Great Depression, but I'm sure that's a record Abbott and his mates can beat. We already have gulags in the Pacific, I wonder how much further we can sink.

edited 21st Feb '14 2:20:11 PM by medicus

Asylum seeker dies in some sort of outbreak of violence in Australia's Manus Island Detention Centre, prompting calls for Morrison to resign.

Abbott defends his minister in characteristic fashion.

"As long as he's tough, who cares what happens?" is his point, I'd guess.

Completing Australia's current militaristic approach to the issue, it's recently been determined the Manus Island detention centre is run by a Sri Lankan former military officer.

Whencanwekickthemoutwhencanwekickthemoutwhencanwekickthemout.

Yeah, you don't want a wimp running "border protection". We'll stick with the thug we currently have, thanks.

Sad thing is that most people still want tougher action against boat people (no mention of refugees that come via plane, or, say, the thousands that overstay visas). There's really nothing further we can do save for withdrawing from the Refugee Act, starting a war with Indonesia or just flat out shooting asylum seekers and sinking their boats.

Suicide internationally, but this is the Abbott government, he'd pimp out his own daughters if he could score some points against Labor by doing so. They have already decided to defy a hundred years of tradition and release Cabinet papers relating to the home insulation scheme. And there are fears that they might wreck the UN's probe into human rights abuses in Sri Lanka in order to cooperate on asylum seekers.

Your avatar is incredibly appropriate for that post.

edited 24th Feb '14 2:29:49 PM by medicus

In the last federal election, I collected all the political campaign material that made it to my mailbox, with the intent of eventually donating it to my university library.

Sounds strange, but as a history student I'm well aware of just how useful sources like that can be.

Anyway, I've finally gotten around to donating it. Going back and looking through the leaflets, I'm not surprised that the Liberals won. They must have had Satan himself writing it. "End the waste, end the debt, end the tax, stop the boats." Labor never had a chance.

It's not all dreary of course. Clive Palmer sent me a DVD! "Vote for Palmer United, we're fair dinkum (Titanic II video inside)".

Wonder if I should keep Tony's "Contract With Australia":

How well do you think he's delivered on those? Perhaps I should do as he urges and "keep this contract to hold us to account."

edited 24th Feb '14 5:15:46 PM by medicus

My favourite WTH? campaign ad is still this one◊.

I never bothered watching the Titanic ll DVD was it any good?

Still can't believe Abbott/Murdoch was able to sell that as the greatest betrayal ever committed by a government. And it still works — no matter what Greens/Labor says about Coalition policy, all they have to do is scream "CARBON TAX!" and the audience applauds.

1: So far, this has been... not too bad. It's pretty much the same, I've noticed - maybe I'm wrong, though.

2: Why get rid of the Carbon Tax? It's $15 per ton, do you know how much CO 2 you'd have to release to make up one ton of carbon dioxide? Stupid, crowd-pleasing rhetoric.

3: Waste is the same as always, to my understanding. As for debt... well, considering Tony Abbott used Government funds to attend the wedding of one of Gina Rhinehart's kids, I'd say this claim is just not sound.

4: Modern roads... How about instead of ripping up old roads and making new ones, we repair the dangerously neglected streets so that they feel like new? It does the same thing for much less money. Of course, some streets -should- be replaced wholly, but not enough to justify a complete overhaul. And even then, the country towns will be neglected - "modern roads" is for modern cities after all. Also, as to services, how is the government going to whip private businesses into shape?

5: STOP THE PLANES, DICKHEAD. CHASE THE OVER-STAYERS, FUCKWIT.

6: This one is laughable - Holden is taking its business off-shore, and Qantas - the Flying Kangaroo, not Australian owned for a while now but still a national icon - is laying off 5000 jobs.

In short: History books will refer to these flyers and strategies as propaganda and maybe even hate speech ("Stop the Boats" will be seen as the horrible xenophobia that it is, I can only hope).

edited 26th Feb '14 4:07:54 AM by MrMallard

1, 3 and 6 are vague generalized promises of the sort all politicians of any stripe make with a big empty spot on just exactly 'how they're going to do this.

I really dislike politicians talking about increasing jobs, since you can have openings but without people actually working because they get laid off too easily, or they have no access to training for the skills needed for those jobs.

Rather I'd like to see decreasing unemployment rates.

Of course Tony & friends don't see that as a negative — it might damage the unions and by extension Labor, so all good.

The Coalition appeals directly to that segment of the population that believes they don't have to do anything while still doing something about climate change. That the God of the Free Market will come in and save them at the last second.

Then it turned out the bookcase was too big for the office. So he had a second, smaller one built. At a higher cost.

They will improve services by privatising them and having the free market make them more efficient. Never in the history of the world has this resulted in poorer-quality services and higher prices. Nope. Absolutely never.

If this government gets a second term then Australia as we know it is dead.

edited 26th Feb '14 3:33:02 PM by medicus