General Australian Politics Thread

This is how I've defined State Capitalism.◊

I'm having to learn to pay the price

Don't think discussing it is asserting dominance but this is off topic.

nice poster but I disagree with what's said.let's leave it there

edited 26th Mar '14 5:18:43 AM by joesolo

I'm baaaaaaack

I'm sorry. You seemed aggressive in your argument. I'm sorry for my attempt at passive-aggressiveness.

Come sail your ships around me, and burn your bridges down.

Shall we talk about the sale of Medibank Private instead?

Another Liberal move purely for political reasons. Short-term benefit to the budget for long-term loss. And they can say Labor is terrible at economic management when they come back in and the Liberals have sold everything. Bastards.

It's not over. Not yet.

Cut to the bone.

hashtagsarestupid

They're all over the place down here at University of Tasmania.

This. Our professor giving his opinions such as Australia becoming a third world country instead of teaching the course was one of the reasons I stopped studying government and law.

Because (from my experience, at least) if you argue they become belligerent, and I don't have time to debate a failed ideology literally every time I go to campus.

That would be my reasoning as well. That is not to say I am all or capitalism or destroying the environment for profit or for the sheer joy of destroying it, but in seeing the way those with a communist leaning behave the sum of the parts make the whole even less appealing.

If you haven't just seen Question Time today you're about to hear about it all over the news and papers (in a nutshell, the Speaker was challenged on no confidence over bias and effectively demonstrated her bias and arguably hatred of the opposition after the vote was taken, something that could well have long reaching ramifications.) If others come to the party I'm definitely going to jump in on this but before I do I have a question for the experts.

When Opposition Leader Bill Shorten asked a question of Prime Minister Tony Abbott part of the answer was to verbally attack his mother (who is stepping down as Governor General to be replaced by General Peter Cosgrove.) This was as vicious an attack or slur as I had heard in Parliament and when Manager of Opposition Business Tony Burke stepped up on this point of order Speaker Bronwyn Bishop at first would not even allow the point of order to be heard, on the pretense of knowing what it would be about, then claiming there was no point of order.

How can there possibly be no point of order in this case? Attacking family of members would certainly be out of line, something even Tony Abbott realized and withdrew. Even. Tony. Abbott. If we get into discussion on this issue this would be a prime example of bias. Did Speaker Bronwyn Bishop consider this not to be Unparliamentary language or is she angry at the Opposition's motion of no confidence and wanted some measure of revenge, how could this incident in particular (and many others that I would be happy to discuss if and when it comes up) be allowed?

edited 26th Mar '14 10:03:25 PM by tsstevens

Currently reading up My Rule Fu Is Stronger than Yours

Well, I'm all for progressive change, but I don't believe that we need to dismantle the system which is what S Alt is about (and the reason why they broke off from the Socialist Alliance, or so I heard).

I suddenly have a picture of Abbot going 'Your mother is a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberry'.

But yeah, for a politician Abbott is a terrible speaker. I still remember the time when he went "<list of names that sound foreign> Is there anyone in the Labor who are Australian?" back when he was the Health Minister - and the fact that he had to answer for it in 7:30 report that night (or the night after, I forgot).

edited 26th Mar '14 10:47:13 PM by IraTheSquire

But he was born in England... He thinks he's more Australian than families that have been here for generations because of his name?

Do you have a link though?

Tony Abbot practically is a Monty Python character anyway.

The speaker has such glaring bias I think I might go blind watching Parliament Question Time. I think what the Opposition needs to do is make some sort of call out to LPA members to cross the floor. Might not work, but could stir things up a bit within the libs.

"I thought Djent was just a band" -Physical Stamina

That was like at least 8 years ago, so I doubt there's a You Tube video.

But I can check.

But I remember it because the week after I mentioned it to a Young Liberal who thinks Abbott is an idiot.

Edit: Moderate vs conservative combat in the Libs.

Best quote: "George (Brandis) has really drunk the right-wing Kool-aid."

edited 27th Mar '14 1:50:00 PM by IraTheSquire

Brandis may be the worst Coalition frontbencher of them all.

Old rich white man, the only thing he has to worry about is that he can't shoot his mouth off and say whatever he wants.

It's not over. Not yet.

Labor criticises the Libs on grounds other than jobs!

I am legit surprised.

edited 27th Mar '14 9:41:01 PM by editerguy

Scott Morrison seems worse to me...

"I thought Djent was just a band" -Physical Stamina

Morrison is just a thug, a bully plain and simple.

Brandis is the kind of Liberal who combines that "born to rule" mentality with open contempt for anyone who wasn't born with a silver spoon in their mouth.

It's not over. Not yet.

It's satisfying to see that Brandis is being resisted by his own party.

Hopefully common sense will win out and no concessions to this self-deluded bigot will be made.

What if there’s no better word than just not saying anything?

I have to say though, this 18C stuff isn't an on-the-fly idea from one nutjob in the party. I read about this crap before the election, it's been on the liberal agenda from day 1 and it's only now they're getting around to it.

If he's being resisted by the liberals, it's because he's being an idiot and giving them very bad press. His "rights to be a bigot" comment really drew attention to everything.

edited 28th Mar '14 5:48:03 AM by MrMallard

Come sail your ships around me, and burn your bridges down.

Ken Wyatt has been very consistent in his opposition, before things blew up with Brandis's comment.

Other recent news:

Theives and other convicted criminals allowed into NSW Police Force (even more worrying in relation to the increased powers O'Farrel is giving them, perhaps)

Broad support for mass privitisation

An amusing Twatter feed: https://twitter.com/boltcomments

Schild und Schwert der Partei

Can anyone explain to me why "infrastructure" is so important to the Federal Coalition. The sale of Medibank is going towards infrastructure. Sale of state assets only gets a Commonwealth cash injection if the proceeds go to infrastructure. Why?

It's not over. Not yet.

Not to mention there are factions within the Liberal Party too. The reason why they don't pull a Labor half as often us that it takes a lot more before Liberals start to stab each other (remember right after 07' when they lost power, massively? Or Malcolm Turnbull who was stabbed? ).

edited 28th Mar '14 4:10:20 PM by IraTheSquire

That's some serious Waleed Aly fixation lol. I didn't realise he was such a big deal.

Incidentally, The Bolt Report was outrated by Legally Brown multiple times, so Bolt is just another minority view rather than the mainstream voice he likes to think he is.

He isn't, not really (no disrespect intended). The problem is he represents everything Bolt's readers hate:

• Foreign name
• Muslim
• Academic
• ABC presenter
• Progressive

The Bolt Report goes to air on Sunday morning. It's a dead time slot, like Insiders.

Problem is that Bolt has market saturation what with his views being published in every Murdoch-owned paper in Australia (I still remember when I first saw him appear in The Courier Mail) and he is constantly cited when it comes to amending the Racial Discrimination Act.

And, as far as I can tell, the RDA has been in practice since 1975. I thought it was brought in under Rudd/Gillard, but this has been in operation for nearly forty years (or twenty years, as 7.30 reported it). Says it all really about Abbott — he'd prefer the country to go back to how it was before Whitlam became PM.

It's not over. Not yet.

Here is the exact text of section 18C[1] and the following 18D[2].

hashtagsarestupid

It seems to me like Andrew Bolt and his fellow Far-Right Zealots are slowly but surely sneaking their way into mainstream political views. I mean, the conservative side of politics generally protects the interests of newspaper executives, so it's not surprising, but I wish they would at least be a bit more consistent. The whole 'small government' thing should extend to civil liberties as well as economic dealings.

"I thought Djent was just a band" -Physical Stamina

@Medicus

Good point.

The original RDA was created in 1975. 18C and 18D must have been amendments updating the act about 20 years ago, under Hawke/Keating Labor. You can see in 18C it refers to an act from 1986 for example.

@Cards

I was going to write a really longwinded, detailed response to this, but then I realised I really don't know where mainstream Australia is headed anymore.

Maybe you're right. On issues like asylum seekers Australia is pretty far right already, and now we're repealing anti-discrimination legislation and I'm sure Abbott's got a lot more planned. It is possible that as the far-right pushes and pushes to get its full vision of Australia realised, they will go too far and cause a huge backlash that will swing things back, but who knows.