General Australian Politics Thread

Mmm-hmm. I do wonder if someday we'll start counting the long-term early mortalities from respiratory damage the way we do estimates for the Chernobyl radiation victims.

A travel ban is going to be put in place tomorrow at 9pm AEDT. Current word on the street is that it's gonna last for at least 6 months.

Because it's 2020 and the chaos entities aren't going to let WA get away that easy: there's a fresh bushfire in Furnissdale, near Mandurah.

And because we as a society haven't flipped off enough cosmic powers this year, a business lobby is calling to reopen the Uluru for climbing in order to revive the pandemic-hit NT tourism industry.

Morrison is demanding an investigation by the embassy to the US after a 7News reporter and cameraman were assaulted by Washington, DC police.

Australia targeted by 'state-based' cyber attack.

60 Minutes Australia has an update on a raid.

Looks like Labor will be holding onto Eden-Monaro in the House of Reps by-election. Personally, I'm relieved; the LNP threw a lot of pork at that swing seat.

A bunch of Murdoch and otherwise LNP-aligned news outlets are still trying to spin it as 'devastating' to Albo, despite the overall tally indicating a swing toward Labor. Gotta love it when a huge chunk of your media landscape is run either by Murdoch or by a former LNP Treasurer...

Most international students would tell others not to come to Australia after coronavirus response.

Cheng Lei was detained in Australia. She's living in Beijing to work under CGTN.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-31/australian-detained-in-china-television-anchor-cheng-lei/12615362

She's also being unpersoned as we speak.

Edited by Ominae on Aug 31st 2020 at 8:10:13 AM

Censored: Australian scientists say suppression of environment research is getting worse.

Well, if you can't fix the problem, pretend it doesn't exist.

So, a question about native customs and practices. When looking at some science websites of Australia I saw a pop-up warning "Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are warned photographs/videos on this website may contain images of deceased persons". What is this about?

Avoidance practices. Many (not all) Indigenous communities traditionally avoid naming the deceased for a given mourning period (which varies between communities) as a gesture of respect; in some Indigenous faiths, it's believed that naming or depicting the recently departed disturbs their spirits, though others refrain from doing it simply out of respect. When they're referred to, it's usually in a roundabout way (e.g. "the old man who painted"). And if you do need to name and depict a recently departed Indigenous person for a media publication, you'd generally get a written permission from their family first.

Here's a useful explainer on the custom.

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Sep 24th 2020 at 10:55:48 AM

Yeah, warnings like that are pretty common to see on television as well.

News is a little over a week old, but the 2020 Queensland state election has seen Labor hold onto (and slightly expand) its majority, with Annastacia Palaszczuk set for a third term as Premier. Frankly I'm relieved, given the sheer volume of pro-LNP negative media coverage (mostly Murdoch, who owns nearly all newspapers in the state), Clive Palmer spreading 'death tax' lies with his personal totally-not-a-thinly-veiled-lobby political party, and bashing from news outlets across the nation for COVID border restrictions which are... er... more or less the same as those adopted by Liberal-controlled states like South Australia?

Sub-news would be Labor's Jackie Trad losing the seat of South Brisbane to Amy McMahon of the Greens. Congrats to McMahon — though I'm sad to see Jackie go. She was a great force for progressivism, regardless of the years-long smear campaign that's been pushed against her...

Honestly I think Clive Palmers over the top bluster was one of the things that tipped the election so decisively in Labor's favour. He's annoyed enough people over the years that anyone him condeming something is more or a less a ringing endorsement.

On the issue of Jackie Trad, I haven't followed all the scandals plaguing her that closely but I would say that it's rather telling that the seat flipped to the Greens rather than LNP indicating the electorate at least leans quite progressive.

Well, South Brisbane is an inner-city electorate — pretty much every electoral division with a Labor vs Greens two-party preferred vote is. For example, at the federal level, there are only three seats where the Greens are in the TPP: Melbourne (the one seat they actually hold, with current leader Adam Bandt, whom I dislike), Cooper (also in inner-city Melbourne; until last year it was called Batman), and Grayndler (inner-city Sydney, very progressive, includes Marrickville and Newtown; this is where the current ALP leader, Albo, is from).

Re: Trad, basically she was accused by the LNP of corruption regarding the selection of a principal for some school that was being constructed in her electorate. There was, predictably, an absolute avalanche of negative coverage... only for the state's independent corruption watchdog to clear her in its investigation. Not that that fact matters; the M.O. of those papers is to count on the fact that most people will only see the headline and base things off that.

As for why the Right would want the Greens to get that seat instead of Labor... well, to put it bluntly: the Greens are hated most places that aren't the cities, and forcing Labor into coalition with them would result in a government that'd be guaranteed to lose the next election in a landslide & damage the brands of both enough to guarantee several terms of LNP rule.

Oh, I am aware of the scandals. I live in South-East Queensland, I just wasn't following them all that closely beyond the saturation of media coverage.

I'm SEQ myself and I wasn't aware of those scandals. This election I had just been hearing about John Meyer running against the greens and his accusations that they were corrupt and couldn't lead.

Though tbh I didn't hear much about THAT either

Actually, as a Sydneysider, I'm kind of curious about Queenslanders' overall attitude toward the statewide lockdown. Most of the coverage outside (and due to media ownership, within) the state has been negative, often running with the federal govt's "We Are Very Concerned" angle if not outright castigation.

One of my close relatives (also in NSW) works for a travel agency, the experience of which as far as I'm aware can be summed up as "people's things getting cancelled, people abusing the middlemen about said things getting cancelled, dwindling work hours due to the (federal) JobKeeper allowance tapering off, dwindling manpower". She talks about the whole lockdown debacle as being ruinous for Qld's tourism industry, and the implication seems to be that Annastacia should be using QR codes or 'something else' instead of doing lockdown, and that this would prevent those industries from dying (risks notwithstanding).

Myself, I can't help but be skeptical of something so closely resembling "open things up again" rhetoric, given how disastrous that's been for various other countries.

Honestly its a bit of a mixed bag, though even in state a lot of the criticism seems to be more of an excuse for Murdoch and other media owners to attack a Labor government.

I think what a lot of Victorians and even some New South Welshman (myself excluded since I live here) is that Queensland is huge. I mean its not Western Australia huge but few places are and unlike WA there's actually places to go outside of the Capital Cities Metro Area so there's been a fair push for internal tourism. The the North and Far North rely heavily on international tourists more so than interstate ones so they're boned until a vaccine is deployed on mass and mostly are fully aware of that so they'll take what they can get.

This biggest pinch for the state border closures are coming from the Gold Coast region which is where a lot of the interstate tourists go, but its also the location of the biggest border crossing so its expereincing the biggest disruptions as well and that seems to be the place where the loudest complaints are coming from.

Edit to fix work mix up.

Edited by KnightofLsama on Nov 20th 2020 at 6:52:58 AM

Seems like there is a major dispute going between China and Australia after the former made a list of complaints they have about the Chinese government. This is apparently the list of things China is complaining about.

Ooh, that's one spicy international callout post.

For real, though... ugh. I feel like one could easily make a bingo card for PRC diplomatic statements... so many goddamn Weasel Words, too.

There's so much conflation here that it's making my head hurt.

And don't even get me started on the Huawei point...

The CCP tossing money at people to get away with shit reminds me, of all things, of an episode of Adventure Time "Furniture and Meat" where the main characters go mad with power upon realizing they're filthy rich and throw money at people to get away with doing truly outrageous crap.

That episode did have them pushing their luck too far when one of them tries to bribe a head of state into letting him sit on her head. This enrages her so much she tries to execute them by boiling them in their own molten gold.

I think other countries are starting to reach a similar boiling point (if not quite as literal).

Edited by M84 on Nov 28th 2020 at 4:03:28 AM

Looks like the press are eating up Scotty from Marketing's opposition to the CCP callout. Calling it "defending Australia's honour" and all that. Ye gods, I resent all the free rides he's been given this year: a bunch of media lords basically decided pre-emptively that COVID would be the Scotty's "redemption arc" after his openly callous Never My Fault/"pose for photos but do nothing substantive" attitude to the bushfires at the start of the year; I can already imagine them gearing up to call him the bloody Saviour of Oz for whatever vaccine distribution plan he comes up with.

(Why, yes, I am still bitter about how Kevin Rudd & Wayne Swan successfully kept us out of recession altogether during the Global Financial Crisis and all they got for it was 10+ years of media-abetted debt-scaring/"the Liberals are the budget managers" meme-reinforcement, plus disingenuous 'bleh bleh neoliberalism' braying from the Greens, only for Sensible stimulus to suddenly be good when COVID rolls around and the Liberals propose one that's far bigger and far less efficient than Swan's was.)