Australian Politics thread

CJB wrote:

Says the bloke who brings up Tony Abbott in a discussion about a Labor senate seat.

Yeah, but I don't pretend that I don't do it.

I would happily vote Liberal if a) the government made no changes to their bench, and b) Malcolm Turnbull was leading the coalition; I didn't particularly like him the first time he lead them, but I've warmed to him in the time since. Of course, they'd also have to get rid of Abbott (he's devious and untrustworthy), Bishop (a sycophant who just parrots the party line), Hockey (blustering moron) and Pyne (Abbott's lackey).

Ah, the old "I'd vote Liberal if Turnbull was leader" shtick. Funny how many of them there are despite the fact that the Coalition's polling numbers started climbing as soon as Abbott replaced him, making Labor shit its pants so profusely they flushed Rudd down the toilet. Also interesting that you put personality over policy, as all it'd take for you to vote Liberal is a change of salesman, not a change of product.

And it'd be Round 2 of "Malcom's an out of touch silvertail!" if he actually were to become leader again. Leftoids aren't fooling anyone.

CJB wrote:

Ah, the old "I'd vote Liberal if Turnbull was leader" shtick. Funny how many of them there are despite the fact that the Coalition's polling numbers started climbing as soon as Abbott replaced him, making Labor shit its pants so profusely they flushed Rudd down the toilet.

And yet, in the time since, polling results have shown that most voters would prefer Turnbull and Rudd over Abbott and Gillard as Prime Minister

CJB wrote:

Also interesting that you put personality over policy, as all it'd take for you to vote Liberal is a change of salesman, not a change of product.

Since all of Abbott's policies are geared towards getting him into the Lodge - he's more interested in being able to say he's Prime Minster than in actually being Prime Minster - personality is policy. He's got such a forceful and aggressive way of presenting everything that it's impossible to overlook his personality. How are you supposed to be able judge a policy objectively when the person trying to convince you that it's the right policy is effectively beating you over the head with a cricket bat while talking to you?

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

And yet, in the time since, polling results have shown that most voters would prefer Turnbull and Rudd over Abbott and Gillard as Prime Minister

The grass is always greener. In any case, I'm talking about the poll that actually matters: two-party preferred.

Quote :

Since all of Abbott's policies are geared towards getting him into the Lodge - he's more interested in being able to say he's Prime Minster than in actually being Prime Minster - personality is policy. He's got such a forceful and aggressive way of presenting everything that it's impossible to overlook his personality. How are you supposed to be able judge a policy objectively when the person trying to convince you that it's the right policy is effectively beating you over the head with a cricket bat while talking to you?

So basically you're saying Abbott is an effective communicator and this is now a bad thing. And that you'd take all the Liberal Party's present policies if only they were verbalised to you by Malcolm Turnbull.

Guess Abbott should take communication lessons from Gillard and talk to people in the manner of a boganised Play School presenter.

Interested to know where you stand on Roxon's anti-discrimination bill, PM.

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

...more interested in being able to say he's Prime Minster than in actually being Prime Minster

Isn't that what Gillard did?

Craig Thompson was arrested today, faced with 150 charges of fraud:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-31/craig-thomson-arrested/4493722

Mark Dreyfus is a fuckstick of epic proportions.

I love the contradictions between what Gillard says in public.

She knew 12 months in advance that Evans would be resigning and leaving a Senate vacancy, but forced a respected local senator to resign ostensibly to open a seat up for an indiginous woman.

Makes perfect sense.

Just like how resignations are usually announced at 10.30 and 11.55pm at night. Nothing to see here.

Senator Cormann on Swannie's epic mining tax failure:

“Any chief financial officer in a publicly listed company that came in 90 per cent below his revenue target on a key measure like this would have to quit his job,”

Boom.

Tony Abbott on Craig Thomson:

"It's always been about the judgement of the Prime Minister... who was running a protection racket for Craig Thomson for months and years."

So he accuses Gillard of criminal behaviour (which, under any other circumstances would require proof to substantiate such an accusation), when we all know that if their positions were reversed and Abbott held a minority government by the slimmest of margins, that he would do everything in his power to keep an MP accused of misconduct active in the House, and claim that he was doing it because he believes in innocence until guilt is proven rather than guilt until censured.

So I think that all Abbott and Cormann have proved is that neither side is fit to run the country.

Vesper, how would you feel about running for PM this year?

CJB wrote:

Senator Cormann on Swannie's epic mining tax failure:

“Any chief financial officer in a publicly listed company that came in 90 per cent below his revenue target on a key measure like this would have to quit his job,”

Boom.

Cormann is a terrible performer but I have to pay that.

"World's greatest treasurer" ay. This is what happens when you put a TAFE lecturer in charge of the country's purse strings.

Most disturbing is the revelation in The Oz the other day that Gillard takes the advice of Wayne Swan and David Bradbury seriously.

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

Vesper, how would you feel about running for PM this year?

It's about thirty years earlier than I planned, and I've yet to amass my fortune as a Kerry Packer/Alan Bond style corporate tycoon, but y'know what, up against Gillard I think I stand a shot.

That said, my frequenting of Canberra strip-clubs and brothels and a couple of drunken liasons would come back to haunt me. I suspect jumping a self-confessed communist in a stairwell after accusing her of being a lesbian all night would sound a lot more rapey in print than it actually was.

Gillard has a new asylum seeker deal:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-09/australia-to-send-some-asylum-seekers-to-nz/4509682

From 2014, New Zealand will take 150 asylum seekers from Australia each year, and settle them.

On the Jeremy Fernandez bus incident:

As one would expect, the thing is an impetus for yet more self-flagellation about the wacism at the core of our society, but has anyone pointed out that the nutjob woman first got enraged at the fact that a man was speaking to her children and called him a paedophile before she called him anything else? So rather than yet more finger-wagging about how wacist we all are, how about a discussion about why mothers have been scared shitless into thinking anyone with a cock dangling between their legs is a paedo.

But is one person saying those views really representative of a systemic problem? Or is it just one person being a bigot?

Perhaps the criticism should be directed towards the other people on the bus who said and did nothing.

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

But is one person saying those views really representative of a systemic problem? Or is it just one person being a bigot?

I'd say the latter, but when it comes to an individual's racial prejudice, a collective guilt is often attributed to the entire country as if it's, as you say, a systemic issue. My question is, why is the tarring of men as paedophiles (see things like Virign's policy of not letting blokes sit next to children) not being mentioned when it seems that particular boogeyman was the impetus for the woman going apeshit. We'll have plenty of self-important pieces about what caused the boganess to call Fernandez "black" (Howard, Abbott, the flag, the monarchy etc.) but zero on why she called him a "paedophile."

I mean, personally, I don't read much into what a mentally ill person rants about on public transporation, but much of the media seems to be taking this event and the boganess' opinions seriously, so why not explore the full breadth of the prejudice she was exhibiting?

Quote :

Perhaps the criticism should be directed towards the other people on the bus who said and did nothing.

Perhaps. From memory, Fernandez's account on The Drum website mentioned that a passenger told the woman to stop but she presisted with her ranting. Strangely most of the media accounts didn't mention this.

Gillard and Rudd backers are at each other's throats again. Speculation mounts that Rudd will challenge again within weeks.

Do we really have to wait until September to be rid of these squabbling children?

Quote :

OPPOSITION Leader Tony Abbott has been heckled during a speech apologising to the victims of forced adoption practices.

A number of women in the audience began yelling at Mr Abbott when he used the words "birth parents".

He said: "We honour the birth parents, including fathers, who have always loved their children."

Mr Abbott also acknowledged the efforts of adoptive parents, as those in the audience continued to shout.

"I hear what you are saying ... I honour the parents, who have always loved their children," he said.

"The last thing I would wish to do is cause pain to people who have suffered too much pain already.

"I am happy to retract it."

In some quarters, the term "birth parent" is deemed insensitive to women who relinquished their children under difficult circumstances.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/national-news/forced-adoption-victims-receive-apology-from-federal-government/story-fncynjr2-1226602348281#ixzz2O8TYQlXv

Australia has become one giant vagina. And not in any positive sense. We've created a culture of perpetural apologies and outrage (anyone who thinks "birth parents" is offensive can well and truly fuck themselves).

In other news, Labor is destroying itself.



EDIT: Breaking news, Simon Crean has called on Gillard to call a spill.

EDIT 2.0: Rudd pussies out of standing for the leadership.

Tony Abbott makes stupid remarks on the government's super reforms, likening it to the economic crisis in Cyprus. Then, when Julia Gillard makes a counter-comment, pointing out how patently irresponsible these comments are, he attacks her for talking about domestic issues while abroad even though he is the one who brought it up in the first place:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-07/wong-attacks-abbott-over-super/4614602

Can we please find some solution where neither Liberal nor Labor are running the country?

It's been a convention of Australian politics for many decades that a prime minister should leave domestic bickering at home and refrain from attacking the Opposition on overseas trips. Such petty behaviour demeans Australia and the Office of Prime Minister in front of a foreign audience.

Not that I expect any less of from that vulgar, crass, serial home-wrecking, all-round terrible person.

CJB wrote:

It's been a convention of Australian politics for many decades that a prime minister should leave domestic bickering at home and refrain from attacking the Opposition on overseas trips.

Then perhaps the leader of the Opposition should refrain from trying to bait the Prime Minister into a debate while they are away on an overseas trip.

Yes, this is the fist time an Opposition leader has commented on government policy while the PM was overseas. First. Time. Evah.

It's certainly the first time I can recall the leader of the Opposition made statements that demanded the Prime Minister address them while overseas. He has likened the government's plan to restructure superannuation to the financial crisis in Cyprus, which is completely untrue. Given that the situation in Cyprus threatens to undermine the entire nation's economy, it's a very serious accusation.

The problem in all of this is that if Gillard addresses it, she embarrasses Australia on the world stage (as you put it), but if she doesn't address it and instead lets one of her ministers handle it, it suggests a lack of leadership when the country is - as Abbott would have us believe - facing a serious financial meltdown.

I cannot believe that anybody would think Abbott would make for a good Prime Minister, given that he has resorted to alarmist scaremongering to try and score political points.

There are ministers here at home who could answer questions on domestic politics. Previous prime ministers would not have descended into partisanship on overseas trips*. Alas, Gillard is no statesman and has admitted that she has no interest in foreign affairs anyway (a common trait amongst the bogan race).

Amusingly, Gillard claimed Abbott would damage Australian-Chinese relations. Apparently calling the likely next prime minister an "economic simpleton" whilst visiting China is not damaging to Australia's image.

Luckily the Chinese are not ignoramuses and are aware that Gillard is a lame duck (not a dig at her duck-like tuchus, I swears it) and have accorded The Hon AJ Abbott MP the appropriate welcome: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/china-fetes-abbott-like-pminwaiting-20120723-22k9e.html

* Though I suppose I ought to give a dishonourable mention to Paul Cunting Yr9 (Hons) who refused to take Howard with him to the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin.

CJB wrote:

There are ministers here at home who could answer questions on domestic politics.

Yes, there are.

But have you been following the events that have unfolded in Cyprus? It is a serious national crisis akin to the Greek economic meltdown. For Abbott to liken the super reforms to the situation in Cyprus would be the same as saying that a thunderstorm in Sydney had the same impact on the city as Cyclone Tracy did on Darwin. Abbott's comments were irresponsible, alarmist and fundamentally misleading. Given that the Cypriot financial crisis is so serious, it would demand the Prime Minister's attention - irrespective of where she was - if it were true.

What Abbott did was shout "fire!" in a crowded theatre.