Australian Politics thread

I don't think he was saying the super reforms were akin to the whole Cyprus crisis but rather the gov't-taking-people's-savings aspect of it, which certainly some of the ideas floating around in the stratosphere as far as super reforms go were similar too. As much as they wound up neuteuring themselves.

I really love how the gov't's solution to their own political incompetence over the super issue is to establish yet another arbitrary red-tape committee and beg for bipartisanship.

Fast Rail, another white elephant. If it was economically viable to have a VFT link between Melbourne and Brisbane it would already exist. Domestic flights work fine. I'm pretty disturbed by the government's creaming of their pants over something that won't start to cover its own costs until 60 years down the line.

The only viable link is Sydney to Canberra, which would allow Canberra Airport to become Sydney's defacto second airport.

The mid-century future will have to be luddite as hell for 20th century high-speed rail to be a desirable form of transport. This is basically like announcing the paving of roads designed for horse-and-buggies in 1900 to be completed in 1950.

High-speed trains (HST) are prestige projects. As with manned space flight, it's hard to make an economic case for them, but they announce a country's arrival in the top tier of nations. That's why they obsess politicians and one reason why the PRC has built such a network.

As someone who uses air transport and HSTs fairly often for work, I have to say the convenience of not having a full cavity search every time I travel is in the train's favour. Though maybe it's a matter of time before Big Government decides to humiliate its citizens at the railway stations as well.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Though maybe it's a matter of time before Big Government decides to humiliate its citizens at the railway stations as well.

already do at mine

Erica Ambler wrote:

Though maybe it's a matter of time before Big Government decides to humiliate its citizens at the railway stations as well.

Spoken like someone who has never experienced the joy of riding on a CityRail train.

What do you mean? I've never seen CityRail transit officers do anything other than check tickets.

Maybe Monkey's arsehole was too much to resist.

Bill Shorten looks like a fucking foetus.

That is all.

Fin Review reporting today that Tony Abbott is now at 50% on preferred PM and something like 44% approval. Labor's primary vote is back in the 20s. Its primary vote amongst men is at 24%. Women is a better but still woeful 34%.

On the polling if they were to switch to Rudd two party preferred would be 50-50. The astute commentators are correctly pointing out that there is no way that would realistically carry through because no leadership change is going to be seamless, and the perceived dirt from another coup could be just as bad if not worse for the participants and beneficiaries.

I think if Rudd thinks that by being 'drafted' he can get away with clean hands he is kidding himself and showing as much contempt for the electorate as Gillard does by claiming a lot of people aren't used to a female in charge. Everyone knows he's been undermining and plotting since he got the chop. It's only been a monthly fixture of the political reporting for the last four years. If he thinks he can get on tv and say 'well I didn't topple a sitting PM in her first elected term, I was asked to lead after she vacated the position' and it will just be fine he is kidding himself.

And that's before you get to the fact that he was probably even less effective than Gillard and more regularly left in the dirt by Abbott before he was toppled. Something a lot of people forget. When Abbott won that leadership ballot over Hockey it was seen as some kind of bizarre joke, then within a month or two he had Rudd and Swan looking like insecure schoolboys who got beaten by the school jock in the HSC.

Further, his economic message is diluted. 'Saved the economy from the GFC' may have been a good line for the last election, but with the budget position well and truly in the bucket, the story is more 'Government that squandered the mining boom once and for all'.

The way the BBC reports Australian politics is that Gillard is the second coming and those who opposes her are misogynistic/homophobic/insert-other-pejorative-here.

I assume things are a bit more complicated than that.

Much, much more complicated. The Gillard government is going to be a goldmine for academia and publishers for years to come, so much could be written about it.

To use just a recent example from the past week, Gillard got up before an audience of school children and told them that the centre-right political party in opposition, whose deputy leader is a woman, would outlaw abortion and remove women from Australia's political life if elected. In her own words, abortion was now an election issue.

This came out of nowhere and has no basis in reality. Both sides of the press gallery called her out on it. Even the feminists who applauded her famous 'misogyny speech' rolled their eyes at this one.

She is the worst of the worst, a woman who has risen well beyond her level of competence, and when legitimate questions about her political judgement and actual abilties are raised, she cries misogyny and sexism when nothing is further than the truth.

The fact is she was popular prior to and just after her installment over Rudd and Australians were generally happy to see a female PM. The opinion polls reflect that. If an idea of a female PM was so reprehensible to the Australian electorate, as she now claims, the reality is the factional bosses in the Australian Labor Party would have never installed her.

She is only reviled due to her governments continued stumbling from one policy disaster to another, and the continued examples of dishonesty or contempt for the electorate.

In a country where voting is compulsory, calling anyone who doesn't like you a misogynist, and waxing at length about how you feel men aren't comfortable with a woman in charge, is not exactly smart.

If it were truly the case, I doubt the senior female figures from Australia's centre-right and far-left political parties would be united about this:

Quote :

Women attack PM on gender

• by: Joe Kelly
  
  From: The Australian
  
  
  
  
  
  
• June 17, 2013 12:00AM 
  
   
  GREENS leader Christine Milne and deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop have warned against Julia Gillard's revival of gender politics, calling it an unfair attempt to silence legitimate criticism of her government.
  
  Key independent MP Andrew Wilkie described the Prime Minister's elevation of abortion as an election issue as "scaremongering" and condemned her claim that female voices would be banished under a Tony Abbott-led government as "patent nonsense".
  Senator Milne yesterday agreed it was not politically smart for Ms Gillard to have reignited the abortion debate, but expressed concern Mr Abbott could make a deal on the issue with Democratic Labor Party Victorian senator John Madigan following the September poll.
  
  While expressing concern Mr Abbott did not have enough women on his frontbench team, Senator Milne rejected Ms Gillard's argument that female voices would be shut down under a Coalition government.
  
  She also expressed disappointment at the implications of the Prime Minister's revival of gender politics in her speech at the launch of the Women for Gillard fundraising initiative last week. "I was disappointed because mixing up gender with policy is a bad idea," Senator Milne told Sky News's Australian Agenda.
  
  "When you try to roll these things together, as in that speech earlier this week, what you get is the notional view that you can't criticise a policy of a female leader without that being some sort of criticism of gender, and that's not the case."
  
  Ms Bishop accused Ms Gillard of using gender as a "shield and a sword" to silence criticism of her government, and argued women in Australia were not disadvantaged by their gender.
  
  "She is using this kind of claim and sexism generally as a defence against legitimate criticisms of her performance," Ms Bishop told the Ten Network's Meet the Press program.
  
  "Her own party are being bluffed into keeping her as their leader because if they seek to remove her on the grounds that she's lost respect or she's incompetent, then they'll be labelled as misogynists for removing Australia's first female prime minister."
  
  Mr Wilkie was harder in his assessment, saying Ms Gillard's speech was "terribly regrettable" and "turned a lot of people off".
  "I think Julia Gillard is better than that. She doesn't need to go there," he said. "She doesn't need to run a campaign based on smear and fear."
  
  Mr Wilkie said Ms Gillard's credentials as a feminist crusader had been damaged by her decision last year to defend then Speaker Peter Slipper in the parliament despite his referral in a text message to female genitalia as shell-less mussels.
  
  "Julia Gillard will ultimately be judged not as a woman prime minister but as a prime minister, and whether or not she was a good prime minister and whether or not she ran a good government," he said.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Vesper wrote:

To use just a recent example from the past week, Gillard got up before an audience of school children and told them that the centre-right political party in opposition, whose deputy leader is a woman, would outlaw abortion and remove women from Australia's political life if elected.

That's hardly a valid point. Julie Bishop hasn't expressed an original thought in years. All she ever does is re-state the Oppposition's position on whatever matter is in the press (mind you, Christopher Pine also does this). I get the distinct impression that her position is only a token appointment, designed to reinforce the Opposition's credentials as promoting women in politics. She doesn't do anything else.

The Liberals and Labor are as bad as each other. I think the best we can hope for is neither of them getting into power and a government formed of the Greens, independents and Clive Palmer (the climate is that bad).
[/quote]

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

Vesper wrote:

To use just a recent example from the past week, Gillard got up before an audience of school children and told them that the centre-right political party in opposition, whose deputy leader is a woman, would outlaw abortion and remove women from Australia's political life if elected.

That's hardly a valid point. Julie Bishop hasn't expressed an original thought in years. All she ever does is re-state the Oppposition's position on whatever matter is in the press (mind you, Christopher Pine also does this). I get the distinct impression that her position is only a token appointment, designed to reinforce the Opposition's credentials as promoting women in politics. She doesn't do anything else.

Misogynist.

No, it would by misogyny if I said all women were incapable of expressing original thoughts.

Please, answer me this question: when was the last time you saw or heard Julie Bishop say anything other the the Opposition's party line? She never deviates from it. Now, maybe that's a personal choice, in that she doesn't want to say something the government might use to hammer the Opposition the way the Opposition do the government, but please explain to me why the likes of Joe Hockey and Scott Morrison do and say more? Hell, even Christopher Pine does more, and that's mostly because he's Tony Abbott's attack dog.

Listen to just about anything Bishop says and tell me that you aren't hearing Abbott's words with ehr voice.

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

Please, answer me this question: when was the last time you saw or heard Julie Bishop say anything other the the Opposition's party line? She never deviates from it.

This just in: Deputy leader of a political party expresses views of the political party she's the deputy leader of.

So Rob Dopeshott and Tony Windbag are quitting politics to avoid retribution from their electorates for their installment of a manically incompetent, toxically divided Government which was clearly unfit to govern in 2010.

Shame. Seeing those pair of imbeciles get clobbered was going to be one of the highlights of election night.

EDIT: The Kruddshirts are circiling a petition to force a leadership spill tomorrow morning (thanks for the stable government, aforementioned imbeciles, it's only the fourth one in three years). My tip is that tomorrow the Commonwealth of Australia will once more be under the grip of that mendacious, egotistical, psycopath Kevin Michael "The Cunt" Rudd. Windbag will squib on his "promise" to back the Coalition on a motion of no confidence and the farce will go on.

Ruddy has said he'll contest the ballot. Not that it mattered - Gillard made a late move to agree the caucus. But both have said that if they lose, they won't contest the election.

True to form, Rudd is going on for a while announcing his intent to contest. But I think he's made a fair point: too much of politics has become about the personalities, not the policy.

Gillard showed today why she is revered by much of the caucus while Rudd is not. She is a leader. She's just sadly incompetent. Her putting her neck on the line showed a selflessness, a willingness to lead by example, and a certain amount of grace than Rudd has ever shown.

Bit ironic given she's an avowed atheist and he's a devout Catholic.

If Gillard survives I think the polls probably will improve.

I know sod all about Gillard's policies, but she has one of the cruellest faces I've ever seen on a woman. Perhaps I should rise above that essentially superficial judgement, but I tend to go with my instincts in such matters.

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

Rudd is going on for a while announcing his intent to contest. But I think he's made a fair point: too much of politics has become about the personalities, not the policy.

Rudd's challenge last year and his challenge this year were both centred around "stopping Tony Abbott" not policy differences with Gillard. As recently as the  Hawke era, it was unconventional for PMs to name the Opp Leader by name, let alone debase the Prime Ministership to a mere popularity contest with the other bloke. Personality is the basis of this challenge, not policy!

P.S. I've just downed about 6L of sangria at a Mexican joint, so pardon any spelling errors.

Kevin Rudd has won the ballot and is PM... again. Australia is a joke country with a joke government.

Well, it's not like Abbott has any policies other than "do the opposite of what Gillard does", so I guess personality is all they have to fight over.

Sure, Tony Abbott wants to turn the asylum seeker boats around and send them back to Indonesia. Once upon a time, I might have agreed with him. But then I did a month at a school with a refugee program and took classes made up entirely of kids who are refugees, and I lost a lot of my preconceptions about asylum seekers. I have no idea what the best way to handle asylum seekers is, but I know that turning the boats around isn't it. Because to those asylum seekers, spending thousands of dollars that they don't have to risk their lives crossing an ocean in a boat that isn't seaworthy to spend the forseeable future incarcerated in a detention centre with no guarantee of being allowed into the contry in the first place is a risk worth taking. To the asylum seekers, turning the boats around and sending them back to Indonesia will only be the tiniest of speedbumps.

I'm too drunk to pay attention to most of what you wrote, but I hope the dribbling retards in the Western Sydney marginals remember that it was Rudd - that contemptible little fucktard - who restarted the regional people smuggling business.

And that Abbott, with his send-the-boats-back plan, will only double their business?