Australian Politics (12 Viewers)

[Iron]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

animals to be bred and slaughtered

 

[katie tully]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

Oh don't be a fucking retard. Not only is it very juvenile of you to claim I'm a 'general idiot' for a spelling difference, but I'm pretty sure you know full well where the rather arbitrary spelling difference originated from 100 years ago, and why it might be common for Australians to spell it another way (and the original official way) by habit.

Maybe you have Asperger's or something and shit like that sends you into an obsessive fit, but it's got absolutely nothing to do with either my intelligence or factual accuracy.

I disagree mang. I mean shit, if you're old enough to tie your shoes and acknowledge that there are two main political parties, then you should be able to spell them properly.

To argue politics and be ignorant of the spelling is ridiculous. A sham. You're a sham.

Shammy.

 

[Trefoil]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

I don't know how to spell it properly, yet I know that in 1912, the ALP changed the word 'Labour' in its name to 'Labor' in an effort to be more American?

It's a load of rubbish. I continue to fail to understand why silly ALP members often feel pride over the spelling difference when the logic behind it was so asinine (an American in the party wanted the spelling 'modernised'), and the functional difference is approximately bullshit.

 

[Iron]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

All your posts have this stench of regurgitated wiki

 

[katie tully]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

I don't know how to spell it properly, yet I know that in 1912, the ALP changed the word 'Labour' in its name to 'Labor' in an effort to be more American?

It's a load of rubbish. I continue to fail to understand why silly ALP members often feel pride over the spelling difference when the logic behind it was so asinine (an American in the party wanted the spelling 'modernised'), and the functional difference is approximately bullshit.

Who gives a shit why they changed it, just know that it was changed nearly a 100 years ago and there is no such thing as the Labour Party.

 

[Trefoil]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

All your posts have this stench of regurgitated wiki

I guess that beats the stench of regurgitated Drudge Report, right?

I highly recommend you try the following instead:

http://news.google.com/
http://pollster.com/
http://slashdot.org/
http://www.physorg.com/
http://scholar.google.com.au/

 

[Iron]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

I guess that beats the stench of regurgitated Drudge Report, right?

I highly recommend you try the following instead:

http://news.google.com/
http://pollster.com/
http://slashdot.org/
http://www.physorg.com/
http://scholar.google.com.au/

slashdot: 'news for nerds'
You keep it, or, better yet, return to the bellies of Mordor's apathetica

I like Drudge because it is consise about the major event of the moment (simple photo with simple heading), and it's just a compiled list of political news, from all sorts of respected, imparial sources.
It's only since Hillary dropped out that i've noticed a trend to report the headlines in the most GOP-friendly way possible -eg Bill Clinton calls McCain 'hero', Obama vows to 'change everything', McCain labels Obama 'socialist' etc. It's not exactly opinion or lies
At any rate, I still call abc news home

 

[youBROKEmyLIFE]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

www.littlegreenfootballs.com

 

[katie tully]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

www.greenleftweekly.org

 

[Trefoil]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

I like Drudge because it is consise about the major event of the moment (simple photo with simple heading), and it's just a compiled list of political news, from all sorts of respected, imparial sources.
It's only since Hillary dropped out that i've noticed a trend to report the headlines in the most GOP-friendly way possible -eg Bill Clinton calls McCain 'hero', Obama vows to 'change everything', McCain labels Obama 'socialist' etc. It's not exactly opinion or lies

You're fucking kidding me right?

The Drudge Report is more conservative than the fucking Daily Kos is liberal - and at least they have an unbiased polling firm to give them credibility.

We're talking about the same guy who says science makes him nervous.

And try reading the comments on Drudge some time.

 

[Iron]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

It's funny how conservative is a dirty word here, while liberal is a dirty word there.
Drudge is still one of the best pit stops to quickly pick up what dozen or two issues are dominating American news (or at least the best i've found). They are generally pretty comprehensive in what they cover, though I admit that they can be selective in the way they phrase the links - but that doesnt bother me because the links are to quality journalism, not greasy blogs

 

[Trefoil]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

I suggest using google news and the queries 'obama' and 'mccain', or its category tabs.

And it has the benefit of not giving an inaccurate picture of where things truly stand due to bias and cherry picking.

 

[Iron]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

Yeah, but to do that is hugely inconvenient and cherry picks the news by confining it to what you want to hear about, rather than what the big issues actually are.
Jeez, i'm not worshiping satan or anything mate. It's like THE internet news site for politics in America

 

[Silver Persian]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

Hope we're not moving into an era of stagflation again

 

[Trefoil]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

The last stuff I read (IMF and cen bank IIRC) predicted unemployment AND inflation to stay at or below 6%, to go with a GDP growth of 2.2% (consider most Western countries are gowing into recession, or negative GDP growth).

I don't doubt we'll be economically depressed for a while but it wouldn't appear to be anything like the worst case scenario. Also, related to the above figures, I've read a bit about how we actually needed something like this to slow our growth rate - which was getting out of control on the back of China.

 

[katie tully]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

China just cut funding to minerals and wool exports yesterday. Arse has fallen out of the wool market.

GG China

 

[chicky_pie]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

Labor's script is showing, brown noses out of joint



JUST before question time yesterday, an email accidentally went out from Wayne Swan's office to a generous range of recipients, including a number of journalists.

The Treasurer's email contained a list of all the Dorothy Dix questions to be asked by Government backbenchers to ministers that day.

Is there anyone left in Australia who thinks that question time is spontaneous? Perhaps there are a few, living in sheltered communities along with the Tooth Fairy, Ern Malley and the real driver of Marcus Einfeld's car.

Such gentle and trusting souls would find this document to be depressing reading. All the brown-nosing little questions were there, word for word, all laid out and ready like a pair of warm jarmies in a document running to 15 beautifully typed pages.

"Question One: D'ath to Rudd: Will the Prime Minister update the house on the Government's response to the global financial crisis?" And so on.

The Government realised its error early in proceedings. The manager of Government business, Anthony Albanese, and the Government Whip, Roger Price, zoomed back and forth between backbenchers and ministers, re-ordering the questions to restore some vestige of spontaneity.

Accordingly, instead of asking the first question as dictated by the leaked memo, Yvette D'ath of Queensland (the blonde, pale lady who does a lot of the nodding behind the PM during question time) asked the second.

And instead of asking the second question as planned, Jodie Campbell (the other organised nodder, the one with the dark, curly hair) asked the first.

Really, the resultant completely staged sham was not all that much different from the completely staged sham as originally planned, but everybody on the Government benches seemed to feel better after the frantic rearrangement.

Malcolm Turnbull got hold of the Dorothy Dix list, too - he made a great show of helpfully passing it across the desk to the Prime Minister, who gave him a long, cold stare of complete loathing, and refused to touch it.

Truly, it was a strange day of misfired shots. The Opposition spent most of question time trying to prove the Prime Minister had ignored the advice of the Reserve Bank governor, Glenn Stevens, on the Government's blanket guarantee of bank deposits.

The PM accused Turnbull of consuming "far too great an intake of seriously deep red cordial this morning".

The real story turned out to be that Rudd hadn't spoken to Stevens at all - probably even worse, given the circumstances - but had instead relied on assurances delivered by the Treasury Secretary, Ken Henry, during a Cabinet meeting.

The PM quoted Henry three times, in a mild breach of cabinet solidarity - no doubt there, then, about who's to carry the can should things go belly-up.

And Turnbull responded quick-smart by asking if Rudd would sack his Treasury boffin, should the above belly-up scenario indeed become flesh.

Verballed by one side of politics, and indirectly threatened by the other; all in all, a tricky day to be Ken Henry. The poor man's probably earned one of those seriously red cordials.


http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/...ript-is-showing/2008/10/21/1224351253306.html

HIlarious.

 

[youBROKEmyLIFE]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

I'm doing my research on how long this 'recession' will last. I'm estimating 6 - 10 months.

Also fucking lulz at Inasero who owes me two boxen of icecream as oil prices are so low OPEC is having a mad cry.

 

[Trefoil]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

I'm doing my research on how long this 'recession' will last. I'm estimating 6 - 10 months.

Why do you say that? There's really no indication that this is anything like previous financial crashes (except the GD), nor that it's getting better any time soon.

Unless you're implying 'recession' to mean strictly quarters of negative growth, not the depression that continues afterwards - though even then I still think you're being too optimistic, as it were.

 

[Iron]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

On matters of perspective
Tony Abbott and Robert Manne | October 25, 2008

Awesome exchange between Abbott and Manne on the Howard gvt, Rudd gvt and future.

DEAR Robert,
MORAL character, like everything else, needs to be judged on the whole record not one or two incidents. This is why your verdict against the Howard government, that its moral flaws fatally undermined all its achievements, cannot be sustained.

Two million new jobs, a 20 per cent increase in real wages and a doubling of net wealth perhead cannot be dismissed as mere economic accomplishments of no moral account. The former government's conduct over boat people and the Iraq war, your chief indictments, were tough calls but morally justifiable ones.

Anyone can proclaim concern for the poor. The real moral achievement is actually alleviating their poverty. Far from the "rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer", in Howard's Brutopia, statistics show that the rich indeed became richer but that the poor became richer too at a slightly faster rate. Those who allege "too high a price" for economic gains need to explain which moral law dictates, for instance, that a union must negotiate every worker's pay and conditions or why a better funded ABC is a moral imperative rather than a question of taste.

Moral theologians can say "none of the above" when confronted with unpalatable choices. Governments don't usually have that option. No one wanted children in detention but the alternatives were separating families or ending detention and undermining Australia's capacity for border control. It took time to devise more humane ways of handling these difficult practical issues. Ministers' initial comments about children overboard were based on the official advice at the time. John Howard supported the Iraq war and Kevin Rudd didn't but both had the same view about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Neither of them lied because the moral character of a statement turns on understanding at the time, not what might later be learnt.

Still, this "virtue war" that you are engaged in matters because people need to believe that they have honourable leaders, not just effective ones. About the most damaging charge that can be made against a political party is that no idealist would join it.

We should learn from the past, not dwell in it. Accepting that the Liberal Party won't apologise for the Howard government, what else do you think, Robert, that it needs to do now?

- Tony Abbott

Dear Tony,

IN defending the record of the Howard government you draw an implicit analogy with an individual life and say that "moral character" ought not to be "judged" by "one or two episodes". There are two obvious problems with your claim.

First, it all depends on the episode. If one distinguished public figure falsely claims that he had not committed a traffic offence, it would indeed be wrong to judge his whole life on that basis. If another was discovered by a court of law to have committed only one murder, no one would think it wrong for that act to cast a shadow across his whole career. This distinction can be applied to governments.

Second, I do not judge the Howard government harshly because of one or two episodes. In brief, I judge it very harshly because it refused to offer an apology to the stolen generations and because it destroyed the possibility of a formal act of reconciliation on the centenary of the federation. In addition, I judge it harshly because, despite the fact that Australia had one of the smallest asylum seeker "problems" in the West, the government locked up, frequently for years, entirely innocent men, women and children, who were eventually found to be refugees, in conditions of such harshness that many simply lost their minds; and because, eventually, the government decided to solve this problem by the deployment of military force. I also judge it harshly because, following the outrage of 9/11, the government decided to follow the US with a lamb-like loyalty, which meant that we fully embraced the Bush doctrine of US-initiated preventive war, fatal to the entire architecture of postwar international law, and because, on the basis of a false intelligence trail, we participated in an unlawful invasion that has been responsible for the death and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and for the poisoning of the relations between Iraqi Shi'ites and Sunnis for decades to come.

Most importantly of all, I judge it harshly because the Howard government failed absolutely to rise to the overwhelmingly most important challenge of our era - climate change - by refusing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol; by continuing to deny the near-complete scientific consensus on the matter; and by pretending that a problem so grave that it threatens the very future of the Earth could be solved by voluntary government decisions and by technological quick-fixes.

Tony, I do not deny that under the Howard government the economy boomed. Where I differ from you is that I think credit must be shared, between the commodities boom; the professionalism of the Treasury and Reserve Bank; the previous reforms of Labor; and, to be fair, the steady hand of Howard. Yet even if the entire credit for the prosperity belonged to his government, I simply cannot see how its truly terrible moral and political failings - over indigenous affairs, asylum seekers, foreign policy and climate change - are somehow erased. If the Liberal Party is to return to good repute, the toxic legacy of the Howard years must now be faced.

- Robert Manne

Dear Robert,

OBVIOUSLY, the former government's conduct over boat people, Aboriginal reconciliation, and military intervention in Iraq has grievously offended you. Of itself, that doesn't mean that its conduct was objectively immoral. A government has not necessarily failed a moral test just because some people who take morality seriously think that it has. Coming to a different moral conclusion and living with the consequences can be a sign of character rather than weakness. It might even be our duty, sometimes, to take difficult, dangerous, risky and unpleasant measures in order to do good.

People of goodwill can disagree over the need for a formal apology. The Howard government's pressing duty was more to remedy present evils than to apologise for past ones. In this respect, the intervention in the Northern Territory, where others equivocated, more than demonstrated its moral fibre.

Detaining unauthorised arrivals is not inherently immoral. Clearly, in some cases, detention should have ended sooner. No government perfectly responds to all the human circumstances for which it is responsible. Without the policy of strict detention, though, the leaky boats would have continued to come. The Australian government would have had cleaner hands but people would have died. Isn't there a risk here, Robert, of preserving your moral standards with other people's lives?

Not invading Iraq would have perpetuated the Saddam regime just as not intervening in East Timor would have prolonged oppression. It's not UN sanction that determines an armed intervention's moral quality. It's the nature of the evil that's averted and the probability of the good that might be done. The invasion of Iraq might turn out to have been a mistake - although that's now less likely - but it wasn't morally wrong.

As for climate change, calling it a moral issue when so much remains contentious is an attempt to close down debate. It's a sophisticated form of bullying.

- Tony Abbott

Dear Tony,

ON many levels your response puzzles me. Let me discuss each issue briefly.

On indigenous affairs you claim that Howard's "pressing duty" was to "remedy present evils" rather than to apologise for past wrongs. Your answer simply replicates the phoney choice Howard offered for a decade. It is not only that there is no reason to choose between an apology and practical work. It is rather that if there is vital practical work to do in the remote communities, as there is, the moral authority of the government is enormously strengthened if it has solemnly acknowledged the profound injustices of the past. Do you genuinely believe that Kevin Rudd's decision to apologise to the stolen generations is inconsistent with his Government's commitment to the indigenous women and children of the Northern Territory?

You claim that it was necessary to imprison innocent men, women and children in atrocious conditions for many years to stop leaky boats coming. The punishment of asylum seekers as a deterrent measure that you advocate is a clear breach of international law. If you doubt me, ask Philip Ruddock. Your claim that detention worked as a deterrent is also factually incorrect. In August 2001, after two years of mass detention, more asylum seekers arrived by boat than in any month of Australian history. The deterrent measure that succeeded was the subsequent deployment of military force. What is, however, most deeply troubling is your implicit claim that it is permissible to inflict suffering on innocent people to achieve a political result. Kant taught that it is wrong to treat people as a means and not an end. So does the Catholic Church. Perhaps you could ask Cardinal (George) Pell.

You defend the invasion of Iraq. The invasion involved defiance of international law; blind trust in false intelligence; an embrace of the dangerous and revolutionary doctrine of preventive war; the deaths of many tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis and the displacement of perhaps two million more. The invasion has brought Iraq close to civil war; hardened a new generation of jihadist Islamists; made the US more hated around the world than it has ever been; and even immensely strengthened Iran. If all this represents a possible victory, I would not like to see what would count for you as a defeat.

Most dismaying are your comments on climate change. Those who follow the views of the qualified scientists know that humanity now confronts the greatest challenge in its history. In response to this crisis, John Howard led the second most irresponsible government in the Western world. And all you can think of saying is that my pointing this out is "a sophisticated form of bullying".

The Liberal Party has reached a point of crisis. With the kind of defence of the Howard record that you have given so far, it has no decent future. Under the Turnbull leadership, I am hopeful that the party will dispense with apologetics of this kind and return to the worthy tradition that began with Alfred Deakin and ended with Malcolm Fraser.

- Robert Manne

Dear Robert,

I DON'T want 1996 to be the last time you ever vote Liberal. Plainly, though, you won't be won via re-litigating Kyoto, the apology, boat people and Iraq. On these matters, I can respect your views but don't share them and could not otherwise have served in the Howard government. As well, I'm not sure that voters would respect a party which developed retrospective scruples over its own actions.

I suspect that, in 1996, you voted against Keating as much as for Howard. My challenge is not to persuade you that the Liberal Party is morally pure - mission impossible, in your current state of mind - but that it is less objectionable than the Rudd Government. By 2010, we will all have a better idea of its competence and integrity. Already, in economic terms, the Howard era seems like a lost golden age. Rudd has just spent half the surplus for no long-term reform. He looks like giving a decade's accumulated surpluses to the states with no insistence that they change the union-ridden bureaucracies that have crippled services.

Still, it would be a big mistake to wait for the Government to lose. Oppositions need policies that will make a difference, reflect voters' judgments about what's common sense and pass a national interest test. The next Liberal government will have to tackle the dysfunctional federation by giving the national government more authority over the states.

Liberals mustn't forget that the party represents the conservative as well as the liberal tradition. We need to cultivate Burke's notion of government as a trust and society as a partnership. The individual is important but so is the social fabric in which his life has meaning. The market provides context for economic man. Traditional values and institutions that have stood the test of time provide context for social man. That's how we can be both economically liberal and socially conservative.

- Tony Abbott

Dear Tony,

YOU ask what might tempt me to vote again for the Liberal Party. I can best answer like this. In general, I would be tempted only when convinced the party has turned its back on the Howard legacy and returned to its Deakinite roots. In broad philosophical terms this means three things. First, the abandonment of neo-liberalism - the superstition that leads towards a blind faith in the capacity of the market to solve all our problems for us. Second, the repudiation of neo-conservatism - the waging of a permanent culture war against the "political correctness" of the "elites" on behalf of the "commonsense" of "ordinary people", that has led your party to the dead end of populist conservatism. And third, the disengagement of Australia from the stranglehold of American exceptionalism: the belief that Australian international policy should consist, in essence, of automatic support for US unilateralism and the imposition of American values and interests, where necessary through the use of military force.

You also ask what I think about the Rudd Government. I am, on balance, a strong supporter. Kevin Rudd has already broken with neo-liberalism: he excoriates the ideology of "extreme capitalism"; he is an enthusiastic supporter of "activist industry policy"; he has ambitious plans for infrastructure spending and "nation building"; although a fiscal conservative, he intends to expand the welfare state through paid maternity leave; and he has even shown signs of neo-Keynesianism, through his recent anti-recession pump priming.

Rudd has repudiated key parts of the culture war, by apologising to the stolen generations and by dismantling most of the Howard government's asylum seeker policy - indefinite mandatory detention; temporary protection visas and the Pacific solution. And he has taken Australian foreign policy in a new direction, through combining alliance ties with the US with "creative middle power diplomacy" - trying to revive the nuclear non-proliferation movement and to inject a distinctively Australian voice into NATO discussions of strategy in Afghanistan and international negotiations over climate change, global poverty and the financial meltdown.

Tony, one sentence in your letter struck me as seriously comical. You write: "Already, in economic terms, the Howard era seems like a golden age." Implicitly you are blaming Rudd for the impending global recession. This is like saying in September 1939: "Already the (Joe) Lyons era seems like a time of blessed peace", thereby blaming (Robert) Menzies for the arrival of European war. Another sentence, however, about the great conservative, Edmund Burke, interested me deeply. Burke famously wrote: "Society is a contract between the past, the present and those yet unborn." The overwhelming responsibility of our generation, because of the coming catastrophe of global warming, is to pass the kind of Earth human beings have always known to these generations yet unborn. Absolutely nothing now is of remotely equivalent importance. I have been deeply disappointed by the timidity of the Rudd Government's response to climate change. If the Liberal Party adopted a far more audacious policy, as I believe Malcolm Turnbull knows it ought, I really would be sorely tempted to vote for the Liberal Party in 2010.

- Robert Manne

Dear Robert,

THE next Liberal government won't be a carbon copy of the last but it won't be unrecognisably different either. The Liberal Party is the political representative in Australia of the liberal and the conservative traditions. Individual Liberals' instinct will differ on particular issues but nearly all place a high value on personal freedom as well as on values and institutions which have stood the test of time. Almost none of the Liberals I know have the blind faith which you attribute to the Howard government. By all means point out the former government's failings but don't pretend that it had no virtues if you want Liberals to take your analysis seriously.

How did this "neo-Liberal" (or market) fixation which you detect manifest itself? Was it in blocking the Woodside takeover; increasing minimum wages; legislating to boost pensions to 25 per cent of male earnings; devising and funding the Northern Territory intervention; or dramatically improving benefits for families with children? How did this alleged "neo-conservative" (or culture war warrior) mindset reveal itself? Was it through increased funding for the ABC and universities; tax deductions for cultural benefactions; or appointing people such as Stuart Macintyre to government bodies? True, the former government valued the US alliance (as the current one does) but John Howard didn't need America to lead Australians into East Timor or the failed states of the South Pacific.

The former prime minister was not perfect - no one is - but he would never have proclaimed that a problem was the biggest moral issue of our time and done next-to-nothing about it. He wasn't phony, as Rudd will prove himself to be if he fails to match his greenhouse rhetoric with specific, speedy and drastic action.

The same government which narrowly lost the 2007 election won handsomely in 2004. Were voters dupes or was there more to appreciate and less to condemn in the Howard government than Robert Manne, in his moral fury, is prepared to concede?

- Tony Abbott.

Tony Abbott is federal Coalition spokesman for families, community services, indigenous affairs and the voluntary sector. He was minister for health and ageing and, earlier, minister for employment and workplace relations in the Howard government. He was once a journalist with The Australian.

Robert Manne is professor of politics at La Trobe University. His assessment of the Rudd Government will appear in the November issue of The Monthly.

Liberals & Power: The Road Ahead, edited by Peter van Onselen (Melbourne University Press, $36.99), out next week. Van Onselen is an associate professor in politics and government at Edith Cowan University in Perth.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,24548052-28737,00.html