Is political discourse in this country broken? (1 Viewer)

[Blastus]

Both parties are signposting, acting ridiculously immaturely and constantly at each other's throats.

Question time is a disgrace to all Australians due to the actions of both sides of the aisle.

The media, in its dying throes needs to push stories that sell more, and thus is involved in sensationalist drivel that politicians pick up and run with for their own publicity.

There's actually nothing we as voters can do about it because the mass of intelligent individuals is so thoroughly outbalanced by the diseased bogans who want to stop the boats or want a fair go.

The ALP no longer stands for anything, the great intellectual tradition of the left is now being wielded by the greens who are trying to wedge the ALP on every issue. The greens themselves are now facing a coup from the completely deranged NSW branch, run by a bunch of rusted on marxists and 'purist' types.

The Liberals have succumbed to the morass of howard-style conservatism which is some elements of economic liberalism bulwark ed by giving people who don't need money the money of other people. Either that or they're a bunch of annoying god botherers who want to force their morals down our throats with the power of the state.

Basically, we're fucked.

What can the population do?

 

[Jimmy Recard]

suicide

 

[Lentern]

Both parties are signposting, acting ridiculously immaturely and constantly at each other's throats.

Question time is a disgrace to all Australians due to the actions of both sides of the aisle.

The media, in its dying throes needs to push stories that sell more, and thus is involved in sensationalist drivel that politicians pick up and run with for their own publicity.

There's actually nothing we as voters can do about it because the mass of intelligent individuals is so thoroughly outbalanced by the diseased bogans who want to stop the boats or want a fair go.

The ALP no longer stands for anything, the great intellectual tradition of the left is now being wielded by the greens who are trying to wedge the ALP on every issue. The greens themselves are now facing a coup from the completely deranged NSW branch, run by a bunch of rusted on marxists and 'purist' types.

The Liberals have succumbed to the morass of howard-style conservatism which is some elements of economic liberalism bulwark ed by giving people who don't need money the money of other people. Either that or they're a bunch of annoying god botherers who want to force their morals down our throats with the power of the state.

Basically, we're fucked.

What can the population do?

Is there a country or a point in time where it was a whole lot better? For all the brilliance of Burke and Paine they're peers included some pretty awful types.

A few scattered points:

On question time what really nauseates me is that when the parliament was hanged, Oakeshott more or less offered his endorsement to anyone who made it into something respectable and both parties weren't willing to lose the long cherished chance for incumbent governments to waffle about how brilliant they are and goad the opposition on how powerless they were.

Also, Annabelle Crabb does my head in with her style of parliamentary coverage. She's an intelligent woman, brilliant writer and from what I can tell has a wonderful heart but uses it to dress up politics as some kind of boxing match where pointless censure motions are encouraged in place of genuine policy answers(she once wrote that "Smith will never make it in this place" because of his straight bat answering.) And I know she does it in a post modern, ironic way but she still masquerades as a serious journalist and takes up the column inches of someone who might, dare I say, do it properly. Annoys me even more that she now writes not for a private company but the ABC.

On a related note, on the rare occasion we get a good panel of say Phil Coorey, George Megolagenis and Laura Tingle on Insiders, we lose fifteen minutes of the show to these gimmicky, dramatic montages. One of the worst I remember was during last years campaign when they had three minutes of Rudd just walking around shaking peoples hands, smiling, reading to children etc interchanged with cuts of Swan or Gillard looking stressed/concerned with "Am I ever gonna see your face again" playing in the background.

On the anti-intellectualism and the Marxists at the gates element of the greens I agree wholeheartedly. What is really upsetting is how recently it was that the image of the Liberal party was Turnbull with some speculation it might soon be Costello, Labor's leader was Rudd and most popular minister was Tanner while the biggest threat to Bob Brown's leadership seemed to be Nick Mckim. Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison and Lee Rhiannon were virtually non entities in federal politics while boneheads like Kim Carr and Kelvin Thompson were by all accounts pretty much ignored by Rudd if they wanted to contribute to the policy debate.

It all went downhill when Iron left.

 

[cosmo kramer]

whats howard style conservatism

 

[LonelyWolf]

I fucking hate this country, but it's still one of, if not the best to live in.

 

[Lolsmith]

whats howard style conservatism

Stop the boats is remnants of Howard conservative.

What are the population to do? Become the people the country needs in order to alleviate it from the cesspool it will inevitably catch on fire, fall down and sink into. Become a good journalist and write and inform the public of actual things. Call people cunts to garner attention or somefin. Join pOlitics in order to generate differing opinion. Malcolm Turnball, afaik, is a great polly with serious insights that are above this insane stop the boats, kill all gays and muslims types. Hell, I respect Tanner despite our pretty significant political disparity because he's an intelligent man. There are genuinely good men (not so sure about women as I h8 Gillard and Bishop, not so sure on Wong or others) to be put into positions of authority for the betterment of Australia, not WelfareStateChristianBoganland.

 

[cosmo kramer]

stop the boats would be fine if people wouldnt always qualify it with "yeah im fine with refugees coming here just do it the proper way" no shut the fuck up its not how they get here that matters its the fact that they are coming here

i aqctually argued to some lib idiots about this that "boat people" are probably more desirable than plane people because boat people have amassed enough money to get here themselves instead of just sitting in a camp waiting for some faggot to transport them for zilch

people with more money = higher status = prob higher iq = less likely to trash up the place

 

[powlmao]

Australia is fucked if the major parties don't change!

We need to disolve the parliament and re-vote people who aren't bogans and know shit all about how to run a country.

I agree with most parts of the budget (riding teen mums of free money) but others are just stupid

 

[cosmo kramer]

whats so egregious about this years budget anyway i mean besides shit like that chaplain stuff which frankly i find it difficult to care about

 

[cosmo kramer]

overworked servant of the thing upstairs

 

[LonelyWolf]

Australia is fucked if the major parties don't change!

We need to disolve the parliament and re-vote people who aren't bogans and know shit all about how to run a country.

I agree with most parts of the budget (riding teen mums of free money) but others are just stupid

you're asian

 

[cosmo kramer]

berk

feed me

 

[Lentern]

Stop the boats is remnants of Howard conservative.

What are the population to do? Become the people the country needs in order to alleviate it from the cesspool it will inevitably catch on fire, fall down and sink into. Become a good journalist and write and inform the public of actual things. Call people cunts to garner attention or somefin. Join pOlitics in order to generate differing opinion. Malcolm Turnball, afaik, is a great polly with serious insights that are above this insane stop the boats, kill all gays and muslims types. Hell, I respect Tanner despite our pretty significant political disparity because he's an intelligent man. There are genuinely good men (not so sure about women as I h8 Gillard and Bishop, not so sure on Wong or others) to be put into positions of authority for the betterment of Australia, not WelfareStateChristianBoganland.

Sharman Stone and Judi Moylan are both pretty cool women from the Libs, I always liked Plibersek in Labor but Blastus assures me he has dirt on her, otherwise Julie Owens and Justine Elliot seem to believe thinking is a good thing. None of your forward thinking, philosophical intellectual types will get much of microphone under the current lot. Rudd's there coz he can't be rid of, Turnbull's profile is too great to keep on the backbench and the socialist left(not the Ferguson left) will push a few onto the frontbench but they won't get allocated senior ministries.

 

[Lolsmith]

ta, I was not aware of these ladies' profiles.

 

[Funky Monk]

Is there a country or a point in time where it was a whole lot better?

This. The current trash is reflective of essentially my entire experience of political discourse. Aside from having more entertaining and intelligent combatants like Keating/Costello, does everyone have rose-tinted rear-vision, or was question time ever actually more productive?

 

[Funky Monk]

Basically, we're fucked.

What can the population do?

I really see that the only course of action is to become engaged, whether that be through the dissemination of information/media/etc, through political means, or at some other level. You said it yourself -

There's actually nothing we as voters we can do

Voting alone isn't enough. It's probably doesn't seem ~fair~ that we might have to sacrifice some/much of what we'd actually rather be doing to instead fight a tide of ineptitude, but consider that at least it's better than fighting a tide of genocide or some other fucked up third world shit. Maybe this is actually the lousy nature of the First World game.

 

[Lentern]

This. The current trash is reflective of essentially my entire experience of political discourse. Aside from having more entertaining and intelligent combatants like Keating/Costello, does everyone have rose-tinted rear-vision, or was question time ever actually more productive?

Oh question time itself definitely has gotten worse, I was talking about politics generally. The setup question or "Dorothy Dixar" that all government questions are now used to be seriously frowned on and because they wouldn't be broadcast at 3pm and again on the 6pm news there was a time when a censure motion was a rarity and a genuine attempt to persuade crossbenchers and some wavering government mp's to withdraw support for the government. But the technocratic consensus was a lot narrower back then and the influence of public service policy wonks was a lot smaller.

 

[Jimmy Recard]

we can abstain from voting

like me



also stop the boats
lol
its not illegal to come here on a boat
its not illegal to enter the country to seek asylum

 

[Funky Monk]

its not illegal to come here on a boat
its not illegal to enter the country to seek asylum

ugh, truths

 

[Funky Monk]

its not illegal to come here on a boat
its not illegal to enter the country to seek asylum

ugh, truths