"I for one welcome our insect overlords" - The Politics Thread

[hasbeen]

frankly in terms of what needs to get done . asylum seekers is number 567889888897 on the list . labor gets no votes if they
try to do the right thing . where as the liberals have played the race card .whether it be yellow peril, reds under the bed or boat people ,
forever .

good call mr rudd .

One-eyed rubbish.

 

[FFC Mariner]

f**k dogma, what about the poor bastards paying the price so Kevin can shut up 2GB?

 

[dibo]

If it's about shutting up 2GB, that's probably why the talk of upping the humanitarian intake to 27,000 is sotto voce.

Less than one year ago it was 13,500. Gillard bumped it to 20,000 and Rudd will go to 27,000. In the space of a bit over a year we will have doubled our humanitarian intake. That won't be on the front page of the Telegraph, but it makes a real difference to people who are actually seeking asylum.

I don't like the idea of sending all comers to PNG, but I *really* don't like the idea that we're fishing bodies out of the Timor Sea on a regular basis.

If this can stop people getting on leaky boats and instead we fly twice as many here as we did a year ago, fine by me. I'd much rather we had a Qantas counter at every key Australian embassy in the region and we flew people here than anybody getting on a people smuggler's boat.

Long term, I'd like us to actually *create* this mythical queue - create a process by which people can claim asylum, have their claims assessed and be resettled quickly to welcoming countries and safely without any need for people smugglers to be in the mix or kids to die at sea.

Doubling our intake is a good start, but we need regional assessment processes and more countries to come on board to really make it work well.

 

[hasbeen]

Desperate times call for desperate measures and given the increasing number of refugees worldwide it really wouldn't be asking too much for us to really bump up our intake. If poor 3rd world countries can show some humanity by catering hundreds of thousands then surely we can afford to take lots more. The Labor and LNP both have crap policies (driven by popularity only), whereas the Greens have the best policy but no-one will embrace it because it might cost a few quid. We are a tight-fisted bunch aren't we?

 

[dibo]

It's not money - the "cheapest" option is onshore processing, but that carries the attendant risk that we'll keep fishing bodies out of the ocean for the foreseeable future.

Better that we ensure people don't get on a boat but more people come here.
The point is that it's the boats, not the people, that we need to stop.

 

[true believer]

One-eyed rubbish.

ooh there never was a yellow peril? Menzies never tried to outlaw the communist party ,then pull the petrov
affair stunt? this sort of stunt. was howards bread and butter .with the act of piracy of the tampa ,then peter rieth
manufacturing the kids over board con.
stunt pulling and wedge politics is inbedded in phoney tony's dna

 

[midfielder]

I have totally turned off .... switch the dial every-time I see the Dud or the Phoney .... or any political debate ...

Don't trust one and think the other treats me like I am a fool...

I have a solution... everyone in in the country change their vote and not one sitting member will get back...

However I have stopped listening to either major party ...

 

[FFC Mariner]

^This

A plague on both their houses

 

[true believer]

^This

A plague on both their houses

you get the politicians you deserve. get involved or don't complain about who you get.
right now the front bench of both sides are made up of accounts and lawyers.
this is what I find is the first thing that must change.

 

[FFC Mariner]

Until getting involved means being in a tank that rolls into Canberra they can f**k off.

Most of them are either lawyers or Union hacks.

 

[true believer]

then you get what you deserve.

 

[midfielder]

HHHHMMmmmm interesting move by the Dud to bring in US experts to run his election campaign ...

 

[dibo]

It's a bit misleading - they're not here to 'run' the campaign and 'sister' parties tend to share expertise constantly.

Labor here tends to link with UK and NZ Labour and the US Democrats.

Libs here link with the NZ Nationals, UK Conservatives and US Republicans.

They're constantly doing swaps of activists and campaigners, not to mention swapping lines and strategies, so this isn't exactly new.

Hell, there are even lines from the 1964 Presidential race that have shown up here recently:

 

[midfielder]

First time I can recall hiring in folk the way the Dud has... very clever me thinks ... Phoney and Hewson may share a special honour ...

 

[hasbeen]

Is 'Visa' McTernan still on the ALP payroll?

 

[dibo]

Another important thing to remember - the PM doesn't run the campaign, National Secretariat does (and the National Secretary is the campaign manager). Rudd's not hiring anyone, NatSec is.

And FWIW, I've met (and campaigned on the ground with) folks from the US, NZ and UK.

 

[dibo]

Is 'Visa' McTernan still on the ALP payroll?

Nope.

 

[hasbeen]

Still, I reckon they got their money's worth.

 

[true believer]

It's a bit misleading - they're not here to 'run' the campaign and 'sister' parties tend to share expertise constantly.

keating advisors are given a lot of credit by the yanks for the clinton election.

 

[dibo]

Both New Labour and Dick Morris's 'triangulation' are other names for Hawke and Keating's ideas before they ever made it over there. We slayed Thatchernomics and Reaganomics before they ever took hold. We had a decade of hard reform and then lo and behold, 22 years of unbroken economic growth.