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

[midfielder]

A tale of two duds... It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way . . ."

 

[dibo]

What's your argument for Labor being a dud?

 

[midfielder]

What's your argument for Labor being a dud?

HHHHmmmmm .... well don't need one ... they have to earn my vote [dare I say respect] as do the libs.. neither inspire me or fill me with any grandeur plan they may have... I disagree with a number of polices of both .. disagree with both on future directions..

As we discussed before I don't care who wins, I see both parties as almost identical... eg PNG / turn the boats back.... I don't trust the Dud IMO he will in the time honoured words of Richo """ do whatever it takes""" as for the Phoney he has told me nothing ....

The ALP brand AARRRRGGggg in NSW ... and before you start on Federal V NSW thats ho hum to me ... look at the Keating / Carr decisions yonks ago...

In simple terms neither have given me any reason to be confident in their leadership .... which is sad ...

 

[dibo]

See, I just don't get that.

If we were in some sort of national crisis, fine, but I don't think there's a lot wrong with this government, other than that the Opposition and certain (pretty partisan) business groups are running around saying they're awful.

The budget is in deficit, but both our deficit and net government debt are tiny, and other than that the country is safe and secure, the economy's rolling along at 2.6%, inflation is well contained at 2.4%, unemployment is low at 5.7%, interest rates are really low at 2.75% (cash) and 6.85% (housing).

We've got the NBN rolling out, carbon pricing is working well (and about to get better), the schools funding package looks like a winner, I'm struggling to see the problem.

PNG and 'turn back the boats' aren't the same thing. While I don't particularly like the PNG thing, I *do* like the proposal to lift the refugee intake to 27,000 (the ultimate stick and carrot package) while the Opposition proposes to turn back the boats (which it can't practically, legally or diplomatically do) and *cut* the refugee intake to 13,500. They're very different. The Opposition is opting for a broadband package with three quarters of the cost but a fraction of the speed and coverage and on schools they won't even tell us what they want to do - we have to wait til after the election.

This isn't partisan myth-making either - I'm very partisan but these are simple facts. You can consult the Liberal Party's own website and confirm them if you like.

 

[dibo]

OK, so hilarious development - the Coalition have decided that given they don't have an education policy and weren't going to be able to think of one, they'll just back the Gonski plan for four years. FMD - they're a rabble.

Great outcome for schools though!

 

[midfielder]

D

You said ...""" See, I just don't get that.

If we were in some sort of national crisis, fine, but I don't think there's a lot wrong with this government, """

I could say the same think about the Howard government ...

Every time I vote I want something from who I vote for ... no party will ever get me to be their cheer leader nor back whatever...

Not enough time or space ... however I don't like what I see in Dud nor do I like many of the polices ... as for the Phoney I have NFI what he plans to do ...

Let me be very clear and greedy I am in small business and service small business so I am looking for who does this best...both are Farking hopeless, IMO only Howard & Hawke understood how to help ... Today small business [under 100 employees] employs 61% of taxpayers in Australia and neither side of governments IMO other than lip service and statements on how important it is have polices that encourage small business to grow and expand, and how they will reduce red tape [by the holy mother of Mary its annoying] .... I read somewhere there are over 1 million small business in Australia imagine if each on average invested $ 25K per year ... that is a 25 billion dollar investment each year and that is big big money ... So inspire and drive and support and help and encourage and have decent awards for small business ....

 

[dibo]

That reads a general purpose whinge rather than anything specific.

 

[midfielder]

That reads a general purpose whinge rather than anything specific.

Bingo twice... first its for them to impress me, and they have not.... second your comment about a general whinge about lack of policy and vision for small business fails to understand its not a whinge more a cry for understanding and much needed policy ...

I laugh when I read the mining industry is going to invest 60 billion over three years or so and it may go down to only having 40 billion of projects left on the book... BTW those figures are kinda guested at ... Imagine if all the million + small business invested 25K per year over the next 5 years ... 125 billion of investment spread across all of Australia and helping the 61% of us who own or work in this sector... now imagine a 50K per year investment which is very achievable 250 billion ....

 

[midfielder]

Off and Running ... 7 September ... just to help both sides some famous political sayings...

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H. L. Mencken

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
John Kenneth Galbraith

If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.
Milton Friedman

If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.
Winston Churchill

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.
Mark Twain

If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.
Emma Goldman

Politics have no relation to morals.
Niccolo Machiavelli

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.
Mahatma Gandhi

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.
Thomas Sowell

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
Will Rogers

Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
Ambrose Bierce

 

[dibo]

Off and Running ... 7 September ...

Just like we were off and running for August 31?

I'll believe it when C-1 is driving up the avenue to Yarralumla.

 

[FFC Mariner]

Given that the major parties have both become indistinguishable, my vote will go to what ever desperate will pledge the most to football on the Coast.

Vote for sale, vote for sale.

Robertson is up for grabs so I am hoping PT, the Mayor et al are working the phones.

Roof for the open end and I will hand out placards.

 

[style_cafe]

D

You said ...""" See, I just don't get that.

If we were in some sort of national crisis, fine, but I don't think there's a lot wrong with this government, """

I could say the same think about the Howard government ...

Every time I vote I want something from who I vote for ... no party will ever get me to be their cheer leader nor back whatever...

Not enough time or space ... however I don't like what I see in Dud nor do I like many of the polices ... as for the Phoney I have NFI what he plans to do ...

Let me be very clear and greedy I am in small business and service small business so I am looking for who does this best...both are Farking hopeless, IMO only Howard & Hawke understood how to help ... Today small business [under 100 employees] employs 61% of taxpayers in Australia and neither side of governments IMO other than lip service and statements on how important it is have polices that encourage small business to grow and expand, and how they will reduce red tape [by the holy mother of Mary its annoying] .... I read somewhere there are over 1 million small business in Australia imagine if each on average invested $ 25K per year ... that is a 25 billion dollar investment each year and that is big big money ... So inspire and drive and support and help and encourage and have decent awards for small business ....

It really gripes me that small business is classed as under 100 employees & they are all treated the same.
FFS small business is under 10 employees & should be given every assistance to grow.
Cut the red tape & all the hooha & let the self employed make a decent living.

 

[true believer]

more criminal activity from Murdoch

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-polit...acks-on-rudd-its-business-20130803-2r65x.html

The arrival of Col Allan in Australia is making a lot of people uneasy.
Allan is a man widely known inside News Corporation as Col Pot, a play on the name of a Cambodian genocidal dictator.
He is News Corp's most feared flamethrower in a company of flamethrowers and he has been sent to Australia by Rupert Murdoch himself. The purpose of his mission has become clear in recent days. One person who should rightly be disconcerted by Allan's sudden secondment to Australia is the head of News Corporation Australia, Kim Williams. Several other executives should also be leery, but they are not Allan's primary target.
His primary target is Kevin Rudd.
Advertisement<iframe id="dcAd-1-4" src="http://ad-apac.doubleclick.net/adi/...rticle;pos=3;sz=300x250;tile=4;ord=9704740.0?" width='300' height='250' scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0"> </iframe>
Why Murdoch wants Rudd to lose the coming federal election is not primarily political, it is commercial. News Corp hates the government's National Broadband Network (NBN). The company has formed a view that it poses a threat to the business model of by far its most important asset in Australia, the Foxtel cable TV monopoly it jointly owns with Telstra.
Murdoch has declared war on Rudd by dispatching his most trusted field general, Allan, whose reputation is built on his closeness to Murdoch and his long history of producing pungent front-page splashes and pugnacious campaigns as editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph and, for the past 12 years, The New York Post.
Allan's mission is to help consign Rudd to the dustbin of history reserved for failed leaders.
The ramp-up of the war effort has been rapid and intense.
Friday, July 26: the chief executive of News Corp, Robert Thomson, announced in New York that Allan would be returning to Australia to provide ''extra editorial leadership for our papers …''.
Monday, July 29: Allan is at work in Australia within 72 hours of the announcement.
Tuesday, July 30: he begins several days of meeting with editors. The message is simple and brutal: you have been going hard on Labor but now, with Rudd's revival in the opinion polls, you have to go harder.
Wednesday, July 31: he is spotted lunching with Lachlan Murdoch and other executives.
Friday, August 2: The Daily Telegraph depicts Rudd in a hoodie escaping from a bank he has just robbed, with the headline: ''Rudd's $733m hoist on people's savings''.
Yesterday, August 3, The Australian runs four negative headlines about the Rudd government on its front page alone, including ''Revealed: How Rudd blew $250bn''. The Daily Telegraph splashes with a front-page banner headline: ''Price of Labor - another huge budget shambles … and now we're $30bn in the red''. In Melbourne, the Herald-Sun took out page one with ''It's a ruddy mess''.
Rudd is a broad target. His own parliamentary colleagues could not stomach him and removed him from office after less than three years. After he rose like Lazarus to return as Prime Minister on June 26, one third of the cabinet departed rather than serve with him. His election-eve policy reversal on asylum-seekers was spectacular. His Papua New Guinea detention strategy was exposed as a bluff.
On June 26, Rupert Murdoch used Twitter to write: ''Australian public now totally disgusted with Labor Party wrecking country with it's sordid intrigues. Now for a quick election.'' Rudd's greatest failing, in the eyes of News Corp management, and the greatest threat he poses, is his $45+ billion NBN, a massive project announced without any serious costing. News Corp views this as a threat to the business model of its most important Australian asset, Foxtel, jointly owned with Telstra.
The company much prefers the Coalition's less costly but also less ambitious national broadband strategy. News Corp newspapers have reported the numerous failings and cost-over-runs of the NBN in hundreds of stories.
Although the Coalition's alternative is less costly, it offers an inferior capacity for downloading content at a time when consumer demand is shifting dramatically towards content-on-demand and content via computers.
This shift is reflected in the enormous run-up in the shares of the market leader in content-on-demand, Netflix. Shares in Netflix closed at $US246 (A$276) in New York on Friday, a prodigious run-up from its $52 price a year ago. Netflix now has a market valuation of $US14.5billion compared with $3 billion a year ago.
Foxtel has responded to this threat by launching its own content-on-demand product, FoxtelGo, and is launching an online-only version, FoxtelPlay.
Foxtel's co-parent, News Corp, is engaging in a more structural response.
It wants to kill the NBN threat at its ultimate source - Kevin Rudd.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/murdochs-vicious-attacks-on-rudd-its-business-20130803-2r65x.html#ixzz2aw0IP5T8

 

[midfielder]

quote='midfielder, post] Off and Running ... 7 September ...

Just like we were off and running for August 31?

I'll believe it when C-1 is driving up the avenue to Yarralumla.

Should I give the Simpsons call... say--- I told you so... ---bow to a lessor God ....or pretend I did not see ... or simply ignore ....

I will take the higher moral ground as will Dud & Phoney and say nothing ....

 

[FFC Mariner]

So when Kevin said that "he had better things to do" on 7th September, that wasnt actually true.

Channel 9 pounced on the lie like a flash.

Good start f**k knuckle.

How about the time teased " I am not going to discuss an election date"

 

[dibo]

Should I give the Simpsons call... say--- I told you so... ---bow to a lessor God ....or pretend I did not see ... or simply ignore ....

I will take the higher moral ground as will Dud & Phoney and say nothing ....

You read the paper and saw a prediction of Sep 7; congratulations. I said I'd believe it when I saw C-1 going up to Yarralumla. It went, it's on. Had nothing to do with you.

So when Kevin said that "he had better things to do" on 7th September, that wasnt actually true.

Channel 9 pounced on the lie like a flash.

Good start f**k knuckle.

How about the time teased " I am not going to discuss an election date"

Of all the trivial things...

People are going to make a call about the future of the country. Whether the PM was playing mind-games with the meeja and an increasingly spooked Opposition about the election date is probably rating somewhere behind the leaders' hairstyles and the leaders' preferred football teams in voters' minds as they mull over their vote.

 

[midfielder]

For What its worth I just did the ABC compass election thing to see where I stand..

My results:

Libs .....52
Green... 50
ALP... 44

Outer left field if the Greens got hold of Malcolm and put some decent economic polices together .... HHHHHMMMmmmmm wonders aloud what they would achieve...

A mate did the test at the same time his results where...

Libs... 54
Green... 52
ALP ... 44

Gotta say very unimpressed by both so far .... come on guys show me the vision....

I liked the survey an example ... do you like the Carbon Tax [big no from me] ... do you believe in climate change [big yes from me] ...

IMO we have never had a debate on climate change ... what we have and it by and large reflects a lot of politics today is extreme views by both sides.. long term its a worry my three sons 24 to 29 [and most of their friends] are totally turned off politics whereas at the same age I and those I associated debated issues at length ... maybe its the need to feed the 24 hour news cycle or the desire to be constantly out there in your face ... but I hit the switch button every-time I see the Dud or one of his kind and the same for the Phoney and his kin...

Without trying to moralise to much .... I see both sides moving into the dangerous territory the US has where nothing can get done simply to score points... Me I hope one day the Greens get some decent economic polices .....

No idea who I will vote for yet ... love to vote for Wiki Leaks but he is not in NSW ...

 

[dibo]

IMO we have never had a debate on climate change ... what we have and it by and large reflects a lot of politics today is extreme views by both sides..

What do you mean we've never had a debate? What do you want?

In 1997, then-Environment Minister Robert Hill (a Liberal) accepted climate change was real, and went to Kyoto to negotiate a position on an international emissions reduction agreement that became the Kyoto Protocol.

After spending the conference ensuring it was watered down (we were first out of the blocks on trying to water it down the agreement - even the USA only joined in after us in trying to take the nuts out of it) to protect Australian industry, we agreed to a deal but then refused to sign the final protocol.

For ten years.

In 2007, the debate in the public mind was settled and public pressure was building up enough that the Howard Government agreed to emissions reductions in line with our Kyoto commitments (but not to sign the Protocol) and agreed to implement an emissions trading scheme.

Aside from signing the Kyoto Protocol, essentially both parties went to the 2007 election on a unity ticket to price carbon and undertake emissions reductions using a market mechanism.

As we know, Rudd was elected in 2007, signed the Protocol and from 2008 made the first steps to legislating the ETS.

The Libs dumped Nelson and Turnbull on the way to getting Abbott and backflipped on their election commitment to support an ETS, instead supporting direct action largely based on 'soil carbon' that doesn't work.

Direct action means paying people when they reduce their emissions. In other words, we're going to pay polluters if they promise to clean up their act and to farmers to do 'soil magic' that doesn't work. Your tax dollars and mine going to polluters. Polluters lose nothing if they just continue polluting. So the least cost thing for the taxpayer is for nothing to happen. From a budget point of view, you just promise to pay f**k all and polluters will do f**k all. Easy, except on the environment.

An ETS means that the polluters pay. We (as consumers) pay in the end, because polluters will pass on the costs, but cleaner industries will get a competitive advantage through lower costs and the market forces everyone to clean up. We stop paying as much, we stop polluting as much, all good.

Direct action is a fig leaf - it's the emissions reduction policy you have when you don't want to reduce emissions. It's the emissions reduction policy you have no intention of reducing emissions because you're ignoring the problem because you don't believe it is a problem. If you have to pay anything, it's a taxpayer subsidy to your mates.

We've had the debate. The debate was settled right where the science settled back in 2007. Everyone agreed, until Tony "climate change is complete crap" Abbott became leader of the Liberal Party and we were back on the bloody merry go round.

Abbott's present position is a fair way to the right of Howard's, while Labor's has been consistent for a decade and a half.

 

[FFC Mariner]

Still no promises of cash for football on the Coast.

Donkey vote looming

Come on Kev/Tony sort it out

 

[dibo]

It's day 2 of the campaign. Hold your horses.