Soft power in the Pacific Islands against the Chyna threat doesn’t come cheap and places pressure on the budgets of non Defence portfolios every time of a new ANNOUNCE ( like the PIF regional police scheme).
The Senate Estimates sub Committee dealing with the Defence portfolio rarely gets round to addressing these costs.
While leaving out the bits on Dutton
NDIS $35 billion
Defence $53 billion
About 450,000 receive NDIS. Yep some people cheat, like in most things, but it is not a huge rort.
Shorten just got legislation passed that will fix most of it. Morrison and his goons farked it and didn’t really care.
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So many free and cheap gigs in Northcote, and Thornbury. I get twitchy if I have to go Brunswick or Fitzroy, it feels like a mission, but it’s the same there too.
It’s the booze that is outrageously expensive. And I imagine the cost of running a venue is a killer too.
I went to a show for a couple of bands last week. All the band members would be younger than me. They’d also be younger than 80% of the crowd.
Rewind back to when I started going to gigs in the ‘90s I reckon it was the opposite. The band were always a couple of years older, but the crowd was always young, and drunk, or at least we were.
It’s the same people going to shows now as it was in the 90s. They’re just older. Where are the young crew?
You would know how many aussies are living with a disability and how much we spend on it comparatively to other OECD countries.
And my criticism of Bill is hes a lousy campaigner. He just doesnt exude any sort of confidence.
Im sure he is excellent in back room politics - thats how you end up leader of the Labor Party. But thats not where the Australian public vote.
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Yep depending on your definition, anywhere between 2 and 6 million.
Without Bill Shorten there would be no NDIS.
Noone votes for him. Which is sad because it cost the country big time.
I was talking about this last night with a mate at the pub.
Cost of living for young people has been real. They’re not getting out.
It’s the Gen x (and older millennials) who are keeping live music alive at the moment.
Gen X’s will have older kids now and can get out on weekends with mates. Also decent high paying jobs to afford it getting out.
But yeah, it’s grim for pubs right now. And not many young bands around either.
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Dutton living off charity. According to his disclosure statement update, his recent visit to Israel was fully funded by AIJAC. AIJAC is a registered ACNC .charity.
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You haven’t taken my nephews to the park. They are only interested in running up the slides.
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My boys would also climb up the slide.
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My two boys don’t - because at 15 and 12 they wouldn’t be seen dead with me at the playground…. But up on the slide was de rigeur when they were younger.
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I don’t know if the ALP can lose the next Victorian election, but by geez they’re giving it a red hot go.
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Really, the only thing I know about Katie Allen is her pitch at the voting box in the last election.
Which was, “I know my party sucks, but if you vote me out then it will suck even more.”
Seriously.
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Not yet, but I probably will. I’ve always had a lot of rspect for Carr, who came up the hard way. It’s likely to be an interesting read.
You call him a “spud”, Foxy. Is that because you have contempt for socialists ?
Unlike so many of the “Left” Kim Carr is a real socialist, and has been since school days when a history teacher at high school lent him copies of socialist literature to read at home.
He was just about the only Labor Left member to challenge Albanese’s self-serving right-wing hegemony, and was also a friend of Kevin 11, for which that nice Mr Albo ostracised him and had him frozen out of Labor Left. As Labor Left was no longer a genuine left-wing grouping, Carr went and formed his own mini-faction (Industrial Left) and supported Shorten for the party leadership. Even though he was from the Labor Right, Shorten’s views were a lot closer to socialism than anything Albo promotes.
Albo is always telling us about the poverty of his youth, and how his saintly mother did everything to raise him correctly - which I’m sure is all true, but why does he have to keep repeating it, as though no one else ever had it tough growing up ? Kim Carr certainly did, but he never uses it to promote himself.
Carr knew the writing was on the wall when Albo levered himself into the leadership. He retired gracefully from politics in 2022. I hope his book digs the dirt on Albo.
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Nothing to do with his ideology perce, he was solid enough on that. It was a personal issue between us.
I knew him since the late 1970s when he first was a teacher and then when he worked for Joan Kirner. Kim may have been a real socialist, but he could be an arrogant, ruthless bully. It was always his way or no way. His book will be full of his narcissistic toxicity.
Though I did agree with him on his views regarding Shorten vs Albo; and on this we were both correct.
I didn’t have any contact with him, but dealing with different Departments, you could always work out which Minister had sway. I got the impression he didn’t. There was never any compromise on positions.
You have met enough MPs and Ministers to know that some are easy and a pleasure to work with and some are difficult, or have difficult staff, or are just incompetent. Kim Carr covered all three well in my view.
In Labor Politics, he was a strongman and for a long time had so much power that he got his own way. Carr and Conroy ran the factions for years, but like all of us, got older, weaker and less formidable.
He was in his reign:
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Shadow Minister for Science and Research
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Shadow Minister for Industry and Innovation
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Shadow Minister for Public Administration and Open Government
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Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs and Reconciliation
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Shadow Minister for the Arts
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Shadow Minister for Housing, Urban Development, Local Government and Territories.
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Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research
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Minister for Manufacturing and Minister for Defence Materiel.
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Minister for Human Services
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Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research
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Minister for Higher Education
The only job that in my view he did a reasonable performance was when he was Shadow for Indiginous Affairs. You may gather he was not my favourite Comrade. Unlike @percebushby , I will not read his book.