Australian Politics, Mark II

Haha, Turnbull referring to Shorten’s backflip on the company tax as evidence of the absence of authority in his party.
So, what’s Turnbull’s authority within his own party, for instance on the Liberal Council call for ABC privatisation ?

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When that show was airing was about the last time Labor had capable leadership

You leave Major McMahon alone. You should be praising his memory. After all, he brought Young Gough to government after 23 years of “Liberal” rule.

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Bill and Ben the Flowerpot men was made in UK in 1953, the year of my birth when Doc Evatt was Labor Leader. I watched it on the ABC in early 1960’s I reckon.

Labor has had many great Leaders since Dr Evatt.

In any case, WTF would you know about Leadership.

It last aired in th 80’s… so I was getting at bobby.

And given your thoughts on Shorton, a lot more than you it seems

I think you are both talking about 2 different things.

Good, … is not necessarily popular,eg Billy Bland … and Popular doesn’t necessarily equal Good, … eg: Boneless.

Turdball is Popular but with a spine like the Flowerpot men, and Bill, is a Good leader of his party, … (notwithstanding his very rare recent misstep,) … but unfortunately has the charisma of an actual Flowerpot,

And the argument is fkn moot now anyway, … we’re too close to an election for ructions, … and the only hope for a change, as I said, is if Bill voluntarily steps down, … which is a very, very long shot, you’d have to think.

So, why don’t you write him an Email Ben, … asking him to do the right thing and fall on his sword, … Bacchus can write him one telling him to “ride it out comrade”, and just generally kissing his ring:, … and I’ll write him one and beg him to go and buy borrow, or steal a personality of any sort… OK?

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Works for me :joy:

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Being a 80-20 labor-others voter, I’m not impressed with the way W Shorten goes about it. He was terrific when taking on CSR and with the Beaconsfield mine collapse but he has no idea on how to be electable. If Labor loses seats at the by-elections later in the month, he must go.

Like a broken record

Join the ALP and lobby against Bill, or just keep up your pointless whinging.

Walked down my local Main Street this morning and the CPA was about distributing “the paper the bosses don’t own”, The Guardian.

Wanted to take one just to ■■■■ tripper off, but my latte was getting cold.

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How’d the government go sneaking its rules through about getting jail time for criticising the government? Nice big step towards fascism that basically no news outlet noticed… somehow.

Unless I’m mistaken, Labor backed the legislation.

Shorten, the kingmaker, shafted Rudd for Gillard, then shafted Gillard for Rudd. When the punters consigned Rudd to the political dustbin, Shorten decided to make himself the king. No wonder Labor Right only trust him marginally more than Socialist Labor do.

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Bill farks up, big deal considering the LNP have been a train wreck for 5 years

See this is where Bill has been good.

He has managed to sell the MSG that it’s all about winning, … that you can do next to fk all for what you care about from Opposition, … and this would have been a fertile wedge, … a “Labor don’t care about National Security” bash for the Sqibs.

You can always undo stuff, or slowly water it off into oblivion once you are in. This is that political “Savvy” I keep talking about, … I get it, and I’m ok with it.

Similar, but I already had my copy of the Green Left Weekly.

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I disagree here.

Firstly, history says that the ALP DON’T water this stuff down once in office. Gillard didn’t, Rudd didn’t. They didn’t even bother investigating stuff like the Howard govt’s unlawful misuse of the intelligence orgs to spy on East Timor over the Timor Gap oil rights, or to investigate the complicity of the Aust govt in US torture, both of which would have been political beatsticks to use against the Libs as well as being the right thing to do.

Second - once you endorse a policy, you kinda commit to it. You can’t say ‘we strongly support this strong legislation which will make Australian strong, strongly’ pre-election, then turn around and say the legislation is a dud after the election, because you’ve already conceded the validility of your opponent’s arguments. You have to loudly make a genuine case that this is busted law. ‘The libs are doing this to cover up their abuse of children on Manus and to try to crimiinalise the investigative journalism done by the ABC!’ is the obvious line of attack.

If this is political ‘savvy’ then it’s of the worst and most useless kind. Short-term tactical manoevering aimed to get Shorten’s butt onto the lodge’s dunny seat, at the cost of sacrificing his ability to do useful and principled stuff once he gets there.

This is the ALP equivalent of Turnbull selling out his life-long convictions on stuff like global warming because he needed to appease the lunatic right wing of his own party in order to win the PM job. Even if you win in the short term, you lose in the long run.

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Vote 1 HM!

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Do you understand our parliamentary democracy and the role of an opposition ?

Boot and Ben, the Flower pot men have been ranting on about Bill Shorten, and about this Foreign Interference Legistation.

For the past 7 months, Labor have been arguing, negotiating and battling with the Government to get amendments to the original. They have achieved most of this and compromised to reach a consensus on the rest. Now they support the bill.

That is their farking job, to make sure that Laws that are passed are fair and reasonable and in the Country’s interest. When it doesn’t they vote against it.

You can all have your views on Bill Shorten and Labor, and believe what the Media want you to believe, but maybe you should find out the facts. Though I guess facts never seem to bother the Flower Potters.

Lol.

Just shows how little attention you pay as you rant. I have said f all about the “ban funds from people governments don’t like” legislation. But seeing as I stand up and say that you need to face the fact that Shorten is not popular, and change him out if you want to win an election, I suddenly become a flower pot man. If the rest of the ALP is as blinkered as you I doubt it’ll get far. And that’s a shame, because they are, bar a few nasty moments like refugee policy, a way better alternative than the More Power for Adolph Dutton Party. But there you go. An election will more than likely be lost to a despised opponent through wilful arrogance, and disregard for public (you know, the guys who’s votes you actually have to win) opinion.

C’est la vie.

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And do you get what I was saying?

I was responding to BSD who believed/hoped this was some sort of masterful multidimensional chess move on the part of Shorten and the ALP in order to neutralise ‘national security’ as an election issue by passing laws they knew were duds and then repealing/loosening them once the ALP regained power.

Whereas i was saying, nope, ain’t gonna happen, either the ALP genuinely believe this stuff is good policy or they’re passing it now as a tactical measure and will never both repealing it because they simply don’t care about that stuff very much.

Neither you nor I believe the ALP are passing these laws with the intention of repealing them once the election is over. The only difference between our opinions is that you believe these laws are an acceptable useful compromise while i believe they’re undemocratically restrictive and their enaction is a cynical abandonment of principle.

As a side note, the other day the govt announced charges against the whistleblower in the Timor Gap spying case and his lawyer. This, you’ll remember, was when the ASIS under Howard illegally spied on East Timor over oil right in the Timor Gap (the intelligence services are only allowed to investigate security matters, not commercial ones). The Gillard govt used anti-terrorism powers to put the whistleblower under house arrest and confiscate his passport to prevent him testifying about this in the case East Timor brought against Australia at the Hague, despite no suggestion ever being made of terrorism being involved. Now both the whistleblower and his lawyer are being prosecuted for espionage, while the lawbreaking they tried to address through fully proper and legal internal channels remains ignored.

You’ve got the Howard govt using ASIS to help out it big business mates, and the ALP govt abusing summary anti-terrorism powers to cover up this illegality despite no terrorism at all being involved.
And now you’ve got the Turnbull govt prosecuting a lawyer for representing his client, and keeping the whole thing under wraps using dubious espionage laws, and the only reason anyone knows about any of this is because Wilkie went public with it under parliamentary privilege.

You’ll forgive me for being cynical about the goodwill or good faith of either major party on security and free speech when they’re both using anti-terrorism laws as political weapons.

It seriously beggars belief why Rudd/Gillard didn’t simply come clean and hang Howard and the Libs out to dry on this as soon as the ALP got into power.

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