Huh? They voted on two awful bills a real labor party would have fought in the streets to avoid.
The Australian people didn’t really vote for the Libs, in that fashion, their votes actually decreased, people voted for Hanson and Palmer.
Come on
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No one survives on Newstart. The Old Age Pension is just on the poverty line; Newstart is 80% of that. Cash in hand in the Black Economy, if you can get it…
Instead of doing the job they were elected for, Labor are running for cover. The shyte-hawk, rightwing Liberal Lite Members of Parliament are more worried about saving their over-paid over-privileged jobs than working for a just society. I listened to the Senate debate today. It was pathetic. I heard Liberal Lite licking the rear ends of the Liberal Right Government in the same way this Tory government licks the rear ends of the Septics. Made me want to spew my ring.
Then on came a Greeny, and said all the left-wing things Labor should have been saying, but didn’t have the guts to.
In chasing the middle-of-the-road swingers Liberal Lite are going to lose a large proportion of their traditional voters — people like me, whom they made the mistake of taking for granted because they believe, mistakenly, that we’re rusted on.
Rusted on we may have been, but their incompetent election campaign (good policies, evil presentation, unelectable leader) and now this betrayal of some of their most basic principles has blasted us with a therapeutic spray of political WD-40.
The main quarrel I’ve always had with the Greens was over their bourgeois failure to understand the workings of the Trade Union Movement. On the other hand the Labor Party was founded as the political arm of the ACTU. Unfortunately they’ve come a long way from that in my short lifetime — I’m willing to bet that now there are even Labor MHRs and Senators who don’t pay union dues…
The Labor lot haven’t just weakened their Union ties — they’ve gone so far as to rear up on the Union Movement via Albo’s attack on Setka. Whether or not Setka deserves a kick in the ring is debatable, and there is obviously a great deal of history between Setka and Albo anyway, but to use the current case arriving out of a domestic dispute which has now been settled amically between him and his wife in the meantime is tactical stupidity of the highest order — that, or Albo has caved in to the Murdoch media’s baying for Setka’s blood.
The upshot is that Labor appears to have abandoned its founding Union base under Albo’s nominally leftwing leadership, and that the Greens, who are making all the right noises in the Senate, may well have grown closer to the Trade Union movement in the last few years.
I welcomed Albo’s accession to the leadership, but if he is going to cave in under the right wing pressures from the Liberal Light element he can go to China. I thought getting a supposed Left-wing leader would help put iron in the soul of Labor. How wrong could I be ? If the current trend continues, I’d rather see Mark Dreyfus as Labor leader — he may be a nominal right-winger, but at least he has integrity, convictions and courage.
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The ALP could have voted for the tax cuts and the tax cuts would have gotten through. They could have voted against the tax cuts and the tax cuts would have gotten through. They could have voted for the Newstart raise and it would have been blocked, or against the Newstart raise and it would have been blocked.
As you say, they’re not in government and in cases like this when the crossbench are sufficiently lined up behind the Libs, it doesn’t matter what the ALP does. Therefore the ALP have the complete freedom to choose how to vote knowing that a vote either way will do nothing concrete except symbolise what they stand for.
And so, they deliberately chose to vote for the tax cuts and against the newstart rise, knowing that the only effect it would have is to tell the country about what the ALP believes. Hell, they could have voted for the cuts AND for the newstart raise if they liked - goodies for everyone - oppositions don’t need to worry about budgetary discipline after all.
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They’re actually not that expensive, IMO. Their stuff is great quality and really funky. They also have great sales. I’ve been buying their bags, shoes and accessories for years, all on sale. They’re a very, very good brand. I have yet to find one as good anywhere in the world, comparative to their price and range.
All this mock outrage over what an opposition with a minority in both houses does is amusing. It is all irrelevant for at least the next three years and by then our economy will be totally farked.
You guys will then be still blaming Labor for things out of their control.
Labors job is to get back into Government by any means necessary and to hence win votes from those who didn’t support them last time. I support the lie, cheat and steal method of winning elections, and if it upsets all you of high principles, so be it.
Go and join the Greens.
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You’re proving yourself to be a very stubborn and silly man. And if you’re what Labor is made of thesedays then none of what has transpired is any surprise. You ■■■■ on people who have and would vote for your party because they express dismay about its strategy. ■■■■■■■ oath i’ll vote Green, they give a sh.it.
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Isn’t that what Labor said during the Election campaign, if you don’t like our policies, don’t vote for us? Well, they did! They lost the unloseable Election through their own arrogance.
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What arrogance was that?
I thought their policies were good and aimed at a fairer society, but the message didn’t cut through the negative scare campaigns. Unfortunately fear wins, and in the end Labor were too nice.
Neuroscience shows we are wired to move away from perceived threat more than towards reward - i.e. the mammalian flight or fight response (Limbic system) wins out over human consciousness (prefrontal cortex). The election result was this in a nutshell.
The sad truth is that Labour will need to work on a few scare campaigns of its own.
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You’ve missed a very obvious joke.
For all the coverage about the loss of franking credits hurting “average” Australians, you’re for sure going to end up with a subset of actual average Australians believing that they will get these franking credits despite not knowing what they are, much less being eligible for them.
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Fark me !!! Call me stubborn, when you are suggesting to stay with a strategy that lost the election ???
The election has just be run and done, and won by the other blokes. Labor presented a solid progressive policy and you and me voted for it, but not enough others for a variety of reasons, one being that they are thick between the ears. Another was, it seems, that they didn’t like Bill Shorten, and now some on here are whinging about a vote in Parliament where the Government with the numbers passed the policy that it presented to the Electorate and farking won with it.
I have read everything Albanese has written about the reasons why they took this position in this parliamentary vote, not what I would have done, but seems reasonable to me. So maybe you and others should save your anger for the farking Government who are trying to give in flat taxes that benefit the rich; but again consider that this is their proclaimed policy and this is what won them an election. Viva democracy !!!
Go to the farking Greens, and become a squeaky little pissant voice that never gets an policy enacted, never even gets a point across and has become so marginalised that they will lose all their seats in Parliament in the next three elections, unless they address mainstream needs and aspirations, like there fellow Greens did in Europe, where they actually got into power and could then make progressive change not only for the environment but for real social justice.
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I can’t see that Labor had too much to lose, at this stage, in standing by its so-called principles. If the state of the economy and related issues is as dire as some predict come the next election, and the ‘quiet Australians’ feel they’ve been had after all, it’s a little bit harder now for Labor to stand up and say we told you so. And it will be another ‘can’t be trusted’ target the for LNP who, unfortunately, on this one, will be correct. This policy was strongly opposed and the backflip makes Labor look weak as ■■■■. If they’ve descended to a can’t beat 'em, join 'em strategy then they deserve to lose the respect of supporters.
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People voted for labor because they thought Labor had principles. Turns out they don’t.
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Hell beni, that is childish BS.
Parliament is politics; and all that goes on behind the scenes is a mystery to most. You can drop your bottom lip and get all outraged, but I vote Labor for it’s policy and the ability to make progressive and lasting changes for working people when it is in Government.
And as history shows us, Labor is the only Government that has made progress possible in our society and its Government record on the economy and other social policy is good. So do not trot out the principles argument, as this vote in Parliament has nothing at all to do with any principle.
You may think that grandstanding by opposing everything is principled, I think it is just show-boating and ineffectual. Albanese (who is not one I like) tried as hard as he could to get amendments, and gave concessions to get them done. Lack of numbers in the Senate meant that Labor was powerless; and that Morrison and his thugs would rather deal with the “independent Senators” who will become his lap-dogs. Lambie will bask in her short-term glory but will be giving ScoMo head before long.
Well, … 51% or so did, … the other half of us (virtually) voted exactly the opposite.
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One-eyed support of a political team annoys Blitz, no matter which side it is.
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And this is where the Scummo mediawhore mantra, “Labor must vote for the tax cut package - the whole tax cut package because we were given a mandate for it” is shown to be false.
51% of the electorate voted for it and that’s a bare majority, certainly — but our system of democracy is based on individual members who represent individual seats, each of whom is elected to promote the set of policies he or she presented to the constituency whose support they won. In other words it is incumbent upon each Opposition Member (and I use that term advisedly) to continue to present and fight for the policies upon which they were elected. Anything less is a betrayal of the voters who elected them.
By voting for the Government’s shonky tax program in its entirety the Labor members have betrayed their electors. They should have done what a real Opposition is supposed to do and voted against. So what if the bill would have been passed anyway ? At least by opposing it, they would have shown some integrity !
And the argument that they had to support it because (a majority of) the public wanted it and it would have been “a bad look” for Labor to do otherwise, just doesn’t hold water. We’re not talking aboutthe whole electorate here — we’re talking about the swinging voters in the middle, say 3% or 4%. And we have three years to convert them to some decent Labor policies (if there are any left, once the pusillanimous Liberal Lite right-wing hacks have worked them over.
Under Bill Shorten Labor had a pretty good set of policies, even though they were to do precious little for the Old Age Pensioners and nothing at all for the poor bastards on Newstart.
Their problem was twofold:
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the swinging voters had learnt about Bill from the Herald-Sun and the rest of the Murfuck Press: they didn’t like him, much less trust him and were damned if they’d vote for him. Any clown who bothered to look could have seen this six years ago, and yet the Caucus voted Bill in as Leader ! It was as if they had a death wish.
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Their policies, good and all as they were, were presented unbelievably badly, so that the ordinary punter felt as if you’d need a degree in economics to understand them. When Bill started in to preach his policies, like a Parish Priest giving his Sunday sermon, you could hear through the whole church the snores from Joe and Joan Ordinary in the back pews.
Labor needed two things to win this last election: a popular, media-friendly front person, and a competent media manager who knew how to present good policies in simple sound bites, and how to attack the Lieberals in similar fashion to the methods Scummo used against Bill and Labor.
I thought Albo would be that leader, but I now have serious doubts as to his suitability, given recent events, as outlined in a previous post in this thread.
As for the competent media manager: of course, not just any efficient spin doctor would do — he or she must be someone who understands and believes in the socialist ideology, who has read the leading socialist theorists of the past and who has the ability to distil their ideas for our soundbite-governed internet age. Not an easy ask, I know, but Labor must find this person if they are to succeed in the near future. They didn’t have one during the campaign, they still don’t have one, and they don’t appear to be looking for one.
I despair of this Party, run as it is by the self-interested, self-obsessed Liberal Lite majority in the Caucus.
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We agree on much Perce, but not much of this post of yours.
Governments always declare they have a mandate, and strictly speaking they do, as Morrisons group were re-elected with about the only policy that had was these massive tax cuts. It is irrelevant how many of us voted Labor or in what electorate, as democracy is all about the most numbers of seats winning.
And it is a bit much to claim that an elected Labor candidate is betraying voters as once elected they represent all voters and not just those who voted for them.
I also disagree with you about the election result. While there is no doubt that Bill had a popularity problem with some, and that the influence of a biased Media was significant, and the lies from Palmer and LNP had an effect, I believe that the final analysis will show that Labor lost because it was lazy and thought it would win easily just by reading polling data and having a strong policy agenda.
If you study electorate by electorate there are some very obvious lessons to be learned. In my electorate of Ballarat, we managed a 6% swing to Labor, which was achieved mostly because of the fantastic local campaign run by Cathy King and her team. The Campaign Manager did the best job I have ever seen in a federal campaign, and she had us all working our collective backsides off to win every available vote. In the adjoining electorate of Gorton, Brendan O’Connor lost 11% of which nearly 10% went to a young independent who worked hard to get known. Brendans campaign was lazy, haphazard and very unprofessional. Friends in Western Sydney say the same about most electorates there, same in WA and SA, and in Tassie the local campaigns were dominated by Liberals. If you do the work, you get the results.
While I would have preferred Labor to abstain from the vote or perhaps oppose it, I understand and somewhat agree with the position of Albanese. I am not a fan of his, but it is early days and we are all still grieving over May 18th.
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I’m with Bacchus on this.
Tax cuts do stimulate the economy in the short term. Labor wouldn’t want to be in a position where the economy rebounds and the Libs say everyday Labor voted against the cuts. Because that’s literally all the Libs would speak about.
You don’t take to the streets over tax cuts.
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Ok, explain the bending over on the Galilee basin then
Federal election result in QLD
LNP seats 23
Labor seats 6
I personally think the Galilee is bad, but the message from QLD was crystal clear.
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