The Labor Policy Draft Document that will go to the National Conference is posted here.
Visionary to some, is shock-horror to others and having a diverse Party like Labor is agree on many issues is like herding cats. I could dissect your post point by point but all I would be doing is refuting what you have gleaned from Media.
While I reckon Labor could do a better job of getting its message across, it is so farking difficult when no Media are interested in publishing the truth or taking an even-handed approach to presenting news. My own experience with the Hun, ABC and Channel Nine, still gives my nightmares.
I actually would have thought that Bomber supporters would understand the power of Media after the Saga, and how some Media people just live to spread terror.
The treatment of Australian Prime MInisters from Gough Whitlam onwards has been disgraceful. I even have empathy for Tony Abbott, who may be a rightwing zealot, but he did not deserve the Media scorn he received.
I get it. I have no issue with anyone who actually knows why they vote for a particular person or Party.
And I also get a Small Business Owner hating Unions.
After all, why would you want to be forced to pay your workers a fair wage with fair working conditions, so you can make more money for yourself and your Family from their labour, and having Unions being the only ones who make sure you do.
[It’s not clear if @Bacchusfox’s next post was in reply to you or someone else]. If so, WTF would the ALP ever consider doing that? That is signing their death warrant as they will get no support from the Murdoch MSM or from all the multinationals.
Unions are at their most effective when they are protecting people in low paid or unsafe workplaces.
They are at their worst when they are
protecting high paid workers at tax payer cost eg the salaries on the desalination plant
protecting criminals who have entered their ranks and cronyism in employment (eg the MUA in the 90s/00s)
putting in ridiculous clauses that are used to stop productive work- I remember once at a telco a 200M investment being held up because there was a carpet square missing in an exchange where equipment was being deployed
fighting to protect local wages and conditions in industries that are being offshored due to an inability for local businesses to compete because of labor costs, resulting in the death of whole local industries and wholesale job losses (eg our manufacturing industries)
building processes/awards that mean that employers can’t be transparent and honest with underperforming or unrequired staff and have to call them into meetings without agendas and use legal speak and performance management plans
stopping people from helping other team members out and getting on with third because you can’t do work outside your award job description
building jobs that are so narrow in description that they make work boring with no connection to outcome, just cogs in the wheel, slowly dying from boredom and waiting for a package
Exactly. So why not have it presented by a media-friendly, likeable leader, such as Albo or Plibersek ? Why hamstring the Party with a backroom boy whom nobody in the country trusts, be they left or right, except for the rusted-on Labor Party apparatchiks — a backroom boy whose defining, salient quality is his naked overweening personal ambition ?
Unfortunately, Shorten is unable to distinguish between what is good for the Party and what is good for Billy. And do you really believe that Billy with his Jesuit-trained logic-chopping is incapable of trimming and modifying Labor Policy better to suit his own personal desires ?
What is the point of having great Policy if the voters neither like nor trust the Leader presenting it ?
No. If Labor loses the next election it will be because the Party didn’t have the strength, the determination, or the imagination to elect a likeable leader capable of winning a popularity contest (which sadly is all a general election is in this media-driven era), and the blame will rest squarely on the shoulders of the Party apparatchiks who can formulate good Policy, but who balk at electing a Leader capable of presenting it successfully to the general, Murdoch-muddled public.
Don’t you sneer at “popularity contests”. Labor’s greatest achievements in living memory were gained by the election of popular leaders, viz, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating !!
Yep let’s have a Simon the likable as per KRudd, who single handedly destroyed a good Government.
I don’t kknow who you are, but I suspect you actually know very little about Bill Shorten, again just what the Media tells you. Of course, any farking person who aspires to Lead a Nation must have personal ambition, but he has many great qualities that has united the Party behind him.
And Perce, you may be happy having a “likeable” Leader but I want someone who I trust and who I follow and that is Bill Shorten. You are another who wants Labor to be true to its principles, but put up Simon the Likable, to win the popularity contest.
Labor’s greatest achievements in living memory !!! Well, loved Paul like a brother, hated Bob Hawke with a passion, another egotistical self-centred prikk. Yep they did make it easier for all us Baby Boomers to make a killing in the property market, and in doing so, farked over workers, Unions and the next generation of home buyers. Their capitalist mates were all happy though, as they counted their extra billions.
You obviously have no idea how the system in this country works. Unions do not set industrial laws or employment contracts. They fight for their members rights and to get the best possible result, but all workplace laws are set by Governmehnt, so if you do’t like these things blame the farking Government that enacted the legislation. And if Unions break the laws they get prosecuted like the rest of us; can’t say the same for Business though.
Yep, there have been and there are crooks and corrupt people in Trade Unions, just like there are in Business and indeed our whole society. And I respect and admire blokes like John Setka, who devotes his life to protect his Members in the Building Industry. Some call him a thug and much worse, but I would rather have a champ like him fighting to keep me and my mates alive than a Grollo who doesn’t give a fark about their employees safety.
Nominally it’s the anti-China/Russia election meddling legislation, though it looks like some of the anti-GetUp stuff has sneaked in there, although details are sketchy at the moment.
This one hits home to me because I’m involved in a small wildlife rescue non-profit. We foster joeys whose mums have been hit by cars, etc etc. We also attend big natural disasters, like Black Saturday, and at those times (like we did on black Saturday) we get donations from international partner organisations to help us buy medications, fuel, equipment, animal feed, pay vet bills etc. We also write submissions to govt promoting stronger protection of native species and opposing destructive development and logging.
There’s a real chance that we’ll have to register as an ‘agent of foreign influence’ under this legislation, whereas Adani is not touched.
As I was talking about above re the general rightward drift of policy, the delusion that foreign corporations do not impinge on the Australian political process is not one that the ALP would have swallowed in the past.
I wonder if Bacchus would change his mind on Bill once we get another 3 or 4 years of the Tories after 2019?
I think Bacchus needs to ask himself, would he rather have Labor in power for 12 years with an egotistical self serving prik, or stay in opposition with a unified party till 2022?
Yep I could be pragmatic and say givbe me another KRudd and Government, but then my heart is still burning on the damge he caused Labor and the whole Nation. And I have gone the full circle.
When I joined the Party it was Socilism or nothing an dwe would figh tthem in the streets to get our aims, then as I got older and had a taste of Government, it was let’s doing and say anything to stay in power.
But now, I have reached the stage in my life where all we have is our principles and we have failed you younger generations in many ways. So fark being popular.
Mr Blood One, I remember a self serving opportunistic carnt telling me once that it is great to have principles but unless you win Government then you cannot do anything. Well he went on to be a Minister in John Cains Government in the 1980’s. He was a corrupt, thieving son of a beech and he and his mates bought Cain down, leaving Joan Kirner to cop the flack.
You may think that Elections are about who is popular; I would rather have them about who is best for our Nation.
I am sorry that most here do not think Bill is any good, and while I know you are wrong, I am prepared to go down the path of another many terms of Rightwing rule, just to say I told you so. Maybe thne you will see past this personality bullshite.
Why does it have to be incompetent but popular or competent and unpopular. Is Australia really so devoid of leadership we can’t produce a popular and competent politician.
I’m reading this document right now. And I’m only going to mention in passing that the relationship between what a party’s platform says and what it actually does is tenuous at best, otherwise we wouldn’t have the Libs party platform saying ‘sell the ABC!’ while the parliamentary party says ‘the ABC won’t be sold’, nor would we have seen Hawke and Keating running around deregulating and privatising stuff left and right while the party platform was still talking about socialism.
Anyway, back the the document. Here is the ALPs NBN policy, just as an example.
National Broadband Network
Labor builds the infrastructure of the future. The National Broadband Network is the biggest, most important infrastructure project in Australia’s history allowing us to dramatically improve our productivity, service delivery and revolutionize how and where we work, learn and live.
Labor is committed to ensuring that all Australians get fast, reliable and affordable broadband, no matter where they live or do business. Wholesale prices should be the same, whether people live in the city or the bush. Broadband should not be more expensive for those who can least afford it.
Labor is committed to ensuring consumers remain at the core of its communications policy, and for Australians to have a good lived experience over the National Broadband Network.
Labor will hold the Liberal Government to account for the roll out of a second rate NBN, and work to deliver for all Australians a network that is fast, reliable and affordable.
This isn’t a policy statement. It isn’t within shouting distance of ‘visionary’. One paragraph bragging that the ALP birthed the NBN, one paragraph promising to keep attacking the Libs for their stuffups on the NBN, and in the middle, two paragraphs of motherhood statements that could just as easily be copy-pasted into (or from) the Libs policy platform document
Nothing about FTTP vs FTTN, nothing about technology mix, which are the two most stupid blunders the Libs made on the issue. Certainly no deadlines or delivery goals. Nothing that actually matters.
This should be fish in the barrel for the ALP. And again, I’m NOT just going on media here, i’m going from what I see out of my own eyes. I see, in in a seat that should be winnable for the ALP and which has had its NBN delayed for nearly a decade because of the arrant stupidity of the Libs, the mindless viciousness of Abbot and the venal ambition of Communications Minister Turnbull, nothing about this stuff, not even in the flyers in my mailbox during election campaigns.
It is a draft policy document. The action plan is waiting on the go ahead. And in any case, it is mute if you dont win Government as everyone is saying.
Part of the Australian way to knock those who rise to the top.
Think about it, very sad and very true.
Of all the Labor Leaders that I know, two of the best were Julia Gillard and John Brumby. I didn’t like either of them much personally, but both were great Leader and very capable of getting things done. They were both crucified.