After watching Penny Wong in insiders this morning I can’t see myself voting labor again for a very long time
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Yep.
I’m old enough to remember when post-cold war basically all the West decided that trading with China would inevitably drive political liberalisation there. Instead, it allowed the regime there to use western demand to industrialise and raise the living standards of their population (so diffusing the sort of economic unrest that drove the breakdown of communism in the USSR and eastern Europe) while at the same time exporting basically all the Wests’ manufacturing capability to minimum-wage chinese sweatshops.
Massive own goal. Not only helped an totalitarian regime avoid collapsing under the weight of its own economic failures, but the democratic world massively weakened itself in the process and now is so reliant on Chinese manufacturing in its supply chain that we cannot meaningfully apply economic pressure or sanctions or anything because it’ll hurt us more than it hurts them.
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[quote=“Vanders_18, post:80, topic:16451, full:true”]HK should be a sovereign democratic state. Long term thats probablu in the interests of all countries outside of China in the region.
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It is part of China. British exploited it for years and all Western Nations should just fark off and left China handle it.
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Think she spoke great sense.
What is your issue ?
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Mmm, … I just watched the interview earlier.
Not sure what the problem is.
You have very different memory to me.
China was used by Capitalists for its cheap labor and its ability to make cheap products, so factories all over the World closed, goods sourced from China and the Capitalists made more profit.
None of them cared at all about the political system there or the Chinese people.
Now China is moving towards being the biggest economy and greatest power, the narrative is altered, and they care about Chinese Political and how peoples are treated.
Absolute hypocrisy on your part HM.
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She, and this maybe just how I interpreted it seemed to lack a tonne of empathy’s towards the pacific island leaders pleas to walk away from coal.
Now this bothered me on two levels.
- As what would have been foreign minister this is a bad tone to take when dealing with our closest neighbours. Partially when we had the Libs actively trying to strike Climate change from the records. She could have stood ground. Been in opposition. But took the lib lite position.
- It’s just another move way from the position that Labor took to the election of progressive policy and now moving to appease the lowest common denominator in an attempt to win back the votes of the unwashed. Which to me further confirms my suspicion that labor has lost its convictions.
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It’s making it very hard for me to believe labor would have lived up to their pre election promises
I didn’t take that out of it at all.
I thought she was realistic and supportive of NZ and the Pacific position.
No disrespect Beno, but you were a Greens member and you want to bag someone else’s convictions !
Under Albanese, Labor will become more pragmatic than under Shorten, but they are committed to renewables.
Let’s put that in Biblical terms. You’re saying that under Albanese, Labor will sell their birthright for a mess of pottage.
More like he will outdo Bob and Paul on consensus !!!
Yeah. Well, they were hardly socialists. But Albanese has made his name on being the Left alternative — but as soon as he gets the plum job he turns his coat.
Albo like many others is Socialist in name only. In fact, name the last Socialist ALP Leader. Doc Evatt maybe, but none since and a socialist is never going to win power in Oz, unless they have the guns !
It is easy to be radical when you are a shitkicker, but when you have power and want to win, pragmatism becomes first choice.
Huh? ! 100% agree that a lot of western capitalists made a hell of a lot of money outsourcing labor to china, and pushed the ‘but it’ll lead to them politically liberalising!’ argument cynically in the interests of being able to do that.
I’m arguing that the policy achieved basically the opposite of its stated objectives, and weakened the position of the democracies dramatically in comparison to authoritarian China (and it’s not like anyone had any illusions about China in this period, the corpses in Tianenmen Square had barely been hosed off the cobblestones)
Except the Chinese are going back on Xiaoping’s deal.
Hong Kongers want democratic freedoms, economic independence, personal freedom.
And its patently clear they havent forgotten it.
Reporting on the PIF outcome has been a journalistic beat up , which played into Mirrison’s hands. The outcome was no surprise to any participant, as the red lines had been drawn weeks, if not months ago, in negations on the draft.
Domestically, Morrison is being presented as appealing to his Neanderthal climate change deniers in the Coalition, while signing on to some positives as a scene setter for the next UN meeting of substance.
And it diverts from adddresing the fractures in the Coalition on Climate Change, together with the substance of whether the Government is fiddling the books on meeting our Kyoto targets - as well as the commitment to renewables.
And Beno, while most of us want to see the end of coal mining, Penny Wong was correct when she said that it is still important to us. Harsh reality, but it is true and let me know how many people would be really happy to have no electricity, as without coal it would happen.
Andrews Government and Labor Federal Policy is to grow renewables, but coal is still going to be with us for another maybe 50 years. I am doing my bit, using solar and wind power in my properties, are you ???
That’s fine, and totally valid. But the most pragmatic way to answer that is talk about how we are going to transition our economy away from it. Not double down on how important it is. As I said, it really lacked the empathy a would be foreign minister should have.
Let me give you an insight into just how bad things are for these people. A mate of mine, died in the wool lib man, a carpentry teacher from tafe SA gets an assignment to spend a month in Kiribati to show the locals building methods that may help them raise their houses higher to help cope with rising sea level. When he gets there it’s so bad that he tells his work he needs to stay a little longer. That was 4 years ago, he’s still there and days in the time since he went there, the land mass has halved.
These people are losing their homes because of this, soon to be refugees. She could have answers that a lot more diplomatically than she did. She was my favourite labor senator. Not anymore. Just another sycophantic crony.
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I didnt see Pennys Performance.
But if its about worrying about our domestic electricity needs its a load of bunk.
We export almost 90% of all coal mined in Australia. We produce plenty. The argument against or for would be about increasing international supply.
Australias role in global warming is always about our role on the supply side of the equation.
So you want us to tell Kiribati and others what they want to hear and not the truth.
I do not get how diplomacy is going to help anyone in this case. So you get all precious and affronted and continue to live a fantasy world. Better if we help the Pacific Islanders move to higher ground with new housing, help them with education and health, support their economies and employment. Their problem is today and it is real, and you want to whinge about a Politician telling the truth.
So what are you really doing about climate change ??