Politics

Have you seen the other side?

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Maybe, . but look what they did to Gillard, just because she was a she, and decided to not have kids, ā€¦ and had a pear shape & poor fashion sense, and ā€¦ etc ā€¦ et fkn cetera.

She would also have to resign her Upper House seat and get elected to the Lower House, which is doable, ā€¦ but sheā€™s so good in the Senate.

Yep. Penny Wong is the perfect leader. Iā€™ve said it many times before.
Articulate, clear, no bullsh*t, straight shooter, doesnā€™t twist words.

She canā€™t and wonā€™t be the Leader of the Labor Party because sheā€™s a Senator. You canā€™t have a Senator as the leader of the government or opposition.

Iā€™m sure the Labor would like to keep it that way, so sheā€™s unable to challenge for the leadership.

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Andrew Hastie requires reigning in. If youā€™re sure about your facts, you know, really sure, say it outside the chamber. We do a lot of business with the Chinese so youā€™d want to be sure before spouting off.

There is something odd about this. The order of business in the house is usually settled before sitting times. There would have been an awareness that Hastie was going to speak. As he chairs an intelligence committee , it would have been assumed that he would cover that ground.
What he might need to have to answer to is making public classified documents and their contents ( including some of US origin).

So $444m to a bunch of miners and big businesses calling themselves the ā€œGreat Barrier Reef Foundationā€ without even tendering it, as an environmental grant, is totally fine and thereā€™s no evidence for the need of an independent corruption commission. Thereā€™s a bit more for you in case you donā€™t get your tax cut guys. Donā€™t worry, itā€™s just come out of the tax payerā€™s pockets and they reckon itā€™s for the environ,ent. Lol.

Oh yeah, how much does it suck when privatisation doesnā€™t work the way you want it to? These guys who own one of the old, polluting power plants that is at the end of its life have the gall to want to replace it and upgrade rather than sell it to someone who we found to keep burning coal in it! We need to change the competition laws to stop the sensible thing happening there. Better slash some more funding to the ABC. Too much competition for the Murdoch empire.

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Smacks of joining in with, or doing a favour for, the US by calling the guy out in a near empty Senate, but leaving the Jellyfish with plausible (not,. lol) deniability as PM.

I donā€™t think Turnbull would have been involved in this would he? Turnbull is the arch-Free Trader, heā€™d want to keep the chinese on side because their trade will make us all rich Any Time Now. But I seem to recall that Hastie is one of the new(er) breed of religious wackos, more aligned to Abbottā€™s way of doing things. Very different ideological factions of the Liberal party, and not ones that get on together very well.

Personal guess is that Turnbull probably DIDNā€™T want or expect this, and that itā€™s as much a salvo aimed by the Abbott faction at Turnbull as much as anything else. Turnbull can either condemn Hastie and thereā€™ll be whispers about how heā€™s weak on security issues, or he can endorse him and give up yet more of whatever principles he ever had in the interest of keeping his job, or he can say nothing firm either way and look weak and out of control of his own party. Which he is.

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Ah yeah,ā€¦ youā€™re right. Forgot he was an Abbott disciple ā€¦

Hastie is a WA liberal ( not a Senator) came in at a 2O15 by- election before that served in the army . As with Molan , likely to be on the right wing.
The problem for Australia is that its defence and trade interests with China do not align.
Bringing China into the WTO was seen by most as a way of minimising such conflicts and for China to follow WTO trade rules.
The problem is that China is not playing by the rules. It is using its trade power to force political stances.
This has not been helped by Trump invoking WTO security exceptions provisions ( for specious reasons) to justify trade restrictions against China.

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Turns out that Hastie made his statement in the Federation Chamber which is used for more specialised business debates, which may run concurrently with House sittings. The Federation Chamber is also public unless a decision is made to hold debates in camera.
So, Turnbull may not have known but others would have. Whips should have known. Seems no-one tipped him off.
Turnbull is now checking the classified status of the documents ( which Labor members on the security and intelligence committee would also have).
Hastie is a Duntroon boy, one of the few polling booths in the ACT to favour the Liberals.

An MP can release foreign intelligence under Parliamentary privilege. Yet at Senate Estimates witnesses are refusing to answer questions and are turning down FOI requests such as how many staff have left a Ministerā€™s office.
So much for the Senate shining a light in dark places. Estimates has become a joke when it is being treated with contempt. Expect more of it when sport comes up on 29 May in the late hours of the evening.

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Australiaā€™s Wealthiest 200 people increased their wealth by 20% over the past 12 months.

20 fkn percent!!

Trickle down economics working well.

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The Libs are both childish and viscous

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Like snot?
Is that childish & viscous enough?

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Glad you chose snot haha

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He is all the more dangerous because he is a fundie Xian. You know, the kind of people that would happily push the button because then we would all go to heaven.

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Not all of us. Just them.

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How fkn cool is Noel Pearson??

Why isnā€™t this guy in Parliament? Could listen to him speak for days ā€¦

I recall Labor going hard at him for a period there but he declined.