Re: Aus Federal Politics thread (V)

[Mick Sawyer]

Why the fark that brain dead dickhead didn't call a DD in February 2010 will forever be a mystery to me.

We've agreed on that a time or two.

[Big Dog]

Facts can feck an argument huh BD?

Only if they're irrelevant.

[Big Dog]

I'm still trying to work out what this governments done wrong.

...and No Mick, I'm not going to elaborate. That mud has been tracked through this forum often enough already. If Braddles doesn't get it by now he never will.

[Mick Sawyer]

Facts can feck an argument huh BD?

Only if they're irrelevant.

Help me out then BD. You said "Normal for a Labor/Green government." Which government or governments were you actually referring to, or is that irrelevant as well?

[Mick Sawyer]

...and No Mick, I'm not going to elaborate.

I'm going to find an emoticon for you BD. One that pokes it's tongue out, wears a "watermelons suck slugs" tee shirt & gives everyone the forks. You wouldn't need to type anything and still make the same contribution.

[Big Dog]

...and No Mick, I'm not going to elaborate.

I'm going to find an emoticon for you BD. One that pokes it's tongue out, wears a "watermelons suck slugs" tee shirt & gives everyone the forks. You wouldn't need to type anything and still make the same contribution.

It would sure save a lot of time from going over the same old ground.

[skully]

Just who the fark is running this country?

"A NEW tax on glass and plastic drink containers could push up an average family's grocery bills by more than $300.

The Greens are heavily lobbying for the container deposit scheme to be introduced nationwide and the federal government supports it.

The scheme could cost some families up to $470 a year more as the new charge pushes up prices on drinks containers by 20c - with industry experts saying it could mean paying $4 more for a case of beer.

------------------------------------------------

The Greens clearly don't give a fark about lower and middle Australia's increasing struggles to afford to simply live, and the Pinkos appear to be ready to roll over and be bum-farked yet again by the Greens. FMD.

And you Pinkos ask "exactly what has this govt done wrong?" Allowing Bob Brown to insert his withered smelly willy in the Vulture's dinger must shirley be this Keystone Cops Govt's no. 1 crime?

I retort with "exactly what has this govt done RIGHT?" MS/JGK/Ponts will give us a spoiler tagged dissertation about how the appallingly implemented and run Pink Batts and BER schemes saved the Aus economy from disaster, and how the Carbon Tax will save the world. And that will be where the well runs dry.

[JGK]

How was the BER appallingly run? 3 separate reviews have said it was a success.

[skully]

A success because it poured billions into the building industry (including shonky qunts like Reid) but not many, many schools complained loudly that they had little say in how the cash was splashed and felt they got appalling value for money i.e. the obligatory million dollar canteen buildings. Many schools were forced to accept buildings they didn't actully want (would rather the cash have been spent differently) but shut their holes for fear of missing out on the bonanza. Typical unregulated Pinko waste.

[Paul Keating]

Free university education, free health care and superannuation not good enough for Skully.

What has the coalition given him?

[skully]

Free university education, free health care and superannuation not good enough for Skully.

What has the coalition given him?

Oh look, here's Ponts living in the 70s again.

The coalition recognises that you cannot live beyond your means, something that the Pinkos and most of Europe simply doesn't get.

[JGK]

A success because it poured billions into the building industry (including shonky qunts like Reid) but not many, many schools complained loudly that they had little say in how the cash was splashed and felt they got appalling value for money i.e. the obligatory million dollar canteen buildings.

So a few unhappy schools out of 10,000 mean it was a failure?




Meanwhile, skully and BD seem to be setting policy for the faceless men of the NSW Labor Right:


Labor NSW votes to end Greens deal

July 14, 2012 - 10:54AM
AAP

NSW Labor general secretary Sam Dastyari has declared the free ride should be over in any preference deal with the Greens, sparking a fierce rebuttal from the party's Left.

Mr Dastyari moved his motion in Sydney Town Hall as NSW Greens senator Lee Rhiannon held a media event outside the doors of Labor's annual state conference.

As 850 delegates looked on, Mr Dastyari declared: "From today the free ride is over.

"Delegates, it's time to redefine our relationship with the Greens party.

Advertisement
"Today, at this conference we'll be proposing that the Labor party not provide the Greens Party with automatic preferential treatment.

"The Greens political party are not our friends, they are not our allies, they are our political rivals," Mr Dastyari said.

But assistant secretary John Graham, from the party's Left, said the NSW Right's proposal would do more to alienate Greens voters.

"The NSW Right used to say behind closed doors, we're having this debate now so let's have it all out, you can move to the centre, lose a few seats to the Greens, outsource the Left of the party, that was wrong," Mr Graham said.

"I welcome the recognition that this is a serious threat, but these Greens voters we're trying to persuade, imagine them, full of hope, desperately many of them wanting Labor to be just a bit better.

"Are we really going to win them back by talking about backroom preference arrangements?"

Mr Graham described Mr Dastyari and Australian Workers' Union chief Paul Howes, a right-wing ally of the state secretary, as "human headlines".

NSW Labor senator Doug Cameron, from the party's hard Left faction, said while he disagreed with the Greens' stance on the Rudd government's emissions trading scheme and refugee policy, Labor should not attack their left-wing values.

"I say that we should not attack any party that takes progressive positions," Senator Cameron, a former head of the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union, told delegates from the conference floor.

"The type of positions that the Greens take on the IMF and the WTO; my union the AMWU wrote those policies and they plagiarised them so why should we attack them on decent policy?"

© 2012 AAP

[skully]

Leave it to the Dubber Pinkos to have some commonsense.

You and Ponts now seem to be going all Green, when it suits you. Ponts even abused me for admitting I had voted Green at one point in my voting life.

Wow, hypocrites much?

And you used the word failure (guilty conscience perhaps? ). I used the words, appallingly run. If you are gonna play the man, at least quote correctly.

[JGK]

How am I going Green?

The NSW Greens are a bunch of crazies. Boycotting Israel and all that.

Still, this is all a bit for show. I think electoral tactics under the preferential system demand that Labor preference Libs higher than others in left leaning seats now withstanding that the ALP would prefer the Greens to win rather than the Libs.

[skully]

SO do you have an opinion of what the Pinko Dubbers are doing, irrespective of it being a show? Given that you pointedly mentioned myself and BD, I assumed you were not supportive of Dastyari's move.

If that is not the case, I withdraw my accusation that you have become a fairweather Green supporter.

[JGK]

As I said, the move is for electoral expedience. There is no principle in it either way. If it helps keep Abbott out of the Lodge then I am all for it.

I mentioned you and BD because you have been complaining about the Green-ALP links for ages.

[skully]

No, I've complained about the ridiculous amount of power the Greens have wielded since their deal with the Vulture. You can't honestly tell me that you relished the sneering image of Bob Brown on the steps of Parliament House?

And yet would they side with their coalition partner on asylum-seeker policy? No farkin way. Frauds, the lot of 'em.

[embee]

skulls

the greens will always* be a minority party who will side with the pinkos before the tories. The pinkos have lost their 22% needed from the centre and right of politics ...those voters dont really want to support the greens so by moving away from the greens the pinkos hope to start picking up some swinging middle grounders...


*for the next few political cycles anyway

[skully]

Might be an interesting read

"BILLIONAIRE mining magnate Clive Palmer says he is considering launching an online newspaper, which he wants to call Rage, to be staffed with journalists laid off by Fairfax.

“One of the things we are thinking about very seriously is running an online news service across Australia and offering some hope to all the journalists that are being dismissed at The Age and Fairfax,” he told reporters in Brisbane."

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Could go down in history as the most impartial newspaper on all things political, ever.

[JGK]

Funny that he wouldn't hire the journos being put off by News as well.

[embee]

Labor is getting its mojo back

by
Sam Dastyari

14 Jul


This week the Labor Party did what it does best – reassert itself as the champion of the centre, the custodian of the middle, the minder for the mainstream. It has been a fascinating and exciting week.


Cartoon: Bill Leak
Over 200 new people joined the Labor Party and there was a buzz of enthusiasm, even optimism, throughout the membership that frankly has been missing in recent times.

Last weekend I sparked off an internal (but carbon neutral) firestorm by saying Labor should reconsider its preference relationship with the Greens. My reasoning was simple - don’t for one minute believe that the Greens are Labor’s friend. They are like the Tories, they serve themselves first.

In NSW they tried to kill us by exhausting their vote putting us where they put Pauline Hanson – last. What does that tell you? That the Greens think Labor – the party that has gave us superannuation, family assistance, Medicare, anti discrimination, Mabo, land rights, the Franklin River to name a passing few – is no better than Pauline Hanson?

The Greens were successful in their work. Unfortunately, a half dozen or so good Labor MPs lost their seats as a result. Let’s be honest, while there will always be areas of agreement – it stands to reason - on a lot of things we are poles apart. No one should expect a free ride from Labor.

It has meant an interesting week for me, but that’s not the point. The Labor Party is not about its officials and what they may or may not say. The Labor Party is about its deeds, beliefs and its project for the nation.

Other parties serve their masters, whether on the Left or the Right. We serve those for whom their masters are themselves, their families and their suburbs.

This weekend marks the most important time of the year for NSW Labor, with over 1000 party members converging on Sydney’s Town Hall to take part in our annual conference. Boring? Lacking in vision? Void? Not a chance.

Our conferences and debates are not for the vertebrae challenged. Where the Liberal and National party conferences are flower arranging, air kisses, European cars and delegates falling over each other to agree, our conferences are about muscle and bone. Sure, these debates can get tough and earthy – a fact encouraged by a set that has delegates facing each other and not genuflecting towards the stage and leadership.

See how you go at Conference if you’re not up to it or half cooked in your convictions. The greats have passed through here. Gough Whitlam, Neville Wran, John Faulkner, Bob Carr and Paul Keating earned their stripes right here, debating policy on the floor of Sydney’s town hall.

And what a difference a year makes. A year ago, at our Annual Conference, NSW Labor was on its knees. The 2011 State Election loss devastated our grand party. The long term Labor administration had been thrown out by NSW voters and as this Conference has heard before, the voters don’t get it wrong. We mostly had ourselves to blame. In the true Labor way, all of this rightly sparked a period of soul searching and reflection.

I’d be lying if I didn’t acknowledge I’ve had some dark nights and thoughts in the last two years. Would we survive? Can we survive? Is Labor finished? Has the project been completed? What is left for Labor to do? At the same time, the party had to confront the membership challenge with party membership in NSW hitting a record low.

But throughout these dark nights, something always stood out for me from Labor’s grand past. We are resilient and we bounce back. It is in our soul and in the gravel laid out by our elders.

Through an aggressive reform and recruitment agenda, the ember of renewal can be found. We are changing how we develop our ideas – a new model of policy formation where the party members are brought into the process.

We are trialling community preselections - a new way of selecting candidates where the community gets to decide who the Labor candidate should be. At today’s conference we will even discuss changing how Labor selects its leader – a previous taboo. This is the work of the future.

Today I’ll be proudly telling the conference that Labor in NSW is growing again. This year we have recruited over 2700 people – proportionally the biggest increase since Governor General John Kerr dismissed Gough Whitlam. And there’s the rub – people are joining our Party for our outlook and our reasons.

When the Greens say we have no vision, what they really mean, is that we don’t have their vision. Too right we don’t. And as our 2700 new members have showed, the community wants more of our vison than theirs.

There is also optimism coming back into our show. When you believe in the capacity of Labor to make right as much as I do, then you can smell and feel that the party is starting to get its act together. It’s where the conference should be.

[horace]

hmmnn....the NSW right are creepy..

on a different issue, what do people think about compulsorary income management for NewStart and Disability Pension recipients?...this is modelled on the NT and WA experiments for Indigenous income security recipients and is being extended under trials

[JGK]

Gittins on the money as usual...

Spoiler:

[JGK]

hmmnn....the NSW right are creepy..

on a different issue, what do people think about compulsorary income management for NewStart and Disability Pension recipients?...this is modelled on the NT and WA experiments for Indigenous income security recipients and is being extended under trials

It's revolting.

[Mick Sawyer]

Gittins on the money as usual...

I reckon he's been nosing about in here.

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