6 - # of Straya threads or # of times we've changed Prime Minister in a decade?

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I feel like one of these days there must be some way out of the knot on refugee 'policy' (which as axver notes isn't really about policy at all). It would take a leader, a folksy happy warrior, with the right temperament to deliver a Reagan-style 'there you go again' moment. Just cut through the bullshit and fearmongering; and it is bullshit, given the relatively modest calls on this country's generosity.
 
Australia Votes 2019: Let's Talk Better Mileage vs. Kill The Bastards


(apologies for incredibly obscure old Onion reference that literally nobody will spot)
 
The other thing about the Labor party is that I think they've probably got a lot of supporters who hold fears about immegants. A lot of older, rusted-on ones, I'd think.

The Eltham stuff yesterday was really nice. There's a big community of elderly white people who are behind the whole Welcome to Eltham thing. Would not happen in Werribee. :lol:

Vlad n U 2 said:
Genuine kudos to you for giving them a shot.
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?? I mean I am a socialist, I guess. (They have a helpful explainer on 'what is socialism?') I've gotten on to it through people linking to it on Twitter, I'm sure you follow the same people I do (though I've never seen Gray Connolly tweet about it), I think there's some great stuff there, although there's one particularly Sydney Twitter user who is like literally Karl Marx in 2016, like I follow her because I am fascinated by the language she tweets in, I don't know if she speaks like it. It's so fucking dense and I feel she must be living in a bubble because like 0.0000002 percent of the population can engage with that.
 
The ALP have probably done the numbers and realise that taking a humane line on refugees will cost them more seats to the Libs than seats they will gain/protect from the Greens.

Simple political arithmetic with no willingness to advance policy on principle.

Though I suppose a fair chunk of the ALP Right retain a strong protectionist streak and don't give a shit about refugees. I know a guy like that. Loves to go on that there's not a single vote in refugees north of Bell Street.
 
cobl04 said:
?? I mean I am a socialist, I guess. (They have a helpful explainer on 'what is socialism?') I've gotten on to it through people linking to it on Twitter, I'm sure you follow the same people I do (though I've never seen Gray Connolly tweet about it), I think there's some great stuff there, although there's one particularly Sydney Twitter user who is like literally Karl Marx in 2016, like I follow her because I am fascinated by the language she tweets in, I don't know if she speaks like it. It's so fucking dense and I feel she must be living in a bubble because like 0.0000002 percent of the population can engage with that.
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That's good! Yeah, their ABCs of Socialism has proven to be very useful, especially after Bhaskar Sunkara gave away a free download link a while back on Twitter. I'm glad you're finding it helpful. (are you talking about Eleanor Robertson?)
 
By that logic, did Christensen think that Rudd was a swell guy in 2007?
 
Finally the plebiscite has been killed off by the Senate.

It's a shame Turnbull is a coward who won't pursue policy he believes in and damn the risk. I'd like to believe the electorate would view positively a leader with the courage of his convictions.

Turnbull and Rudd are proving rather similar in that they are willing to blink when their principles clash with political games.
 
They're both hollow men and they always were. Reflect for a moment that Turnbull could easily have ended up leading the Labor party.
 
Yeah I really don't think history will be kind to Turnbull. He'd be a sensational leader of the ALP. But he's chosen his path and I think he'll soon be little more than an old man throwing pathetic missives from the outer. He'll think himself a Keating but more closely resemble a Rudd.
 
I don't think he would be an awesome leader of the ALP actually. Frankly they're lucky he didn't join. His scintillating business career was mostly smoke and mirrors - lucking out with Ozemail twenty years ago does not make you a tech guru, as the NBN debacle shows us - and even to the extent that he was good at it, making money is a very different activity from effective leadership in a political sphere.

Honestly, I'm mostly surprised my private bet with myself that Turnbull gets rolled by Christmas looks unlikely to play out. Early in the new year maybe.
 
He invented it back in college with Al Gore, yes i heard that one before. Malcolm is truly a 'renaissance man', a giant for our times. A veritable Churchill. Not post-stroke 1950s Churchill, but Battle of Britain Churchill.
 
I love Churchill being this hero of conservatives everywhere. He was an entirely mediocre politician whose sole good performance came when he took the helm during a war already underway and being fought with a vengeance, and this performance was still not good enough to keep him in power at the end - which is remarkable, since war victory usually solidifies your grasp on the top office.

Most of the man's career stands as a condemnation of his character.
 
It was his oratory prowess, that has made him a revered figure, I think. I mean his most famous speech is about losing a battle with dignity.


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Churchill's one moment of greatness was being right about Hitler, but even there he wasn't the only one (Britain was rearming in earnest throughout the thirties, maybe not fast enough, but not negligibly either).

Churchill was the man of the moment in 1940 - I don't think moral encouragement is nothing, and he did play a part during a time when things looked extremely grim - but wrong at almost every other time in his life.

That said, the pejorative comparisons made between him and Chamberlain are wholly unfair and unwarranted.

His loss in 1945 was predictable enough. Wartime mobilisation had already introduced something of a Labour government by stealth, and I would suspect people had no interest in a return to the status quo.
 
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I heard about that and would rather punch myself a hundred times in the nuts than attend it.
 
There's another Sydney twitter dude I follow who got himself on the guestlist. He's quite funny, I hope he goes and gets fucking plastered and then writes about it, he works for Pedestrian.
 
cobl04 said:
There's another Sydney twitter dude I follow who got himself on the guestlist. He's quite funny, I hope he goes and gets fucking plastered and then writes about it, he works for Pedestrian.
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I want to be his friend.
 
Yeah, I figured, especially given how many of his friends paid homage to him on Halloween last year.
 
Sadly enough the cocksucker may well be right. See, where I think we might differ is not on who the enemy is but on what is wrong with this picture. The centre-left is blowing it, massively. I mean that the Queensland election is Labor's to lose, and I'd like to think they won't, but if they don't step up, then it'll be the same old bullshit as ever, with an extra twist of ugly (not that state-level government is all that critical in Australia).

Of course he might be wrong too. About Queensland, anyhow. It's such a backward place you know, returning wall to wall Labor governments since 1989 with two unhappy and brief exceptions. Queenslands, well, people in general, really hate privatisation.
 
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