Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi #7

[cobl04]

Jesus fucking christ do I hate the Liberal party.

 

[kabigon]

Don't worry, the almighty coal gods will save us.

 

[Axver]

There is a case to have uniform penalty rates for the weekend - having separate rates for Saturday and Sunday reflects a cultural division that has faded (in part because of declining religiosity, but actually mainly because Saturday was not always seen as an integral part of the weekend). It also promoted some accounting inefficiencies, if you want to look at it that way. But in suggesting there should be a uniform weekend penalty rate, I always advocated that it be set at the higher Sunday rate, because despite all this bullshit about "agility" and "modern connected 24/7 world", people clearly still value their weekends highly and it's an unsocial time to work.

I loved when Kelvin Thomson tried to contact one of the groups seeking the abolition of weekend penalty rates - by ringing them on Saturdays and Sundays and never getting a response.

 

[Axver]

Is it just me, or is the Age now starting to agitate against the Dandrews state government?

 

[cobl04]

Links?

 

[Axver]

I can't find the article from a couple of days ago that prompted that post now, but their reporting of him now always seems to come with a negative or pessimistic slant. Admittedly I live in a Brunswick bubble, but I haven't spoken to anybody who's said anything negative about him. If anything, opinions are just a mild "yeah he's fine".

Today the Victoria section of the front page currently leads with "government can no longer ignore tide of public opinion". The actual article is headed differently and is more reasonable, though the idea Andrews moved slowly reflects the destructiveness of gauging reactions by hyper-obsessively following the 24/7 news cycle. The story broke on Thursday, and two days later the speaker and deputy speaker were gone—a massive shake-up, and in the past that would've been considered extremely rapid action. It still is when you compare it to federal intransigence over far greater misdeeds (Bishop, Ley, Sinodinos, the list goes on). This is exactly the sort of shoddy political reporting that we do not need. Here's the piece: Daniel Andrews must do more than tinker around the edges on MPs' entitlements

 

[cobl04]

Bill Leak died.

 

[Vlad n U 2]

Good riddance.

 

[Kieran McConville]

so how about them Mets that WA election tomorrow, eh?

 

[intedomine]

Gushing tributes over Leak in Australian were pathetic. He was "brave" apparently

 

[Axver]

Thank fuck we won't have to cop another racist or homophobic cartoon from that cretin Bill Leak.

As for WA, aaaahahahahaha see ya Barnett. What unbelievable swings, even by WA standards. The composition of the upper house may be a little worrying though. Fluoride Free WA and Daylight Saving Party both get seats; probably One Nation and the Liberal Democrats too. This is what you get when you have a malapportioned upper house that still uses Group Voting Tickets.

 

[cobl04]

So was the ON result good or laughable? I've been away so only catching up now.

 

[Axver]

It seems to depend on how you read it. I haven't had a chance to look in detail, but on the face of it I would suggest the result is a mild disappointment for the party but still a concern for all of us who aren't bigots and racists. Basically, statewide they polled at only about half the level predicted by polling, but they did not contest every lower house seat so that skews the figures somewhat. In seats where they ran, they still underperformed but not as drastically, and they did well enough in rural areas for the Nats to have legitimate cause for concern, especially if the preference deal with the Libs is repeated elsewhere.

But on that preference deal, it burned the Libs. Hard. Their vote was catastrophic, worse than most predicted. The ALP were expected to win a swathe of seats, but through strong swings in marginal areas. Instead they got a massive statewide swing that allowed them to win theoretically safe Liberal seats. No doubt the deal with One Nation played its part in driving voters to the ALP, especially as One Nation fractured over the final week.

 

[DaveC]

you probably know all about this guy already but i'd never heard of him and this is cool so fuck off you sick cunts.

 

[LemonMelon]

Has there been an Aussie national holiday named after the subject of this video yet? Because there damn well should be.



HATERS GONNA HATE

 

[cobl04]

???

 

[Axver]

Man, one day there's going to be an amazing biography of Mark Latham.

 

[Kieran McConville]

The guy's another in the long and classic line of Labor freakouts. Not many Labor people leave the fold, but when they do, it's fireworks all the way down. There are two men irredeemably ruined by losing; Latham and Hayden. You just imagine the trajectories not taken. I'm not saying Latham isn't a pretty unpleasant character, but losing that one, 2004, against Howard, that's got a lot to do with a lot of things.

If this was the 1950s, they'd have found him an ambassadorship to somewhere or other and got the press to not write about the crinkling of aluminium foil under his suit everytime he moved around in a room.

 

[Axver]

There's probably a great book to be written about what losing an election you "should" have won does to a person. Australia furnishes three brilliant examples in the space of eleven years: Hewson, Beazley, Latham. Ol' mate Latho has perhaps the least reason to feel mortally aggrieved of the three, yet he has by far gone off the rails the most, and what little public support he retains comes almost exclusively from the side of politics that hated his guts in 2004. It's an interesting comparison to Hewson, who has remained fairly true to his principles and in doing so has lost support from some of his traditional base while picking up a fair chunk of respect from the centre and soft left that he never had in the nineties.

But then you've got Beazley. If any man should be a bitter, petty loose cannon right now, it's him. Who would really blame him? If you somehow lost one election you actually fucking won, and then had your chance to cruise to power stripped from you by the party in favour of a new golden boy who proved to be a walking nest of white ants, there's not a person alive who would be startled if you spent your time spouting drivel in the crank press and engaging in bizarre fights with people you feel betrayed your cause. And yet there's Beazley, still true to the labour movement, a sensible and unruffled man to the end. Does he have a bunch of voodoo dolls he stabs every morning just to keep the fury at bay?

 

[cobl04]

Mark Latham doesn't deserve an ounce of sympathy or forethought about what effect losing that election might have had on him. He's an absolute cunt.

 

[Vlad n U 2]

The little I've seen of Hewson on TV suggests that he is very reasonable for a Liberal - and I found it particularly startling. Could be part of an argument for how far to the right mainstream Australian politics has drifted.

 

[Axver]

Yeah, Hewson is a level-headed and thoughtful contributor to public debate. I may disagree with him on a number of points, but he actually brings a depth and rationality sorely absent from a lot of commentators who purport to represent the right.

I suspect he's becoming much like Malcolm Fraser - it's not that they have drifted from the Libs, but that the Libs have drifted from them in their attempt to co-opt the One Nation vote. And, well, the general lack of talent in that party today doesn't help. Say what you will about their personal politics, at least the likes of Hewson, Costello, Downer, etc. were vaguely competent at what they did. And you sure could reason with them more than you can reason with fuckwits like Christensen, Abetz, Brandis, Dutton, and so on.

 

[cobl04]

I like Hewson. Not sure about Downer, he always seemed like a prick to me. And there were people like Vanstone and Reith who were just as big names.

But your point is well made. And the fact that Turnbull, who we always assumed would stay reasonable, has completely sold out, tells you were the Libs are at.

 

[Kieran McConville]

But then you've got Beazley. If any man should be a bitter, petty loose cannon right now, it's him. Who would really blame him? If you somehow lost one election you actually fucking won, and then had your chance to cruise to power stripped from you by the party in favour of a new golden boy who proved to be a walking nest of white ants, there's not a person alive who would be startled if you spent your time spouting drivel in the crank press and engaging in bizarre fights with people you feel betrayed your cause. And yet there's Beazley, still true to the labour movement, a sensible and unruffled man to the end. Does he have a bunch of voodoo dolls he stabs every morning just to keep the fury at bay?

Beazley, for all his failings, does strike one as a pretty decent character. And he was always - I think - of a fairly conservative end of the Labor movement. Muscular Christianity and all that. You could see him turning into another Hayden if he was a different sort of person. But he never has.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Mark Latham doesn't deserve an ounce of sympathy or forethought about what effect losing that election might have had on him. He's an absolute cunt.

Yes, well, that's a little bit like the 'we mustn't try to understand the terrorists' meme after 9/11. Sympathy has nothing to do with it. I wouldn't piss on Mark Latham if he was on fire.

 

[Kieran McConville]

I have little time for John Hewson. He may well be a reasonable sort, in and of himself, and he certainly to his credit has no truck with the anti-science nonsense of climate change denialism and other such shibboleths. But the platform he was peddling in 1993 was standard Thatcherism/Reaganism. In some ways it was probably the most extreme policy platform the Liberal Party has ever taken to an election. Howard walked a lot of that stuff back in the interests of, you know, winning.

 

[Kieran McConville]

And then of course there's poor old Arthur Calwell, who pretty much did win (except not quite, just like Beazley) in 1961, and then went on to lose two more elections before being shafted in favour of Gough Whitlam. If he was bitter, he didn't have long to stew in it, politicians were so much older in those days, it was more or less a 'till death do we part' proposition.

 

[Axver]

I like Hewson. Not sure about Downer, he always seemed like a prick to me. And there were people like Vanstone and Reith who were just as big names.

But your point is well made. And the fact that Turnbull, who we always assumed would stay reasonable, has completely sold out, tells you were the Libs are at.

Downer was a deeply flawed man, and not the finest member of his long-standing political family, but I wouldn't consider him down in the same minor league as the mess of Libs we've got now. Vanstone and Reith can get fucked eight ways from Sunday, yes.

It's insane that Turnbull is both party leader and one of its biggest donors, and yet cannot assert his influence. He's genuinely terrified the party will split. I'm not sure he realises that he should call the bluff of the ten or so ratbags on the social reactionary fringe of his party, because if they walked, most of them would lose their seats to moderate Liberal candidates at the next election.

And then of course there's poor old Arthur Calwell, who pretty much did win (except not quite, just like Beazley) in 1961, and then went on to lose two more elections before being shafted in favour of Gough Whitlam. If he was bitter, he didn't have long to stew in it, politicians were so much older in those days, it was more or less a 'till death do we part' proposition.

ALP history for the 1950s and 1960s is insane. Menzies never ever should have been in power for as long as he was.

And I forgot to quote it, but it's interesting what you say about Hewson's policy extremism. I'll pay it economically - the current party is riven with contradictions, in that they bleat about free enterprise and want to deregulate/privatise the shit out of stuff, except for the stuff where regulation or public ownership win them votes. Hewson was more ideologically pure, if you can put it that way. But in terms of rank social extremism, and of denying research if it doesn't suit a pre-determined narrative, the current party is on the fucking moon whether your point of comparison is Hewson or the left. Well, I guess if your point of comparison is the left, they're on a Martian moon.

 

[cobl04]

18C defeated. Looking forward to our right-wing columnists spending 99.99999999% of their time shitting their pants about this for the next three months. Stupid cunts

 

[Kieran McConville]

And I forgot to quote it, but it's interesting what you say about Hewson's policy extremism. I'll pay it economically - the current party is riven with contradictions, in that they bleat about free enterprise and want to deregulate/privatise the shit out of stuff, except for the stuff where regulation or public ownership win them votes. Hewson was more ideologically pure, if you can put it that way. But in terms of rank social extremism, and of denying research if it doesn't suit a pre-determined narrative, the current party is on the fucking moon whether your point of comparison is Hewson or the left. Well, I guess if your point of comparison is the left, they're on a Martian moon.

Economics was exactly what I was referring to. Hewson-as-Liberal-saviour was operating during the high water mark of hard Thatcherism/Reaganism. Hewson in 1993 was like a young Milton Friedman with hair.

We got the softish version under a longrunning kinda-sorta-Labor government, but the opposition became increasingly unhinged during those years. Hewson was their hail mary pass. I am thankful, for all his social liberalism, that he crashed and burned in 93. Also, I have some dim direct recollection of those times, and he was not immune to the same party pressures to flip the switch to reactionary from time to time.

I doubt very much whether he has moderated his preferred economic prescriptions in the decades since. But he probably has enough sense to know that 'reform' goes down like a lead balloon just at present.


Also I'd make the observation that in the modern Liberal Party, when social liberalism meets the remnant economic cargo cult, it is social liberalism, not the cargo cult, that blinks first. Exhibit a; Malcolm Turnbull (not that I think he believes, or ever believed, in anything much really. He may own a few Bill Henson photos, but I'd be surprised if he's read much).