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Vlad, I do wonder what news organisations you like, since you usually preface a link with a comment about not liking the organisation. :lol:

Hey! I've always said I've liked the Australian section of The Guardian!
 
I prefer the Australian section of the Guardian to the parts of it that are... not that. But it's a low bar.

Also the entire website rapidly becomes a sort of global mashup once you scroll below the very first headlines (and sometimes not even then; for example pretty much any incident in the UK will immediately receive top of site billing 'what we know so far!' (bugger-all) and so on; so it's hard to differentiate.
 
Had to love the breathless reportage yesterday of what The Census Tells Us About Ourselves. Given the circumstances in which last year's census were undertaken, I assign it very, very, very little credibility. Another item for the memory hole...

Not to mention most of the 'revelations' fall into the 'who gives a shit' category. For me at any rate.
 
Hey! I've always said I've liked the Australian section of The Guardian!

:lol:

But seriously, what outlets would you recommend with minimal qualification?

Still hangin' in there with the plebiscite, huh. What's stopping them, if it's so frigging important?

The Senate.

Which justifies the "aren't they?" after your comment of "But they're in government".

Had to love the breathless reportage yesterday of what The Census Tells Us About Ourselves. Given the circumstances in which last year's census were undertaken, I assign it very, very, very little credibility. Another item for the memory hole...

Not to mention most of the 'revelations' fall into the 'who gives a shit' category. For me at any rate.

I was definitely worried about the quality of this census for fairly obvious professional reasons (I am very heavily reliant on the old censuses at times), so I was actually surprised there was a pretty good response rate in the end. Future analysis might sometimes need qualification, but not as badly as I feared.

The Daily Telegraph beat-up about Sydney as "Chinatown" and similar reportage shows many journos haven't the first ability to read statistics - or, worse, know exactly what the stats say and don't care that they're reporting them in a misleading fashion to get clicks/sales.
 
They know exactly what they say. Same as Daily Cunt saying "Muslims are up 146%" or whatever it was, having risen from 0.2% to 0.5% in 20 years or something.
 
I had a dream the other night where the Coalition had oozed to another victory, and in this this dream, we woke up on the day and realised that Labor had forgotten to actually run a campaign. In fact in the dream I think that they might have been sheepishly advocating a vote for the Coalition. It was... not a good dream.
 
Anyone in Melbourne want 4 free tickets to a taping of Shaun Micallef's Mad As Hell tonight?? It's in Elsternwick at 5:30 so if you want them let me know ASAP :up:
 
They give a link to an Eventbrite signup page on Facebook when the next season is about to start again, and if you miss out there's a standby list too. I've been a few times and it's always great fun. If Tuesdays weren't busy for me I'd be tempted to go every week.
 
Holy fuck Scott Ludlam just resigned upon discovering that he still holds Kiwi citizenship and is thus ineligible as a dual citizen.

Should move to NZ and run for the Greens there, as NZ has no problems with dual citizens as MPs. (If I ever stand for office, guess which country it will be in.)
 
It's a fucking dreadful, archaic law that needlessly limits the talent pool for public office and the public service.
 
So what happens in this situation? I mean, filling the spot he is vacating? I should know, but I'm a little fuzzy. It is within the purview of the government in his home state, yes?
 
So what happens in this situation? I mean, filling the spot he is vacating? I should know, but I'm a little fuzzy. It is within the purview of the government in his home state, yes?



It depends on whether his election in 2016 is ruled invalid, in which case third on the Greens list gets it. If it's just treated as a resignation, party can nominate whoever they like—even Ludlam himself if he renounces NZ citizenship.
 
Ok, I thought it might be something along those lines. I guess time will tell. He does come off as one of their better performers, but who knows how that'll go.
 
Some good observations here from occasional blogger John Quiggin:

I’ve made this point before, but I’m constantly reading articles about the rising share of “protest” votes going to “minor parties” in which the set of minor parties excludes the National Party. The reason is, of course, that the Nationals are a long-established party which, with a few state-level exceptions, operates in permanent coalition with the Liberals.

But, for all practical purposes, the same is true of the Greens. Roughly speaking, Labor and the Greens are in the position the Liberals and Nationals (and previously the Country Party) were for most of the 20th century. They fight three-cornered contests, often bitterly, and do a lot of agonising about preference swaps, coalitions and so on. But, when push comes to shove in terms of forming governments, they almost always line up together, whether in a coalition, with a formal agreement, or with informal support.

The most important difference between the two is that the Greens get more votes from a wider range of electorates. The difference that drives the spurious analysis of “protest parties” is that the coalition between Labor and the Greens is less formal and more fractious than that between the Liberals and Nationals.

If you count Labor and the Greens as a coalition, then the rise of protest parties in Australia appears primarily as a crackup of the political right. We’ve seen a profusion of rightwing protest parties, with only the Xenophon group in the centre, and nothing much at all on the left. That differs from the situation in some other countries, where social democratic parties have embraced austerity and collapsed (Greece, Netherlands) or where the established leadership has been pushed aside (UK and possibly soon US also). I have some ideas about this, but I’ll have to write about them later.

But, coming back to the main point, a consistent analysis should treat both the Nationals and Greens as minor parties, or else neither of them.
 
Oh my fucking god the Greens just lost another deputy leader, Larissa Waters.

She's a dual citizen. She was born in Canada to Australian parents and the law about dual citizenship there changed a week after she was born. She believed she was not a citizen and had to actively seek it by age 21, which was true when she was born. But I'm guessing, without having read the text of the law that came into force later in February 1977, that those born under the old law who were yet to reach the age of 21 were covered by the new law.

Fuck me.

Also, meant to respond to what Kieran posted but honestly not much more I can add than agreement. Though I wonder where to now for the Greens after Ludlam and Waters! Not only have they lost two senior figures, but, well, for this to happen once is an accident; twice looks like ineptitude.
 
Please oh please let Cory Bernardi turn out to be a citizen of, I don't know, the Third Reich.
 
Is it hyperbolic to say that the Greens are more or less dead in the water now?

Please oh please let Cory Bernardi turn out to be a citizen of, I don't know, the Third Reich.

Can we charge Eric Abetz on being the nephew of a Nazi and who-clearly-hasn't-learned-based-on-his-own-ideology-act?
 
I think we are far enough out from an election that the damage for the Greens will be contained. If there were an election in the next few months this would be worse.

I also think most rival parties know they too are vulnerable to this - and have experienced it themselves. Coming out all guns blazing opens you to having your rivals investigating all of your MPs' eligibility, state as well as federal, and if they find something the blowback will be worse than any shot you fired. "There but for the grace of god go I" is the sensible attitude for a rival party. Ten bucks there is at least one ALP or LNP member of an Australian parliament who is ineligible.

But I do think this will impede the Greens both in terms of parliamentary performance during the current term and in growing their vote at the next election. Their language about Larissa is stronger than about Ludlam with regards to her coming back. I get the impression she will renounce her Canadian citizenship and stand as the lead Green candidate at the next election. But I fucking hope Ludlam comes back. He's a good bloke, one of the most capable politicians from any party, and he commands a considerable personal vote in WA.

Can we charge Eric Abetz on being the nephew of a Nazi and who-clearly-hasn't-learned-based-on-his-own-ideology-act?

No kidding.
 
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