5 - # of Straya threads or # of times Melbourne has been crowned world's best city

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Though that, of course, leads to the point that one major reason New Zealand stayed out of Australian federation was because of Australia's rampant racism. New Zealand did not want to see the policies applied to Aboriginals also applied to Maori. This was not entirely through the goodness of their hearts but through the simple reality that parts of the central North Island (the King Country, so named for the Maori King movement, and Te Urewera in particular) were still under de facto Maori sovereignty. The implementation of Australian policies would have, without question, led to open warfare on a catastrophic scale.

I love this cartoon from the federation debates that gets reprinted often:

c1926atl.gif


http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/cartoon/1926/lampooning-the-australian-federation

At the end of the 19th century there was a possibility that New Zealand would join the new Australian federation. Resistance to this proposal became a way in which New Zealanders began to distinguish themselves from their fellow colonials across the Tasman Sea. In this cartoon New Zealand, in the person of white-robed Zealandia, prefers to hold the hands of her Pacific neighbours rather than be lured into the clutches of the Australian ogre.

Sorry, I'm sort of getting into my zone here...
 
As far as the racism and/or mistrust toward successive waves of newcomers, it is indeed neither new, nor especially Australian. In the US as in Australia, it was the Irish and their popish ways at one time. Indeed circa the first world war, I'm not sure the general status of the Irish in Australia was much better than that of muslims today (and the Irish were very strong about building their own parallel institutions within the state, eg. the Catholic schools).
 
As far as New Zealand goes, thanks for that background there Axver - seriously. I guess I knew a little of that, in a vague and fuzzy way, but far from most or all of it.
 
Sorry, I'm sort of getting into my zone here...

Got my axvers interfering and they going gorillas, HUH

Seriously, fuck this country. Why do we even bother trying to defend it? What a fucking shithole born on the shittiest possible values. What good has even come here since 1788? Nice coffee??? cool, enjoy stepping over the bones of the mercilessly slaughtered and unmourned on the way to your favourite vegan boulangerie, dudes :down:
 
Yeah, I'm still partial to some harmless aspects of Australian society, but as a whole it's on a very unsavoury foundation that is unlikely to be rectified any time soon.
 
I'm partial to its remnant social democracy and think that this represents the best of us, and is not something that will come back in a hurry if extinguished.
 
Haha cheers guys. I've been spending too much time lately banging on in various settings about how we understand the colonial world all wrong. I think a lot of people at the time would have considered a map of Britain's antipodean possessions without New Zealand to look as odd as when Tasmania is left off maps today. Maybe moreso, because Tasmania's not one of our larger states while New Zealand was one of the big three colonies with Victoria and NSW.

As far as the racism and/or mistrust toward successive waves of newcomers, it is indeed neither new, nor especially Australian. In the US as in Australia, it was the Irish and their popish ways at one time. Indeed circa the first world war, I'm not sure the general status of the Irish in Australia was much better than that of muslims today (and the Irish were very strong about building their own parallel institutions within the state, eg. the Catholic schools).

This is a very good point. There were riots about (and by) the Irish! Probably some of our greatest civil unrest. And now who would consider the Irish to not be white?

Hell, I have a Greek friend who's always going on about "white people", but I mentally lump Greeks in with "white people" even though seventy years ago that definitely wasn't the case.

Yeah, I'm still partial to some harmless aspects of Australian society, but as a whole it's on a very unsavoury foundation that is unlikely to be rectified any time soon.

Mainly because it makes too many powerful white men too uncomfortable, and basically fucks up a whole lot of popular narratives that major political parties/movements rely upon.

I agree with Kieran about the remnant social democracy, though it's worrying to note how closely tied many of our early gains on labour rights and the welfare state were tied to White Australia (this happened to a less virulent but also regrettable extent in New Zealand too, focusing more specifically on the Chinese).
 
^The early and not so early Labor movement was certainly part of the White Australia edifice, but I'd like to think we can take the good and ditch the bad. Hell, women's suffrage had no small part to play in the rise of prohibition in the US, but nobody (sane) is suggesting rescinding the vote for women.
 
Not just the US! Probably the most important group for women's suffrage in Australia and New Zealand was the Women's Christian Temperance Union, which was an American import in the 1880s and became rapidly successful. Their most notable achievement, of course, was securing the vote for women, but they can also claim responsibility for the various local authorities that went dry. I don't know the details for Australian states, but would you believe that almost every general election in New Zealand between 1894 and 1987 (that date range is not a typo) included a referendum about whether to continue alcohol licensing or introduce prohibition! The 1919 one came really close to winning too, and from 1894 to 1908 the winning option was "reduction", whereby no new licenses were granted.
 
I did not know that about New Zealand's general election referenda. 'Reduction' sounds like a nice racket if you can get it. I just can't think of this stuff anymore without starting to think like Enoch Thompson.
 
I can see why they took "reduction" out after 1908 because yeah there's no way that wouldn't become a blatant racket.

I just did some searching to see if there were equivalents in Australia. Turns out the ACT was dry from 1911 to 1928, thanks to the same King O'Malley who stole the U from the Australian Labour Party's name. Basically as soon as federal parliament moved from Melbourne to Canberra the politicians made sure the ACT was "wet".

WA also had four prohibition referendums, none of which succeeded. But I haven't found details for elsewhere. I know Victoria had a "local option" where localities and districts could restrict their alcohol trade. Box Hill was famously a dry suburb of Melbourne.

And of course let's not forget the six o'clock swill that existed throughout Australia at various times between the 1910s and 1960s, which caused far greater problems than it ever solved.
 
Interesting... yeah, well the six o'clock swill was the main thing that leapt to my mind from the mid century era in most of Australia. Blokes would knock off at 5 and turn up completely smashed at 6.30 to beat their wives.

That sort of prohibition-instinct may get traction again in times to come, but it won't be the Christian temperance ladies' league, it will be the health lobbyists with their dismal daily dripfeed of press releases and jeremiads. It's not that alcohol cannot be abused, nor that alcohol businesses don't wield a lot of cultural clout that - where it intersects with sport particularly - could stand to be clipped back a bit, it's just that some (most?) of us can enjoy a glass of wine or two without going nuts and smashing someone's head in.
 
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I'd say the restrictions on tobacco show how this sort of thing should be done. It's an effective combination of reducing availability through impediments to access and steep price rises, well-resourced marketing campaigns to highlight the health effects and reduce its social popularity, and the creation of a lucrative source of government revenue to ensure it will never actually be made illegal so those who have both the interest and the resources to acquire tobacco can do so. It's a good model for illicit drugs, and perhaps provides some lessons for alcohol. I do not think booze should be so sharply restricted, and I would suggest it enjoys a social position far beyond that ever occupied by tobacco, but governments can build on the success drink-driving campaigns to now emphasise the health risks of excessive drinking (I say this as somebody whose liver has no idea what hit it this year) and they can also expand the tax base from alcohol. It's lucrative already but it can be tweaked, both to make more sense and to accrue revenue.

To date I think government taxation of alcohol has been a bit poorly thought-out at times. We saw that with the alcopop tax. Yes, there was a problem with teenagers binge-drinking alcopops, since they were 1. sweet, 2. marketed at them, and 3. attracted much lower tax than some other alcohols. But responding by simply whacking up the tax on that particular drink was a stupid solution that didn't consider the wider implications. Why do you think we now have so many ridiculous pseudo-alcopop flavoured ciders? Because the manufacturers just moved on to the next option that was taxed at a lower rate. If you're going to tax alcohol properly, do it consistently and in a way that doesn't just cause silly fads.

(The upside, however, is the much heightened popularity of cider. Sure there's heaps of shit on the market, especially the flavoured stuff that's never seen an apple, but it's also improved the availability of the good stuff. I remember before cider exploded, you were lucky to find even something as shit as Bulmers on tap. Now every pub has a cider, and a good pub has a good cider.)
 
I agree with most of that, with the proviso that I don't want to give ammunition to people who really do regard any alcohol as simply harmful, period, and to be in the same basket as tobacco.

The 'alcopops' tax was just your typical silly moral panic reaction.

Speaking personally, I have to chuckle at the health diagram on the side of my weekly Stanley wine casks. "See this picture of a glass? That's all you can drink a day or you'll die'. Yeah, ok... fuck off.

A sensible approach to regulated availability and taxation would seem to recommend itself to all sort of drugs (I suppose there are exceptions like meth where it's just such bad news that it should be flat out illegal). One thing is for sure, in general and historically, the human animal has a propensity to seek some relief/stimulation/altered states of mind.
 
Yeah, the "alcohol is like the worst drug ever" people irritate the hell out of me, and I have no particular desire to pay anything more for booze - it's quite pricey enough thank you - but there is a public health case to be made. Not just for regulation and taxation, but for campaigns to alert people to the health risks. If you're still happy to drink knowing the risks, good, go for it, but I'm not sure many people are adequately aware of them, especially not young people. Everybody, even your most idiotic young teenagers, now knows that smoking causes cancer and willingly exposes themselves to the risk if they choose to do it; same for the obvious risks associated with driving and the need to wear a seatbelt, be sober, and drive at the speed limit. If we're going to be pumping shitloads of tax revenue into public healthcare to treat ailments related to excessive alcohol consumption, then it's hard to argue against taking at least some measures to reduce the incidence of these problems. A sensible campaign to highlight risks, combat alcoholism, and promote proper enjoyment of alcohol would be good - one that doesn't demonise all drinking and isn't as insufferably lame and useless as "enjoy responsibly".
 
Well absolutely, some highlighting of the dangers (psychological as much as physical) of flat-out abuse of the substance isn't unreasonable. I'm not sure the risks of moderate(ish) drinking are anything terribly scary assuming that

a. you're not pregnant
b. you're not driving.

Or no scarier than anything else in life short of living in a glass box. I mean yes, ok cancers of various kinds probably. But then we're into, 'you'll die of cancer if you eat a steak' territory (you might, but it could also be that everyone lives longer than they used to and, well, many cancers are diseases of later life).

I mean if we're talking liver failure or blackouts or fugue-induced violence, that obviously isn't anything I recognise as moderate.

I think we should have a government education campaign to teach kids that it's cool to enjoy the finer things in life. "Coming to the club tonight, Jonno?" "No, Farquhar, I shall be reading the new Franzen while I enjoy a glass of Hardy Bros. Pinot Noir." Maybe they could do an ad in the form of an incredibly lame rap of some kind, because that's what the kids pay attention to nowadays.
 
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I like to believe the whole don't-drink-while-pregnant thing is common knowledge, but I'm shocked by how often it happens. If anything alcohol-related needs greater promotion of the risks, that's a lead candidate from my experience.

As for the "you'll die if you eat a steak" thing, sure there's statistical evidence that those who eat the most red meats experience a marginally higher instance of certain cancers than those who eat the least. But - and this is further to the point you were already making - to read that statistic out of context is misleading. It's not like tobacco, which is always going to cause net harm to your health. This particular heightened risk of red meat needs to be considered alongside the health benefits it affords to get the full picture. If you're happy to take the risk, and think the various benefits and/or taste are worth it, then medium or rare? Alcohol is not dissimilar, especially red wine.

And I would totally support a series of Wine Snobbery courses being introduced as mandatory high school subjects.
 
On your second paragraph... eeeeg-zactly. We are talking about marginal risks, accompanying something that itself isn't bad per se (it's food; maybe you don't want to live on nothing but it, but it is food and has value).

Wine snobbery courses sound like the perfect Friday afternoon bludge subject for today's highschoolers, and I'd approve it.
 
Reports indicate that Ian Macfarlane is defecting from the Libs to the Nats. The man himself does not appear to have confirmed this, but the press gallery is treating it as basically a done deal. Apparently he's a friend of Turnbull's as well, so this will really sting.

Rumour has it he's not the only one jumping ship either. Scott Buchholz - who lost the party whip role when Turnbull ousted Abbott - has been mentioned.

Oh, and there's a suggestion that this is actually part of a succession plan, and that when Truss moves on soon, he will be replaced by a Joyce-Macfarlane ticket. Now, I realise Joyce has been the most prominent Nat for some time, but he's also a fucking idiot and I was hoping the whole heir-apparent thing was just a delusion held by him rather than a serious prospect.
 
Joyce is an embarrassment, and to this day I don't understand how this so called plain old accountant from Goondiwindi ended up as a creepy confidant to the Rineharts.

Interesting if true about Macfarlane. When he first left his role in the Queensland Graingrowers Association to run for politics, people assumed it would be as a National. The Nationals were not happy. Think of it as a rightwing version of Peter Garrett's political career.
 
Is Macfarlane your MP, Kieran? Because one of my friends here wondered if there were some preselection shenanigans going on in his electorate that gave Macfarlane the impetus to jump ship. But I doubt that, given the secrecy that has apparently surrounded negotiations through to today. It seems to me the obvious conclusion is the correct one: brazen self-interest. If Macfarlane stays a Lib, he's a backbencher. If he goes Nat, he's likely back in the ministry and could rise higher.

I'm most curious to see if he brings anybody else with him, especially if it's anybody from outside Queensland.
 
Is Macfarlane your MP, Kieran? Because one of my friends here wondered if there were some preselection shenanigans going on in his electorate that gave Macfarlane the impetus to jump ship. But I doubt that, given the secrecy that has apparently surrounded negotiations through to today. It seems to me the obvious conclusion is the correct one: brazen self-interest. If Macfarlane stays a Lib, he's a backbencher. If he goes Nat, he's likely back in the ministry and could rise higher.

I'm most curious to see if he brings anybody else with him, especially if it's anybody from outside Queensland.

Yes, yes he is. But as for any behind the scenes stuff about preselections, I would have no idea. My impression is that he is as safe as safe can be as the local member, so it probably is personal ambition. Who knows, he could end up replacing Warren Who as the leader of the Incredible Disappearing Party.
 
Seriously, how long do the Nats have left in them? I suppose they're firmly entrenched in a few areas, but it's taken less for other parties to completely unravel, including here (looking at you, UAP).

I only followed the Guardian's live blog, but it seems that question time didn't address Macfarlane/defections at all. The ALP kept gunning after Mal Brough, an issue in which I should take more interest than I do. The guy definitely should be sacked from the ministry, but it doesn't look like that's happening in a hurry. Do people care enough about this for the ALP to push as hard as they are?
 
I think that they have a generation at most. They're being cannibalised by the Liberals on the one hand, by rural independents (some former Nationals) on the other, and, I think, one of these days, the Greens might start to make inroads too, particularly in areas where issues like coal seam gas are at stake.

The Greens could go a few different ways. Confined to their inner city redoubts, is one fate. Kiss goodbye to any hope of Bob Brown's aspiration to be a party of government if so. If they make a play for rural Australia, the game could change. I know not enough to know if this is remotely on the horizon. I see some sign of it now and again, but then mostly, it's just business as usual (ie. at election time, Liberals, Nats or assorted conservative outliers win a seat).

Brough is as dirty as it gets, but I don't really understand why Labor are spending so much time on this, at this time. They are just making themselves look irrelevant.
 
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It's safe to say that renaming the party from Country to the Nationals did not achieve its objective, as the party's support has only contracted. Obviously part of that is the result of urbanisation, but it's unavoidable that since the eighties they have ceased to frequently differentiate themselves from their coalition partner or to take a stand against the Libs when required on issues that matter to their constituents. No wonder the independents you mention have been successful, and in most cases have represented a loss of significant talent (especially Tony Windsor; Bob Katter is the obvious exception - though i guess he has a talent for populism).

I do wonder where the Greens will go. They had success in rural NSW at their last state election and it could point the way forward. Plus there are a good number of young professionals who twenty years ago would vote Lib without thinking who have come across - they cannot support the ALP, but they are passionate about marriage equality and climate change and similar, so they vote 1 Green, 2 Lib. It's part of how the Greens won Prahran in the Victorian state election.

The question, I think, is what happens to all of these young Green voters (of which I am obviously one, even if I am of the more traditional "let my preference ultimately flow to the ALP" variety). When they're forty and move to the suburbs, or when they're sixty and move to a small coastal town, do they keep voting Green or do they go back to the ALP or Liberals? Can the Greens survive as the party of social liberalism after the inevitable success of marriage equality? Can they hold onto the social democrats like me? I think it's hard to predict an answer - but I also think they won't implode like the Democrats. They will, if nothing else, continue to matter in the Senate.
 
Oh, and I will say this: if the Greens ever get into a position to matter in forming government (most likely as a junior but influential coalition partner to the ALP), they better fucking have a switched-on, charismatic, popular leader informed by some talented and perceptive strategists. That moment will be absolute do-or-die for them. Any blunder and they will probably be toast, in the sense of having any further chance at real power rather than just tootling about causing a nuisance in the Senate. If they nail it, it would be a springboard to bigger and better things.

(I suspect, however, this is more likely to happen in New Zealand, where the Greens still can't pick up a local seat thanks to first-past-the-post for that half of the ballot, but enjoy a stronger nationwide party vote than their Australian counterpart and as a result enjoy good parliamentary representation. If NZ Labour can't fucking find a halfway decent leader any time soon - and it looks very poor on that front right now - the Greens may fancy their chances to, if not overtake them, at least be taken very seriously alongside them.)
 
It's official: Macfarlane is a Nat.

He's trying to spin this as a vote of confidence in Turnbull! During the presser he said he had two options: leave parliament or join the Nats. Interesting.
 
It's safe to say that renaming the party from Country to the Nationals did not achieve its objective, as the party's support has only contracted. Obviously part of that is the result of urbanisation, but it's unavoidable that since the eighties they have ceased to frequently differentiate themselves from their coalition partner or to take a stand against the Libs when required on issues that matter to their constituents. No wonder the independents you mention have been successful, and in most cases have represented a loss of significant talent (especially Tony Windsor; Bob Katter is the obvious exception - though i guess he has a talent for populism).

I do wonder where the Greens will go. They had success in rural NSW at their last state election and it could point the way forward. Plus there are a good number of young professionals who twenty years ago would vote Lib without thinking who have come across - they cannot support the ALP, but they are passionate about marriage equality and climate change and similar, so they vote 1 Green, 2 Lib. It's part of how the Greens won Prahran in the Victorian state election.

The question, I think, is what happens to all of these young Green voters (of which I am obviously one, even if I am of the more traditional "let my preference ultimately flow to the ALP" variety). When they're forty and move to the suburbs, or when they're sixty and move to a small coastal town, do they keep voting Green or do they go back to the ALP or Liberals? Can the Greens survive as the party of social liberalism after the inevitable success of marriage equality? Can they hold onto the social democrats like me? I think it's hard to predict an answer - but I also think they won't implode like the Democrats. They will, if nothing else, continue to matter in the Senate.

Well I have one answer to some of the questions you pose there. The answer is that the Greens, over a course of decades, become a conservative (small c) party with an interest in matters climate change and sustainability. Their voters age with them. Look to the difference between the labour movements of the 1890s, and Labor as a governing party a couple of generations later. They had some good governments though. In no way was it socialism, but some good was done. Chifley almost serves as our FDR if you squint a bit ('the light on the hill' is probably the single most potent, resonant piece of phrasing any Labor figure has ever penned).

I'm not implying some kind of rejection of the social reforms they currently support, just that presumably at some point that will be very firmly the status quo.

I think the Greens have come too far, and indeed become too entrenched, to go the way of the Democrats (were they really ever more than a febrile product of the personality cult of Don Chipp, and to a lesser extent, Cheryl Kernot?)

Now if the Greens go national, some day, in big way, they will inevitably develop a conservative wing. It makes perfect sense. Where they might hit bumpy times is what to do about reconciling - if that is even possible - the actual ex-communist elements (the veteran, relatively marginal, figures here and there who provide a grain of truth to the whole right wing 'watermelon' jibe). Could be the Greens have a split in their future.
 
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Oh, and I will say this: if the Greens ever get into a position to matter in forming government (most likely as a junior but influential coalition partner to the ALP), they better fucking have a switched-on, charismatic, popular leader informed by some talented and perceptive strategists. That moment will be absolute do-or-die for them. Any blunder and they will probably be toast, in the sense of having any further chance at real power rather than just tootling about causing a nuisance in the Senate. If they nail it, it would be a springboard to bigger and better things.

(I suspect, however, this is more likely to happen in New Zealand, where the Greens still can't pick up a local seat thanks to first-past-the-post for that half of the ballot, but enjoy a stronger nationwide party vote than their Australian counterpart and as a result enjoy good parliamentary representation. If NZ Labour can't fucking find a halfway decent leader any time soon - and it looks very poor on that front right now - the Greens may fancy their chances to, if not overtake them, at least be taken very seriously alongside them.)

I know what Labor here thinks about the Greens (in the main, it's open war), but it's less clear what the Greens will do if they have the chance. In a way I wonder if they haven't already blown it, back during Rudd's halcyon days. Fortunately, nobody remembers anything anymore.
 
Well I guess Macfarlane thinks there will be a second term for Turnbull. Sadly, he's probably correct.

On the other hand, guess who shows no sign of leaving parliament? Tony. Which is funny because, unlike Rudd, there will be no return for him. Not even a two minutes to election night return culminating in a wildly jovial speech about saving furniture. Ever. Ever. Ever. Morrison maybe, if things go flakey. But not Tony.
 
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