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

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
Haha, my girlfriend (who is living in France) was like "I need help to vote" so I got drunk and spent like two hours writing her up a super basic document (I didn't realise how fucking many candidates there are for the Victorian senate) and she's pretty much gonna do the same as me, vote 1-6 above the line for all the left parties not called Socialist Alternative.

She lives in Goldstein which is an incredibly safe Liberal seat, and with the new Liberal candidate being gay will appeal to the rich but socially progressive young voters so I just said vote 1-2 Greens/Sex.

They don't participate in elections I don't think.
 
I'm guessing he meant Socialist Alliance.

Looking forward to reviewing them and the SEP soon. Wrote my One Nation review yesterday and felt uncomfortable even being on their website.
 
Yeah, for all my criticisms of today's socialism and unbearable campus activists, I've always put the socialist parties high in my preferences, definitely above the ALP or the Sex Party.

Hell, this time around I'm sufficiently concerned about the failure of parties such as Sex to articulate a good economic position that I may put them below the ALP, rather than using the ALP as my cutoff of parties I like or don't mind too much.

But then I remember how angry I am about the ALP being complicit in offshore detention, data retention, not passing marriage equality while they had the chance, etc., etc. So the exact order of my preferences remains uncertain only a week out (except, of course, Greens 1).
 
There has to be a price in it for Labor, a price to pay for their bipartisanship on the offshore gulag (which it is). That is pretty much the only reason the Greens are potentially getting a no.1 from me; aside from obviously agreeing with their environmental raison d'etre, I am lukewarm about them. For various historical and cultural reasons they are presently serving as a de facto home for unimpressed social democrats, but that does not make them a social democratic party.

I mostly wish Labor were better. On some fronts they are quietly getting better; you will notice that the hard-edged market rhetoric has mostly departed with the true believers like Latham and Emerson, even if a whiff of Third Way politics still hangs around the room. On other fronts, less so.

And it's not even much of a price, considering that Labor obviously will benefit in the first instance from the resulting preferences.
 
Last edited:
For various historical and cultural reasons they are presently serving as a de facto home for unimpressed social democrats, but that does not make them a social democratic party.

Co-signed.

Though I think the Greens have always been more of a natural home for me than the ALP. I'm strongly supportive of the environmental component, and I've never shared the idolisation of the working class that permeates much Labourism (and socialism).
 
I suppose my perspective on the Labor or social-democratic tradition is that;

1. yeah, 'working class rhetoric' can get a bit on the nose, but whether they accept it or not, everyone who relies primarily on their wage or salary (or equivalent) to live is the working class. I suppose the picture can get a little blurry with certain aspects of the so called 'professional classes', but if you're an untenured academic, for instance, just for instance, then you're working class. It is the right's great devilish genius to convince people otherwise, pit them against each other.

2. It implicitly excludes those shut out of work altogether (whose ranks will swell tenfold in coming decades, you read it here first), although at least the centre-left pays some heed to the importance of a social safety net.
 
Last edited:
I've lost a fair amount of respect for Keating with this rant. OK we all know he's an old school Labour warrior, but there's a difference between coming in to bat for your team and being an old man yelling at a cloud. In this case Keating is the latter.
 
I'd imagine part of him still wants to be in parliament throwing barbs at his opposition, but here it just sounds like the Labor leadership have asked him to be an attack dog for them momentarily.
 
Well in amongst the bits y'all didn't like I see further rhetorical proof that Labor has indeed moved on somewhat from the 'Hawke/Keating Legacy', including apparently Keating himself. The Third Way is dead.
 
Keating is not the only "legend" wheeled in when the big parties get anxious about the Greens. Costello just mailed everyone here in Higgins to convince us that O'Dwyer is doing such a fabulous job and to scaremonger everyone against the emerging green threat. Local charities have also been mailing us to defend O'Dwyer as an invaluable asset to our community. It's fascinating here at the moment. The Green presence is very strong.


Sent from a barge floating through the docks of Dublin
 
1. yeah, 'working class rhetoric' can get a bit on the nose, but whether they accept it or not, everyone who relies primarily on their wage or salary (or equivalent) to live is the working class. I suppose the picture can get a little blurry with certain aspects of the so called 'professional classes', but if you're an untenured academic, for instance, just for instance, then you're working class. It is the right's great devilish genius to convince people otherwise, pit them against each other.

I suppose this is a question about whether working class is defined purely by economic indicators, or if it has a cultural quality. I've always understood it as having a blue collar aspect, that you could be earning a cosy $100k a year as a self-employed plumber and still be working class while this hypothetical untenured academic, again just for instance, on god-knows-what from semester to semester but certainly less than cosy plumber mate over there, is not working class by virtue of having a white collar professional job. (Or black collar if this hypothetical untenured academic wears his band t-shirts to work every day because there's no dress code, but I digress.)

I think you need at least some common-feeling, as well as common interests, for there to be a shared class. That plumber mate may well turn up his nose at "useless intellectuals in their ivory tower", not to mention "office-dwelling paper pushers with soft hands". There are many people in the working classes who run their own business and aren't reliant on a wage or salary; there are many in the middle and upper classes who rely on a wage or salary. In many ways I think class is more an aspect of how you see yourself/how others see you, than anything that fits neat categorisation.

2. It implicitly excludes those shut out of work altogether (whose ranks will swell tenfold in coming decades, you read it here first), although at least the centre-left pays some heed to the importance of a social safety net.

Good point. :up:

O'Dwyer must be in deep trouble for them to wheel in The Man Who Would Be King. What's Howard been up to this campaign?

Judging by Twitter he's rocked up to the Liberal party campaign launch - yes, a campaign launch seven weeks into an eight week campaign (Greens doing the same, and ALP were only a week earlier) - to play the role of dignified elder statesman to which his eyebrows always aspired.
 
Incidentally Howard must have finally gotten contacts at some point, he's been sans glasses for quite a few years now. Vain, moi?

Also incidentally it's a good thing I didn't sleep in Saturday morning and miss the one sunny day of the month. yaaaaaay.
 
I suppose this is a question about whether working class is defined purely by economic indicators, or if it has a cultural quality. I've always understood it as having a blue collar aspect, that you could be earning a cosy $100k a year as a self-employed plumber and still be working class while this hypothetical untenured academic, again just for instance, on god-knows-what from semester to semester but certainly less than cosy plumber mate over there, is not working class by virtue of having a white collar professional job. (Or black collar if this hypothetical untenured academic wears his band t-shirts to work every day because there's no dress code, but I digress.)

I think you need at least some common-feeling, as well as common interests, for there to be a shared class. That plumber mate may well turn up his nose at "useless intellectuals in their ivory tower", not to mention "office-dwelling paper pushers with soft hands". There are many people in the working classes who run their own business and aren't reliant on a wage or salary; there are many in the middle and upper classes who rely on a wage or salary. In many ways I think class is more an aspect of how you see yourself/how others see you, than anything that fits neat categorisation.

I don't disagree with some of that, and the sway of the cultural assumptions and outlooks pretty much guarantees that anything like solidarity is dead on arrival. I suppose my use of the phrase 'working class' is idiosyncratic beyond belief and really maps more on to 'the 99%' of Occupy-era rhetoric than of any common understanding in everyday Australia. So until I can change hearts and minds, I guess the great workers' revolution will have to wait.

Though in practice a lot of those small business working class are just employees who pay for their own equipment, win-win. Whether they like to think of it that way or not.
 
Last edited:
Yes, well, I really do think the Occupiers had a point there. Shame not a whole lot seems to have come of it, certainly no fundamental questioning of the assumptions that are driving rapid economic inequality.

Anyway, I look forward to the Great Kieran Workers' Revolution of next year. Kieran '17. Get to it.
 
Or; The Parma United Party.


Occupy was a miserable failure. Its whole no-organisation organisation ensured it was swept away like a troublesome cockroach.
 
Or; The Parma United Party.

I would vote for that so many times.

Occupy was a miserable failure. Its whole no-organisation organisation ensured it was swept away like a troublesome cockroach.

Maybe. Maybe not. The Chartists seemed like a miserable failure at the time too.

But then the Chartists actually had a clear programme - the six-point charter that gave them a name - while Occupy was little more than rhetoric. That rhetoric, nonetheless, persists for now even if the movement flopped.
 
I would vote for that so many times.



Maybe. Maybe not. The Chartists seemed like a miserable failure at the time too.

But then the Chartists actually had a clear programme - the six-point charter that gave them a name - while Occupy was little more than rhetoric. That rhetoric, nonetheless, persists for now even if the movement flopped.

It's true up to a point. Then maybe my problem with Occupy is indeed the absence of a clear program. The rhetorical point they were making stands, and if anything has grown more urgent.
 
Last edited:
I would love to see some serious minor party success in the lower house. It would make things very interesting, and maybe another round of minority government will make Australia a bit more accustomed to the concept.

As I see it, there are at least three SA seats that could fall to NXT and I expect that to come true for at least one, Batman and maybe Higgins could go Green, McGowan is expected to hold Indi (I'm a little nervous), Katter should hold on up in Kennedy and Wilkie for sure down in Denison, Windsor better take New England, and now Oakeshott's really in the game in Cowper. I had no idea he was still so well liked around that area.

Oh, and of course WA Nationals are technically crossbenchers since there's no coalition in that state.
 
I would love to see some serious minor party success in the lower house. It would make things very interesting, and maybe another round of minority government will make Australia a bit more accustomed to the concept.

As I see it, there are at least three SA seats that could fall to NXT and I expect that to come true for at least one, Batman and maybe Higgins could go Green, McGowan is expected to hold Indi (I'm a little nervous), Katter should hold on up in Kennedy and Wilkie for sure down in Denison, Windsor better take New England, and now Oakeshott's really in the game in Cowper. I had no idea he was still so well liked around that area.

Oh, and of course WA Nationals are technically crossbenchers since there's no coalition in that state.

That's quite a crowd once you add them all up, and it's not like the majority of them could even be taken as a bloc. The Greens and the Xenophon crowd (maybe) would be unlikely to lean the same way as McGowan or Katter if it came to the crunch. And I wouldn't mind it coming to the crunch. All this 'we won't negotiate or do deals, no no no' bullshit speaks to lack of foresight as much as it does anything else.

Actually no, scratch that, I could easily imagine some of the Xenophon crowd being hard to predict and maybe not entirely LNP-unfriendly. Let's say Wilkie and the Greens and maybe Oakeshott/Windsor in one column if it came to it. Though I wouldn't trust Oakeshott entirely either. McGowan and Katter would without a shadow of a doubt grant supply to the LNP.
 
Last edited:
Yep. I expect that if there is a hung parliament the majority of minors/indies will go with the incumbent as in 2010, but who knows. You can guarantee the Greens, 1-3 of them, will support the ALP, and that Katter will support the Libs. I would be incredibly surprised if Wilkie didn't support the ALP but he'll play hardball in negotiations and drive me up the wall. NXT is a completely unknown quantity and will probably stump for whoever gives SA the most dosh. Would Oakeshott and Windsor dare to repeat their decision of 2010, and would McGowan dare to replicate it?

The blocs I see are Green/Wilkie on the left, or Wilkie/NXT on a no pokies platform, and Oakeshott/Windsor/McGowan as moderate rural indies. Katter, of course, is in a loopy class of his own. I always got the impression Windsor thought him as big a fool as Abbott.
 
Back
Top Bottom