Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi #7

[Axver]

I get what you're saying, but it's symbolic, right? Obviously the day's not going to change for a long while but that's not a reason to just keep up the status quo for the sake of it. We've got to keep up the fight to get it changed, not shrug our shoulders and wait until it's more than "marginal".

Oh yeah I don't disagree, and on the upside I now get two days to be grumpy, because you know on Hottest 100 Day I'll be disagreeing with a lot of the shit in there.

 

[Kieran McConville]

The Hottest 100 is our penance for taking this land. It's meant to hurt.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Am I crazy or are the Coalition party room screwing themselves up to bring back Abbott?

I hope they do. I hope they do it. It will turn a certain defeat into an annihilation.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Enjoy that victory lap, Barnaby, because you and your whole goddamned crew are going down, you are going down to Chinatown.

 

[Axver]

Kind of relieved Barn won actually. Helps keep Turnbull alive a little longer, which I view as preferable to a leadership change—even if a return to Abbott would be, indeed, annihilation. My suspicion is that Bishop and Dutton are the leading contenders and I don't think I could cope with Dutts, even just as captain of a fast-sinking ship.

I also suspect Keneally is not going to prevail in Bennelong. MPs dismissed under s44 tend to earn voter sympathy.

 

[Kieran McConville]

I wouldn't care to venture a guess about Bennelong. If either of the two were to see an upset (if that's even the word) that'd be it I reckon.

But something's got to give. Even with most of the major media helping them across the road like a little old lady (imagine if this was Labor in power, if you will), the government surely can't hope to string it out for another year.

 

[Axver]

Off the top of my head—and I could be quite wrong here—if Keneally wins, it would be the first citizenship by-election at which a disqualified candidate recontests and loses.

I'd certainly be happy if that proves to be the case.

But my worries of an even worse PM than Turnbull, in the wake of another Liberal knifing, would increase rather seriously!

 

[Kieran McConville]

What difference does it make? Their policy agenda is already pure evil, and it goes on unabated. What matter that the frontman is mild mannered and (allegedly) urbane?

 

[Axver]

What difference does it make? Their policy agenda is already pure evil, and it goes on unabated. What matter that the frontman is mild mannered and (allegedly) urbane?

I can only assume it gets even scummier under Dutton.

I do hope the Libs lose government on the floor of parliament just to see the Murdoch rags have their biggest meltdown yet.

 

[Vlad n U 2]

Dutton would mean a Joh-esque police state, really, wouldn't it? It's bad enough now but, Dutton's a nightmare scenario.

 

[Axver]

Exactly. Turnbull might be crap, but he is a weak-willed coward, not the amoral and unfeeling cunt that Dutton is.

Also, Hanson, Burston, and Christensen showed up for Leyonhjelm's fascist funtimes parliamentary party with Hot Malt Drink Yiannapolous. Remember these scumbags as fascist fellow-travellers.

 

[Vlad n U 2]

Malcolm Roberts turned up too for whatever reason. Nobody told him he's no longer an anything?

 

[Axver]

Malcontent Fuckberts is just attracted to his own kind.

Really I'd have been surprised if he was anywhere else.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Dutton would mean a Joh-esque police state, really, wouldn't it? It's bad enough now but, Dutton's a nightmare scenario.

I'd be wary of attributing presidential or kingly powers to the person who holds the PM's chair. It doesn't really work like that, except when leaders acquire an extra aura of dominance through repeated winning (Menzies, Hawke, Howard). If anyone's been winning in recent years, it's news to me. Abbott's government was bad and Turnbull's is equally bad in much the same ways, no better but no worse. Dutton would be much the same with an uglier face, but it won't be Dutton. He simply doesn't command the influence within the party. If he did, they'd be clamouring for him up in Queensland to help press the flesh with their local elections, but they are not. Morrison, perhaps.

Of course Joh did run a police state, but he had a lot more than six months to build up that power base. It took quite a few years for his cult of personality to accrete.

 

[Axver]

Australian bushfires are pretty ferocious, but you've got to hand it to the current fires in California for doing what no Australian bushfire has done, and go straight after Rupert Murdoch.

 

[Axver]

The Guardian's live blog from parliament today is something else. Amy Remeikis is writing it and I'm pretty sure Bob Katter has broken her.

 

[Axver]

It is, finally, done.

Eat shit Lyle.

 

[Kieran McConville]

I thought maybe they were just going to run out the clock on this thing. Not for lack of trying apparently.

 

[Axver]

The amount of dumb amendments. Fuck every single one of them, wasting time in a cause they knew was lost, just to drag it out for everyone, wasting parliamentary time and energy.

I can't wait for these cowards and connivers to get slammed in everything ever written about this shameful phase of Australian political history.

 

[Kieran McConville]

It's like that old (now forgotten apparently since he's rehabilitated) Onion headline 'history licking its chops to have a go at Bush administration'.

 

[Axver]

It's wonderful what having a fascist not long after your term will do for your rep, huh.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Don't matter to me. Bush was and is scum, and frankly it's a lot of the same people in new garb. Fuck them all. Pay less heed to fascistic theatrics and more to legalised looting, would be my instinct.

 

[Axver]

Dubya must be sitting back and praising every god anybody's ever worshipped. In October 2016 he was the ultimate devil in US politics, and looked likely to remain so until any generation alive today had passed on.

And now he's a footnote.

On the other hand, I don't mind him being relegated to a footnote. Fucker deserves to be forgotten. But - not before his crimes are tallied and thoroughly condemned, and now that won't happen because we've got somebody even more egregious to focus on.

 

[Axver]

Urge to speak ill of the dead rising, rising...

I hope they serve nice scones at Flo Bjelke-Petersen's funeral.

 

[cobl04]

This is pretty cool: Missing WW1 submarine AE1 found with underwater camera

 

[Axver]

So this is pretty fucking funny. Remember when Fraser Anning defected from One Nation the very morning he was sworn into the Senate? And that it came amidst the end of his friendship with Pauline Hanson over a bitter dispute about his personal staff?

Well, the staffer he refused to fire for Pauline... he's just gone and fired.

Senator Fraser Anning sacks his top adviser as speculation swirls about his future

 

[Axver]

And Aussie politics keeps giving. No, I don't mean Barnaby, though that's pretty funny. I mean Jacqui Lambie expelling Steve Martin - the guy who gets her Senate seat - for not resigning to create a casual vacancy so that she could return to parliament.

 

[Axver]

Anyone following Tasmania's election tonight?

The Hare-Clark system makes this pretty much the ultimate for election nerds. Love it.

Result isn't looking too flash though.

 

[Axver]

Tasmanian Greens have gone from 21% of the vote in 2010 to 10% tonight. Fuck me.

 

[The Sad Punk]

Hope everyone enjoyed an anarchy sausage today.