Elaugaufein
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AusPoliGaf |Early 2016 Election| - the government's term has been... Shortened
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AusPoliGAF: Over the limit three words at a time
Aarglefarg
Member
I'm getting flashbacks to Mitt Romney right now.
Aarglefarg
Member
Fucking hell Malcolm. Doing anything to avoid answering the question. Totally transparent.
bobnowhere
Member
Interesting tactic by Turnbull, I'm an outsider so you can trust me. Writing off most if not all of his front bench there.
Elaugaufein
Member
I'm watching this with my mother (Coalition voter). The difference of opinion between her and you guys is interesting.
Aarglefarg
Member
It started off so well with Laura Tingle and Chris Uhlmann questioning a non-answer, but went heavily downhill since then. Awful.
It's just parallel stump speeches we've heard before.
It's just parallel stump speeches we've heard before.
Does she think Turnbull answered the very first question (about the expectations for him when he became Prime Minister and if he'll be different once he has his own mandate)?
Elaugaufein
Member
She interpreted the question differently: Her opinion was "If you'd asked about climate change he would have talked about climate change."
I did a double take as well haha.
Elaugaufein
Member
I'm impressed that we're totally avoiding talking about the conditions on Naru and Manus at all.
ETA - Oh man. Shorten going for the throat now.
It's a fair argument contextually: If you don't trust me (because I'm a Labor leader) then trust the IPA (because they are on your side).
ETA - Oh man. Shorten going for the throat now.
It's a fair argument contextually: If you don't trust me (because I'm a Labor leader) then trust the IPA (because they are on your side).
bobnowhere
Member
Zinger!
CrazedProfessional
Member
Shorten is flustering the fuck out of Turnbull. Wow.
Elaugaufein
Member
Hey, be fair you'd be flustered too if you discovered Shorten had a strong opinion on something and could argue for it, It's like getting viciously gnawed by your plain beige wallpaper.
I'm not so sure, I only heard half of it though and all Turnbull seemed to say was that their policy was for jobs and economic growth. Jobs and growth is an outcome, not a policy, Mal.
Elaugaufein
Member
You know this tax argument isn't correct despite the fact it gets brought up every time.
Tax increases will only reduce a thing if they make something else more attractive (and that's not automatically a bad thing maybe the other thing is more desirable).
Tax increases will only reduce a thing if they make something else more attractive (and that's not automatically a bad thing maybe the other thing is more desirable).
bobnowhere
Member
Maybe a minor technical win to Turnbull mostly based on appearance and presentation but all in all it was insipid and won't change a single vote.
I did like the mandate question, both ran away from that one as fast as possible! Tony Abbott of all people made some sense on this, he said he had to respect the mandate of the people that elected him as well.
I did like the mandate question, both ran away from that one as fast as possible! Tony Abbott of all people made some sense on this, he said he had to respect the mandate of the people that elected him as well.
Elaugaufein
Member
It's actually not very complicated though: If you don't have the support of the Senate , then clearly the people haven't give you a Mandate. If they wanted you to be able to do (whatever it is you're doing) without any second consideration they'd give you a Senate majority as well.
Technically incorrect, you need the confidence of the HoR to govern, not the Senate. A mandate only means the democratic force of will to form government, nothing else. It doesn't mean anything regarding any policy or any leader. If you had a referendum on a topic that wasn't binding then you'd have a mandate to change the law in lines with the referendum if required. If we had voted for a republic the government would have had a democratic mandate to yell at the Queen and Westminster to let us go. Etc.
Or at least that's the only meaning of mandate that makes sense, the Senate was meant to be a house that protected the smaller states against the tyranny of the commons of the larger states. It's not meant to be what it is now, but it is what it is I guess.
If you make x more expensive less of x will happen. It's inevitable. It's supply and demand.
I didn't watch the debate so I don't know the context of this, but remember that the housing bubble is partially driven by the difference in rates on labour and capital.
Also, what did we think of the debate? Better or worse than the first? Do we know anything we didn't before? Has Shorten turned into a real person? Is Malcolm still as irritatingly smug as before?
D.Lo
Member
The Australian Senate is way less representative than the house!
NSW is 35% of Australia, and Tasmania is 2%. A TAS senate vote is worth 16 times that of a NSW Senate vote. Unrepresentative swill was right.
Popular vote by party of the lower house (or maybe both houses combined?) is a fair call for mandate, but not binding. I think Beazley had a very good point that Howard had no mandate for the GST, but Gillard therefore had no mandate for anything at all really. Form government in the lower house = mandate.
Elaugaufein
Member
That depends what you mean by representative. Because the lower house is "Representative" of an electorate by a single candidate it's extremely common for vast swathes of the population to have no practical say whatsoever in the lower house (all those times when 52-53% of the vote gives a government a staggering majority. This effectively leaves 47% of the people with no actual representation at all. Which is highly unrepresentative. It also makes it easy to construct scenarios in which its possible to get 100% of the seats with 50.1% of the vote .
That's not a thing that occurs with our Senate system (it used to, for the early period in our Federation it wasn't unusual for the Senate to be near completely dominated by one party or other because it was effectively a bunch of individual FPTP races , which means that if a party could win one of them it would likely win all).
No , it won't necessarily. Imagine that the most profitable thing is A by 10%. If you then increase the tax on A such that its profit is reduced by 5% , it's still the most profitable thing , so no one is going to reduce investment because of that. Disincentives are relative not absolute. What it may do is reduce the amount of A produced (since there's less money in the system of A) but that's not a reduction of investment.
As another point by that argument the only valid taxes are sin taxes, which is ridiculous to start with, since if something is socially bad enough to merit being the only class of things taxed it's logical to ban it outright not tax it. And at that point you have no money to govern with.
Previously not attractive options will become marginal investments if taxation incentives were changed. We live in a very free market, it's hugely unlikely nothing more would open up.
It's not the only valid taxes are pigovian taxes, it's that they're the best. Their excess burden is positive. The government should be in the business of receiving as much of its its revenue as possible from the least bad sources.
D.Lo
Member
A Senate with representation proportional to state populations (with a two seat minimum matching the territories) would be so much more democratic.
Otherwise we should ditch TAS and SA, and probably WA, or they should be demoted to territories. They get such massively disproportionate Senate representation, and we end up with crap like Lambie and Harradine.
Otherwise we should ditch TAS and SA, and probably WA, or they should be demoted to territories. They get such massively disproportionate Senate representation, and we end up with crap like Lambie and Harradine.
Aarglefarg
Member
Individual elected people have their mandates and shouldn't betray the values they were elected for just because some other values got the majority in the house of reps. But they shouldn't just obstruct as a person who is good in that position can get the balance about right.
Aarglefarg
Member
The Chaser appeared.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-polit...k-the-feds-broke-my-fall-20160530-gp746i.html
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-polit...k-the-feds-broke-my-fall-20160530-gp746i.html
bobnowhere
Member
Hehe.
Saw that earlier, The Chaser starts again Wednesday week.
Edit: Craig Reucassel causing havoc as well!
Aarglefarg
Member
It was covered in that article but with a pool pointless short video (lower in the article). It is good to see that better video.
Dastardly Jerks
Banned
Dicko on Q&A tonight. Bonza. Can't get on the leaders debate? No sweat - get a Q&A panel instead.
D
Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
Or go unicameral and just increase the size of the lower house.
People in remote and regional areas don't deserve to be classified as second class citizens compared to perennially pandered people in western sydney and corangamite or whatever it is. If you just concentrate on high population centres then remote people will get shafted more than they already do.
bobnowhere
Member
You'd need a fundamental redesign of how seats are awarded though. Queensland has been unicameral since the 1920's I think and they are usually a political disaster zone especially with their single seat electorates. The ACT is to small for a second house but at least we have multi-seat electorates resulting in a spread of views. I think someone did an analysis a while back of the ACT and single seat electorates would have resulted in 16-1 or 17-0 in the noughties, not particularly representative.
New Zealand has a pretty interesting unicameral system, a combination of single seat electorates and then an extra allocation of seats based on country wide primary, pass I think it's 4-5% primary and you are guaranteed some level of representation. It is worth consideration.
I'm still a fan of the senate but it should be more representative. Maybe dump state quotas, increase it 100 seats and tell parties/individuals that for every %1 primary you get, you get one seat. Can't think of too many fairer systems than that. The majors would bitch and moan but they do that anyway.
Elaugaufein
Member
I do not think this is a good idea. Queensland works this way and the result is either populous leaders who often fail to do what is necessary or Authoritarian leaders who are asshats and get kicked out after one term or the case where leaders are both and you get a generation of entrenches police and economic corruption.
A unicameral Parliament that works like New Zealand's system could maybe work though. As could a mixture of our reps and Senate system if we stopped pretending the Senate had feck all to do with the states these days but the result of that is likely very similar to the NZ system anyway.
This is effectively FPTP again, in that what a plurality of people want may be exactly what a majority of people do not want, which is what preferential voting is designed to avoid by electing the preferred compromise candidate rather than the plurality favoured candidate.
D.Lo
Member
hate to quote Abbott, but city people should not have to subsidise rural people's lifestyle choices.
But this isn't about rural. A rural NSW/Vic person is screwed in terms of democracy just as much as a sydneysider.
Western Sydney is pandered to because it contains Australia's largest lower middle class population.
Tasmania and SA are pandered to because the constitution makes their Senate votes worth 10-20 times more than a NSw one.
D.Lo
Member
What percentage of Australia's wheat comes from Tasmania and SA?
The government can subsidise industries if it makes sense for the country, but you should't have more political say just because you're in an area of primary production industry. And you should also never get more government benefits because of your postcode unless it is in the country as a whole's best interests.
Damn phone lol.
I'm not speaking about SA and Tas, but more generally remote and rural areas where people live. You say it's a lifestyle choice but why isn't it "a lifestyle choice" to live in a shithole city like Sydney?
Rural areas contain plenty of people who live there for either primary production & industry (agriculture, mining) or support services around those industries. Those local economies are just as valid as a city, but more expensive to operate because of logistics in getting stuff to and from there. I'd argue that given the number of speculative industries that thrive in cities, the regions can actually be more tangibly productive than the city (per capita at least).
I'm not touching the indigenous issue on people living where they do because I am sure you know that it is for strong cultural reasons.
If voting in both houses was proportional to population then we would only see an increased focus on pandering to cities rather than provision of essential services to remote areas. For example the GP Networks (old medicare local mental health service) that you see several of in the Melbourne metro area? There is one of those in WA which covers something like 75% of the area of the state. Alone.
Say what you want about population density, but when you factor in travel it becomes a serious issue about equality for access to essential services. A senate which can vote along state lines or advocate for state issues is crucial when it comes to issues like these.
Rural areas contain plenty of people who live there for either primary production & industry (agriculture, mining) or support services around those industries. Those local economies are just as valid as a city, but more expensive to operate because of logistics in getting stuff to and from there. I'd argue that given the number of speculative industries that thrive in cities, the regions can actually be more tangibly productive than the city (per capita at least).
I'm not touching the indigenous issue on people living where they do because I am sure you know that it is for strong cultural reasons.
If voting in both houses was proportional to population then we would only see an increased focus on pandering to cities rather than provision of essential services to remote areas. For example the GP Networks (old medicare local mental health service) that you see several of in the Melbourne metro area? There is one of those in WA which covers something like 75% of the area of the state. Alone.
Say what you want about population density, but when you factor in travel it becomes a serious issue about equality for access to essential services. A senate which can vote along state lines or advocate for state issues is crucial when it comes to issues like these.
D.Lo
Member
WTF? Well done insulting 1/3 of Australian by population.
And yes it's a lifestyle choice. Nothing wrong with anyone's lifestyle choices. But it's one that is not being subsided by someone who chose to love somewhere else.
Just as 'valid', but evidently not as economically valid? If you want to live there, you should pay for what is necessary to live there, or at least closer to it.
If they really want more doctors they can move to Melbourne, or pay for them. Can I build a house in the middle of the Simpson desert then complain I don't have a doctor next door?
Everything within reason, things may be worth subsidising to the economy in some cases. But a sense of entitlement despite choosing to live somewhere expensive to service is not warranted. Live within your means goes for communities too.
30yearsofhurt
Member
Unicameral doesn't solve anything on its own. The problem is with PV forcing you to pick between the two biggest options. That leaves 25% of people not represented. It gives us a lack of realistic diversity in political representation. Ultimately less than 100,000 swinging voters across 20 marginal electorates decide the government. That's less than 1% of all voters. If you want to minimise disenfranchisement of half the other 99% you'd go with purely proportional representation. The argument against it is the likelihood of 'hung' parliaments and therefore political instability. But having a minority government hasn't led to political instability in Australia. It's just led to politicians learning how to compromise and negotiate.
What an awful thing to encourage out of politicians.
What an awful thing to encourage out of politicians.
bobnowhere
Member
dead.jpg
The reef dead, or you metaphorically?
D
Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
as an Australian who only intermittently gets to visit Australia, Sydney is the best city. Obviously I don't have to actually live there, but I'd far rather spend a week in Sydney than Melbourne.
I'm not sure you get it. For regional and remote communities and towns it's about getting the basics. Secure water, power, medical, dental, education and so on. Moving to melbourne is not a solution unless everyone moves.
This isn't a sense of entitlement. It's a basic right in this country which does not vary with postcode.
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