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AusPoliGaf |Early 2016 Election| - the government's term has been... Shortened

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WA One Nation candidate claims gay community uses Nazi-style mind control

Where do they find these people? PHON really isn't a party, it's just a loose conglomerate of nutters each with their own crazy purpose trying to ride into Parliament on the coat tails of Hanson. If PHON hold the balance of power in WA or even worse in QLD how long till the states resemble the world of Mad Max?

Though maybe as many as 18 PHON's are ignoring the deal and hate the Libs so it probably doesn't bode that well for Colin. I really hope the press push Barnett on this and every single crazy statement from these people whose preferences he so dearly wants.

That second part could be really bad news for Colin, the PHON alliance being even potentially useful hinges on a handful of specific seats, if those are the ones going rogue he's pissed off the Nats and the Inner City Lib types in exchange for nothing.

ETA - Wha ? Soviet Mind Control that was then used by the Nazis. I mean even given we pretend that they both somehow has mind control and still lost this doesn't make sense in the historical geo-political context (it's more sensible if you omit the Soviets).
 

D.Lo

Member
That's what you get when both major parties believe in the neo liberal ideal, and when either is in power they keep telling everyone the economy is growing so you are better off.

Even though you lost your decently paid job and now embarrassed to work part time at Dominoes or in a call centre with a 26 year old manager. Or you are 30 years old with a degree working in some admin temp job unable to see yourself ever owning a house or even collecting decent savings. Or you haven't had a pay rise in five years in IT yet the office if full of 457 visas.

The parties complain about each other, but are basically planning on doing the same things with minor tinkering and it's started to ring hollow. Greens have tainted their brand with 50% of the population. How else do people protest vote? The loonies are the ONLY way to say 'fuck you Laberal'.

I realise many of these things are federal, not state, but it all melds together in a lot of ways. In Victoria at least last election there was the bold move to scrap the ring road, an actual difference! In NSW we're fucked both majors have had massive corruption.
 

Jintor

Member
Cncyr-cover.jpg
 

D.Lo

Member
...and of course The WA Nats are now preferencing The Greens ahead of The Libs in strategic seats/regions in retaliation.
Ironically enough they should do that based on policy anyway for rural voters affected by drought, outsourcing, poor services etc.
 
could you elaborate on that?

The more conservative party of the population loathes the Greens. But that was never not going to happen, if you look at their history: one of the key Groups that led to the formation of the Greens was almost literally Inner City Upper Middle Class Women to say that this was never going to go over well with the type who vote National is an understatement.

Further the Greens by their nature aren't good for Logging / Coal Mining Industries and the associated unions (the occasional association with the CFMEU is mainly from the Construction part , which is from the "Green Ban" Inner City type history. ).
 

D.Lo

Member
could you elaborate on that?
Probably more than 50%. They're inner-city through and through. The party has spent far too much capital for too long on fringe issues that have no effect on 90% of the population or tell too much of a 'chardonnay hippy ideals' story (eg drug injection rooms) that goes against anyone with anything except fringe progressive social policy preferences.

And Greens MPs, federal and state, have constantly popped up with non-core nonsense that just makes them look out of touch with a huge chunk of the population. Even when the basic idea of what they say is fine in many cases, they are often tone deaf to how it could look or be spun, eg 'No Gender December'.

I just think they're permanently stuck in their inner-city hole, which is bizarre in a lot of ways because their welfare and environmental platforms, ie their actual main platforms, would benefit more regional populations more than anyone, with the exception of short-medium term issues (for those populations) like not supporting mining and old growth logging.
 
Those drug injection rooms work. Which is one of the most hilarious bits about this. Certain things turn people off caring about data and being tough on crime, as opposed to addressing root causes and rehabilitation is one of those things.

Given that it's hardly surprising that people give strange weighting to other stuff. No Gender December is about reducing stereotypes not about preventing you giving Sam a Tonka Truck set.
 

D.Lo

Member
Those drug injection rooms work. Which is one of the most hilarious bits about this. Certain things turn people off caring about data and being tough on crime, as opposed to addressing root causes and rehabilitation is one of those things.

Given that it's hardly surprising that people give strange weighting to other stuff. No Gender December is about reducing stereotypes not about preventing you giving Sam a Tonka Truck set.
I'm not saying I'm personally turned off by stuff like that (though I have been by some of them, my biggest complaint with the Greens is their flopping between pragmatism and idealism seemingly randomly when they have the balance of power), but many are boneheaded politically for a party that has no chance governing but assumedly wants to appeal to more of the population, and like I said their core platform could have great appeal to rural electorates if they can just shut up on items they will not be able to control anyway.
 

Axiom

Member
I miss the Democrats being a thing that mattered and Natasha Stott-Despoja popping up on Good News Week all the time.

Man they really shit the bed with the GST and then kept failing the saving throws.

The Greens just ain't it for me.
 
Democrats were before my time but sounded cool. I sort of agree with Greens but between Di Natale nothingness and Lee Rhiannon marxism I feel a bit lost
 
I miss the Democrats being a thing that mattered and Natasha Stott-Despoja popping up on Good News Week all the time.

Man they really shit the bed with the GST and then kept failing the saving throws.

The Greens just ain't it for me.

The Democrats were in an awful position in a lot of ways, and the GST thing fed them to the Greens who'd been lurking around the edges for years at that point.

The Democrats were sort of a Liberal equivalent of the Democratic Labor Party originally, started by a defector and gave a chunk of one major party voters a validation for voting for the other party, by the time the party destructed it was split between a centrist block (right of Labor) and a left wing block (left of Labor) that were almost indistinguishable from the Greens (there's a few noticeable Greens who were Democrats).

The GST deal put a dent in their "Keeping the bastards honest" image and fed the left wing section to the Greens , after which the Democrats lacked the presence necessary to rebuild themselves (unless you at least have the potential to hold the balance of power the media ignores you*).

If the Greens hadn't been a thing they might have recovered (though I suspect the only difference between the party that would have resulted after that and the modern Greens would have been the name, they were already drifting that way pretty fast).

*eg all those anti-Islam parties that were getting attention before the Federal election have been completely ignored since it was demonstrated that PHON had stolen their thunder. And the SFF have been getting actual attention since they won Orange. This is a tactic that minor parties use too, PHON and the Greens both talk up their chances of winning anywhere there's a chance, because getting the media talking about it can literally make it happen (if you just need an extra 2% of the vote to win somewhere , then media coverage saying it's possible can get enough people to vote for you to make it happen). Xenophon is good at it too, drawing the maximum controversy out of things who already has a position on sometimes and other times deliberate raising a media furor to see where popular opinion is.

I'm not saying I'm personally turned off by stuff like that (though I have been by some of them, my biggest complaint with the Greens is their flopping between pragmatism and idealism seemingly randomly when they have the balance of power), but many are boneheaded politically for a party that has no chance governing but assumedly wants to appeal to more of the population, and like I said their core platform could have great appeal to rural electorates if they can just shut up on items they will not be able to control anyway.

The Greens are screwed there, historically they've been idealistic with the occasional pragmatic move (some of the "pragmatic" things they've been raked over the coals on are actual Greens policy (which means they've been working with a generally opposed party (or opposing a generally closer party) to realize their ideals)). They get raked over the coals either way (if they are idealistic they are a "party of protest", if they are pragmatic "in bed with the Liberals").

The Greens can't really shut up on some of those things either. That inner city vote concentration is gradually getting them State House Seats, losing it at the moment would cause them to lose so many seats that the media would call them dead (even more so right now with conservative parties sucking up the rural oxygen).
 

D.Lo

Member
If the Greens hadn't been a thing they might have recovered (though I suspect the only difference between the party that would have resulted after that and the modern Greens would have been the name, they were already drifting that way pretty fast).
Not at all IMO. The greens were a Bob Brown cult. The Dems died, among other reasons, because they were internally too democratic, which meant massive differences of opinions among members, even sitting MPs, and public leadership battles for half a decade finally did them in.
 

luchadork

Member
i dunno. you havent really shown me how they tainted their brand. a few minors examples of things that seem to happen every day with the major parties.

theres a massive double standard when it comes to the greens. and i imagine a lot of it just comes down to australia being a fairly regressive conservative country.
 

D.Lo

Member
i dunno. you havent really shown me how they tainted their brand. a few minors examples of things that seem to happen every day with the major parties.
I elaborated on my point with a couple of examples, I'm not going to write a dissertation.

And I don't think it's a double standard, just a political reality. They're stuck at 10% because, as Elaugaufein pointed out and I agree with, they need the city-lefty social stuff to get the seats they have, but those positions alienate many in the rest of the nation, locking them out of an appeal I believe they could have on their primary enviro-welfare platforms. They're the Nationals of the left in a lot of ways, a regional player.

Bringing that back to my main point, this means they're an unsuitable choice for most people wanting to protest vote against the current iteration of Laberal, because either people already do protest vote to them and have for a while (their current ~10%), or dislike them. So it leaves the protest vote to the loonies like ON.
 

Shandy

Member
I actually saw an ad for the Greens earlier. I don't remember a single thing they said. I think it was just a broad outline of their platform. Not addressing the issues we currently care about here in WA at all. Good job, you beautiful idiots.

Libs are just crossing their fingers hoping to win government.
Nats are trying their darndest to protect their influence.
Greens are ????????
Labor... actually got Shorten over to talk about improving job prospects. They might be the only ones who care. Well... I guess One Nation cares too, but for all the wrong reasons.
 
Not at all IMO. The greens were a Bob Brown cult. The Dems died, among other reasons, because they were internally too democratic, which meant massive differences of opinions among members, even sitting MPs, and public leadership battles for half a decade finally did them in.

This isn't really true, Bob Brown carried a lot of weight because of what he accomplished, but he was forced / chose to roll back personal positions for the party (eg he was going to support the Telstra privatization for some environmental concessions but changed position), The NSW Greens / Left Renewal and the Rhiannon and Brown Snipe Show didn't come of of nowhere either, it's a thing that;s been building for years.

Part of the problem is that the media is very selective in how it paints the Greens but over long periods which can lead to weird public perceptions. If you look at some old articles the Australian was framing Milne as a moderate compared to Sarah Hanson-Young, which reversed as soon as Milne took over, and SHY is back to being a commy now.

And it's actually the internal democratic bit that I think would have led to the take over, the Dems sank their centrist "Keep Them Honest" credibility with the GST , and the democratic structure means that had the Greens not been their for the Left wing defection to happen, almost certainly would have resulted in a take over. Largely because it was already happening, the Democrats started out politically fairly similar to Xenophon (ex-Libs) but had a solid Left wing block by the time of their destruction (on topics like the military , the Democrats official positions were pretty much indistinguishable from the Greens ).

I actually saw an ad for the Greens earlier. I don't remember a single thing they said. I think it was just a broad outline of their platform. Not addressing the issues we currently care about here in WA at all. Good job, you beautiful idiots.

Libs are just crossing their fingers hoping to win government.
Nats are trying their darndest to protect their influence.
Greens are ????????
Labor... actually got Shorten over to talk about improving job prospects. They might be the only ones who care. Well... I guess One Nation cares too, but for all the wrong reasons.

Haha. Yes, this happens a lot. Because of the way Greens policy works a candidate can't really say much other than being Generic Green #3 until its been confirmed with the appropriate body*. They do make an effort to identify specific issues to go in on before things start but usually those things are still fairly generic unless some other candidate provides a specific opening.

*Say what else you will but they take the Consensus Decision Making and Local Group Control things seriously. Even when its probably unwise.
 

luchadork

Member
Part of the problem is that the media is very selective in how it paints the Greens but over long periods which can lead to weird public perceptions.

this is what i was trying to say. i'm not very eloquent though and it was 2am and i re-read d.lo's posts and actually agreed with the core of what he's saying.

people are able to overlook muslim bans, 2% corporate tax rates, blatant corruption, climate change denial, homophobia, etc. and still vote for the other parties. but when it comes to the greens, you get weird 'messaging' from the people which sounds an awful lot like what murdoch and co have been peddling for decades, which ignores major policy and focuses on minor stuff (which pales in comparison to other parties) which makes them (the greens) seem stupid.

"the greens arent talking about any of the issues which really affect me. what do they even stand for?"

when in reality climate change and proper corporate taxation are the two biggest issues that the greens run on and would help people out the most. but it always get reduced down to "theyve got some really weird ideas like injection rooms, socialism, and turning our kids into cucks". the greens cant actually change their major policies to broader more popular things because right now the popular policies in australia are super conservative and regressive. changing the minor stuff doesnt matter when the major stuff that is popular right now runs antithetical to what the greens represent. thats why theyre stuck at 10% imo.

if anything theres an argument to be made that their major policies are too similar to the major parties and theres nothing to differentiate them enough to draw votes away. i think thats what the left renewal guys are on about.
 

Shandy

Member
Oh God, I just checked the preference flows. They're mostly terrible. Microparties, man. I don't care how much you hate the system, there is no reason to put Family First, ACP, and One Nation that high.

As an aside, a gift from WA to the rest of the country: Julie Matheson for Western Australia
Yes, that's right: A party named after a person. Because they have such a good track record. Entirely way too many exclamation marks, indeed, enough for you to question their sanity. And to top it all off, a twist on a familiar mantra that makes you want to run far, far away.
 
Oh God, I just checked the preference flows. They're mostly terrible. Microparties, man. I don't care how much you hate the system, there is no reason to put Family First, ACP, and One Nation that high.

As an aside, a gift from WA to the rest of the country: Julie Matheson for Western Australia
Yes, that's right: A party named after a person. Because they have such a good track record. Entirely way too many exclamation marks, indeed, enough for you to question their sanity. And to top it all off, a twist on a familiar mantra that makes you want to run far, far away.

Preference deals are often like for like and the Christian micros seem like a good deal for like minded parties, they have right inter-preference flows and discipline. It doesn't tend to pay off for their partners though, since their preference flows are just a reflection of their voters desires and they rarely have the resources to get HTVs out. One Nation makes sense too since they are riding high. Though honestly any party that puts all of those high is probably doing so because it's equally a dumpster fire.

Heh, there's a reason why all parties come from the Eastern states, which is to run Federally you need to bring like minded parties together and they usually take the name of the parties who have more members and resources (one of the origins of the Greens was an anti-nuclear WA party).
 
As an aside, a gift from WA to the rest of the country: Julie Matheson for Western Australia
Yes, that's right: A party named after a person. Because they have such a good track record. Entirely way too many exclamation marks, indeed, enough for you to question their sanity. And to top it all off, a twist on a familiar mantra that makes you want to run far, far away.

Odd, seems like a perfect fit for PHON. Their standards for Candidate selection aren't that high, being able to put together a barely competent website would earmark her for a leadership role. Though she hasn't been advocating for killing Indonesian Journalists or claiming there has never been a good looking black woman, maybe she balked at those policies?

Back to the website, I like how the header is just a cropped version of her poster!
 
Odd, seems like a perfect fit for PHON. Their standards for Candidate selection aren't that high, being able to put together a barely competent website would earmark her for a leadership role. Though she hasn't been advocating for killing Indonesian Journalists or claiming there has never been a good looking black woman, maybe she balked at those policies?

Back to the website, I like how the header is just a cropped version of her poster!

Now now, pretty much every not intensely religious deranged right winger seems like a perfect fit for PHON* and you wouldn't want to lose all of them would you ?

*Seriously, they don't seem to have ANY solid internal position so if you hate something that happened since 1801 they seem like a good fit.
 

Quasar

Member
The Democrats were in an awful position in a lot of ways, and the GST thing fed them to the Greens who'd been lurking around the edges for years at that point.

That pretty much was when I switched to Green in the senate (historically I voted labor, but with demos in the senate) , and the Tampa election and labors cowardice there was when I moved to Green in the lower house too.
 

D.Lo

Member
That pretty much was when I switched to Green in the senate (historically I voted labor, but with demos in the senate) , and the Tampa election and labors cowardice there was when I moved to Green in the lower house too.
Yeah I did that too, I swear if Beazley had stood up to that shit they would have won and we would not be in the dark timeline.
 

Shandy

Member
Does he last the full term? Abbott at least stood by his convictions, as terrible as they tended to be. Turnbull just comes across as weak and ineffective.
 
I'm betting the tax increases will go through the House and Senate. But Turnbull will get the knife or he'll knife the right-wing of the Liberals.

Either way, someone's getting knifed.
 
I think Turnbull will go the distance (limping along) if only because if they had someone who could take Turnbull they would have already done it, and if if Turnbull could see a way out of this mess he would have taken it already.

The stand off is only likely to end if something changes the dominance of Turnbull's wing in the Lib Party Room or the dominance of the Right wing in the combined LNP Party Room (so Turnbull is probably less upset by the constant thorns in his side jumping ship than he can express publicly).
 

legend166

Member
Obviously cutting the CGT discount on property is a good idea, but part of me is annoyed that the baby boomers get to see their wealth grow immensely due to ridiculous tax policies and literally the month I finally buy a house they're talking about policy to slow price growth. Although if it's all in the same market it doesn't really matter.
 

luchadork

Member
Obviously cutting the CGT discount on property is a good idea, but part of me is annoyed that the baby boomers get to see their wealth grow immensely due to ridiculous tax policies and literally the month I finally buy a house they're talking about policy to slow price growth. Although if it's all in the same market it doesn't really matter.

theres so much debt wrapped up in houses right now. i really worry that whatever they do to fix the problem will hurt those who just entered the market more than people who have more established positions. i have a few friends that just bought apartments and i imagine are insanely leveraged. seems so harsh to make them pay so much to enter then have the prices come down. it'll destroy a lot of people if they dont handle this correctly i reckon.
 

legend166

Member
theres so much debt wrapped up in houses right now. i really worry that whatever they do to fix the problem will hurt those who just entered the market more than people who have more established positions. i have a few friends that just bought apartments and i imagine are insanely leveraged. seems so harsh to make them pay so much to enter then have the prices come down. it'll destroy a lot of people if they dont handle this correctly i reckon.

My mortgage is like 97% of the purchase price. Thanks LMI (the biggest scam in the whole thing really)!
 

D.Lo

Member
theres so much debt wrapped up in houses right now. i really worry that whatever they do to fix the problem will hurt those who just entered the market more than people who have more established positions. i have a few friends that just bought apartments and i imagine are insanely leveraged. seems so harsh to make them pay so much to enter then have the prices come down. it'll destroy a lot of people if they dont handle this correctly i reckon.
That's my concern too, too many Gen Ys have bought in, the scam must continue or hell will pay.

What happens when you've been paying for four years but the prices drop and now it's worth less than what you owe? At least if you bought 10 years ago when prices were half you'll get back at least what you paid.
 
I think Turnbull will go the distance (limping along) if only because if they had someone who could take Turnbull they would have already done it, and if if Turnbull could see a way out of this mess he would have taken it already.

The stand off is only likely to end if something changes the dominance of Turnbull's wing in the Lib Party Room or the dominance of the Right wing in the combined LNP Party Room (so Turnbull is probably less upset by the constant thorns in his side jumping ship than he can express publicly).

The Libs are doing a pretty good job at smearing Shorten atm, it's not going to result in a turnaround in the polls but it should stem the bleeding at around 52-54 Lab 2pp. It's going to take a further catalyst to force a change like losing a bi-election, a complete wipeout in WA, losing a member in the House, massive malfeasance or an open revolt against a specific policy.

He'll limp along for a while.


Or this might do it!

I love how he wants to sit on the cross bench but still be in the Nats part of the LNP. It's nice to want things.
 
That's my concern too, too many Gen Ys have bought in, the scam must continue or hell will pay.

What happens when you've been paying for four years but the prices drop and now it's worth less than what you owe? At least if you bought 10 years ago when prices were half you'll get back at least what you paid.

It's impossible to solve the problem without causing those over leveraged to suffer, the problem is that investors are overleveraging to absorb supply.

You'd ideally wind back slowly but investment markets that depend on these things are pretty much bubbles people will run for the hills the second any action is taken and the prices will collapse rapidly.

Stopping the concessions for any new pre-built housing purchases but grandfathering in existing owners is probably the best you can do*. Maybe set up a fund to bail out over leveraged Owner / Occupiers.

* Maybe very slowly scale back the concession on already owned previously existing houses.

Or this might do it!

I love how he wants to sit on the cross bench but still be in the Nats part of the LNP. It's nice to want things.

It could theoretically happen, wouldn't be the first time in history but probably in World history (US Independents generally caucus with the closest group). Shame for George that it can't happen for him: The LNP mainly sit as Libs and they aren't going to lose leverage for his grandstanding, they already demonstrated that when McDonald tried to jump.
 

Quasar

Member
I love how he wants to sit on the cross bench but still be in the Nats part of the LNP. It's nice to want things.

Given coalition weakness, he and any others should be able to treat everything as a free vote. Not like the LNP can just go kicking people from the party at this point.
 
Given coalition weakness, he and any others should be able to treat everything as a free vote. Not like the LNP can just go kicking people from the party at this point.

He already can, thats why the right are free to direct policy, Malcom can't in case the right brings his government down in response. But the right are tankkng Turnbull's centre appeal while failing to win back One Nation voters so it's a spiral of failure.
 
The problem with the Libs (and by extension the Nats) is that they're generally neoliberals economically, which is what the protest voters don't want, but the Libs are so dry that they balk at "populist" economic policies - fuck, they let the auto industry here die for no discernible reason aside from "free market lol". Even a certain breakaway senator is economically conservative, which makes it obvious that he's completely unaware that's not what PHON voters want, they're generally protectionist and they want local jobs and the return of local industries.

Fuck, even Labor is better-poised to take advantage of the disillusionment, considering Shorten's more recent jumping on the protectionist bandwagon and Labor, you know, actually having appealing policies that the Libs won't touch, even if it's not much.

I don't think blind protectionism is right, but the Hawke/Keating/Howard status quo of neoliberalism can't go on either. The real problem is the rise of inequality, which is hurting economies around the globe in general, but mainstream parties are still in the grip of Reagan/Thatcher-ist "economic rationalism" for the most part, though left-leaning parties are slowly transitioning away from that orthodoxy.
 

bomma_man

Member
I read a post by Crab in another thread that summed up my feelings on free trade: if you're going to have it, you need to aggressively redistribute wealth to the people that lose out. If you're not going to do that, you're better off without it.
 
I read a post by Crab in another thread that summed up my feelings on free trade: if you're going to have it, you need to aggressively redistribute wealth to the people that lose out. If you're not going to do that, you're better off without it.

But you can't. Because Free Trade inherently enables Capital Flight to places that don't. Which is a significant part of how this mess arose in the first place, half the political parties in the developed world don't want to do anything about it and the other half don't dare too.
 
Looks like all awards are being dropped by 25 basis points on Sundays and Public Holidays. The Libs will be loving it. Can't wait to see the massive increase in employment from this and I'm sure the extra money totally won't just flow into the back pockets of business owners.
 

Shaneus

Member
Looks like all awards are being dropped by 25 basis points on Sundays and Public Holidays. The Libs will be loving it. Can't wait to see the massive increase in employment from this and I'm sure the extra money totally won't just flow into the back pockets of business owners.
Jesus fuck. How in the hell did this get passed?

Looks like it's just a cheap pot-shot at unions :/
 
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