• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

AusPoliGAF |OT| Boats? What Boats?

Status
Not open for further replies.
A

Arksy

Member
Wow people are actually worried for the ABC. I'm seeing save the ABC petitions all over my wall and news feed. Don't be, the ABC ain't going anywhere. Abbott is too much of a Burkian to want to change it.
 
B

bobnowhere

Member
Arksy said:
Wow people are actually worried for the ABC. I'm seeing save the ABC petitions all over my wall and news feed. Don't be, the ABC ain't going anywhere. Abbott is too much of a Burkian to want to change it.
Click to expand...

I imagine there are some who would like to sell off the ABC but I can't see Abbott ever being party to it. He might lose a vote.
 
M

Myansie

Member
The debt ceiling deal from an economics and executive perspective is absolutely fantastic. The politics behind it happening is beyond bizarre. Great work by the greens.
 
B

bomma_man

Member
There are few things in politics that are both good for the country and absolutely hilarious and this debt ceiling deal is one of them.
 
L

lexi

Banned
Scott Ludlam's motherfucking smackdown said:
“What kind of government takes stock of the collective years of experience of the public sector, bolstered with the kind of private sector expertise that we see within the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, and immediately embarks on a process of mass sackings and redundancies?

We know who has set the template: people like Colin Barnett and Campbell Newman, a yawning vacuum of imagination, yesterday’s men who have somehow deluded themselves into thinking that something as powerful and dangerous as the global climate system can be subordinated for momentary political advantage.

So this is your big moment. This is the moment where you propose to dismantle the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which will cost the budget something in the order of $200 million a year and crash the renewable energy sector in Australia just as it is finding its strength.

What I do not understand is why all of you on that side of the chamber are suddenly looking so shaky. All the bluster has gone out of you. The Liberals put up one speaker yesterday, Senator Abetz, who quickly ran through the same tired talking points that he has been reciting for three years and then sat down.

The rest of the Liberal Party have stayed in their offices and the Nationals have not showed up at all at your moment of triumph, and that is what I am struggling to understand.

In one year, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation has already achieved nearly four million tonnes of carbon emissions abatement—more than half of our annual target. For all of the strange financial illiteracy on display on the other side—people calling it a hedge fund or Bob Brown’s bank—this is not a grants organisation and this is not writing out cheques that the Commonwealth does not get back. It is making money for the taxpayer of approximately $2.40 for every tonne of carbon abated.

Who knew that you could actually make a financial return to the taxpayer at the same time as eliminating greenhouse gas emissions and creating jobs in the sunrise industries of the 21st century? It is generating a 7.3 per cent return on investment, which is nearly four per cent above the standard government bond rate. It is an entity that is filling the budget vacuum that has been left by your proposals to abolish the carbon price and the mining tax and it attracts just under $3 from the private sector for every dollar that it invests.

How awkward for you to discover in a committee hearing that this entity that you propose to wreck is actually making a financial return to the taxpayer. How exactly does that square with your budget emergency and your desperation to attack the Public Service, cut education spending, cut health spending and abolish public transport funding because you are in such a desperate budget emergency? Yet, at the same time, you line up to kick apart an entity that is making, and intends to make, a $200 million return on the taxpayers’ investment.

The CEFC, as others have noted, is one of 14 co-financing institutions around the world that are catalysing and creating huge investment in renewable energy. Bloomberg New Energy Finance believe the investment in one year is upwards of $58 billion in renewable energy and $109 billion in energy efficiency globally. At last we have the Australian parliament and the Australian government doing its bit. As the empty government benches show, maybe you are not quite as proud of this as you might have displayed during the people’s revolt.

I have had a bit to do with the Clean Energy Finance Corporation in Western Australia. They briefed a meeting, ironically enough, of your stakeholders—the mining industry—in Kalgoorlie earlier this year to explain how the mechanism would work. They said: ‘We are not a grants organisation. We are not here to write out cheques that we won’t see again. We are here to get the industry on its feet.’ And the first people at the front of the queue will be the gold and nickel producers in the goldfields who are looking for some kind of hedge against skyrocketing gas and diesel prices. They are the ones who will build the first iteration of this technology in Western Australia. Not because they are driven by the climate imperative—they are driven by commercial imperatives and they are looking to get technology into the ground that can protect them from rising energy costs.”
Click to expand...

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/sav...ended-by-greens-others-less-predictable-24000
 
M

Myansie

Member
Abbott will dissolve it and reform it under his direct action plan. A total waste of time, money and opportunity, but this is an irrationally bitter government bent on wiping gillard's legacy from the Australian record.

Turnbull and hockey are the only two who seem to have tweaked that the opposition rhetoric was just that and in power you have to actually govern for the collective. Even bishop has been disappointing.
 
D

Dryk

Member
The Greens are the ones talking the most about financial responsibility this week. It's really interesting. In more sombre news it looks like the Coalitions lie regarding that $1.2 billion has taken hold as "fact" because the media just passed it on. Good job guys.

Myansie said:
A total waste of time, money and opportunity
Click to expand...
This year in politics :\
 
D

Dryk

Member
lexi said:
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/sav...ended-by-greens-others-less-predictable-24000
Click to expand...

Compare the only Liberal speaker

I would like to ask Senator Milne before she goes why it is that Australia needs to do more to save the world. Senator Milne, is it not true that Australia emits less than 1.4 per cent of carbon emissions in the world? Tell me, someone: is that not true?

Senator Thorp interjecting—

I hear 'per capita'. Australia needs to do more, we were told. We emit less than 1.4 per cent of the world's emissions of carbon. Labor's proposal, supported by the Greens and indeed supported by the coalition, was to reduce our emissions by five per cent. Five per cent of 1.4 per cent—you do the arithmetic. Australia is doing something, and it is proposed by the current government to be doing something. We will reduce our emissions, but we will do it by direct action. We will not do it with the imposition of the world's greatest carbon tax. We will not be leading the world when the world has to do something if it is as concerned as Senator Milne tells us it is.

This debate today, and this whole debate around this package of bills, is about keeping a commitment made to the Australian public prior to an election. That is what we are very keen and determined to do. We are unlike the Labor Party, who before the 2010 election promised us they would not be introducing a carbon tax. Then, immediately following the election, they broke their promise to the Australian public. We do not intend to do that. We intend to meet the commitments we made, which the Australian people supported. This is what the Australian people wanted and, under the Abbott government, this is what they will get.

That is why we want to get rid of it. We want to do our part in reducing the electricity bills for average Australians, for ordinary Australians. They agreed with us. That is why they voted for us in spades at the last election. That is why they are desperately waiting for this parliament to do what we promised to do to reduce their electricity bills and remove the carbon tax.

I see there is a long, long list of Labor speakers, because they are going to filibuster this debate through until 1 July, they would hope, and with the support of the Greens they will probably be able to do it. But I ask the Labor speakers, any one of them, to tell me these things. If the carbon tax is so good, why did you promise before the 2010 election not to bring it in? Is it true that Australia is emitting less than 1.4 per cent of the world's emissions of carbon? How is the Labor Party's proposal to reduce those emissions by five per cent going to save all of the ills that Senator Milne is predicting are going to confront the globe?

I am one of those who accept that the climate is changing. As I have often said in this place, once upon a time the centre of Australia was a rainforest. I understand that once upon a time the globe was covered in ice. Of course the climate changes. It always has done. But, in spite of Senator Milne's scepticism and accusation against anyone who does not agree with her, there are equally as many reputable scientists who challenge, or who doubt, that it is man's involvement that has caused the climate change in recent times. You will notice that the Greens used to call it global warming. Now, it is climate change.

Debate interrupted.
Click to expand...

The only arguments they're bringing to the table are "It's somebody else's problem"
 
M

Mondy

Banned
Does anyone else find Andrew Bolt's self obsessed desperation to bring Tea Party politics to Australia the most hilarious thing they've ever seen?
 
W

wonzo

Banned
I would donate great deals of money to the tea party equivalent made up of Bolt blog commentators just to see them march on the streets. I need this.

BZ3mqbTCcAA6lRl.png:large
 
M

Mondy

Banned
wonzo said:
I would donate great deals of money to the tea party equivalent made up of Bolt blog commentators just to see them march on the streets. I need this.

BZ3mqbTCcAA6lRl.png:large
Click to expand...

21385037_wtf_reaction_gif.gif


Holden has made the decision to pull out of Australia as early as 2016, according to senior Government ministers.

The ABC has been told the announcement was supposed to be made this week but has been put off until early next year.

Holden says its discussions with the Government are continuing, and it does not respond to speculation.

Despite several of his colleagues believing Holden is leaving, Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane says that is not his understanding.

The Federal Opposition has warned Holden would make the decision before Christmas if the Government did not announce an assistance package for the industry before then.

The Government has previously said it would wait for the findings of a Productivity Commission inquiry, due in March.

However, the ABC understands that Holden has made the decision to pull cease its Australian production irrespective regardless of an assistance package.

Research released last month suggested that Holden's closure would cost the South Australian economy $1.24 billion and 13,200 jobs.
Click to expand...

Well well well.... Is this not the most predictable outcome ever.

The most blatant case of taking the money and running that I've ever seen. This was ALWAYS going to happen and now both Labor and the Coalition need to answer for wasting our money on these corporate washouts.
 
M

Mr. Tone

Member
This got a chuckle out of me.
The Australian Capital Territory opposition leader has demanded the resignation of the education minister, Joy Burch, for retweeting a comment that her federal counterpart, Christopher Pyne, was a “cunt”.

Jeremy Hanson said Burch was no longer fit to remain in charge of the education of ACT children and the incident threatened to undermine her ability to negotiate effectively with the Commonwealth.

Burch has apologised for retweeting the comment that another Twitter user made after a fiery meeting between Pyne and state and territory education ministers over school funding last Friday.

That night, a Twitter user, @GhostOfPJK, posted a photo of Pyne watching a media conference of five state and territory education ministers who were demanding the federal government honour its promise to match school funding agreements struck before the election. The tweet said: “As the NSW education minster rails against the #gonski betrayal … #pyne is smugly loitering. What a cunt. #auspol”

Burch said she had retweeted the comment accidentally, removed it swiftly and contacted Pyne’s office to say sorry. “I sincerely apologise for any offence it may have caused,” she said in a statement. Burch – whose portfolios in the ACT government include education, training, disability and young people – also argued in the Canberra Times that it was a mistake owing to her poor social media skills.

Hanson said Burch had demonstrated “incredibly poor judgment” to retweet the highly offensive description of her federal counterpart.

“It’s unacceptable for Joy Burch to be in charge of schools and the education of children in the ACT. She’s no longer fit to serve,” he said in a statement issued on Friday. “To be the minister for education, high standards have to be adhered to, including the ministerial code of conduct which requires ministers to act with ‘respect for others’.

“If I or Christopher Pyne had used the same abusive language describing Joy Burch, there’d no doubt be uproar in the media. How can this be acceptable behaviour from a minister in the ACT government?”

The meeting last Friday was the first post-election gathering between Pyne and all state and territory education ministers. Jurisdictions that had already signed deals with the Commonwealth to roll out Gonski-inspired school funding from next year voiced fears they would lose out from a possible renegotiation of funding amounts to include the hold-out governments of Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland. Three days later, the prime minister, Tony Abbott, and Pyne sought to quell the concerns by pledging to spend the full $1.2bn originally earmarked for the three non-signatory jurisdictions for the coming four years.
Click to expand...
 
D

Dryk

Member
I'd pay to see that

3udhd9.jpg



EDIT: Has anyone read Pyne's school funding cheat-sheet? It's basically "blame Labor" and "Labor wanted to actually make sure its money was put to good use the bastards"
 
D

Dead Man

Member
Pyne is the easiest person to hate in the world. Smug, self satisfied, bully, charmless, severely lacking in intellect and integrity, and with a fucking stupid smirk on his face all the time.

Gah, I hate him so much. He is emblematic of everything wrong with the current LNP.
 
L

Lafiel

と呼ぶがよい
Dead Man said:
Pyne is the easiest person to hate in the world. Smug, self satisfied, bully, charmless, severely lacking in intellect and integrity, and with a fucking stupid smirk on his face all the time.

Gah, I hate him so much. He is emblematic of everything wrong with the current LNP.
Click to expand...

I'd say the same thing about Scott Morrison to be honest!

He's infinitely punchable.. along with Pyne and Tony Abbott of course.;p
 
D

Dryk

Member
If you zoom and enhance on that first photo you can actually see Tony Abbott scowling with his hands up against a window
 
D

Dead Man

Member
r1chard said:
Oh look. A week of fallout from ASIO doing this or that bad thing, and what do we have?

Propaganda, baby!
Click to expand...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-08/asio-cancels-passports-of-muslim-men/5142884

A Sydney lawyer says she is prepared to fight in the High Court over a decision by ASIO to cancel the passports of 20 Muslim men.

The SMH reported this morning that ASIO had cancelled the passports over fears the men, who are from Sydney, would travel overseas to engage in "politically motivated violence".

The move comes after the AFP last week charged two men with allegedly attempting to join the conflict in Syria.

At least four Australians are known to have been killed in the Syria conflict, and intelligence agencies are thought to be tracking about 100 Australians active in the fighting.

Lawyer Zali Burrows says she has been approached by 15 of the men whose passports have been cancelled.

Ms Burrows says the men have received letters requiring them to surrender their passports and they have been told they are an adverse security risk.

She says the men are worried and she is not aware of any of them wanting join the fighting in Syria.

"Basically they're suspected of being terrorists or wanting to go to overseas and participate in jihad war, or whatever other reasons," she said.

"Some of these guys were just young guys wanting to go on holiday to Bali, they even packed their board shorts. Others wanted to go and visit a sick relative."

One of the men, 19-year-old Abu Bakr, told Fairfax he had been targeted for speaking out about violence against Muslims.

"It is a 10-page letter saying I had a jihadi mentality ... I have never been approached by ASIO to talk about this," he said.

"We have been treated unjustly. My record is clean, shiny gold. I am not a criminal."

ASIO says it can cancel passports on security grounds and that withholding passports is an important means of preventing Australians from acting against national security.
Click to expand...
 
M

Mondy

Banned
r1chard said:
Oh look. A week of fallout from ASIO doing this or that bad thing, and what do we have?

Propaganda, baby!
Click to expand...

Gotta get Western Sydney back on side by cracking down on those filthy muslims! A Current Affair are gonna have a field day with this one.

"LEBONESE GANGS! WELFARE! TERRORISM! BIG LOUD OBNOXIOUS RED LETTERS!".....
 
B

bomma_man

Member
A mate who works with refugees was telling me last night he had to stop a guy killing himself last week. Guy saw his parents and two brothers get their throats slit in front of him. Only him and his sister survived.

But economic migrants and all that :/
 
D

Dead Man

Member
bomma_man said:
A mate who works with refugees was telling me last night he had to stop a guy killing himself last week. Guy saw his parents and two brothers get their throats slit in front of him. Only him and his sister survived.

But economic migrants and all that :/
Click to expand...

That sort of stuff is why I'm not that sad that the stupid fuckers I worked for made up shit to get me fired. Nothing you can do for these people at the moment as a worker except watch them deteriorate. Hope your mate is doing okay.
 
M

Mondy

Banned
TONY Abbott and the Liberals have lost their three-year carbon tax advantage over Labor, with support for the Coalition dropping to its lowest since 2011 to leave the opposition leading on preferences for the first time since the election of the Gillard government.

Just three months after being elected, the Abbott government's primary vote support has dropped to 40 per cent while Labor's two-party-preferred support has jumped five percentage points to put the ALP in front 52 per cent to 48 per cent.
Click to expand...

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...latest-newspoll/story-fn59niix-1226779290440#

Oh dear.
 
W

wonzo

Banned
Interesting tidbit from the AFR
The shift towards Labor, first recorded in the November 25 Nielsen poll, began before Education Minister Christopher Pyne was forced to backtrack after saying he would dump Labor’s Gonski schools funding program.

Other pollsters have found that women are shifting away from the Coalition much faster than men.

The size of the poll shift towards the Opposition is in stark contrast to incoming governments rating strongly in the polls in the months after the change to the Howard government in 1996 and the Rudd government in 2007.

In both cases it took much longer for the then-new opposition party to begin performing well in the polls.

The Financial Review’s Poll of Polls’ weighted average has now shifted into Labor territory, with the weighted average of last week’s Essential and Roy Morgan polls coming in at 50.5 per cent for the Opposition.
Click to expand...
 
D

Dryk

Member
Most of the comments on the Australian article about the sliding polls are people complaining about how all media is biased towards the left and that the ABC and Fairfax alliance of evil is doing everything they can to bring the Coalition down. HAHAHAHA.
 
M

Mr. Tone

Member
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/dec/10/childcare-funding-earmarked-for-wage-rises-to-be-diverted-to-training

More than $235m in federal funding earmarked for childcare workers’ wage increases will be redirected to professional development under an Abbott government overhaul.

The assistant minister for education, Sussan Ley, said 16 operators already had signed funding agreements worth $62.5m under Labor’s $300m early years quality fund. Although the new government would not walk away from those existing contracts, it would ask the operators – including Goodstart Early Learning – to voluntarily put the money into professional development measures instead of wage increases.

The announcement comes after the release of an Abbott-commissioned review of the fund, a measure announced by the former government to address childcare sector workers’ low pay. Ley seized on the PricewaterhouseCoopers review on Tuesday to argue the Labor scheme was inequitable, poorly designed and used as a recruiting tool by the United Voice union. Childcare centres required enterprise bargaining agreements to be eligible for the funding.

Ley said the scheme was divisive and created huge market distortions between “the haves” and “the have-nots”. She said educators in the long-day care sector were three times more likely to miss out on the funding than to benefit. The fact it was set up on a first-come first-served basis meant larger operators were favoured because smaller providers could not submit applications as quickly.

“I know there’s been a lot of concern in the sector about this fund and what happens now, and the sector deserves certainty,” Ley told reporters in Canberra on Tuesday.

The assistant minister said the Coalition would honour its promise to match pre-existing contracts under the fund, but would ask operators receiving that $62.5m to “do the right thing” and voluntarily pledge the money for professional development. Ley said she had spoken to one of the biggest beneficiaries, Goodstart, but would not comment on its willingness to comply with her request to redirect the committed funds into professional development.

“I’m asking these providers to think about the greater good of the sector,” she said. “I’m hoping that the full $300m will be available for professional development that will have a real and lasting impact.”

Ley said she was “not taking the money away” into savings but “keeping it for the benefit of everyone”. She was confident of the government’s legal position as she was not going to claw back money already contracted.

Ley said operators that had made conditional offers of wage increases to staff included a clause that they did not have to pay the money if the early years quality funds were not forthcoming. She acknowledged that there were issues with pay levels in the childcare sector but this would be addressed through a Fair Work Commission process now under way.

“Thirty per cent of a subset of the workforce receiving a wage increase for just two years was never going to solve the problem,” Ley said.

“The objective is that every educator in every long-day care service can benefit.”
Click to expand...

and in the SMH
Asked whether it was cruel to be asking low-paid childcare workers to return money promised to them, Assistant Minister for Education Sussan Ley said: “Of course I feel for workers who might have expected a pay rise, but who led them to expect that pay rise?”
Click to expand...
 
M

Mondy

Banned
Dryk said:
Most of the comments on the Australian article about the sliding polls are people complaining about how all media is biased towards the left and that the ABC and Fairfax alliance of evil is doing everything they can to bring the Coalition down. HAHAHAHA.
Click to expand...


You're reading a Murdoch comment section? Quick, read something intelligent to balance the books.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Graven |OT| A heretic priest killing hexed creatures
4
837
mansoor1980 replied
NEOGAF - A Data-Driven View Pt. 3: Communities Section
Social Community
10
2K
Komatsu replied
  • Locked
How The Last of Us became 'the greatest story' ever told in video games
Opinion Analysis 2 3 4 5
203
21K
Elysium44 replied
Forza Horizon 5 |OT| Are you a Mexican, or a Mexican't?
|OT| 42 43 44 45 46
2K
206K
MagnetoWasRight replied
Battlefield 2042 Briefing – What We Learned From The Open Beta
Opinion Game Dev
35
4K
REDRZA MWS replied
Top Bottom