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AusPoliGAF |OT| Boats? What Boats?

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DrSlek

Member
I can understand some of the answers from WA and QLD.

They want more land sold to foreign companies because it means jobs and money for them. They want less tax on mining companies to encourage more to set up shop here.

However some of those answers are just odd. Why do they think we need to spend more on defense? Why shouldn't indigenous Australians be recognized as being the first Australians?
 
D

Dead Man

Member
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/rich-win-big-with-class-warfare-in-session-20130827-2so67.html

The significant thing about the looming change of government is not that the economy will be much better managed - it won't be; these days most of the key decisions are made by the econocrats - but that the Coalition will bring to its decisions about taxing and spending a different bias to Labor's.

How can I say that? By looking at Tony Abbott's promises. If you do pay attention it's as plain as a hundred dollar bill.

Let's start with that boring question of the concessional tax treatment of superannuation. It's by far the most expensive example of (upper) middle-class welfare.

Super has always been a scheme heavily favouring those on the highest rates of income tax, who also happen to be those most able to afford to save.

But towards the end of his time as treasurer, Peter Costello introduced ''reforms'' that made it far more favourable to the well-off by making super payouts tax free and opening the scheme wide to ''salary sacrifice'' by those able to afford it.

At the time, many economists said what they're saying now about Abbott's paid parental leave scheme, that it was so generous as to be fiscally unsustainable.

And so it has proved. In its unending search for budget savings the Labor government has chipped away at that generosity in almost every budget (as I know to my cost).

And as part of its mining tax package, Labor finally acted to remove one of the most iniquitous features of the scheme.

It introduced the ''low-income super contribution rebate'' to end a situation where everyone earning less than $37,000 a year gained nothing from the concessional treatment of super contributions (while people like me saved tax of 31.5¢ in the dollar).

Earlier this year, when Labor was making noises about doing more to make super less inequitable - and the big banks and insurance companies were putting up their usual furious fight - Abbott promised to avoid any further changes for three years. Labor later topped this by promising no further changes for five years. Who benefits most from this moratorium - aspirational families in the western suburbs?

And get this: to help pay for its promise to abolish the mining tax - paid on their super-profits by three of the biggest mining companies in the world - an Abbott government would abolish the low-income super contribution rebate. Who would benefit most from Abbott's opposition to Labor's plan to remove the concessional tax treatment of company cars?

Abbott's paid parental leave scheme would introduce a major new example of middle-class welfare. Since even most on his own side disapprove of it, it's guaranteed to be chopped back in future. Then there's his pledge to remove the means-testing from the private health insurance rebate.

To its unforgivable shame, Labor has repeatedly refused to increase the poverty-level rate of the dole. In March, however, it began paying dole recipients a twice-yearly supplement of up to $105. No doubt as part of its campaign against waste and extravagance, an Abbott government would abolish this supplement. Early in its term, the Howard government rejigged its grants to schools so as to favour private schools. After doing nothing for six years, the Labor government accepted the Gonski report's plan to bias school funding in favour of disadvantaged students, most of whom are in public schools.

After roundly condemning the Gonski proposals, Abbott affected a deathbed conversion to them as the election loomed. Read his fine print, however, and the parents of children at private schools can rest easy. The disadvantaged will soon be back at the back of the queue where they belong.
Click to expand...

Gazunta said:
especially Gaffers
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If the shoe fits, I guess ;)
 
E

Elaugaufein

Member
I am probably wrong on why the majority of Queenslanders disagree on acknowledging the Aboriginals in the Constitution since I disagree with them on almost everything but personally I do not feel it is appropriate to call out any group in the Constitution as its a document for all Australians, so unless you're going to list every group in order of arrival you shouldn't list any.
 
S

Sutton Dagger

Member
DrSlek said:
I can understand some of the answers from WA and QLD.

They want more land sold to foreign companies because it means jobs and money for them. They want less tax on mining companies to encourage more to set up shop here.

However some of those answers are just odd. Why do they think we need to spend more on defense? Why shouldn't indigenous Australians be recognized as being the first Australians?
Click to expand...

Considering some of the posts made previously by Australians on GAF about Indigenous people, it's not surprising. It's also hilarious that I know exactly who they will be voting for based on the remarks that were made.

Edit: @ Elaugaufein, it's a sign of respect and signifies an admission that this continent was not 'Terra Nullius'.
 
Y

Yagharek

Member
Elaugaufein said:
I am probably wrong on why the majority of Queenslanders disagree on acknowledging the Aboriginals in the Constitution since I disagree with them on almost everything but personally I do not feel it is appropriate to call out any group in the Constitution as its a document for all Australians, so unless you're going to list every group in order of arrival you shouldn't list any.
Click to expand...

No, they should be included as it is a recognition they were here before Australia was even an entity as a nation or as states. They had their land stolen from them in every sense of the word.

Everyone else who lives here now was either born as a citizen or became one by choice, and are thus Australians. Indigenous people never had that choice, they suffered genocide and are still woefully treated and have to deal with legacy discrimination and issues from ill thought policies in the not so distant past.

If anyone deserves special recognition, its the people who were here for 60,000 years.
 
E

Elaugaufein

Member
I disagree.

Should we acknowledge Aboriginals were here first and Terra Nullus is a silly doctrine? Yes and the history books and appropriate reparation should show that. If we want to draft a separate document of acknowlegement I would probably support that too. I simply do not feel the constitution should single any one or group out for special treatment or acknowledgement ( with the exception of such necessary for the function of society).
 
Y

Yagharek

Member
Elaugaufein said:
I disagree.

Should we acknowledge Aboriginals were here first and Terra Nullus is a silly doctrine? Yes and the history books and appropriate reparation should show that. If we want to draft a separate document of acknowlegement I would probably support that too. I simply do not feel the constitution should single any one or group out for special treatment or acknowledgement ( with the exception of such necessary for the function of society).
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But from their perspective, you could argue the entire concept of 'Australia' as a nation is like a bunch of squatters that moved in and took control. By definition they deserve special treatment because they never willingly gave any rights to the settlers.
 
M

markot

Banned
I think adding any superfluous text to the constitution is stupid.

I like that its a business document.

We dont need that American shit here.

Mabo extinguished terra nullius. People should be taught about that.
 
E

elfinke

Member
That Vote Compass has turned into a veritable goldmine of information for the ABC, so much so that I'm amazed Clive or Gina haven't made a claim on it yet.

Also, on the question of 'Marriage should only be between and Man and a Woman', I live in the 7th most agreeable seat. Has to be all the fucks on the other side of the Moonbies :/
 
M

magenta

Member
The Economist said:
THE athletic stadium at Homebush, a suburb in the heart of western Sydney, pulsates with Bollywood music. Stalls sizzle with Indian food. About 15,000 people have flocked here for the annual India-Australia Friendship Fair on August 25th. They include immigrants from the subcontinent, but also Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and China. Anglo-Saxons, it seems, are the only community light on the ground. “We need more of them,” says John Niven, president of the United Indian Association, the event’s organiser, who left his native Madras two decades ago.

Politicians of Anglo-Celtic background, from both sides of Australia’s fractured political divide, have at least heeded his call. They are just two weeks away from Australia’s general election on September 7th. Sydney, the country’s biggest city, has become a vital battleground. Its sprawling, multi-ethnic western suburbs are home to several key swinging constituencies. Kevin Rudd, Australia’s Labor prime minister, is in Canberra for a briefing on Syria. Tony Abbott, leader of the conservative Liberal-National opposition, is launching his campaign in Queensland, another state where votes could swing. But both men have sent to this multicultural jamboree their minister and shadow minister responsible for immigration.

Opinion polls show Mr Abbott is the favourite to become prime minister, ending six years of Labor rule. On August 24th (the day before the fair) another poll suggested five Labor-held seats in western Sydney could fall, including one around Homebush and another at neighbouring Parramatta. Over the past 30 years, immigration has transformed these once working-class Labor heartlands into modern Australia’s new frontier—and muddied their political allegiances. About 27% of the country’s population was born overseas. In some parts of western Sydney, that proportion is more than half. Many from India, now Australia’s biggest source country for immigrants, have settled in Parramatta and nearby suburbs. Mr Niven thinks a broadening skills list in the immigration programme, as well looser rules for student visas (allowing some to stay on and work after their studies) explains the rise. Some political figures talk glowingly of India becoming a big export destination for legal, financial and medical services from Indians and other Asians educated in Australia.

It seems strange, then, that one of the election campaign’s most hot-button issues is the growing number of asylum-seekers arriving in Australia by boat. Most are from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Iran. Mr Rudd has followed Mr Abbott’s coalition in a race to the bottom to convince voters which side can come up with the harshest policy on boat people. He launched the so-called Papua New Guinea solution to send boat arrivals to Australia’s northern neighbour—not just to be processed, but to be re-settled there. Since his announcement, arrivals have slowed. The government says this shows the deterrence is working. Perhaps. But it has also given Mr Rudd breathing space to focus his campaign attack elsewhere, on some of Mr Abbott’s big, woolly spending plans. His signature promise, a paid parental leave scheme that would cost the federal government A$5.5 billion ($6.1 billion) a year, has drawn fire from economists and business figures (and muted criticism from within Mr Abbott’s party) over its hefty price tag.

Mr Niven says boat people do not bother Australia’s Indian community. They are more irked by delays over spouse visas for Australians marrying Indians, he says. But Julie Owens, the Labor parliamentarian for Parramatta, finds mixed views about asylum seekers among her constituents. She is one of three Anglo-Celtic female parliamentarians who have turned up to the Homebush fair in colourful Indian dress (the male politicians, less adventurous, have stuck to dark suits). She has held her seat since 2004; in that time, she has knocked at the doors of 75,000 homes. Yet when Labor suffered a national swing against it three years ago, Ms Owens lost ground to the conservative Liberals. Parramatta could go either way on September 7th.

Ms Owens blames media and radio “shock jocks” for stoking fear, especially about Muslim boat people. And she still has persuading to do among the 58% of her constituency who were born overseas. She likes to tell them that when Australia became a federation in 1901, about a quarter of its people were immigrants, only a little less than today. “They were mainly British then. All that’s different now is where they come from.”

Six men from Sri Lanka ask Ms Owens to be photographed with them. They are boat people who were picked up at the Cocos Islands, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean. Five are Tamils, and one a “Muslim Tamil”. They say they fled “political persecution, not economic problems”. Aged between 23 and 38, the men have been in Australia for a year. They spent the first six months being shunted between detention centres. Although they are now free, the Rudd government forbids them to work. (It hopes this “no advantage” restriction will deter more boats.) So the men have been engaged as volunteers at the Friendship Fair. One marvels at meeting a politician: “We could never do that in Sri Lanka". Ms Owens tells them to contact her after the election if she still has her seat.

About 12 km south-west of Parramatta lies Cabramatta, another former Anglo-Celtic working class suburb. Cabramatta is now the heartland of Australia’s Vietnamese community. Its downtown—with the Pai Lau, a giant Chinese gate dedicated to "Liberty and Democracy", bustling markets and Vietnamese restaurants—has the feel of an Asian city. Its population is drawn from boat people and their descendants who fled Indochina after the Vietnam war. Under Malcolm Fraser, a former Liberal prime minister, Australia took what some refugee advocates hail a model approach to boat people. Along with Canada and America, it resettled thousands of Vietnamese after they were processed through refugee camps in Malaysia. Mr Fraser, now 83, is a stern critic of both sides of Australian politics over their hardhearted treatment of the latest wave of asylum seekers.

Chris Hayes, whose parliamentary seat of Fowler includes Cabramatta, is a popular figure among its immigrant communities. On August 24th he drives to a barbecue lunch hosted by the Khmer Krom and Australian Buddhist Association, a group representing Cambodians displaced from the old South Vietnam. He tells them that there is no difference between his great, great grandparents, who left for Australia during the Irish potato famine of the 1850s, and the Khmer Krom’s relatives who fled Pol Pot, Cambodia’s tyrant. “We’re all immigrants here.”

But Mr Hayes also has a hard time convincing constituents. Unemployment in Cabramatta, at almost 10%, is nearly double Australia’s national average, pushing enterprising young people away. He thinks that the rise of people smugglers in Indonesia has sparked unsympathetic attitudes among Australia’s Vietnamese community. They offer direct passages on boats to Australia for around A$10,000 ($9,000) a head. “The first wave of boat people didn’t choose their country,” he says. “They went through processing centres.” His Middle Eastern constituents, who are trying to sponsor displaced relatives languishing in camps, resent boat people for the same reason. “For every person we take off a boat, it means one less person we take from a camp.”

Mr Hayes holds his constituency with an 8.8% margin for Labor over rival candidates from the last election, double the edge with which Ms Owens clings to hers. Nonetheless, he ventures no predictions about how western Sydney will cast its loyalties at the forthcoming election, including in his seat. “There will be a lot more volatility. Younger people have different views from the old working class era out here.”
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http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2013/08/australias-election
 
V

viciouskillersquirrel

Member
DrSlek said:
I can understand some of the answers from WA and QLD.

They want more land sold to foreign companies because it means jobs and money for them. They want less tax on mining companies to encourage more to set up shop here.

However some of those answers are just odd. Why do they think we need to spend more on defense? Why shouldn't indigenous Australians be recognized as being the first Australians?
Click to expand...
The economic policies are basically people voting to preserve their livelihoods and develop their communities economically. Queensland and WA both have vast swathes of land where people living there have very few options when it comes to earning a living.

The anti asylum seeker and anti Aboriginal attitudes are borne out of the isolation and homogeneity of their communities, as well as the fact that the general population in these areas have less education than the cities. We're talking about the whitest, least educated areas in Australia, which narrows people's worldviews somewhat, to the point where their preferred solutions to policy problems don't involve abstractions like social justice or depend so much on stuff like statistical analysis, but are pragmatic and concrete, here-and-now fixes.

Look at Bob Katter'a fixation on ending Woolworths and Coles' duopoly on food retail. He sees two dragons to fight and proposes to go up the mountain and kill them, rather than trying to address the conditions that made that mountain such an attractive place for dragons to congregate in the first place.

A farmer or grazier sees him or herself as a steward of their own land. After all, the farmer who fails to look after their own land exhausts it quickly and bankrupts their business, failing to pass it on to their own kids. This is why they resent these big city greenies who come in and tell them that because of aggregate overuse of the fresh water supply, everyone suffers and desertification and salination are taking place. The farmer resents this because to them, it's as Ann as the nose on Plain's face that the fastest way to get desertification and salination happening on their own land is to stop using water on it. What does this greenie know about farming?

It's the same attitudes that shape views, among white rural Australians, of the welfare state and the services it provides. As far as they're concerned, welfare is for the lazy and services are for the cities. In the here and the now, they don't see the intangible benefits of having a healthy welfare state, not in their own lives nor in those of their friends. As far as they're concerned, their hard earned tax dollars are being unfairly siphoned out of their own pockets and being given to the undeserving or to the cities.

This leads into the prevalence of anti Aboriginal attitudes. In the cities, Aboriginal people have more educational and employment opportunities, more support and more hope, so our exposure to the social problems facing their communities is somewhat lessened. In the country, and especially in more isolated places, these factors don't come into play, so a white country person's exposure to Aboriginal people can often be far less positive.

Perhaps on account of the isolation intrinsic to life as a farmer, people in rural areas tend to rate self-reliance as much higher on the list of virtues than a city person would. This attitude leads people to see one's success or failure in the face of adversity to be a reflection on one's own moral character. This means that they're a hardy and tenaceous lot out there. The trap here, however, is the inability to see the historical and systemic forces that perpetuate the problems in Aboriginal communities and instead see these problems as the culmination of a thousand individual moral failures of the affected Aboriginal people themselves.

Why should we give any special rights or even recognition, they reason, to a bunch of drunken, violent layabouts? They have every chance, they think, to lift themselves out of their situation, clean themselves up and get a job, but they fail to do so consistently. Nope, the thinking goes, they haven't earned the right to even be treated like equals.

Asylum seekers get it even worse, because not only are they coming and taking up tax dollars, but they're also foreign, which means they could be bringing problems into the country that haven't even been dreamed of yet.

TL;DR - The Queensland and Western Australian electorates love them some bootstraps and distrust city intellectuals on account of their pushing impractical pie-in-the-sky schemes onto their practical, self-reliant communities.
 
S

senahorse

Member
They are the political class that could sweep Sydney and help hand government to Tony Abbott - but they won't take questions from school students.

Ten days before the federal election, Coalition candidates poised to win a host of seats across Sydney are being shielded from interviews and refusing to turn up to local events.

This extends to high school interviews – where students grill candidates about what they would do for the electorate and answers are published in local newspapers.

Two weeks ago Fairfax Media contacted more than 50 sitting members and candidates for Sydney seats to ask them about issues in their seat.

Nine from the ALP, including Immigration Minister Tony Burke, gave interviews. But only one Liberal, shadow communications minister Malcolm Turnbull, responded.

For the Liberal Party, poised to win next Saturday according to polls, the silence appears increasingly systemic, with multiple examples emerging of candidates pulling out of events or interviews.

One senior Liberal source involved in marginal seat strategy said there was little to be gained in exposing candidates to media, particularly metropolitan media.

"If it's a request for a TV interview or a newspaper it would generally be a 'no'. There is more that can go wrong than the benefit from a good interview."

Another Liberal operative working in western Sydney seats said: "You just don't expose the new guys who have no experience."

SBS News reported that “the Coalition is banning some of its candidates from speaking to the media or their electorate”, with Andrew Nguyen, the Liberal candidate for Fowler, refused permission to take part in an SBS-run community forum.

And in western Sydney, Fairfax Community Newspapers has been trying to organise "job interviews" in high schools, where students question candidates about their suitability for the job of local member, with their answers to be published in multiple local papers.

At the first interview last Thursday in the seat of Greenway, Labor MP Michelle Rowland and Greens candidate Chris Brentin turned up to Glenwood High School, but the Liberals' Jaymes Diaz, who is favoured to win the seat, did not.
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http://www.smh.com.au/federal-polit...ng-the-jaymes-diaz-effect-20130828-2sq3a.html

It's kind of funny that we don't know what people like Jaymes Diaz (protip: he doesn't know either) and Andrew Nguyen are about, (well we know Nguyen, a refugee himself, is about stopping the boats) yet they are looking likely to be voted in. Doesn't really matter which state, the voting public, by and large are ignorant and think 'change' always means better.

bonus:

diaz729-620x349.jpg
 
J

Jintor

Member
Better to keep your mouth silent and be judged a fool than to open your mouth and prove it. Especially if you keep your trap shut until you're safely in office.
 
B

BowieZ

Banned
So who's watching the forum?

Hopefully no shoes thrown. And I look forward to the superbias of the public worm on Channel 7 (thanks to Coalition grassroots).
 
S

senahorse

Member
Jintor said:
Better to keep your mouth silent and be judged a fool than to open your mouth and prove it. Especially if you keep your trap shut until you're safely in office.
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I understand the rationale it just amazes me that people will vote for someone they know next to nothing about.
 
Y

Yagharek

Member
1st question is killer, Rudd on the defensive.

I think I miss Gillard. Terrible public speaker, but by all accounts a damn good negotiator.
 
J

Jintor

Member
The #imvotingliberal hashtag on twitter is a desperate war between left-leaning fellows sarcastically using the hashtag, american democrats who have mistaken what the hashtag means, american conservatives fighting the american democrats who don't understand what the hashtag means either, and the occasional actual Liberal voter.
 
H

hidys

Member
Jintor said:
The #imvotingliberal hashtag on twitter is a desperate war between left-leaning fellows sarcastically using the hashtag, american democrats who have mistaken what the hashtag means, american conservatives fighting the american democrats who don't understand what the hashtag means either, and the occasional actual Liberal voter.
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The Young Libs really should have known something like this would happen.
 
E

Elaugaufein

Member
So I voted today. Unfortunately given my electorate the most probable effect of my vote is electing the LNP instead of someone worse (starting with my 3rd preference I wasn't voting or who I'd prefer over the others but who I disliked least).

At least my vote for the Senate will do something constructive. *sigh*
 
E

Elaugaufein

Member
TriangleOfCorruption said:
In before standing green army, 15000 strong.
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I do not delude myself that anywhere I hang out on the internet is a representative sample of my country or even my state, let alone my electorate (I'm from one of those Queensland Electorates that appear frequently on the top 10 leasts). Also I didn't vote Green in the Senate (well at least not directly, preference flow means I probably did in practice). Also as you may have noticed my ideology doesn't quite match up perfectly, it's just the closest fit.
 
T

TriangleOfCorruption

Member
Labor certainly have a lot to "look into".

Elaugaufein said:
I do not delude myself that anywhere I hang out on the internet is a representative sample of my country or even my state, let alone my electorate (I'm from one of those Queensland Electorates that appear frequently on the top 10 leasts). Also I didn't vote Green in the Senate (well at least not directly, preference flow means I probably did in practice). Also as you may have noticed my ideology doesn't quite match up perfectly, it's just the closest fit.
Click to expand...

Sorry, I think there was a misunderstanding. I was just being snide about Abbot's base environmental catchphrase.
 
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Elaugaufein

Member
Yeah, the timing made me think you were being snarky at me (since this thread does seem pretty Left-ish and I was basically bitching about my electorate being very right). Sorry.
 
Y

Yagharek

Member
This is the longest election campaign ever. It's been running since election night or maybe Oakeshott's speech announcing his confidence intentions last time, when the Liberals cried foul over the result.

Seriously, Oakeshott/Windsor should have formed their own party and run again. The two best politicians in living memory for me.
 
S

senahorse

Member
Goddam the end result of all this is going to be interesting, think I will get a bottle of scotch for next Saturday, the first half for entertainment, the second half to drown my sorrows :(
 
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