• 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.
R

Ruthless_Barbarian

Member
Shaneus said:
What happened specifically?
Click to expand...

Nothing happened. Nothing at all. Not sure why he even came for the debate.


7:02pm: Shelly the young lady asks a great question! What question do you both want to ask eachother, she asks?

How very meta! The moderator looks a bit worried because now there is a double-answer scenario but no matter.

Abbott says Rudd hasn't given us a positive reason to vote for him, rather than just run the other of all scare campaigns.

Rudd gives a three point answer (of course he does):

1. Schools plan
2. Hospitals plan
3. Broadband network across Straya.

Three positive reasons why I hope you will vote Labor, he says to Abbott.
{audience laughter}

Rudd's question to Abbott:
Tony why don't you tonight release the details of the 200 policies you have fully costed?

There he goes again..more fear, more scare, Abbott says.

Rudd heckles him - what about a straight answer?
Click to expand...

Full debate here
 
B

bomma_man

Member
viciouskillersquirrel said:
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.
Click to expand...

You should be a writer dude, this is great.
 
Y

Yagharek

Member
2007 vintage was a good year. Hope, ambition and a certain je ne sais quoi. Unfortunately after opening, it was quite unlike the description provided by the viticulturist and perhaps should have been left in the bottle a little longer.

2013 vintage appears to be bitter, excessively acidic and more suited to the aged palette which has undergone unhealthy levels of damage. More like vinegar.
 
V

Ventron

Member
Dead Man said:
HOW CAN THIS MAN WIN? GAH.
Click to expand...

I think it was Paul Keating that said in Australia "Oppositions don't win elections, Governments lose". Each election is all about how much we hate the Government, and if it's bad enough, we'll change no matter who the Opposition is.
 
R

reptilescorpio

Member
At least I can look forward to saying, "This is your fucking fault, you voted for him" to the parents over the coming years.

Well, they vote National but same fucking thing.
 
C

CrazedProfessional

Member
It's not that they're hating the government, it's that they're being told by 70% of the media TO hate the government.

Being a bad government is one thing, being FRAMED as a bad government is another.
 
B

bomma_man

Member
Holding on to the essential poll. Going by their record no government on 49 2pp or above a week before the election has lost. Labor are currently on 50.
 
C

CrazedProfessional

Member
It really depends where the swings are and essentially Labor needs a 2%~ Nation Wide swing to even catch up to the Coalition and the 2 free seats they're getting from the retiring independents.
 
V

Ventron

Member
Yagharek said:
Labor still won the popular vote that election, yet lost based on electoral boundaries.
Click to expand...

Not 2001, That was 98 and having a big majority from 96 helped.

CrazedProfessional said:
It's not that they're hating the government, it's that they're being told by 70% of the media TO hate the government.

Being a bad government is one thing, being FRAMED as a bad government is another.
Click to expand...

You see a conspiracy under every rock. If these evil powerful people were so desperate to end the government they'd find a way to rig the counting.
 
C

CrazedProfessional

Member
It doesn't take a conspiracy to end a government, just an opinion piece, an agenda and some sort of media empire.

But you're right, we don't have any of those things in Australia so I'll take off my tin foil and leave
 
B

bomma_man

Member
Ventron said:
Not 2001, That was 98 and having a big majority from 96 helped.



You see a conspiracy under every rock. If these evil powerful people were so desperate to end the government they'd find a way to rig the counting.
Click to expand...

Are you saying that the media has no effect
 
Y

Yagharek

Member
hEnyBHS.jpg
 
M

mandiller

Member
elfinke said:
I used sportsbet to put $10 on Labor to win at 10:1. Now they've jumped out to $11.50 I might go another $10.
Click to expand...

You know how at the last election it was a hung parliament? Well this election the Coalition just needs to pick up a few seats. And Labor? Well, they need to not lose any seats to the Coalition and pick up some. It won't happen. Traditionally Labor western Sydney is now Coalition country. There's a lot of seats there for the Coalition to pick up.
 
V

Ventron

Member
elfinke said:
I don't need luck - Abbott isn't gonna win. I've been saying it for months now.

ALP will be paying for my dinner that weekend.
Click to expand...

Not trying to be smart, just genuinely curious: what do you think will happen in the next 9 days that will cause a swing back to Labor?
 
F

Fredescu

Member
A couple of polls are still showing 50/50. You don't need a "swing back" from there. More polls are showing 53/47 though, which isn't really that close at all. They can't both be right, so it's not a done deal yet.
 
E

Elaugaufein

Member
mandiller said:
You know how at the last election it was a hung parliament? Well this election the Coalition just needs to pick up a few seats. And Labor? Well, they need to not lose any seats to the Coalition and pick up some. It won't happen. Traditionally Labor western Sydney is now Coalition country. There's a lot of seats there for the Coalition to pick up.
Click to expand...

Well the Coalition could lose some of their regional QLD seats to Katter, and it wouldn't surprise me if they lose one or two of their more urban ones to Palmer and possibly one of the heavily mining dependent rural ones. But unless Abbott seriously does double dissolution rather than run a minority government that likely won't make a difference. Both Katter and Palmer have positioned themselves to the right of the LNP. Though they are emphasizing different policies, Katter is playing heavily to the conservative farmers, and Palmer is playing to the wannabe rich. Unlike the previous election I don't think Katter can afford to be part of a minority Labor government at this point (it'd be toxic to his party positioning). So if a minority government forms because of that its likely to be LNP lead.

Basically I'd be very surprised if the House outcome isn't Abbot as PM.
I dunno how the balance of power will work out in the Senate. The complex preference flows and strong divides makes things volatile. I don't think the LNP will get a clear majority, but I dunno if the balance of power will be Greens or Katter or Palmer or a collection of (likely rightish) independents.

Abbot might well double dissolution if the Greens hold balance of power since he's unlikely to get his "mandates" through in that situation. Despite his claim of not being willing to minority government I'm pretty sure he'd go with a right-wingish collection holding balance in the Senate, since a double isn't likely to give him a better result. Its only been twice since 1980 that a major party has held an outright majority in the Senate (and the most recent of those is by only 1 seat) and neither of those have been from a double dissolution. It was the Coalition both times though.
 
C

CrazedProfessional

Member
Fredescu said:
A couple of polls are still showing 50/50. You don't need a "swing back" from there. More polls are showing 53/47 though, which isn't really that close at all. They can't both be right, so it's not a done deal yet.
Click to expand...

Usually there's a last minute rush as the undecided do some last minute research too.
 
M

mjontrix

Member
So, how many GAFers are planning to move from Australia if Abbott wins? I'm actually seriously considering a move within the next 18 months...

If he actually privitises Medicare it might actually make Australia the most expensive place to live in the world! I can't see most low-income people being able to survive without it...
 
H

hidys

Member
mjontrix said:
So, how many GAFers are planning to move from Australia if Abbott wins? I'm actually seriously considering a move within the next 18 months...

If he actually privitises Medicare it might actually make Australia the most expensive place to live in the world! I can't see most low-income people being able to survive without it...
Click to expand...

Okay seriously Abbott is not that crazy...
 
F

Fredescu

Member
mjontrix said:
So, how many GAFers are planning to move from Australia if Abbott wins? I'm actually seriously considering a move within the next 18 months...

If he actually privitises Medicare it might actually make Australia the most expensive place to live in the world! I can't see most low-income people being able to survive without it...
Click to expand...
Are you confusing Medibank with Medicare? No doubt the loony fringe want to get rid of public health, but it would never fly.
 
A

A More Normal Bird

Unconfirmed Member
Ventron said:
You see a conspiracy under every rock. If these evil powerful people were so desperate to end the government they'd find a way to rig the counting.
Click to expand...
This makes about as much sense as most of the Coalition's policies. You're saying that the Murdoch press and other media outlets can't be biased against the government because if they really wanted to influence the election results they would, instead of using their legal right to publish their views to the public like they do all the time all over the world, actually engage in a surpassingly costly and difficult attempt to rig an election, breaking the law and putting entire media empires at risk.
 
M

magenta

Member
viciouskillersquirrel said:
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.
Click to expand...

I grew up on a property outside of small town Australia, this description is more accurate that a Swiss made watch telling the time. The only thing I would add is about your point between farmer vs greenies. A lot of the problems that greenies see can mostly be blamed on corporate run farming operations who base their decision making on excel spreadsheets rather than what happening on the ground. A family run operation do very much care about the long term sustainability of their land and operation as they have more to lose.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Graven |OT| A heretic priest killing hexed creatures
4
825
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
205K
MagnetoWasRight replied
Battlefield 2042 Briefing – What We Learned From The Open Beta
Opinion Game Dev
35
4K
REDRZA MWS replied
Top Bottom