Candescence
Member
Huw Parkinson's political video mashups win the Walkley for multimedia storytelling. Not quite political news, but now the ABC has a compilation of his stuff so far, and it's absolute gold.
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AusPoliGAF |OT| Boats? What Boats?
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The last of the Shirtfronted series came out this morning focusing on the spill Turnbull put into place three months ago.
It's worth a read but the highlights;
It's worth a read but the highlights;
- Abbott and Credlin had no idea Turnbull was gathering support and thought he'd go away like Costello did
- When Bishop came to see him that day to inform him of the spill he was blown away
- He tried to visit the Queen after he was chucked but Buckingham said her schedule was too busy. It's been since revealed she had nothing going on that day and he got snubbed.
Elaugaufein
Member
Honestly I'm not sure how I feel about it. Doubling the threshold at that level allows a looot of (very influential) companies to not disclose. On the other hand closing some of the multinational tax / reporting avoidance ridiculousness before the next report is due is a positive. Kind of hard to say up the pros and cons especially since parts of this are about what isn't disclosed.
I'm also not sure the incremental reform argument is sound, when it comes to reining in the rich and powerful reform only tends to occur when events drive home the absurdity of the existing system , and incremental measures both let off the pressure and also expend fairly rare opportubities to act. The perfect may be the enemy of the good for good reason at times.
I think this sort of describes The Greens as a whole though right? They've never been a revolutionary party.
i'm guessing their line of thinking is to get something done now and fix the rest once the libs finally get turfed
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A More Normal Bird
Unconfirmed Member
It's as much or more about politics as it is about policy. Firstly, I don't think this deal can really be called "incremental progress". The $100 million revenue threshold for tax transparency is something Labor legislated when it was in government. The current government scrapped it, then introduced its own tax transparency measures. The Senate (Labor, Greens and Independents) amended it to include Labor's old $100 million threshold and then the government rejected it in the house. Labor's basically claiming that the Greens have been bluffed and that if they held their nerve, the government would have accepted the $100 million threshold ahead of scrapping their own legislation.
Where this gets messy politically is that Bernardi has claimed that even accepting the Green's $200 million threshold goes against the will of the party room. Therefore we can assume that this is something Turnbull/Cabinet have decided on. From Labor's perspective, they were holding the cards on this issue until the Greens let Turnbull off the hook. Despite the questionable effectiveness of the "Turnbull's rich!" campaign, the topic of taxes on/concessions for the wealthy and big business is still a key one for Labor, seeing as how they're either unable or unwilling to tackle the deficit bogeyman head on. This deal is a blow for them in that regard, due to the following:
- It shows that Turnbull isn't Abbott, both in terms of policy and in negotiating with the Senate
- It removes an arrow from Labor's quiver; they can no longer say that the government either doesn't have a policy, or only has a policy because Labor got its measures restored
- It gives the right wing ammunition to attack Labor's policy, "more extreme taxes than the Greens!"
- As Elaugaufein said this is an area it's hard to expend political capital without a full head of steam
- It could also appeal to those weirdos who go from voting Liberal straight to Green
The Greens famously prioritised policy over politics when they voted against Rudd's ETS. Now obviously they can't be held entirely responsible for the portal to hell subsequently opening and setting (most) progressive politics in the country back by a decade but the point is there are multiple considerations with all of these decisions; policy/ideology, party political jostling and lastly the 'big-picture' meta-game, which in our case basically amounts to whether a decision helps Labor or the Coalition come election time. Those who simplify this deal to supporting the Greens being "pragmatic" or attacking Labor for opposing it when they've passed plenty of right wing crud themselves are missing the point I reckon. Maybe this is just low expectations on my part, but I think it's a good thing that Labor are willing to attack the Greens from the left, just as it is when the opposite happens.
Elaugaufein
Member
But that's the must do something fallacy which has been responsible for some stupid shit in its time (like various tough on crime and war on xyz stupidity). It's not about doing something its about doing the right thing.
I get that, in the general case, nothing is sometimes the right thing to do, but is that so in this instance?
I'm not meaning to be an apologist in this case, I dont have strong feelings about this particular legislation.
Elaugaufein
Member
I'm not trying to be negative either. I'm not personally sure if this is a net good or bad thing.
There's also nothing inherently wrong on working with people you disagree with 90% on the 10% you do agree on. I give the ALP crap because the things they fold on are often terrible not because they deal at all.
Feast your eyes on the mature responsible individuals we have elected as a country.
https://overland.org.au/2015/12/black-bans-and-blackmail/
Kill three people, get a $250k slap on the wrist. Campaign for that company to appoint OH&S representatives, get handcuffed in front of your kids.
Kill three people, get a $250k slap on the wrist. Campaign for that company to appoint OH&S representatives, get handcuffed in front of your kids.
bobnowhere
Member
There was a bit of comedy a couple weeks ago in the Senate involving Bernardi too. Something about reintroducing partial voluntary student unionism and the Coalition split 3 ways.
- Bernardi and Abetz crossed the floor acting all betrayed.
- The bulk stayed put
- And finally some ran "screaming" from the floor as they didn't want to be seen to be voting on the same side as someone or other
All good grown up stuff.
Interesting result from the North Sydney bi-election, for all the talk, the Greens vote grew by what can only be described as statistical noise, the absent Labor vote split everywhere but the Greens and most of the vote siphoned off the Libs went to a disaffected ex-lib who lost the controversial pre-selection battle to the winning candidate and who was also backed by popular independent Ted Mack. Maybe deep down people were more pissed off by the process and issues to do with RNS than anything else and I imagine Turnbull is quite happy.
welcome to the modern australia
Elaugaufein
Member
What's the Green vote like in North Sydney ? There's some areas where the Greens have basically poached all the Labor vote they could get and the remainder would vote Liberal before they'd vote Green.
A
A More Normal Bird
Unconfirmed Member
Don't mention the
class
bobnowhere
Member
Last time Labor was on 20% and the greens at 15% and with Labor not even turning up this time the green vote went up a whole 0.8%. Being a bi-election all the kooks came out of the closet and the vote split all over the place, Bullet Trains, The Future, Population Sustainibility etc... but it seems clear all the ex-labor voters went anywhere but Green.
Fullish results:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/north-sydney-by-election-2015/results/
At first, and second, glance, that looked like the Sustainable Porn party.
bobnowhere
Member
Now that's a party I... could... get... behind?
Anyway, strange days seeing a Liberal PM putting money into the CSIRO. The worlds all upside down and back to front. If your work can be immediately monetised your are looking good but if you are researching the mating habits of the "Pointless Frog from Outback Nowheresville" you're probably still sore out of luck.
Elaugaufein
Member
Wow. That's one of the safest seats I've ever seen and I've spent most of my life in National Party strongholds.
That's where the Sustainable Porn Party comes in.
D.Lo
Member
Haha very nice.
That is the point the Greens lost me.
I personally am a fan of incremental change. The right uses it constantly to do what they want (eg watering down Medicare, selling government assets for short term gain) so why can't we progress progressively as well?
Elaugaufein
Member
In a nutshell its a hell of a lot easier to progressively revert things to a previous state than it is to progressively change things to a new state*. If industry had got the kind of ETS theyd wanted and the public thought they'd done their bit then your chance of incrementally improving it is sweet fuck all. What you'll get is another Mining Tax campaign if you so much as try.
(*Technically its easier to do things that entrenched players approve of incrementally but for most progressive policies these are identical since entrenched players are self-interested and risk averse. But its why Keating could neoliberalize the hell out of everything)
D.Lo
Member
That does appear to be the common wisdom, but has anyone even tried recently?
If we had the weak ETS six years ago, and now PM whoever was going to a summit and it wasn't good enough, we could re-legislate a better one. The old one becomes the new default, the new conservative.
Sure you can't iterate every year. But fucking try something people!
If we had the weak ETS six years ago, and now PM whoever was going to a summit and it wasn't good enough, we could re-legislate a better one. The old one becomes the new default, the new conservative.
Sure you can't iterate every year. But fucking try something people!
Elaugaufein
Member
Gillard's ETS and the MRRT come to mind. I do believe they got axed rather than becoming the new norm. Neither where actually particularly hardcore (the ETS did get sorta screwed by its fixed price start becoming worse than a trade start due to the crash though). The MRRT was basically written by the miners in the end and that still didn't save it.
D.Lo
Member
That's a pretty unique government though. One with basically no political capital to spend, ever. Maybe the only one with so little capital (and basically no mandate ever either) in the modern era.
Mind you we've had a lot of unique governments recently.
"Intolerance in letting me display my intolerance" is such a bullshit argument these days, you'd think people would stop using it by now.
no except for that one time with zizek
the abc board have done a real good job of killing the abc's reputation
roosters93
Member
what was this?
some qanda a couple years ago
roosters93
Member
still on the youtube
cheers
cheers
To nobody's surprise at all, Barnaby Joyce is still a cunt. Who obviously has some kind of greyhound industry in his pockets, given how keen he's been to ban protesters and now this bullshit.
gonna own when tony windsor wins his seat
bobnowhere
Member
Elaugaufein
Member
Hmm. Have we had a further right than the Libs economic party before ? I mean the Nationals are generally more socially right but their economic positions (in the context of farmers/graziers/etc) is often to the left of Keating and latter Labor if you get right down to it. And Katter and One Nation were in a similar vein to the Nationals (hard right socially, left economically for a select group).. And being a hard right economic party with no other policies is going to be hell hard to run on in an Australian context, the Liberals generally can't even manage it in a strict practical sense and that's with people trusting them more with the economy and budget despite their being very little evidence for that theory.
I guess they could maybe go hard right socially and economically and then take a populous anti-science / technocrat approach ? That might have some appeal. Basically a Tea Party movement.
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