Gillard Era Thread

[Damage]

Yes well so far it's obvious that she's probably the best female PM this country has ever seen.

What could possibly go wrong?

[Nick Carroll]

You know what, I am sick of being wrong so I am jumping the fence. Otherwise I am going to spend the entirety of Julia's term in a vague funk.

For one thing I am over these bloody queue jumping boat people and I think we should be simply sending them back to whatever country they came from. If they are such genuine refugees where are they getting all the money to pay the people smugglers? I'm not a refugee but I don't have that kind of money. Fcuk, if I had a spare ten or 20 grand I'd buy a car or something.

For another I am going to begin to nurture a vague fear of Asia in general. What if one of those countries runs out of room and decides there's a nice big country to their south with hardly any people and billions of dollars worth of minerals for the taking? Surely this is a logical possibility what with population growth etc.

Let's start there and move forward.

Alan Jones, Ray Hadley, Miranda Devine, here I come.

[Nick Carroll]

Well fcuk, THAT didn't last long.

Miranda's column today flipped me back again. The bitch!

I mean, yeah, if it were just about holding witlessly bigoted opinions, fine. But to expect me to worry about the SELF-ESTEEM of a bunch of terrified bogans who've allowed themselves to be whipped into a meaningless lather of hostility toward some of the least powerful human beings on the planet ... that's too fcuken much.

OK back to chardonnay/latte/etc middle class disenchantment.

[Beanpole]

Being in a generally pretty depressed mood at the moment with winter rainy gloom and current disgust at the human condition aka workplace managements idea of social interactions Let me predict the political future given the current state of play.

Labor throws its now former principles out the window to hold power. This disgusts the remaining people with any integrity and they leave on the cusp of the election.Abbott can't go much further to the right himself without having a few defections too.

The Greens stuff up big time because the future leader of the party can't work out the difference between her own federal and state funding

Julia succeeds in winning the next election....just but has allready sown the seeds for the party's defeat at the one after that. Abbott bails.
That leaves Malcolm Turnbull to pick up the pieces.

[monkey]

After the "East timor Solution" announcement and the Mining Back-flip there's no more longer any question that we are a nation controlled by bogans - racist rednecks, ignorant bigots and greedy miners.
What a fkn disgrace.
Will we ever have a political leader who is capable of inspiring people to higher thinking rather than pandering to the lowest common denominator?

[Beanpole]

They just booted him out. The fact that he mentioned not changing the policy in his final media scrum shows they had decided to go bogan and Rudd wasn't prepared to go along for the ride. Neither was Tanner and Faulkner. Apparently this was losing their way. Remember the other mugs talked him into ditching the ETS as well.

[monkey]

They just booted him out. The fact that he mentioned not changing the policy in his final media scrum shows they had decided to go bogan and Rudd wasn't prepared to go along for the ride. Neither was Tanner and Faulkner. Apparently this was losing their way. Remember the other mugs talked him into ditching the ETS as well.

Point taken. It's a shame he couldnt ditch the "working families" Ruddbot facade

[Hatchman]

Will we ever have a political leader who is capable of inspiring people to higher thinking rather than pandering to the lowest common denominator?

Not while the lowest common denominator are in the vast voting majority

The only time a party threatened to shake it up was the Democrats and they folded under the GST. End result the Democrats died a painful death.

I'll vote for the Greens but I still suspect that when the blowtorch is applied they'll cave in too because all political parties are the same. They'll never bite the hand that feeds them and on the off-chance that they do (a la Rudd and ETS, mining tax etc...) they'll be beaten down into submission.

Although if Rudd had the balls to hold on to the ETS and weather the storm he'd still be in the top job I reckon because this was the main reason why he was voted in - people wanted policy change on emissions and fossil fuel industries and public opinion, in large numbers can still override corporate persuasion - well at least in democracies.

As soon as he caved on the ETS public opinion on him dived as he was seen (and rightly so) as a pussy. It was a double edged sword for him too. On the one hand the public lost faith and the big miners capitlaised on it and started the swell of discontent against him, when he released the super tax it played into their hands beautifully, they rolled out a slick advertising campaign and he was a dead duck almost immediately.

Rudd was never a "man of steel" like Howard, he went to water under pressure and probably never once stopped and probably "hey maybe I'm not the smartest guy in the room after all".

Gillard will be no different, she's already hedged Abbott on gay marriage, asylum seekers, mining taxes and has effectively shelved climate change policy and now the belief that we had moved forward after Howard is gone as we're we're back at Ground Zero again with conservative driven policies. This election is now a gimme for Labor but it will be interesting to see how the world changes in the next three years and what effect that has.

I'm predicting a decent bag of votes for the Greens in the federal election, they'll probably win Melbourne now with Tanner out. It may be a small victory and the follow on effects will be interesting to see

[mical]

I'd like to see us move to the US style system .. non mandatory voting.

Then maybe only those who actually cared enough to voice their opinion would vote and we'd lose a lot of the donkeys who vote 1,2,3,4,5 etc just to tick off their name.

Think it would work?

[Hatchman]

I'd like to see us move to the US style system .. non mandatory voting.

Then maybe only those who actually cared enough to voice their opinion would vote and we'd lose a lot of the donkeys who vote 1,2,3,4,5 etc just to tick off their name.

Think it would work?

Nah I reckon it would make it worse. American corporations are notorious for vote buying and there is widespread rorting of the system. Several big companies are known for persuading employees to vote certain ways, even monitoring polling stations to note who turns up.

To look at it another way, politicians love non-mandatory voting systems, they've got much better chances of staying in power as only those who can be ars.ed getting down to the poll booth are usually those who care enough to vote and therefore a bit more spending of campaign dollars in specific areas is usually enough to persuade them to vote a certain way to guarantee a win. In other words if politicians like it then we as the general public should oppose it

[mical]

Fair point .. always pays to ask

[TrevG]

American corporations are notorious for vote buying and there is widespread rorting of the system. Several big companies are known for persuading employees to vote certain ways, even monitoring polling stations to note who turns up.

No! Surely not?
Who'da thunk it?

[mical]

American corporations are notorious for vote buying and there is widespread rorting of the system. Several big companies are known for persuading employees to vote certain ways, even monitoring polling stations to note who turns up.

No! Surely not?
Who'da thunk it?

Not bloody me obviously!

I swear having this kid has turned me into Homer Simpson .. limited space in my head.

New knowledge in .. old knowledge out

[ajohnsen]

OK back to chardonnay/latte/etc middle class disenchantment.

Chattering. You forgot chattering.

[lessormore]

Here's one from left field (or should that be "right" from the Libs)-Abbot gets swamped at the election(or even before if the Libs take any notice of media performances)and is replaced by Scott Morrison.
Any press conference the two attend together highlights the fact that Abbot speaks like he has just sacked his speech writer and is struggling to put two words together, while Morrison can actually put in a complete sentence without a single pause, uumm, or aahh.

[alakaboo]

some of the scandinavian countries have got non-compulsory voting, and they have higher turnouts than we do.
the incumbent still nearly always wins. but they vote their little hearts out. they take their democracy seriously in the socialist democrat countries.
e.g.:
sweden voted 52% in favour of joining the EU, so they joined. but they also reserved the right to chose when they join the monetary union.
norway voted 52% against, so they didn't. bet they're glad about that now, sitting on 1% of the world's equity and not having to bail out greece et al.

[alakaboo]

some of the scandinavian countries have got non-compulsory voting, and they have higher turnouts than we do.
the incumbent still nearly always wins. but they vote their little hearts out. they take their democracy seriously in the socialist democrat countries.
e.g.:
sweden voted 52% in favour of joining the EU, so they joined. but they also reserved the right to chose when they join the monetary union.
norway voted 52% against, so they didn't. bet they're glad about that now, sitting on 1% of the world's equity and not having to bail out greece et al.

[alakaboo]

turns out i was wrong, their turnout is only about 85%
still not bad in countries with benevolent governments and socialist ideals.