Oz Federal Election 2013 - Discussion and Comments

[Pukka]

It is totally relevant as people are saying that just because you are religious you are not fit to be a prime minister of a country yet an atheist makes a perfect prime minister.

Well at last I've found something that Julia and I agree on but I still want her gone

 

[Pukka]

Good example of taking a complex subject and trying to reduce it to a rather silly, glib one liner... But thanks for letting us know your opinion...

I don't think it's a complex subject at all, it's very black and white you either believe there is a God or you don't. Personally I think religion is a crutch for the weak minded to lean on, it makes them feel happier and it acts as a big stick to control them.

The world would be a better place without religion, no suicide bombers, no religious nut jobs flying planes into buildings etc but we are off topic so I won't say any more.

 

[ComeFlyWithMe]

I don't think it's a complex subject at all, it's very black and white you either believe there is a God or you don't. Personally I think religion is a crutch for the weak minded to lean on, it makes them feel happier and it acts as a big stick to control them.

The world would be a better place without religion, no suicide bombers, no religious nut jobs flying planes into buildings etc but we are off topic so I won't say any more.

There is a very good case for the separation of church and state.

Just look at the USA to see how it can all go horribly wrong.

 

[drron]

There is a very good case for the separation of church and state.

Just look at the USA to see how it can all go horribly wrong.

I think Syria is a much better example of the problems that religion can cause.

 

[amaroo]

I think Syria is a much better example of the problems that religion can cause.

Nth Ireland is another example.

 

[Pukka]

Nth Ireland is another example.

Yes I was in England when they were trying to blow the whole place up it wasn't good

 

[drsmithy]

I don't think it's a complex subject at all, it's very black and white you either believe there is a God or you don't. Personally I think religion is a crutch for the weak minded to lean on, it makes them feel happier and it acts as a big stick to control them.

While belief in one or more gods is, indeed, binary, there is a huge spectrum of outcomes from how people deal with that belief.

That is where the complexity emerges.

 

[amaroo]

Yes I was in England when they were trying to blow the whole place up it wasn't good

Unfortunately, the planet is littered with examples.

OT - I'm starting to feel sorry for the ALP - why wouldn't you?

Krudd - is nothing more than a turd that will not flush!

 

[casanovawa]

I don't think it's a complex subject at all, it's very black and white you either believe there is a God or you don't. Personally I think religion is a crutch for the weak minded to lean on, it makes them feel happier and it acts as a big stick to control them.

The world would be a better place without religion, no suicide bombers, no religious nut jobs flying planes into buildings etc but we are off topic so I won't say any more.

Thanks for trying to frame what i can and can't believe in, but I'll believe in as many shades of grey as i choose...

And yes yawn, yawn, paradise on earth without religion, i hear its also the cause of every war from a certain group of pseudo-intellectual types who are good at repeating slogans but largely know FA about how complex history is... Or is that also black and white either/or simplicity?? I'll hang on the answer of massive intellects such as yourself who don't need crutches to edumacate me...

 

[casanovawa]

There is a very good case for the separation of church and state.

Just look at the USA to see how it can all go horribly wrong.

Just look at the People's Republic of China and Soviet Union under Mao and Stalin, two biggest homicidal maniacs you could imagine... Mao has at least 60 million dead on his (well i doubt he has one) conscience... Stalin, where would you stop, must rack up at least 15 million doesn't he with the famines in the Ukraine as he dekulakized in the 30s, great purges, gulag system and the crippling of the Red Army and cozying up with Hitler which lead to the USSR losing 25 million or so in WW2...

They all wanted to run the church clean out of the state, replace it with something much better... So perhaps we can lighten up on the BS that Christianity is the font of everything wrong with the world...

 

[casanovawa]

Who was the fool who brought religion into this political debate??

It is one of those topics itself fraught with danger and to mix the two is asking for trouble...

 

[Moody]

Internet spying, apparently.

I worry about you, Skyring. Your posts are becoming increasingly obtuse.

You know, that's the thing. With most people, regular folk like you and I [ed. - I'll let that pass] , you get an idea of what they stand for from just talking with them. Some things press their buttons, some don't. After a few years, you can be pretty sure of where they stand on a given issue.

Apparently that's not the case with Julia Gillard. What she stands for is a list of legislation!.

I find it better to judge people by their actions - hence my list of achievements (good and bad) of the government that Julia Gillard has lead since 2010. I also mostly ignore what Tony Abbott says and concentrate on his actions. Not sure if that is a plus in Tony's case ....

What she stands for on asylum seekers is not a long-held belief, it seems. Not a firm principle. You know, once upon a time, she would have told us that excising the whole of the Australian mainland from the Australian migration zone wasn't a thing she would ever stand for. Quite the reverse, in fact.

But there it is.

Asylum seekers have been a favourite political football ever since John Howard found that there were a lot of stupid gullible voters who could be distracted from real policies by simply playing on their fears. Not original but it works.

To try and cut through the race for the gutter, Julia Gillard put together an expert panel to take another look at people smuggling. They came back with some recommendations that lead to the "No Advantage" policy and the Malaysian Solution. It had some merits (if you are happy with the ends justifying the means), but the whole offshore processing system was turned on its head when the High Court found it breached our obligations under law.

No, Moody, you can't say what you think she stands for and say that this equates to my understanding. You might be more accepting of her words at face value than I. I've been listening very carefully to her for several years and I honestly don't know what she stands for.

Except, well, I know she cares a lot about education, and I know she wants to get her hands on young Australians as early and as much as possible. She must have been trained by Jesuits.

I would never think to assume what your understanding is about anything, Skyring. You have an obvious paranoia about Julia Gillard's motivation but seem happy to gloss over Tony Abbott's. Fill your boots with that one! In the meantime I will stick with actions over words (when available).

And it was Tony who studied and trained under the Jesuits, wasn't it????

 

[Pukka]

Thanks for trying to frame what i can and can't believe in, but I'll believe in as many shades of grey as i choose...

When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.

Lets just agree that we both dislike Julia and think the government is doing a pretty poor job.

 

[Pushka]

I worry about you, Skyring. Your posts are becoming increasingly obtuse.



I find it better to judge people by their actions - hence my list of achievements (good and bad) of the government that Julia Gillard has lead since 2010. I also mostly ignore what Tony Abbott says and concentrate on his actions. Not sure if that is a plus in Tony's case ....



I would never think to assume what your understanding is about anything, Skyring. You have an obvious paranoia about Julia Gillard's motivation but seem happy to gloss over Tony Abbott's. Fill your boots with that one! In the meantime I will stick with actions over words (when available).

And it was Tony who studied and trained under the Jesuits, wasn't it????

You sound like my 90 year old mother in law who hated Catholics just because.

And in raising such issues it shows you don't judge people by their actions at all.

Skyring has made it abundantly clear he won't be voting for either mainstream party. He's probably the most independent person here but you just don't like it when he provides an argument which doesn't bathe Gillard on the holy glow (how appropriate) you see her in.

As for asylum policy, shows how expert her panel was when they developed a solution that breached our obligations under law. Just one of a litany of incompetent solutions proffered by the Government.

 

[Skyring]

To try and cut through the race for the gutter, Julia Gillard put together an expert panel to take another look at people smuggling.

An expert panel. That was Gillard's original solution on global warming as well, wasn't it?

And then she followed the Greens, breaking an election commitment.

This is why I don't know what she stands for. Not what some nebulous "expert panel" thinks - that's a cop-out right there.

I'm a firm believer in the "by their fruits you will know them" philosophy. She's turned the ALP into a joke, Question Time into a bitter personal attack zone, and government into a shambles. The people can't wait to boot her out with a baseball bat, and neither can Labor.

 

[Skyring]

They all wanted to run the church clean out of the state, replace it with something much better... So perhaps we can lighten up on the BS that Christianity is the font of everything wrong with the world...

There's a lot of good in ALL religions. The areas of common ground: don't lie or steal, be kind to strangers, look after the oldies and so on.

It's the parts where they differ and followers regard the small differences as over-riding the basics where they go off track.

Religions always seek to explain the world. Sometimes they get it wrong, as we discover when science advances enough to show that the world is round, the stars aren't just points of light, the earth moves, creatures evolve and so on. If we were writing the Bible or Koran or Book of Mormon today, we'd write them different. And in another thousand years people would look on our efforts as naive rubbish.

But the fundamentals would be the same: don't lie, don't kill, get on with your neighbours...

 

[tgh]

I guess you sorta have the two extremes, some kind of a belief system -v- no belief system.
The evidence appears overwhelming that belief systems are the glue that binds successful societies.
The evidence also appears overwhelming that the decline of "traditional" church influence roughly equates to the erosion of moral values and general law and order in western societies.
My son , after visiting Israel , opined that there was little sign of traditional jewish belief/culture among the young.. they were mostly interested in partying. ( make love not war)
Islam inculcates a very tight "tribal" behaviour discipline and breeding programme that will completely overwhelm western civilisations in no time flat.. IMnsHO...

Gillard ( or for that matter Abbott) has buckley's with the Indonesians, who can afford to wait quietly while their front line troops breed like rabbits (at the expense of taxpayers) and rapidly become the dominant secular influence.
It's only a small step after that for the Indonesians to form a strategic alliance with the now majority religious/social/political group in 'Oz and... the rest of the integration will just happen organically.


Back on topic .... the press is putting on the pressure
The Age newspaper uses editorial to urge Prime Minister Julia Gillard to quit - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Finally I wouldn't bet a cent that Rudd can't win this election, he has enough empathy , aka "common touch" , to fool enough of the people enough of the time.. to win

 

[Skyring]

I guess you sorta have the two extremes, some kind of a belief system -v- no belief system.
The evidence appears overwhelming that belief systems are the glue that binds successful societies.
The evidence also appears overwhelming that the decline of "traditional" church influence roughly equates to the erosion of moral values and general law and order in western societies.

Finally I wouldn't bet a cent that Rudd can't win this election, he has enough empathy , aka "common touch" , to fool enough of the people enough of the time.. to win

Two threads in one!

OK. If we look back, we see that the old days were always better. Children respected their elders, there was no moral corruption and so on. It was the Golden Age. Things are going downhill fast and we see society breaking down - children refuse to respect us, the women are promiscuous etc. etc.

I'll go along with a moral code being good for a society and that religion supplies a lot of that. But look at America - chock full of Bible-bashing tub-thumpers and who can hold them up as an example of moral hygiene?

As for Rudd winning the election, no. Labor is on the nose for any number of reasons, and we can thank Craig Thomson and Eddie Obeid for some of these. Sure, Rudd is popular and smiling and all that, but look at what he's been like since being dumped. When he had his hands on the levers he was leading the ALP downhill because he'd lost his policy directions. Since then, apart from the odd tanty, he hasn't had to answer any of the hard questions. When they start being asked, he suddenly "has to zip".

Should he be in the hot seat he'll be under fire from three sides. First of all his own party, because he's going to have a whole bunch of Gillard troops gritting their teeth in public and slagging him out in private. Things will be said, and things will be added to last year's stockpile.

Second, the Liberals. Tony Abbott destroyed him in 2010 and he's got Rudd's range still. He'll ask the hard questions, probe the weak points, keep on punching away.

Third, the media. There'll be no second honeymoon. Rudd is a juicy story all by himself, and in an election campaign the boring stories will never be heard. Rudd will have to share the front pages with Tony Abbott, so that raises the bar higher for public interest. Humdrum policy and hand-crafted media releases will find their way to the inside pages. Shock and awe drama and conflict is what we are going to get up front and I don't believe that Rudd is equipped to handle that well. He will melt down under pressure.

 

[joeymelb]

Gillard ( or for that matter Abbott) has buckley's with the Indonesians, who can afford to wait quietly while their front line troops breed like rabbits (at the expense of taxpayers) and rapidly become the dominant secular influence.
It's only a small step after that for the Indonesians to form a strategic alliance with the now majority religious/social/political group in 'Oz and... the rest of the integration will just happen organically.

Funny you would mention that. One only needs look at recent history to find similar strategy at work. China for example, move massive number Han Chinese population to "troubling" provinces as resettlement program in a bid to "quieten" down the local unrest. It will not surprise me that in few generations that Tibet will be completely integrated. Also, expulsion of Germans out of Sudetenland after WWII (reference: Sudetenland - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). Or Northern Ireland, where British Empire resettles Presbyterian Scotch/Scotts (please use the term least offend) in....

We have a democratic society and embracing. However, if a certain group of people breed large enough population, they can easily take over. It might not happen in our generation, but strong organised religion with idealogically set of "breeding" program could do it! Malaysia, Indonesia comes to mind - Islam was an introduced religion from eons past....

That said... don't know how this topic is related to the election??

Personally, it is my perception that Labor's own infighting is causing instability in Business and Consumer sentiment. Plus, their ties to Union and Greens are making Australia uncompetitive in the global market. Further, their past records of stuff-ups were inexcusable, lastly a treasurer who have problem with basic accounting concept. I wish we still have Keating (even Costello) in charge of our coffers.

 

[drsmithy]

And then she followed the Greens, breaking an election commitment.

No they didn't. The compromised (yes, there's that awful word again) with the Greens on a specific mechanism for implementing a party policy.

The full quote, which dishonest people like yourself like to conveniently forget, is:

“There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead, but lets be absolutely clear. I am determined to price carbon”.

Labor went into the last election (and the one before) with a policy of pricing CO2. Indeed, I'm pretty sure the Liberals also went into that penultimate one with a CO2 pricing policy.

It's only a "tax" according to the standard right-wing lineup and their tribe of useful idiots. It's not legislated as a tax and once the fixed-price period has expired it won't function as a tax.

If you have a problem with pricing CO2 (and presumably, by extension, climate change), then have the intellectual integrity to make that argument. Don't try and dress it up in transparent bull**** about "broken promises".

As with most of the "outrage" around Gillard, the "great big new tax" is entirely confected. It's nothing more than a smokescreen thrown up by climate change deniers.

I'm a firm believer in the "by their fruits you will know them" philosophy. She's turned the ALP into a joke, Question Time into a bitter personal attack zone, and government into a shambles. The people can't wait to boot her out with a baseball bat, and neither can Labor.

Wow. Blaming Gillard for attack politics. Words fail me.