Oz Federal Election 2013 - Discussion and Comments

[amaroo]

Julia is now the mother of our nation.

Reminds me of that scene in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels - Ruprecht in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels - YouTube

 

[jetlagger]

Listen here, tinpot head.

1. Australia is not a "once fine nation"; it's the envy of the world. Can we have a filter for these type of trolls?
2. We are not anywhere near a dictatorship; in case it passed you by whilst who were reading "Fascist weekly", we are having a September election.
IMO "too much gym work, not enough speed".

Also so.. Your 'rude cough" aggressive slay connotations verbal attack in a deferred speech impediment comes into play again.
It appears to be a recurring theme of yours..
Apologies for reflecting your style...

 

[casanovawa]

Ahhh, got a few laughs out of the last few pages, even a bit of yours Browski...

This political stuff can be divisive can't it...

 

[Skyring]

Wow! You should give Fox News a call because they are looking for a new political reporter and I think you'll fit in nicely. You may want to turn the rabid bile down just a teensy bit at the interview, but.

This sort of thing exemplifies the personal, emotional aspect of political discussion that leads nowhere but general unhappiness. If all we are doing is chanting the slogans of our preferred political party at each other, we're not going to find too many points of agreement.

Now, I happen to agree with casanovawa's analysis. Gillard and Abbott both led their parties to a similar result in 2010, and government went to the party that appealed most to the Independents. The Greens had a say, but nobody seriously expected them to support the Coalition, so it basically came down to three voices: Oakeshott, Windsor and Katter.

Katter would have had a tough job backing Gillard, and as we see he has parlayed his support into a new party. How they will perform is questionable. Not too well, is my guess. If Katter is clever enough, he's looking to recruit the same voters who supported Pauline Hanson, but this time give them a more experienced product and superior organisation. He's still got six months to refine his machine, but it's a big ask to take on the big parties.

Oakeshott and Windsor could see that Abbott would be more likely to call - and win, obviously - an early election, and their influence would vanish along with their jobs. They started off well, but the kinder, gentler, more responsible Parliament they envisioned has long since sunk into nastiness. Thomson and Slipper are the most visible flotsam here, but really the scenes every Question Time do not present our leaders well. Both Gillard and Abbott are products of university politics, and their background shows.

Gillard had the chance to show statesmanship (stateswomanship?) in uniting a fractured organisation. But she has had to fight off Rudd on one side and the Greens on the other, and each time she came up with a plan to lift out of the mud, it fell apart. The mining tax, the surplus, the carbon tax, the asylum-seekers. It's not all bad luck. Dodgy deals and poor planning.

The carbon tax is a case in point. Complex and indirect, it does not address the main cause of our CO2 emissions, which is the burning of fossil fuels for power. We are pulling coal out of the ground at an incredible rate, selling it cheaply overseas, and burning increasing amounts here. The very worst polluters - the brown coal power stations in Victoria - are actually making a fortune in compensation.

For every disaster this government produces, we see a mass of spin and band aids and blame to repair the damage. Does anybody from any side of politics think that the asylum-seeker situation has worked out well? What steps are being taken to fix it? None that I can see. The boat people are coming in record numbers, the people smugglers, like the brown coal people, are making obscene profits instead of being out out of business, and the various human rights groups are aiming their big guns in our direction again.

It does us no good as a nation to bicker and point fingers. Gillard may sigh with happy relief when she loses in September and Abbott is stuck with all the messes, because it's a lot easier to criticise and complain than construct, but that will put her in exactly the same situation she is attacking Abbott over.

Actually, it won't be Gillard, because she will leave the leadership position to someone else, and let us hope that whoever it is has more of an eye for the nation over the party than she displays. Because I don't think Abbott is a nation-builder any more than Gillard is, and anybody with intellect and integrity and insight will find their time to shine.

 

[dfcatch]

Except that instead, he just turned out to be another loser.

Very true - but in the degrees of losing he has nothing on Julia's upcoming loss

Centrebet is rarely wrong

 

[Moody]

Skyring - nice post. Balanced even. Are you feeling OK???

As for Australia under Tony Abbott .... I shouldn't get my knickers in a twist because I always have the escape clauses in my back pocket that :-


A. I didn't vote for him

B. I'm not Australian

But for some reason I am eternally disappointed when supporters on the extreme left and right vomit up ridiculously biased comment against individuals who least deserve it. It's like they have to claw down anything of merit into the sewer they inhabit so that they feel better about themselves. Sad really.

There have been successes and failures with this government, but in the end we are in pretty good shape and should aspire to do even better. Fat chance of that under either party with the current climate of gutter politics and media for morons.

 

[casanovawa]

Your sure there isn't a bit of the pot calling the kettle black in terms of the over the top rhetoric stakes Moods???

As a couple of people have now stated my analysis was pretty much (or broadly) correct (i was almost going to make the point straight after your post that you didn't actually refute any part of my analysis, just took umbrage with some of the words used but couldn't be bothered), so sorry for not getting your approval that the language fell within whatever sort of wierd guidelines you use (according to your post above) to assess what is sensible, measured and appropriate...

Its just a pity you can't actually acknowledge the basic truth of what i said for whatever reason... It was a nice little expanding from Skyring... And not sure which characters in it least deserved it, i didn't actually mention any names but using inferences they were all active particpants in what happened, some up to their neck, not any sort of innocent bystanders???

But no matter, your approval was neither needed nor sought... One can only hope that after the next election things improve, but i think the Australian people will see this experiment in minority govt as a failure that they will not be keen to repeat any time soon... And try to keep a lid on that eternal disappointment, it can't be good for you...

Yours truly
From the sewer

 

[Moody]

Sorry for my brief riposte, casanvawa. I have a sneaking suspicion that many members find my point-by-point replies a little tedious. But for your benefit :-

I thought it was obvious how Tony lost, you had a bunch of independents who for their own political benefit thought they could get within a bulls roar of the levers of power rather than just being a bunch of non entities consigned to making up the numbers and being ignored...

Now I will start off by saying that I have never met Tony W, Rob & Bob, and only took an interest in them when they were the focus of attention post the last election. Bob Katter is a typical larger-than-life FNQ politician who I would summarise as a thinking man's Pauline Hanson (oxymoron alert), and Tony Windsor was only known to me as the whistleblower on a sordid deal the Nationals tried to offer him to retire. No love lost there methinks, and possibly the reason for your ridiculous hatred. Rob O I had no knowledge of whatsoever before the 2010 election. Let me just say your comments that they were only in it for "their own political benefit" says a lot more about your state of mind than theirs.

They came together as odd bed fellows out of expediency after a charade of weighing up both options and fell in together because they knew if they chose to go with the Libs this dysfunctional minority nonsense could probably have been measured in months (as it should've been) before another general election would have been called and the Australian people given another chance and i think we could make an educated guess at what the result would have been..

I agree they were a bit of a weird mob to be deciding who should form government, but it was very entertaining watching from the sidelines. At the start of the process you would have laid odds that they would favour the conservative side of politics, but as time went on it seemed that Tony Abbott was losing control of the wheel. If you get a chance please try to unearth a documentary-style program that followed the 3 Amigos around during those exciting days to see how Tony Abbott snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. It also underlined the fact that they were all (in their own way) trying to do the best for their electorate and their country. And the intention was to put together a coalition that would last a full term - as it should be. Your "educated guess" also assumes that there are a lot of uneducated Aussies. OK - you got me there.

That just based on how fearful this pack have been of going back and putting it to the test to get a mandate from the peopl they claim to serve, and so indulging in every sort of half baked and contrived schemes to cling to power no matter how noxious some of the characters involved were... That to me speaks volumes as to what they thought the result would have been had they tested it (whilst their Labor State colleagues were being used to wipe the floor with), and it has sullied the Labor party, some of its leading members and probably the Parliament in geneal as to what wretched games and contortions have had to been used to get this term to of Government to almost the end of its natural life...

This is where my "rabid bile" comment comes in. On re-reading the paragraph I see no reason to change my mind, but congratulations on your pending happy event. It will obviously lower your blood pressure so that's one positive to look forward to.

 

[Skyring]

It also underlined the fact that they were all (in their own way) trying to do the best for their electorate and their country. And the intention was to put together a coalition that would last a full term - as it should be. Your "educated guess" also assumes that there are a lot of uneducated Aussies. OK - you got me there.

I agree on all three points.

However, intentions are one thing and performance another. I think the Independents were happy to try to control the two horses of Labor and Coalition by steering them with their balance of power ability. They were aiming for the skies, as per Gillard's promises.

How well they performed is going to be in the hands of the people, and my educated guess is that the voters in their electorates will dump them, and the voters of Australia will dump Gillard.

Educated or not - and I tend to think not, at least on political matters - the voters get the final say.

 

[browski]

I agree on all three points.

However, intentions are one thing and performance another. I think the Independents were happy to try to control the two horses of Labor and Coalition by steering them with their balance of power ability. They were aiming for the skies, as per Gillard's promises.

How well they performed is going to be in the hands of the people, and my educated guess is that the voters in their electorates will dump them, and the voters of Australia will dump Gillard.

Educated or not - and I tend to think not, at least on political matters - the voters get the final say.

If the primary role of the MLA is to secure as much for their constituents as possible, then 3 of the Independents (Wilkie, Oakshott and Windsor) have done very, very well.
But the 3rd amigo, wasn't Wilkie, it was Katter. And he made his decision on who to support at the very same time that Windsor and Oakshott did; that was after a week of deliberation. I've asked Bob Katter how could he justify supporting Abbott, when he knew that the others were going to support Julia (thus making himself irrelevant). Effectively Katter did the wrong thing by his struggling electorate. Katter acknowledged this, but said that most of his personal supporters (his "tribe as he called them) were very right wing (I don't know if that was his code for "stupid" but let's take it at face value). So Katter supported Abbott. The right thing to do for his electorate was to support Julia; but he didn't do that and his electorate was worse off because of his selfish decision; but he'll be re-elected with an increased majority you can be sure of that.

 

[Deleted member]

If the primary role of the MLA is to secure as much for their constituents as possible, then 3 of the Independents (Wilkie, Oakshott and Windsor) have done very, very well.
But the 3rd amigo, wasn't Wilkie, it was Katter. And he made his decision on who to support at the very same time that Windsor and Oakshott did; that was after a week of deliberation. I've asked Bob Katter how could he justify supporting Abbott, when he knew that the others were going to support Julia (thus making himself irrelevant). Effectively Katter did the wrong thing by his struggling electorate. Katter acknowledged this, but said that most of his personal supporters (his "tribe as he called them) were very right wing (I don't know if that was his code for "stupid" but let's take it at face value). So Katter supported Abbott. The right thing to do for his electorate was to support Julia; but he didn't do that and his electorate was worse off because of his selfish decision; but he'll be re-elected with an increased majority you can be sure of that.

I suspect their success in doing what their constituents wanted will be tested in September

 

[browski]

I suspect their success in doing what their constituents wanted will be tested in September

No the success for the electorates is already there.
The vote is a different thing.

 

[dfcatch]

No the success for the electorates is already there.
The vote is a different thing.

Actually no

Obtaining money for an electorate is one thing....

Respecting the wishes of your electors is another entirely.

Only when the two align - is it the right thing to do

 

[Pushka]

The perceived success of the independents hasn't been tested yet.

 

[browski]

The perceived success of the independents hasn't been tested yet.

No, the success is there (not Katter's though). The election result is still not there.

 

[Pushka]

Katter's the only one likely to retain his seat. Your perception of success seems a little upside down.

 

[browski]

Katter's the only one likely to retain his seat. Your perception of success seems a little upside down.

Success for the electorate seems easy to perceive.

 

[Pushka]

Clearly not.

 

[Deleted member]

No the success for the electorates is already there.
The vote is a different thing.

How so?
Anecdotal evidence would suggest that for some time they ( Oakshot & Windsor) have been somewhat o the nose in their respective electorates.

 

[casanovawa]

If the primary role of the MLA is to secure as much for their constituents as possible, then 3 of the Independents (Wilkie, Oakshott and Windsor) have done very, very well.
But the 3rd amigo, wasn't Wilkie, it was Katter. And he made his decision on who to support at the very same time that Windsor and Oakshott did; that was after a week of deliberation. I've asked Bob Katter how could he justify supporting Abbott, when he knew that the others were going to support Julia (thus making himself irrelevant). Effectively Katter did the wrong thing by his struggling electorate. Katter acknowledged this, but said that most of his personal supporters (his "tribe as he called them) were very right wing (I don't know if that was his code for "stupid" but let's take it at face value). So Katter supported Abbott. The right thing to do for his electorate was to support Julia; but he didn't do that and his electorate was worse off because of his selfish decision; but he'll be re-elected with an increased majority you can be sure of that.

That is one way of looking at it, an MHR is there to secure as much for their electorate as possible... Its a somewhat greedy, self centred, parochial view which means that the country's interests were to some extent subordinated to the interests of 100-200,000 regional voters... If you could think of a better reason as to why the majority of the populace detest such an arrangement and will be loathe to ever be under it again you have captured it precisely... of course its often a way of ensuring a long political career, unless you rather sutpidly shackle yourself to a political mess in which case it might just end your political career which more than a few in teh country would be hoping for Windsor and Oaksh*t... We'll see come the new parliament whose still there...

And its happened before that a few independents or small parties in the Senate have attempted the tail wagging the dog routine and held influence totally beyond what the small amount of people that voted for them deserve, but this is the first time for a long time that they were able to choose the dog and then try to wag it as well...

Of course once in coalition Labor rightly nudged this bunch of wanna be's off to the side and they have all in return progressively fallen out with the Julia and each other as they have realised how little power and influence they actually had... How could Windsor or that windbag Oaksh*t or any of them with what a staff of a couple, no experience basically at running anything, a few single issue preoccupations possibly be a watchdog for all that Labor or the Libs wanted to do??? There small time players who wanted to mix in the big time, but like the Greens you wouldn't actually let them near anything important or complex, they'd screw up the proverbial chook raffle if you let them...

The other way of looking at what an MHR is meant to do is what their electorate would want them to do...

Now of course hardly any of us before this election knew of Oaksh*t and Windsor outside of their State and probably not even half of them in there because they were non-entities that had by and large achieved nothing and just made up the numbers... I don't really know their electorate and which way the majority of voters lean, but would probably be surprised if there were a heap of Greeny types... In the case of Katter i would imagine the majority of his electorate in Queensland would not have supported him throwing in his lot with Labor... That goes back to an old fashion concept of credibility, that you don't just ditch it when a bit of money is in the offing... Windsor and Oaksh*t, if they are about to get the cough from their electorates will probably get a lesson in short term gain, while Katter will still be there most likely working for his constitutents...

So you may think that he was dumb, and the majority of the electorate are dumb, and anyone who doesn't hold your high brows views are dumb and uneducated etc, but i imagine he will still be there for a bit yet, while hopefully this rabble of independents who rather fancifully thought they could get in and mix it with the big boys will hopefully be put out to pasture and we can get on with letting the adults run the country... I personally would rather Labor or Coalition run the country outright than ever put up with this shambolic nonsense again as would a majority of the hicks out there that don't measure up to your amazing intellect...