General Australian Politics Discussion

[PhoenixxFire]

But honestly though, this article just makes me question whether I'm a dual citizen.

Back when this whole thing started I wondered how anyone could not know that they're a dual citizen, but it turns out that my grandpa was born in England and my dad is a dual citizen (claimed it by descent) and I had no idea until last month

[vox nihili]

This week has been an absolute shitshow. Some highlights:

-Medevac bill past after the government said it would be the worst thing ever (it's not)
-govt then lies about the fact medevac will be a pull factor for refugees (it won't)
-PM deliberately encourages boats to come to Australia by preaching about "borders being open" (they're not)
-govt claims medevac bill will see rapists and paedophiles come to Australia in their thousands (they won't)
-govt reopens Christmas island detention centre at a cost of 0.5 billion dollars
-PM says he can't give as much funding as he would like to North Queensland flood victims because he had to reopen Christmas island
-Christmas island is designated as the site to which medical transfers will take place, despite having no specialist medical facilities and being 7,000 kilometres from Nauru (Brisbane is less than half this distance)
-Dept of public prosecutions reveals they didn't prosecute members of Michaelia Cash's office after they leaked confidential details about an AFP raid to the media because she and the justice minister wouldn't provide witness statements
-Cash says she provided a witness statement (she didn't)
-Peter Dutton attacks the media for reporting facts
-the home affairs office puts a half a billion dollar contract out to tender but only allows one company to go for it (Palladin)
-it's revealed that Palladin is registered to a beach shack on Kangaroo island
-the beach shack has no telephone
-nor mail
-Peter Dutton claims not to know anything about the contract (probably true)
-the home affairs dept fails to answer questions about Palladin
-govt prevents the passage of a bill to hold a royal commission into disability care, and then decides to undo that the next week
-Matthias Cormann (the finance minister) books $3000 bucks worth of flights to Singapore and doesn't pay for them
-he claims "not to have noticed"
-he later claims that he booked the flights directly through the CEO
-soon after the flights were paid for Sen Cormann, the travel agent wins a multi-million dollar contract with the government
-at significant expense, the travel agent is designated as the only one the Australian government can use
-Joe Hockey, the ambassador to the US and former treasurer, asks his staff to meet with the CEO of the travel company to try to secure the government contract for them
-it's later revealed he's also good mates with the travel agent
-the government persists in its campaign against Labor's franking credit changes claiming that it hits pensioners (it doesn't) and will ruin self-funded retirees (it won't)...trying hard to conflate this change with pensioners, most of their statements deliberately false



One. fucking. week.


EDIT: I forgot all the Tim Wilson stuff and literally cannot be fucked going through even more shit that has happened. Long story short, someone spent a whole heap of taxpayer money soliciting donations for the liberal party and probably gave his cousin people's personal details collected by a parliamentary committee so that he could flog his product to them

[vox nihili]

Looks like Christopher Pyne (and Steve Ciobo) are set to retire tomorrow.

Steve Ciobo is a conservative shit-kicker within the Liberal party and, imo, good riddance.

The retirement of Pyne doesn't bode well for the Libs though. As much as he's made a habit out of being a shit stirrer and at times plumbing the depths of soulless political rhetoric, Pyne is actually one of the most moderate voices within the Liberal party. His retirement, along with those of Bishop, and to a lesser extent, O'Dwyer mean that many of the strongest moderates within the party have now departed. Add to that list Malcolm Turnbull. The march to the Right within the Liberal party continues apace.

[PhoenixxFire]

The ACT government (a labor/greens coalition) has become the first Australian state or territory to declare a climate emergency.

"From now on, every time the government makes a decision we will ask ourselves: what does this decision mean for climate change, for emissions, and for the climate crisis we need to avert? If it is not consistent with reducing emissions, then we need to think again. "

The motion also condemned the federal government for its "continued failure to enact effective climate change policy".

It isn't really anything more than a statement, but it's still really cool

[Joseph41]

Plibersek not running.

[Jimmmy]

Thought I'd post again in this thread (I'm being very careful not to use a particular word beginning with i).

The fires are worsening, Victoria is in a state of emergency, the acreage lost already quadruples that lost in other large-scale fire emergencies around the world, so bad that many internationals are hearing as the first news story at night is that of 'all of Australia being on fire'. ScoMo has tonight been seen forcibly taking people's hands to shake them, mentioning how a firefighter who wasn't rapt to see him 'must be tired', when in fact he'd just lost his house, and been attacked from all directions.

Do we think this criticism is justified? I notice the NSW Premier hasn't received quite as much attention, but maybe that's because I'm in Victoria. In any case, what do we think ScoMo can do to symbolise strength and support in those fire-affected areas, and help out the people who we need to support in this time of natural disaster?

[vox nihili]

Disasters are usually really good for politicians (that sounds horrible, but true). Anna Bligh, for example, probably wouldn't have been reelected if it weren't for the Queensland floods. Likewise, Kevin Rudd got a bump off Black Saturday that helped to arrest a broader decline in the Labor vote. Disasters drive people to look for safety and there is safety in the stability of government. All a federal government really needs to do is to be seen to be helping the states and to provide strong moral leadership (i.e. look concerned and get out there to comfort people).

George Bush probably stands out as the most obvious example of someone responding really poorly to a disaster. Hurricane Katrina absolutely decimated his ratings, as he refused to come back from holidays initially and then was a little weird when he went and toured the disaster affected areas. Naturally, this has some nice parallels to Scott Morrison today. I'm genuinely amazed by just how shocking he has been touring the fire affected areas. The last day for him has been particularly disastrous, as it's probably revealed what everyone knows: the politicians are there for the photo op. The basic lack of empathy he's shown has resonated really strongly and has provided the emotional energy to take up the cause against his government's policy inertia on the issue of climate change.

From a policy perspective, disaster response is largely led by the states. NSW has been rightly criticised for some of its response, not least the fact that the Emergency Services minister refused to come back from an overseas holiday (probably a 50/50 chance he'll be forced to resign). Victoria's response for the most part has run well in the media and probably has been good. There were wholesale changes made to Victoria's disaster response after Black Saturday that have set the state up really well for a disaster of this scale. The merger of the metropolitan and rural fire services only happened recently and could have been a particular weak point, but that also appears to have worked well by streamlining services. 

[caffinatedloz]

Every time Scomo opens his mouth about covid-19, he manages to say something stupid. Looking at what New Zeland is doing, I really wish that Australia had had a nationwide lockdown earlier to try and quell community spread.

I honestly don't know how he can still call himself our leader as he angrily declares that "all children should be at school" but tries to subtly edge around the question of whether or not his own are. He's still saying that schools shouldn't shut (and there are a lot of reasons that he might take this position), but since it looks like his own kids are not physically going to school at the minute, it seems preposterous to expect other Australians to.

[PhoenixxFire]

^Pretty much all the reasons for wanting to keep kids in school are population level not individual level, so as much as it looks bad you can both say that kids should stay in school whilst keeping your own home without that being contradictory from a health perspective. Also don't really mind him wanting to keep his kids out of it - they didn't choose to be in the spotlight, although I don't doubt that scomo willfully chooses when to display them lmao.

I can't believe I just defended scomo.

[vox nihili]

Definitely not playing well for him though that he's made that decision about his own kids, but expects parents to keep theirs at school. Advice on schools is slowly changing though, with a shift to "if you can take your kids out of school, you should but they'll remain open for those who can't/don't want to". This advice is probably misguided. The evidence across multiple settings has consistently demonstrated that school closures are not beneficial (one caveat which I'll explain in a second), yet the ramifications are enormous: huge economic losses, kids lose vital education, essential workers have to be home to look after their kids rather than work etc etc.

School closures are generally seen as unhelpful; however, one Australian modelling study predicted that one side effect of school closures would be that people are forced to stay at home to look after their kids and therefore spend less time in the community spreading covid.



Overall, Covid will probably see a big bounce to the government polls wise. Superficially they look like they're dealing with the crisis. In reality though, they genuinely appear to be struggling. Morrison in particular just doesn't appear to grasp the details of what he's doing in most of his press conferences, has done a dreadful job of public health communication and really seems to be grappling with this idea that the primary issue is the economic fallout, rather than the virus.

[JerryMouse2019]

Is it possible that in the future we will see the rise of new political parties that reflect the views of the current younger generation?

Is it also possible that the LNP and the ALP will cease to exist due to these new political parties?

[a weaponized ikea chair]

Is it possible that in the future we will see the rise of new political parties that reflect the views of the current younger generation?

Is it also possible that the LNP and the ALP will cease to exist due to these new political parties?

1. Yes

2. No. They are too rooted in parliament they won't go away.

[keltingmeith]

1. Yes

I somewhat disagree, because I wouldn't even say "in the future" - the Greens are becoming more and more the vote of choice for people that would usually vote Labor. There's still differences, but it's now at the point that Liberal would be guaranteed victories every election if we did a first-past-the-post system of voting. A more interesting question is, do we think we'll ever move past a two-party-preferred system - to which I think that no, we won't.

2. No. They are too rooted in parliament they won't go away.

See above - I think that one day, they will go away. But I think that we will always see essentially one party trying to protect the views of the conservative, and another more interested in progressivism - where they'll stand on different issues, though, I'm not sure, and even saying that Liberal=conservative and Labor=progressive is already a very big simplification of the system we currently have, so