JC Political Thread - For All Things Political Part 2

[vr94ss]

Turnbull is known both for being willing to accept his mistakes and to be willing to cross the political line to support what he believes in. He sees things for what they really are, not what his party tells him to see.

If he ever gets to lead the Libs, I'll vote Lib. So refreshing to see a genuinely honest and principled man in politics. I'm not the only lefty who feels this way either. Instead of downing him, you would be better off supporting him and getting rid of the clown you currently have.

I'd have absolutely no problem with voting for Turnbull. I don't know if the Liberals have had a person that could make me vote their way since Fraser, another principled man. Although blocking supply and using the GG was a bit underhanded, I don't think we'll ever see the GG involved in politics again.

Edit:
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opi...ost-menzies-vision-fraser-20120907-25j2f.html

quote:"Mr Fraser said the Liberal Party had swung too far to the conservative side of politics."
''They say they are conservatives. If you had called Menzies 'conservative' in the Australian context he would have regarded it as an insult,'' he said.
''He wanted a forward-looking, progressive party willing to make experiments - in no way conservative and in no way reactionary.''

Unfortunately these days "progressive" means "left", that was not always the case.


No posts, edit again:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/leftie-fraser-leaves-party-that-left-him-20100526-wchq.html
quote: "Since the end of his prime ministership 27 years ago, the Liberals have moved a long way to the right, leaving Fraser increasingly angry and isolated in the party he once led.

The prime minster who was attacked by Labor as being a granite-faced arch-conservative in the 1980s was in January derided by the Liberals' Sophie Mirabella as a "frothing-at-the-mouth leftie.""

I think that's why Turnbull will never have a chance. These days the Labor Party are far further right than the Liberals 3 decades ago, yet still considered almost communist. Weird stuff. How far to the right is enough? We haven't seen the limit yet I fear.

 

[Rufus®]

Turnbull is known both for being willing to accept his mistakes and to be willing to cross the political line to support what he believes in. He sees things for what they really are, not what his party tells him to see.

If he ever gets to lead the Libs, I'll vote Lib. So refreshing to see a genuinely honest and principled man in politics. I'm not the only lefty who feels this way either. Instead of downing him, you would be better off supporting him and getting rid of the clown you currently have.

Id like to agree, but he always knew that the NBN was correctly accounted for. Also from a man that has spread so much missinformation about the NBN over the past few years to suddenly turn around and state that all politicians should stop the missinformation campaigns and spin doctoring makes you wonder where he's going. Can't say that I trust politicians on any side of politics.

Will his attitude change or will he go back to his old ways? time will tell.

 

[Calaber]

I think Turnbull's issues with the NBN stem from his belief that an improved broadband network was beneficial to the economy but he strongly opposed the way in which Labor was implementing it. His strong financial background would also have baulked at the way Labor was so cavalier in its design and implementation, with no business case prepared beforehand. Remember that he strongly advocated the Conservatives' alternative to the NBN, by upgrading and supplementing existing networks at a much cheaper price, which would have been quicker to complete as well as much more affordable. Might not have been a Rolls Royce system like the NBN, but even a Commodore system could have done the job effectively.

I rue the fact that Turnbull let his principles get in the way of retaining his leadership, because he has strong principles, is intelligent and seems to be far more acceptable to voters on both sides. Abbott, for all his strengths, continues to loll in the doldrums, barely bettering Gillard from poll to poll. After nearly two years in the job, he seems to have stalled. The carbon tax is failing to find much traction now and the boat people issue has lost some of its impact since the agreement was reached to re-open Nauru and Manus. Banging away on those two topics ad nauseum is failing to impress voters, even though the two party preferred vote remains strong for the Libs. Negativity can only run so far - the Libs need to start showing what they WOULD do, not what they won't do once in government. I think Turnbull would be capable of presenting the Libs as a more positive alternative than Abbott is currently doing.

 

[Calaber]

On another note. Let's get away from the ALP and Coalition parties for a while and discuss the Greens. Have they finally run their course?

State by-elections in Victoria(?) recently have seen Greens losing significant voter preference and the NSW local government elections held last weekend saw the Green vote sustain a swing against them by around 11%. Inner city councils in Sydney, where the Greens had actively pursued utterly irrelevant policies such as banning any dealings with Israel or Israeli companies and supporting the Palestinians, were the hardest hit. Obviously, local residents felt that garbage and roads were the key councilissues, not international politics.

Today's Daily Telegraph (Sydney) has a commentary regarding this issue and attributes it to a number of key points.

1. Departure of Bob Brown
2. Promotion of Christine Milne to the leadership
3. Intransigence on asylum seekers, carbon tax, Gonski, and just about every other major spending issue and government policy.
4. Influence over government policy since the last federal election and the agreement with Gillard.

The article claims that the arrogance of the Greens, who are still only very much a minor party nationally but hold the balance of power in the Senate and keep Gillard in office courtesy of Bandt, has turned voters away. Milne comes across sometimes as arrogant and sees herself and her party as more central to running the country than they really are. Australians are now becoming familiar with the Greens and what they really stand for and they don't like what they see.

Personally, I would like to see the Greens fade into political history as a failed effort and won't shed a single tear for them. I think they gained their increased vote at the 2010 election more as a protest vote against Labor than as an increased acceptance of their policies and their polling at the next federal election will be interesting. I suspect they might continue to lose support and be relegated eventually to where they belong. At least, I hope so.

 

[DAKSTER]

The telegraph also had this story yesterday.

Daily Telegraph

A number of people have jumped in his defence, but here at nearly midnight I have just listened to a discussion with Tony Delroy on the ABC. A barrister and former judge (missed his name but I am sure it will hit the papers soon enough) says he was there and saw it happen.

Ok, it was in 1977. What it shows is exactly what you see in him now.. a petulant kid who doesn't like to lose and tells lies. He is denying it ever happened. Is this the stuff leaders are made of? He has also falsely blamed the carbon tax for a myriad of cancelled projects and price hikes, and lied to the parliament. Juliar? Pot, meet kettle.



An article in The Quarterly Essay by Marr writes about an incident in September 1977 when Barbara Ramjan, now a social worker, defeated Mr Abbott for the university's Student Representative Council (SRC) presidency.

Once the victory was declared, Mr Abbott approached Ms Ramjan, who thought he was coming over to congratulate her.

"But no, that's not what he wanted," she recalls in an interview for the essay.

"He came up to within an inch of my nose and punched the wall on either side of my head.

"It was done to intimidate."
Barbara Ramjan

Barbara Ramjan claims Tony Abbott punched the wall near her head to intimidate her at university.

Leader of the House Anthony Albanese said Mr Abbott needed to give a full explanation of the incident to parliament.

"It is Tony Abbott himself who says it is legitimate to go back into people's past decades and to demand full explanations," Mr Albanese said. ''Tony Abbott needs to stop ducking and weaving, Tony Abbott needs to be held to account."

However, Marr has jumped to Mr Abbott's defence, saying Mr Abbott was a "wild kid at a wild time" in university politics and it was "ridiculous" for him to have to apologise for the incident now.

"I think that the punch was ugly, it was a long time ago and I'm sure it happened and shouldn't have happened," Marr told ABC Television.

He said it was "overblown" to think the incident would have a "devastating impact on his reputation".

"It's part of his past and it's part of a characteristic past I think for him."

Tony Abbott says he cannot remember incident.

"It would be profoundly out of character had it occurred," he is quoted as saying.

The bad blood between Ms Ramjan and Mr Abbott was ongoing. In 1977 she wrote to the Honi Soit, a student newspaper, accusing Abbott and a friend of harassing women during student elections.

One woman was "confronted by J (the dentistry student), who decided to 'have a bit of fun' and exposed his genitalia to her as well as urinating against a tree," Ms Ramjan wrote.

"He dropped his pants (perhaps for Abbott's entertainment, he seemed highly amused) and bowed in Abbott's direction, flashing his bum towards the woman," the letter said.

At the time Mr Abbott described the story as "bare-faced lies or gross distortions".

The essay also says Mr Abbott cast the only vote against a Sydney University SRC executive motion condemning police violence against a 1978 gay and lesbian march through Kings Cross.

One former student is quoted as saying for many people it was "sport" to watch the young Abbott campaigning around the university campus spruiking his political views.

"He was extremely right-wing at a time when everyone was extremely left-wing. He used to bait them, particularly lesbians," the unnamed former student said.

Another said: "My lasting impression is of negativity and destruction (but) for those he did get on with, he was well-liked."

The "coming out" of his sister as a lesbian appears to have softened the staunch Catholic's approach to the issue.

But independent MP Tony Windsor told Marr Mr Abbott's style had not changed since his student days.

"Tony Abbott is still at university in terms of the way he does stuff," Mr Windsor says.

"I think it's his style."

But even Labor figures believe the opposition leader's chances of winning the next federal election - under a strategy Marr calls "total war" - are solid.

One says: "All he has to do is stay vertical."

Meanwhile Mr Albanese, as Leader of the House, has referred Mr Abbott to the Speaker over allegedly misleading the parliament over the opposition leader's comments on a BHP Billiton statement.

Mr Abbott said in an ABC television interview that he had not read a statement setting out BHP's reasons for putting off its Olympic Dam project expansion.

But Mr Abbott later told parliament he had read the statement.

"The misleading of parliament is a very serious offence," Mr Albanese said.

He said he had yet to hear from Speaker Peter Slipper about whether the matter would go before the privileges committee.

 

[Cheap6]

Personally, I would like to see the Greens fade into political history as a failed effort and won't shed a single tear for them. I think they gained their increased vote at the 2010 election more as a protest vote against Labor than as an increased acceptance of their policies and their polling at the next federal election will be interesting. I suspect they might continue to lose support and be relegated eventually to where they belong. At least, I hope so.

Broadly, I think there are two sorts of people associated with or in the Green's Party, those with an extreme left wing ideological position, who fit in nowhere else, and those who recognise that environmental and social issues cannot be ignored. I agree with you regarding the former; they will remain on the fringes of politics at best. The views of the latter type will simply become mainstream. That may or may not mean the end of of the Green's Party as an entity.

"He dropped his pants (perhaps for Abbott's entertainment, he seemed highly amused) and bowed in Abbott's direction, flashing his bum towards the woman," the letter said.

At the time Mr Abbott described the story as "bare-faced lies or gross distortions".

Can we presume that the pun is unintentional?

 

[c2105026]

If you look at history, what the moderate left was/is saying eventually becomes practice. Consider things like women's rights, gay rights, anti-discrimination, healthcare, civil rights, environmentalism - as mankind progresses we learn more about things, and make changes along the way. If something isn't working, we change it. If you look at the LNP platform, socially its probably more progressive than what Whitlam was putting out there. Indeed, as the ALP has become more conservative, many went for a third option. True socialists actually view the Greens as a bourgeois capitalist force, for the Greens do not promote marxist revolution and support free market capitalism (albeit with ALP style regulation).

Will the greens wither? Well, historically Greens have gone from nothing to a double figure % share of the vote in a mere 20 years. If the ALP keeps screwing up Greens may well just become the opposition in coalition with ALP; just because a leftie is disenchanted with the ALP doesn't mean they will go to LNP; many in the community (including myself) simply don't agree with their worldview, and probably never will. The left isn't all mungbeans and hacky-sack - the local greens ticket last council election had many hard working professionals on it; the ALP ticket were all businesspeople. Just as some folks on the LNP demonstrate, at times, social progression and altruism. Indeed Liberals and Nationals are separate parties that have had a long standing coalition. I predict malaise for the future ALP as they struggle to find their place, the greens gain to pick up support from lost ALP members and supporters. As they become more mainstream I predict Greens policy to soften somewhat to something that aligns with left-moderate ALP. I do not think though greens will ever win govt. in its own right, though.....the greens will still represent those with socially progressive views and sustainability based economic and environmental values. Many on the forum don't agree with their policies; if this is you then don't vote for them, as your democratic right suggests....

That being said a sure fire way for the greens to fail is to completely sell out just as the Australian democrats did.....once Cheryl Kernot left to seek fame and fortune with the ALP the whole thing just died in the arse. Garrett did join the ALP and had an epic fail......but the greens did not die as a result. Bob Brown leaving has possibly had a negative impact on greens, along with carbon tax backlash.

 

[DAKSTER]

I see Campbell is encountering a lot of resistance. Interesting that one of the countries richest men and a life member of the LNP (Clive Palmer) seems on the brink of leaving the party. He's called Campbells budget arrogant and badly thought out.

I have to say, it seems very, very strange to me that with all this 'vital and unavoidable' cost cutting, over 20,000 jobs cut, and major cuts to the arts sector, that they have given Channel 9 a subsidy of 200K to help out with Big Brother..

 

[Calaber]

Queensland and NSW governments seem to be reading from the same book, but different pages.

I voted for the change of government in NSW last year, knowing that the Libs had a totally ineffective leader and nothing has occurred to make me change my opinion. O'Farrell's latest gamble, cutting education and health funding, is sheer madness. I am prepared to bet that he will be forced to back away from both by public discontent and his own backbenchers. The state's finances may be crook, but cutting the budgets to the two most essential government services is not the way to fix the books.

We need a new leader, not a new government. One with gonads to stand up to the dissenters and unions, and intelligence to devise sensible ways of getting back into budget balance without crippling essential services.

 

[DAKSTER]

Queensland and NSW governments seem to be reading from the same book, but different pages.

We need a new leader, not a new government. One with gonads to stand up to the dissenters and unions, and intelligence to devise sensible ways of getting back into budget balance without crippling essential services.

Unfortunately our system of government makes no allowances for gonads or intelligence. You don't need to be qualified at all for any of the jobs on offer. This means you can have former rock stars with little or no financial education or management training dishing out astronomical amounts of money in whatever way they see fit, and we have all seen the results of that.

I think politicians need to understand 'fiscal responsibility'. Ask any good financial planner (or Greek !!), austerity programs DO NOT WORK if you make them so painful that they become untenable. If a financial planner tells you you need to eat noodles for 3 years in order to repay your debts a little faster, you wont co-operate. You'll either not follow his 'budget' or find another financial planner with a more realistic plan.

Sure, some people can and will tolerate this, assuming that they only need to do it for a couple years and all will be rosy again. Of course, that's a fallacy too, the nice clean financial books wont last forever because some other ill qualified nork will take govt. and mess it all up again.

Unfortunately for those making the decisions, Joe Average is NOT prepared to eat noodles for 3 years to make up for bad govt. decisions. Therefore, in a few short years, all these govts will have achieved is to get themselves removed. New govts will be elected who will restore the stuff taken away, and it will have all been for nothing.

If govts. of any persuasion continue to walk this road, the population will throw them out and get someone with a more realistic plan. Guaranteed. One of the hazards of being an elected official, you can be unelected just as easily.