It seems the Coalition under Dutton isn’t planning to work with the government anytime soon. Dutton and his cohort are throwing whatever they think it takes out there to go negative. Any positive measures (such as a second referendum to acknowledge First Nations people in the Constitution) are reversed almost before they are announced. After all, absolute opposition eventually got Abbott the Prime Ministership. ‘Back to the Future’ was a successful movie franchise and Dutton’s betting it is a good political strategy as well.
Not that the ALP is much better. While the referendum failed, there are a number of ways for the Albanese Government to legislate for a fairer and more equal society. While the move to ensure ‘labour hire’ staff are paid the same as employees doing the same work and laws around the deliberate use of mis-information are a good start, there is a number of additional measures that should be undertaken.
In an environment when state and the federal governments are all claiming they cannot afford to deliver basic health, transportation and education needs to all in the communities they service, the lack of resolve to cancel or at least significantly reduce the cost of the Stage 3 Tax Cuts is criminal. Supporters of Modern Monetary Theory may disagree with claims of balanced budgets and so on, but the ‘conventional wisdom’ is that governments don’t have limitless credit cards and taxes are one of the measures used to engender trust in a sovereign currency. So if there is a need to fund education, transportation and health services equitably to most if not all Australians, why is the government committed to a previous governments failed re-election strategy of handing money back to those that have less absolute need for it rather than actually benefitting the community?
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the operator of the ‘off-shore’ asylum and refugee processing and detention Centre in Nauru has been paid $1.82 Billion over the past 5 years to run the facility on your and my behalf. The payments haven’t decreased in line with the reduced number of refugees being held in what the PNG Court system determined was an illegal detention system when a similar scheme was operational in that country.
There are now more New Zealanders and ‘others’ in some form of ‘onshore’ immigration detention in Australia due to cancelled visas than ‘Unauthorised Maritime Arrivals’ according to the government’s own report yet there is no apparent need to fly them around the South Pacific to ‘suitable’ places of detention at your and my expense. It is still the case that a large number of asylum seekers are in fear of their lives if they return to their homeland. It doesn’t necessarily follow that Australia should be seen to be still running pseudo-concentration camps as a deterrence measure to address a confected political issue where both sides of politics have been equally culpable until now. Onshore detention is equally as horrid – as demonstrated by the plight of the Murugappan family from Biloela. There has to be a better and more humane way to do establish bona-fides quickly and settle people into our community permanently.
With frequent reports of the earth getting close to a tipping point where climate change will be irreversible, transport is one of the more obvious areas to work on and clean up (pun intended). The Coalition Government pushed actual action on doing anything about reducing the emissions and average fuel consumption of any vehicles into the weeds by commissioning report after task-force after strategy. The ALP Government has at least determined that something has to happen. However in the past 18 months, we are still stuck in a limbo where yet another strategy is being developed to determine how to do some things that have been in place in the majority of the economically developed world for decades. There is no local manufacturing industry that has to be given time to adapt – all our vehicles are imported (thanks to the Coalition). Even the USA has fuel efficiency and consumption standards that are yet to be beaten by Australia.
The thing is that the ALP doesn’t need to rely on Coalition support to implement anything. There are enough Greens and independent Members of Parliament to legislate a fairer and more equal Australia tomorrow if the ALP had the political will to work with others to achieve a solution. Rather that talking about it, they could be implementing appropriate funding of services designed to help those who need a hand, remove the stain of inhumane practices to asylum seekers and refugees or pick some more low hanging fruit in the battle to reduce emissions before the planet cooks.
Certainly, Dutton and his cohort of media mouthpieces will scream blue murder, however the proof is in the pudding. If the ALP, the Greens and the independents can go to the next election with well marketed evidence that they have actually made a positive difference to everyone’s lives and the future of the planet in the past 3 years, they have a pretty good shot at re-election. As Leader of the House in the Gillard minority government, Albanese knows how to do it – he just needs the political courage to actually commit.
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Dutton the delirious dummy front is only capable of a uselessness, a negativity, a sulk, for he has no intellect, decency, training (apart from narky copperisms) and experience in essential areas of political and social sciences. Dutton is a DUD and yet is the titular representative of a huge number of very clever achievers and thinkers of a conservative bent. Negativity will aim at loosening the support behind Albanese, challenging fundamentals, credibility, honesty, by any means ugly and confronting. The better days I recall, and there were some, seem to have gone, perhaps forever, certainly for some time. The Ugliness of Murdochery maggoty media is clear.., it aims to clag up a secure fellowship of right wing wealthy and coercing power types, to get results, exploit control, keep us all in this new dark age of challenging anything that thwarts the sick ego of old scrotumfaced Rupe. It is an evil age getting post Orwell, for dishonesty is normal, lies are good, egoprojection desirable, idiocy general and unfainess growing rampant. It’s a permanent nightmare.., imagine waking up to Thatcher alongside???
While very much agreeing with the general tenor or the article, my only quibble is that the proof is in the actual EATING of the pudding.
To do what is required.
Not to do those things that are nice.
Takes guts.
You can understand Labour’s go slow approach. Previous Labour governments have come in all guns blazing and have been shot down by the bias and negativity of our third rate main stream media. We have just witnessed this in its most basic form with the voice referendum. Labour will now proceed with ever more cautious and smaller increments to its agenda. It’s a shame really, spud is probably the most despised opposition leader in our history and the coalition is laughably the most incoherent and the most incompetent of them all. The msm is doing their best but the coalition is unelectable for the foreseeable future so you would think Labour would have a free hand. He may not have kissed Rupert’s ring but Albo will tread very softly in his first term of government. Labour wants to be a long term government.
Let’s hope it’s second term is markedly different.
ALP policies have more in common with LNP policies than with Greens and genuine Independents. Stop voting for either Lab or Lib and we might actually get somewhere.
Mark & MargaretNovember 4, 2023 at 11:32 am
To do what is required.
Not to do those things that are nice.
Takes guts.
And what, specifically, is required? And for whom? Who’s benefit?
You think these last few years have been “nice”? Lucky you!
All people in all countries have their aspirations. What, one may ask is a reasonable amount of time to overcome the carnage and dysfunction wrought over millennia, or the last few hundred years or as the pace of hope and fear accelerates, say the last 50 years?
IMHO it is naïve to think that Oz policies can be cast in ironclad legislation without intense consultation with the leaders of the rest of the world and their operatives. And also to consider the contingencies should those leaders lose their positions to others. Thank goodness it is now going on at a pace.
Whether we like it or not, the world is now inextricably global in terms of economy and ecology. And whilst it is very important to consider that political tenure is subject to the whims of each county’s voters, it is equally important to be able to have plans that can be delivered upon into the foreseeable future.
Suffice to say, the psycho psychological wreckers are ten a penny sailing as corsairs on the high seas under the jolly roger. They just thieve and wreak havoc. Couldn’t build anything if their lives depended on it – in a pinch, they’d rather eat their mates.
Dutton, Ley, the LNP, and all the merry men and women of the Atlas network and the like, are being more rapidly revealed for the flags of death and deception under which they sail. They will be the cause of their own downfall.
In the meantime, overcoming their rhetoric and implementing plans that can be delivered upon at the same time is a very complex and strategic business that cannot be achieved by the wave of a wand or the click of the fingers.
Max, that is the dumbest statement ever. Lib policies dont exist, full stop. Therefore by definition you are wrong. Think about that.
Change is incremental because we keep voting for the no change party. Its a self serving and stupid idea. One side is itching to move forward but is weary of losing at the polls , the other side doesnt give a shit, what ever it takes. BIG FUCKING DIFFERENCE.
One thing the recent Referendum showed us incontrovertibly, is that some 60% of Australian voters can be convinced, or spooked, by a combined push using any means to protect conservatism. Many of those who have crawled out of the primordial slime in the last few months are now very much enjoying their time in the sun.
It means that the progressive left, and the bleeding hearts, need to become a bit more able to counter the lies and misinformation that abound, and not simply relax and believe that truth and justice will win through. We have not really grasped how to deal with the big lie.
You have to love the abc? Their women give air to negative attacks by dutton and sussoneverything but accuse torpid tanya of copying dutton when she made a negative attack.
Tanya and Labor(Ross are you a kiwi or a pom??) can’t win, when the whole mainstream media are biased. Although I still thing sunrise and today will pursue a controversy if tanya can create one.
ps Lyndal Don’t think the spooked were that many. All the 40% who voted no to same sex were no to Aboriginal people and the rest came from don’t know yote no, including those feared of losing their backyard.
pps
Max stop voting for the loonies to get common sense to politics.
Thanks Max, that makes me feel better. Still we need to improve our ability in educating, involving, stimulating, whatever, to get that 20% engaged. It seems that they are a third camp, the “Don’t want to know” – my own son is an example: he didn’t want to discuss it, he took the “no view” and voted no. Then the day after the Referendum he said to me, “why didn’t you tell me the No side was the conservatives – I never vote with them”
My personal take is to encourage people who proudly espouse subject ignorance to either make passive objection through task abstinence (leave it blank!) or to creatively express themselves using crayon pictographs..
Don’t know? Say it with a smiley 😊
Max
On climate change Labor is somewhat better than the Coalition.
Labor was left a mess after they took over from the Coalition; or should that be Noalition?
They inherited the cost of living crisis, it had been Coalition/Noalition policy to try to stop wage increases.
It appears that the relationship with China is improving.
The relationship with Pacific countries has improved.
In relation to energy the Coalition/Noalition is kicking the can down the road through the suggestion of mini nuclear power stations. Scientists working for Exxon predicted that global temperature would be 1.5C above pre-Industrial times decades ago. The amount of methane being voided suggests we are heading into a ‘termination-level transition’ when taking account of what has happened in the past.
“… in a pinch, they’d rather eat their mates.”
Oh, Clakka, what a wonderful vision that creates.
Yes please, and the sooner the better.