Well actually …
Most of us don’t like being abused, harassed or vilified. So much so there are laws that ensure that reported incidents in the workplace and at home can be addressed if reported. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s real job is to convince enough Australians that he would make a better Prime Minister at the next election. What should happen is the opposition leader looks at government policy and either suggests changes or explains what their government would do differently. While you could argue that Dutton and his Coalition Parties have taken the second option – the way they are doing it is to vilify, harass and abuse those who promote alternate viewpoints to the Coalition parties across the country. Let’s look at a couple of examples.
Dutton has suggested that the country’s aging fleet of coal fired power generators would be replaced by nuclear generators in the event of a Dutton Coalition government. He has consistently repudiated the rollout of renewable power, complaining that wind farms are a blight on the landscape, solar storage isn’t scalable and sooner or later the lights will go out because of a lack of power generation which nuclear generation would fix. Well actually – nuclear won’t fix anything.
Prior to even designing a nuclear generation plant there is the small problem that nuclear plants are banned in Australia with the exception of the medical production and research conducted at Lucas Heights in Sydney. As Professor Ian Lowe points out in The Saturday Paper, the ban was implemented by Prime Minister Howard.
Since the ban was actually proposed to the Howard government by the Greens, it beggars belief to think they would support its removal. The premiers of all the states proposed for nuclear power have come out against the scheme. Even Dutton’s Liberal National Party colleagues in Queensland, facing a state election in October, have hastened to distance themselves from the proposal. So there is a formidable legal barrier to the proposal to build nuclear power stations.
While legislation can be changed, it’s unlikely that the Greens would support a repudiation of one of their core beliefs. Then Dutton has to convince the states to overturn their bans. It’s all technically possible, as is winning Lotto this week
Equally as important is that Dutton and his nuclear proponents apparently can’t add up. Dutton’s plan is ten years too late and wont generate enough power. Professor Ian Lowe’s article discusses this and other fundamental flaws.
According to The Guardian,
Peter Dutton has escalated the Coalition’s rhetoric against Palestinians fleeing the Gaza war zone, claiming that none should be allowed to Australia “at the moment” due to an unspecified “national security risk”
Well actually ASIO’s Mike Burgess assured Dutton and the rest of the country that nothing has changed in regard to the assessment of visa applications since Dutton was the Home Affairs Minister. Yet Dutton keeps up the rhetoric – days after Burgess specifically warned politicians to ‘watch their language’ so that existing tensions are not inflamed.
Dutton’s argument that if people come from Gaza they support Hamas is illogical at best. Using the same logic, all Australians supported the Morrison Coalition Government assuming we were living in Australia during the period. Yet, when the compulsory opinion survey better known as an election occurred in 2022, around two thirds of us chose to give their initial support to candidates that didn’t represent the Coalition Government.
ABC News reported this week on the difficulties Federal MP Zali Steggall was faced with to make a speech in the House of Representatives
The OG teal independent has always had an ability to get under the skin of the blokes in the Coalition — it comes with the territory when you win a once blue ribbon Liberal seat from a former prime minister.
But Thursday seemed different, with Steggall at times having to shout to get over the wall of words being levelled at her from the opposition benches.
While not suggesting for a second that other parties in the Parliaments around Australia are paragons of virtue in this regard, the outright disrespect for those that are seen by the Coalition to be representing areas that ‘belong’ to the Coalition across the country is not limited to Federal Parliament. This report is of similar behaviour shown by the LNP majority to an independent Councillor in the Brisbane City Council. This sentence from the news article probably explains the motives
Cr Johnston has had an acrimonious relationship with the LNP-majority council since she quit the party 12 years ago to become an independent.
See the similarities? Like Steggall, Johnston has been elected by the voters in her constituency which the Coalition seems to think they ‘own’. Both Steggall and Johnston has every right to address the forums where they have been elected and reflect the views of their respective communities. No group in any Parliament has all the answers and no group has the right to actively ensure that others with an alternative viewpoint are treated with ignorance and contempt.
As Bernard Keane suggests in Crikey
For politicians like Dutton, whose primary selling point is his “strength” (in contrast to the “weak” Anthony Albanese), a calmer, less inflamed civic life is a disaster; peaceful resolutions of conflicts are a body blow. The political temperature must always be high, there must always be a crisis, one with the highest stakes possible, and we must always be threatened, preferably existentially so.
Dutton is not trying to recreate a better world or clueless – he is the parent that would tell a 6 year old child that was pipped at the post ‘second is the first loser’, rather than they tried their best. He is ultimately responsible for the social unease that is being generated by the ignorant and gullible to groups of people who Dutton is victimising to maintain a fabricated crisis. He is the one that is responsible for the Australia wide scare campaigns against the shift in energy production which is happening around the world. The changes are necessary to mitigate events that will likely adversely affect his and our kids and grandchildren. He has no intention of implementing nuclear power, rather he will allow generators to (in the words of another politician who trades in similar tactics) ‘burn baby burn’. If you want proof, what happened to the second ‘The Voice’ referendum that he ‘promised’ during the bitter and divisive referendum campaign a year ago.
You accept the standard you walk past. Others in the Liberal and National Parties along with the related organisations around Australia can point to Dutton, his ‘shadow ministers’ or the Brisbane LNP Councillors and say ‘it wasn’t me’. But by not publicly calling out the abuse and vilification that is day to day method of operation for the Coalition’s leadership at all levels of government, each member accepts the tactics. Each member of the Coalition parties, from the members of parliament to those that permit advertising material on their fences or stand on street corners come election time and hand out the how to vote cards are equally culpable.
So how do we fix this? Well actually you and I can make a start to changing this culture. If you know a Coalition party member – ask what they are personally doing to change the bullying victimisation, fear mongering and harassment actively supported by their leadership? And when the answer is nothing – ask them why?
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Return to home pagePrime Minister Anthony Albanese, Senator Katy Gallagher and CEO of ACOSS Cassandra Goldie,
I reported to all of you 2 illegal debt schemes administered by Services Australia. None of you ever acknowledged the schemes.
Scheme # 1. Services Australia did not conduct a formal review I applied for. Instead, they sent me an Objection letter which is a void document and used it to drain thousands of dollars via debt collection and direct deduction from my Centrelink payments.
Scheme # 2. Family Assistance Office used the objection decision to force me further into significant debts. Their computer- generated system automatically issue debt notices for all 100% Rent Assistance payments if a parent was not eligible for FTB. This is illegal. They waived over $4000 of the debt issued under the scheme #2. They had no right to issue them in the first place.
Anthony Albanese, Katy Gallagher and Cassandra Goldie, you have to explain your inaction the public.
The unacademic, under educated, underachieving, unwanted ex-Queensland copper type, Dutton, remains an object of derision or adulation, according to the spectrum. Who vote for him, except the greedy, deluded, the wanters and coercers, the donors “putting down deposits”, etc. Voting aganst Dutton would surely include lovers of freedom, logic, manners, decency, legality and hope. Is Dutton influenced by Trump, the manifestation of a cartoon about political filth and stupidity? Possibly, for many followup similarities in efforts appear. Trump could be a cartoon figure x-rated rubbish, about Arch Brownshirt, the rabble rouser. Archie Trump is a figure to suit the boneheaded gas guzzler lover, hamburger gutzer boofhead who just “knows” what is, is. That nearly half of the USA voter herd are Trumpish is sickening, but only if you are reasonable and sensible, not political. As for Dutton, dung beetles must eat the normal diet.
Dutton continues to be a vile, totally deluded climate-change denialist who ticks every box as a hateful, racist political psychopath! With a sad history as a notoriously corrupt, racist ex-Qld cop who revelled in tormenting defenceless little aboriginal children, there’s not much to recommend Dutton. As long as the depraved Dutton is kept in OPPOSITION, ordinary Australians – particularly any Australian who isn’t white, male and Anglo Saxon – are safe from his inherent misogyny, relentless xenophobia and non-stop campaigns of racial vilification. Dutton shows an irrational determination to destroy everything we value. Yes, indeed, OPPOSITION is right where Dutton – and his corrupt, self-serving fascist regime – belong and Australians have a DUTY to ensure that that is right where he and the Lying Nefarious Party stays! Dutton is a self-obsessed, avaricious multi-millionaire who sucks up a very high, and totally undeserved, political wage (plus all the perks that go with it) at the expense of ordinary working- and middle-class Australians whom he despises! Dutton has zero compassion for ANYONE who is vulnerable, poor or, in any way, disadvantaged – this dangerously undemocratic megalomaniacal elitist only cares about himself and the deluded, self-serving, Murdoch-manipulated grubs in the Top 1%!
God help us all if this cold-blooded, totally heartless, callously inhumane sociopath ever manages to crawl over the electoral line like some demented Behemoth – he will destroy, defund and annihilate EVERYTHING that Australians value including Medicare, the Anti-corruption Commission (which the corrupt degenerates in the LNP, for many dodgy reasons, absolutely abhor), government-sponsored childcare, and move to influence right-wing LNP State regimes to defund our egalitarian State education system into obscurity. Everything the LNP touches turns to dysfunctional chaos and anything that the State or Federal Labor Party introduces that is foresightful, egalitarian or provides ordinary working class Australians with any benefit at all, the LNP want to totally defund or obliterate!
The LNP have ALWAYS been “spoilt for choice” for the worst, most incompetent, inhumane racists and alpha male supremacists; the male-dominated cabinet of the LNP – whom the disillusioned ex-LNP MP, Julie Bishop, revealed actually take pride in referring to themselves as a pack of “swinging dicks” – are overflowing with xenophobic, racist white supremacists, self-serving, heartless war mongers (like John Howard), regressive condescending rusted-on misogynists (like Phony Abbott) and appalling totally inhumane bible-thumping hypocrites (like the bone-idle, non-achieving Sloth Morrison, who was a signed-up member of that appalling paedophile-protecting CULT of Hillsong! NOW the LNP has gone from really, really bad to even worse with their dubious “leadership” being taken over by a hideously callous, self-obsessed, megalomaniacal narcissist (Dutton) who hasn’t got one scrap of human kindness and zero compassion for ANYONE who isn’t a billionaire LNP-supporting corporate predator or a signed-up member of the self-entitled Top 1% – ALL of whom are rewarded by the shamelessly elitist LNP with non-stop preferential treatment and massive tax deductions that are denied to the remaining 99% of ordinary Australian citizens!!
Always,always, put the LNP LAST on your ballot paper.
DonPete Duttrump is going from being a moron to a fucking moron and just cementing his racism in concrete. Like his hero he just can’t help himself.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/18/dutton-invokes-nazi-comparison-in-defending-stance-on-palestinian-visas
The Spud’s cringing Cool Hand Luke inner child has seen him reach for a sophisticated cosplay as the Duke. For both the conspiring ‘elite’ money-grabbers and asset-strippers, and the ill-informed, uneducated, conspiracist, supremacist brown-shirts, he apparently represents the designer self-righteous implacable representative of their unrequited ambitions. His confections and guile mark his inabilities and faux macho pursuit operating at the fringe habitations of those that seek a free ride and a way to avoid their inevitable death.
Like a hapless constipated whinge from a broken outback dunny.
I’m still waiting for the national LNP Shave Your Head in Sympathy for P Duddy Day as a protest over the awful, horrible, terrible and just plain nasty treatment of the Thug Spud.
I see someone forgot to lock the protective cabinet Annabelle is stored in:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/21/sussan-ley-defends-coalitions-question-time-passion-as-labor-proposes-penalties-for-politicians-bad-behaviour-ntwnfb
“Passion” definitely isn’t the word I would use to describe the execrable and vile behaviour of the LNP in question time.