BF2S Forums Australian politics thread.

Ty wrote:

Sick of Aussie budget talk. I get it, everyone wants a free lunch and to be rewarded for... I dunno, existing I guess, and those that didn't get pandered to are a little sad. World's smallest violin folks, world's smallest violin.

Be interesting to hear Abbott's budget response speech. I hope he has something better than "Hey, you know that proposed 1% business tax cut we fought tooth and nail to end? Yeah, now that you've scrapped that we actually think it was a good thing".

And people are buying this rhetoric. I am constantly amazed at shit's apparent inability to stick to this guy.

Gotta say businesses are not painting themselves in the most sympathetic light. They're no better, they were supporting Abbott's call to scrap the tax cut, now they're saying they can't live without it. I think that realistically Labor realised that nothing they would do would get them to quit suckling on Abbott's teat so they said "fuck 'em" and decided to pander to their own low-and-middle-income-families-crowd-who-might-actually-vote-for-them-but-probably-won't. Fair play really.

Both sides say what they think the voters want to hear, slip in a few breaks for their sponsors, and thats about it.

Short-term populism FTW...

Simon Crean says Labor should not pre-select Craig Thomson for the next election unless he is cleared of any wrongdoing.

Du-du-du-DUH. ♪

He's just another one of the mining company dickheads who likes to think they've got such a hard deal digging up dirt and making billions.

Australia is incredibly lenient when it comes to its miners, they have a pretty fucking sweet deal. The fact that they pack a sad and threaten to destroy their own industry for the sake of a mining tax or a carbon price is pathetic and though I think the Gillard Government is in general a train-wreck I admire them for not pussying out and bowing down to their mining company overlords like someone like Abbott would have, (and in fact insists he will do as soon as he gets the chance.)

I mean come on, Australia is so fucking resource-rich does anyone really think that a big company like BHP Billiton has the balls to walk away from that and let someone else have at it? Get real.

Wow, Craig Thomson sure took his time. Didn't actually hear the speech but it was playing on the TV at work.

Also Clive Palmer has shown his dedication to an electorate he has only been to once in the past 20 years by putting up an egotistical billboard that basically says "Look at me! I'm Clive Palmer and I have money to waste on badly cropped billboards!"

Seriously, what a fucking bright yellow eyesore. Looks like he's taking a dump too.

I follow him on Twitter. Keep your enemies closer and all that. Was really resisting the urge to call him out for that godawful billboard but it wasn't very polite and wouldn't have made anyone look good.

Noticed he's changed his Twitter picture, probably 'cause it made him look bad when people saw that his billboard pic is just a badly cropped copy of his Twitter pic and realised he put less effort into his bid to show himself as 'serious' about the Lilley electorate than a 14 year old puts into their Facebook profile picture.

Wayne Swan's probably loving it though, he knows that he's really riled Clive up here and Clive will look bad whatever happens. Either Palmer goes ahead with his bid as an Independent, (or knowing him he'll form his own party,) because the Liberals won't touch him or he backs out and looks like more of a nong than he does already. Thing is running will just rob votes from the Coalition candidate and he doesn't want to do that.

My guess is that this is all part of a plan to give Palmer the opportunity to get to slander Swan on a regular basis in a political setting. Palmer will do the slander and mud-slinging work for the Coalition and then back out and claim it was all his doing if the Liberal candidate wins. Swan's far from being in a safe Labor seat so it might just work but seriously I don't think I could take Palmer's unjustified gloating if it goes down that way. "It was all me!" Sure it was you slimy git.

On Craig Thomson - haven't had the time to consider what he had to say in full yet. But I'll say this, his point about the Coalition and the media's portrayal of the whole event is totally justified. He has been bullied to a huge extent and whether he ends up being guilty or not hey shouldn't have done it, it's messed up the investigation into the matter. Which is probably good for Thomson as it won't result in a conviction although even if he 'gets away with it' his reputation will be tarnished forever and it'll probably be his last term in any political office.

I'm not sure how dirty Thomson is, his claims of being framed seems a little far-fetched but I think far more dirty than Thomson could ever be is the Health Services Union itself. Michael Williamson and Kathy Jackson seem far more like the real crooks to me. Williamson seems greedy and stupid and Jackson seems greedy and naive. Both were horrendously overpaid; they were paid more than twice as much as big union boss herself Ged Kearney. I think the higher-ups wanted to continue benefiting hugely from members' money but didn't trust each other with the infighting and subterfuge and it was Jackson who thought "I'll get out while the getting's good and act as the whistleblower". Yeah right Kathy, like no-one would look at the horrendous amounts of money you were paying yourself and conclude you weren't as neck-deep as the rest of them.

See in this type of environment I can see someone like this Marco Bolano fellow threatening reprisal against somone who was trying to clear up the union. But Thomson being the heroic sheriff riding into town to clean up the bad guys and being bullied out of it? Doubt it. More likely was that Thomson was simply caught up in it all and didn't have the balls to act.

Get to the bottom of the HSU shitpile and you'll get to the bottom of Thomson. The media has been dumb to concentrate solely on him though, they've played right into the Coalition's hands.

I saw an interview with Kathy Jackson and she seems to be as much a conniving, scheming leech as the rest of them. She's not the fair maiden by any stretch.

Labor and the union movement seem to be populated with nothing but self-serving garbage - if they aren't annihilated by the poor alternative that is the coalition I'll be amazed.

Katter for President.....

Tony Abbott's showing himself to little more than a two-faced cretin. How on earth can he spend the better part of the last two months criticising and slandering Craig Thomson, calling for him to resign, saying that if an MP of his was involved in a similar scandal he would refuse to accept their vote - which is unconstitutional, (I'm a Kiwi and I know this, where was Abbott when they were teaching basic Australian politics,) even going so far as to refuse him leave to attend the birth of his child. And then start expressing concern about his mental well-being? Yes he has been put under a lot of pressure, most of it's from the shit Abbott and his team have been shovelling on top of him.

You know why of course, since Thomson's speech in Parliament the public has largely realised that Thomson has been convicted before he's been tried. They realise that regardless of whether Thomson spent union money on mouthy prostitutes what he has been put through is sill wrong. Thomson has used the media harassment and the death threats and has garnered a significant amount of sympathy through them. He has played it well regardless of how true it all is. Abbott's concerned that there may be a bit of public back-lash against what Thomson fairly justifiably called a lynch mob. And Abbott is nothing if not a slave to public opinion.

Thomson's response to Abbott's apparent concern has been akin to shouting 'blow it out your arse' which is probably all it deserves.

"...to say he has sympathy and then angrily call for me to resign in the same breath shows just how insincere Mr Abbott is... it shows he is unfit to be a leader and unfit to be an MP."

If Thomson's cracking under the pressure he's not showing it and whether he's guilty of any wrongdoing or not I'm actually quite impressed.

Nah, usually when the shit starts flying everyone cops a bit of splash-back. Thomson could come out relatively good but that's probably just comparatively to how low he sank. If it turns out Thomson's way it gives the Gillard Government a little ammunition. Sure they bowed to pressure and suspended him but Gillard stuck by him for quite a while and the rest of the time has been tight-lipped. With this whole thing it has been far better to keep one's mouth shut. The Coalition hasn't been able to resist running their mouths off of course. If it goes against Thomson I think everyone will lose though the Coalition will be better off. It will leave the Government in a very vulnerable position but unfortunately for the Coalition their conduct hasn't been to a standard where they can claim any major victory. No doubt they'll use their spin machines to dampen any negative feedback for their hyena-like display.

I think this prostitute's testimony won't be important at all. It's chequebook journalism, even if they do claim she hasn't been paid the promised $60k yet. It's also hearsay and will only serve to further the trial-by-media, nothing that would stand up in an actual investigation. She's a prostitute. She sleeps with a lot of men. Probably a lot of older grey-haired business people, I doubt she bothers to learn anything about them, probably not even their real names. I imagine it's kind of hard to distinguish one from another.

To be perfectly honest I think the Media and the Coalition has butt-fucked the whole investigation by getting swept up in it all. The Coalition's hunger to seriously damage the Government got them excited and they went at it like a kid at Christmas. Media played along, things got bigger and bigger, suddenly everyone thinks Thomson is the biggest swindler that ever existed with what he allegedly did being masked behind "The Craig Thomson Affair".

Unless police can did up solid evidence like records or video footage Thomson will probably get away with what he allegedly did. There doesn't seem to be enough evidence and if there is none of it has been made public. That's why this thing is such a fucking mess, the media and Coalition and others have acted as if they had concrete evidence in front of them. They never did. In fact no-one in the public even knows if any exists. Fair Work Australia didn't seem particularly convinced, they had three years to work on the case and came up with something that no-one could use to prosecute the guy. Three years and a limp-dicked report; regardless of whether there was any pressure from the Gillard Government that's pretty damn weak.

Anyway I'm rambling now so I'll shut up and go harass Clive Palmer.

Holy balls.

Now that the Craig Thomson matter has retreated a bit the media is looking for the next thing. That's fair enough.

But's we've fucking done the whole "Labor is looking at replacing Gillard with Rudd" thing. We've done it. It's over. Stop treating it like a real thing. I got to work this morning and swore I'd gone back in time. Why why why is this old story getting brought up again? Is all it takes some anonymous twit saying "Rudd might replace Gillard" and the media jumps on it and Tony Abbott fans it along because he has absolutely nothing to add to any discussion because if he did he might actually talk about things that matter instead of this crap yet a-fucking-gain. What's even more hilarious is that he holds press conferences to talk about the speculation saying "we don't get tied up in leadership matters, we are getting on with the job". By making time for the media about baseless speculation? Good job Tony. You prat.

Remember when everyone saw Gillard replacing Rudd coming? Remember when there was all that speculation about a leadership change and then it happened as predicted? No? Yeah me fucking neither!

It's this sort of thing that makes me hate politics.

Suspend the guy until the enquiry is done, go from there. In the meantime get the job done.

If this sort of shennanigans happened in the workplace heads would roll.

AussieReaper wrote:

Jaekus wrote:

It's this sort of thing that makes me hate politics.

Suspend the guy until the enquiry is done, go from there. In the meantime get the job done.

If this sort of shennanigans happened in the workplace heads would roll.

That removes the "innocent until proven guilty" thing though.

Yeah true. Also I should've said "inquiry".

Point is though that there are far more important matters to attend to than Thomson. I'm not saying sweep in under the carpet at all, but surely it doesn't need 24/7 attention? I guess the media loves jumping onto these sorts of bandwagons.

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