BF2S Forums Australian politics thread.

I'm not hearing enough priase for my awesome call.

http://isjuliagillardstillpm.com/

Also I think this quote from well-known printing error Spike Milligan does this whole situation justice.

"Suddenly, nothing happened. Mind you it happened suddenly."

(Credit to the ABC's Jonathan Green.)

I do seriously wonder what other democratic countries think when they see our political culture. It is ruthless. Four executive leaders - PMs or state premiers - have been deposed in their first terms in the last five years (Rees, Rudd, Balieu, Mills - even Iemma might count) by their own party, and a whole stack of opposition leaders have been left by the wayside (Napthine, the former WA Labor guy whose name I forget, Nelson, Turnbull...)

It's kind of extraordinary. It's actually far more common for a leader to be deposed by being rolled than to actually face an election.

yeah there is literally no media or journalism coverage  here, and we used to own your asses. we don't even care. not a blip on the radar. i think the only australian politics news i've seen (even in pretty respectable journalistic outlets that i read) is when your woman leader thing owned the sexist male leader thing of the other party. gee whizz that was a blast. anyway, have fun, you guys are cute.

well obviously we put a lot more importance on european/american politics than elsewhere. and then after that comes international events/wars etc. australian politics? uuuh. maybe on page 79.

actually i lie, this article was on the guardian home-page today, about the australian election:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/ma … leadership

it was only 4 links below news coverage of the kurdish peacefire. and 2 down from an article about steven seagal's bid on a washington career.

happy international relevance day, australia

Uzique The Lesser wrote:

actually i lie, this article was on the guardian home-page today, about the australian election:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/ma … leadership

it was only 4 links below news coverage of the kurdish peacefire. and 2 down from an article about steven seagal's bid on a washington career.

happy international relevance day, australia

There's also a fairly accurate opiniion piece on the Guardian website's front page at the moment.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree … ia-gillard

This along with the above story and the live steam that's pretty good coverage for a political issue on the other side of the world that doesn't influence anything in Europe.

Anyway on that piece, Australia really is a nation of whiners. I've lost track of how many comments I've seen of heard about how terrible Julia Gillard and the Labor Government is and how there is a need for an immediate election because September is just so fucking far away.

Meanwhile Australia has seen 21 years of continuous growth, resources booms, record low unemployment and interest rates, as well as a record high Australian dollar, (which has its downsides but is a general indicator of positive investment,) while also pretty much completely avoiding the Global Financial Crisis. I understand the need to strive for improvement and to not be satisfied but to think that the right way of going about this is to elect the Coalition and Tony Abbott? A man who can't even say "forced adoption was a bad thing" without making a dick of himself? It's ludicrous. The man's only policy is that he should be Prime Minister, his only strategy is to force an election before he has to come up with any more. There are maybe five in his Shadow Cabinet who are remotely adequate at their jobs, the rest are invisible.

And with all the talk of the instability of the Labor Government; Abbott has only been leader six months longer than Gillard, there's not exactly a lot separating them in terms of recent history of leader changes. Before Abbott Turnbull lasted a little over a year, before him Nelson not even a year. And while entertaining all yesterday showed was that Kevin Rudd never had enough support throughout this whole period of useless speculation. SportsBet had him at $1.15 to win the leadership while Gillard was on $5, even I was half expecting a successful challenge. Bet Rudd knew he didn't have the numbers and if he didn't have them then than he never had them. There was never anything to any of the "Rudd will take back the leadership rubbish".

It seems so utterly pointless to me that the general population would ignore policy, ignore history, ignore their own best interests, and vote in Abbott just because all this leadership rubbish seems confusing and chaotic to them when none of it matters and none of it was even relavent. That's politics I guess.

Spark wrote:

Worth noting that the Guardian is starting up an Australian offshoot and has already recruited some fairly decent names tbf (Lenore Taylor, Katharine Murphy) so it's not like they're completely disinterested.

also worth noting that the guardian is completely broke, operates at a considerable deficit, courtesy of some foreign wealth, and has been shrinking in the UK for the last few years. the guardian only has 1 member of staff in the north of england now - that's the manchester guardian, for history's reminder. its london HQ shrinks year on year.

seems like a move for market diversification tbh, rather than a 'oh look, look at how important and influential in world affairs australia is! deserves it's own team, that's for sure!'

'media diversity' is a bit of a puff-term in the world of print journalism nowadays. it doesn't keep an organization solvent.

Aus politics is more interesting than NZ at least.

Oh wait, no it isn't.

Frankly what is going on at present isn't even politics, its soap opera bullshit which passes for politics here.
I blame the media.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2013-03-22 02:10:53)

Nah Murray Darling Basin Plan just passed a milestone - something about people now unable to make submissions or something. It's still awaiting approval from the states, (I think NSW is holding the whole thing up.)

It was a shame that the circus yesterday overshadowed the national apology for forced adoptions. That whole thing is absolutely awful and the apology from Gillard was very well made. Abbott was pretty good too, his faux pas wasn't that bad and I reckon the hecklers should have realised the intent of what he was saying and shut the fuck up. The NDIS is pretty important too but I'm sure the Gillard Government will be bringing it up as much as they can to try and repair the damage from the spill.

Dilbert_X wrote:

Aus politics is more interesting than NZ at least.

Oh wait, no it isn't.

Not really true, not much happens here. It's not just my own disinterist that means I know more about Australian politics than NZ politics.

There's not as much conflict in NZ. John Key's a fairly competent Prime Minister despite being a slimy bastard with poor articulation and the Opposition has absolutely no-one capable of being a half way decent leader in order to give him any challenge. The Greens are way more whiny than your Greens, (yes it is possible,) and while Winston Peters is worth a chuckle every now and then there are few real characters.

There's a lot more passion in Australian politics; it's a lot more black and white which leads to more conflict and pointless, (but entertaining,) episodes. Plus there is a lot of corrpution and scandal in Australia compared to NZ as well and when you're wheeling out people like Craig Thomson and Eddie Obeid and even people like Peter Slipper... we just can't compete with that. The last scandal we had of any kind was back in 2011 and it was pretty hum-drum really and got resolved without the law getting involved or the MP in question resigning, (though he stood down temporarily.)

The only story from New Zealand in the past few years that made any headlines overseas, (that wasn't All Blacks or Hobbit related,) was my friend getting kicked out of a courtroom because of her sparkly pants. There's a reason for that. Fucking nothing happens here.

speaking of eddie obeid, who watched the 4 corners program a few weeks back?