BF2S Forums Australian politics thread.

It's pretty concerning, especially since the morning started with the Liberals attacking Gillard for her apparently sexist comments. See Gillard claimed a Liberal Government would effectively bar women from politics and also pointed out Tony Abbott's previous comments about abortion, (where he called it "the easy way out".) Julie Bishop, one of two women in the Liberals front bench, deemed such talk to be offensive and sexist. No comment from her yet about the menu.

The timing of the reveal has been fortuitous for the PM. It's from a Mal Brough fundraiser back in March. Joe Hockey was definitely there but he doesn't recall seeing the menu. I wonder who released it though and why they decided now would be a good time? Intriguing.

Edit: Apparently it was from a Brisbane chef who used to work at the restaurant that hosted the fundraiser.

Edit 2: Mal Brough has apologised. Labor is calling on him to be disendorsed, not surprising. You know what though? At least Brough apologised and expressed some regret. Tony on the other hand 'condemned' it but issued no apology and basically attempted to brush it aside as a non-event. He wants it to be considered no different than an event last year where a comedian at a union function attended by Government ministers made an inappropriate joke at the expense of his Chief of Staff Peta Credlin. Don't get me wrong that was a scummy move but it was a comedian's comment at a union-organised event. It was not known about by either the CFMEU or any attendees until it was told and by that stage it was too late to do anything about it. This was a Liberal menu at a Liberal function organised, (though the menu was not written,) by a Liberal. The menu was printed, approved, and distributed to people who attended and not one of them in the whole process had the moral fortitude to point out how horrible it was. Tony's utter failure to take the slightest bit of ownership or recognise the troubling signs evident in the Liberal Party shows just how gutless he is.

The Mad Monk earned his moniker through railing against women's health issues in favour of the church.

Ty wrote:

If you hear about something regarding a Liberal Party fundraiser menu today in between the talk of blue ties, this is what they're talking about.

Note the Quail.

Leeuwin Estate, $85 a bottle. Hope my tax dollars aren't paying for that.

When did I say "she lied about the carbon tax"?

She made an almighty counterproductive fuck-up of it, thats all.

Jaekus wrote:

Ty wrote:

If you hear about something regarding a Liberal Party fundraiser menu today in between the talk of blue ties, this is what they're talking about.

Note the Quail.

Leeuwin Estate, $85 a bottle. Hope my tax dollars aren't paying for that.

fundraiser dinner means people who donate to libs are paying not taxpayers.

obama's fundraiser party was like 5000 dollars a head lol. we are the 99% my ass.

Spark wrote:

It's hard to imagine anyone doing worse at political tactics, strategy and communications - ie. selling the message, convincing the electorate that your policies will effectively tackle complex issues - than Gillard.

But then again, is that the main point?

Re: Abbott. I don't think he's a misogynist and I don't think he's markedly more sexist than Australian society as a whole, which

you would have to say is fairly sexist.

Spark wrote:

It's hard to imagine anyone doing worse at political tactics, strategy and communications - ie. selling the message, convincing the electorate that your policies will effectively tackle complex issues - than Gillard.

But then again, is that the main point?

Re: Abbott. I don't think he's a misogynist and I don't think he's markedly more sexist than Australian society as a whole, which

you would have to say is fairly sexist.

Media and industry are pretty well dominated by men, with a few token women here and there for fluff purposes.
Except Gina Rinehart, not sure if that counts.

Sorry Dilbert, I'm not going to go back and check I sort of just assumed you did given that you have never argued anything substantial as to why the Government and PM are so bad and this is just the standard line from most commentators. I would still be interested as to why you think the Government is so bad.

-

When they're not trying to ignore Menu-suffix-that-I've-decided-not-to-use-any-more, the LNP is just digging themselves deeper today. The restaurant owner, (an LNP donor and member contrary to Brough's initial claims,) is now claiming that the menu was never distributed and it was just a joke between him and his son. Which raises the question: How come Mal Brough was able to recognise and claim responsibility for it immediately after it came to light? Did he just recognise the wine list?

Brough has obviously forgotten his lessons from the Howard years. Deny until more facts come out, then deny some more. Hockey clearly remembered them.

Tony was quick to accept this story as were his followers. "Oh it was all just a tasteless joke between two people"  "Nothing to do with us" "Oh good, now that's settled we can get onto whatever the fuck it is we do to avoid talking about our policies."

Meanwhile a lot of apologies have been thrown around. Brough apologised. The restaurant owner apologised to Brough. No-one has apologised to Gillard yet, in fact they are still calling on her to apologise for apparently inciting a gender war when she spoke to that 'Women for Gillard' group.

Unbelievable.

Also I want to make a joke about "Roast Scapegoat" but I can't think of any right now.

Dilbert_X wrote:

Ty wrote:

Sorry Dilbert, I'm not going to go back and check I sort of just assumed you did given that you have never argued anything substantial as to why the Government and PM are so bad and this is just the standard line from most commentators. I would still be interested as to why you think the Government is so bad.

Right, so although I'm not an Abbott supporter you accuse me of parrotting the LNP line but can't substantiate it?

We've been through it before, Labor has had some reasonable ideas - the carbon tax, the mining tax, home insulation subsidy, funding school building while the building industry is in recession, education reform, NBN (was that their idea?) each of which have been so poorly implemented each has actually taken the country backwards instead of forwards.

If you can't be bothered to substantiate something you accuse me of saying I can't be bothered going into any more detail.

Right, fair enough, and I apologised. I do generally comment at work and trawling through 122 pages worth of thread to find a comment that may or may not be there isn't something I can justify time for. I have encountered the argument before, I possibly incorrectly assumed one or more of those times came from you. I will be more careful next time I assume things or at least be more willing to read through pages and pages of comments to back myself up.

Onward:

- Carbon tax was not poorly implemented, it has even been a success. It is different to the one promised pre-election, yes, but that doesn't change the fact that it has been very successful, both in its aims and ensuring that its economic impact is minimal and even beneficial.

- Mining tax arguably was poorly implemented, I will agree with that one although that was mostly the work of the likes of Gina Rinehart, Clive Palmer, and Twiggy Forrest. The PM should have been stronger, but Christ, she was only going up against one of the most powerful women in the world and her cronies after narrowly forming government a few months after becoming Prime Minister and dealing with an issue that had proven the demise of one Prime Minister.

- Home insulation scheme was actually very successful. Was brought it down was poor safety practices of contractors. The tactic used to destroy the good work that did is the same that the LNP recently used to try and harm the NBN because of the asbestos in the Telstra pits. Not the government's fault, not the government's doing, in both cases the government reacted as any government would upon learning of the problem.

- Building the Education Revolution, or funding school building while the building industry was in recession, saved numerous companies and jobs and built facilities that benefited many schools. The purpose of it was to spend on investments in ways that would promote growth in a struggling industry while improving education facilities. And it worked. Schools were happy, builders didn't go bankrupt, and while it created government debt it was all spent on investment, not waste.

- Education funding reform is also a positive. Teachers, students, and parents are calling for it. It has been handled well by all involved on the government's side, their only hurdle is winning over a bunch of bickering Liberal state leaders who, aside from Barry O'Farrell, have made it quite clear that they are going to do all they can to sabotage it. Just yesterday both Education Minister Peter Garrett and the PM were barred from schools by two different Liberal Premiers - in fact the establishment the PM was barred from wasn't even a school, it was a separate events centre which just came under the authority of a school.

- The NBN roll out is proceeding very well thank you very much. It is on time and on budget and its uptake seems to be growing exponentially. It has had a hiccup in the discovery of asbestos in some sites and like any hiccup it is being dealt with. It is likely it won't be the last problem faced. No project isn't going to have these problems.

All these so-called poor implementations are no different from any policy introduced by anyone ever. Policies that have no problems whatsoever are by far in the minority. A government is tested by whether it can introduce policies despite all this and honestly the current ALP Government has a pretty reasonable success rate all things considered.

Thing is, you may not support Abbott but you've bought every piece of nit-picking and slander he's brought to the table in order to disrupt the government and their policies for no reason other than the fact that he really really thinks he should be Prime Minister. And even with the majority of the media pushing him every step of the way he has stumbled and tripped and fucked up so much that he has only recently managed to come across in the polls tallied by his own fan club as more preferable a leader than someone who has repeatedly been called "the worst Prime Minister in Australia's history" by his side.

Let's talk about the Government's economic record too. The successful navigation of the Rudd-Gillard Government through the worst global financial crisis in a generation. The continued growth. The low unemployment. The Triple-A credit ratings from every major international ratings agency. Headlines like "OECD rates Australia best quality of life for second year in a row" which hit the news late last month. Can't seem to see evidence of this under a Liberal Government, can't see anything that shows they have any idea how to improve what they keep on calling an 'emergency'.

"She's worse than that"

Really?

See this has been achieved by Australia's first female Prime Minister in a minority Government. While all the time her body is being mocked at fundraising events, her opponent poses with signs calling her a witch and a bitch, jokes are made in public about her recently deceased father, comments are made about slitting her throat, dumping her in the ocean in a bag, and beating her to death. Just today some fuckwit, (Howard Sattler,) decides to demand she answer to rumours that her partner is gay. Can you imagine any other politician ever getting this sort of treatment? Can you imagine running a country and introducing a large number of progressive and at times unpopular policies while this is going on? Can you imagine how Tony Abbott would have reacted if someone questioned the legitimacy of his relationship?

But apparently she's worse than "a party of old white men lead by a misogynistic catholic nut with no policy on anything and Dubya-like public speaking ability." Because of... well as far as I can tell because she had the nerve to run a government and own a vagina at the same time. Because she had the nerve to replace her former boss, a man, and end up doing a better job at running the country than him. Because she, as Tony Abbott has put it, "won't lie down and die."

Oh get over it. Your other arguments are just as weak anyway.

The more articles I read from the australian media with very few exceptions, show just how bought and paid for the press really is.

Abbott isn't pressed over anything of substance, Gilard is grilled over something meaningless.

Indonesia won't accept the boats Abbott plans to send them via has BatPhone intercept, but you won't hear anything discussing how bad his policy was then and is now.