PaletteSwappedNinja posted:

the gently caress is #CoryBernardiWankPuffin trending?

QUACKTASTIC posted:

Judge rules 'N-word' not offensive


A QUEENSLAND judge has found the terms "friend of the family" and "sandnigger" are not offensive to a reasonable person.

Gorilla Salad posted:

Holy poo poo,I thought you were making that up.

Redcordial posted:

That article was some royal hosed up reading, I was as shocked as you were to be honest. Then I remembered who the articles were referencing, then it all came together in Queensland

quote:

The Turnbull government is preparing to abandon serious tax reform.

It has ruled out major change in favour of a pair of savings measures seen as politically safe: curbing the excessive use of negative gearing by wealthy investors, and reducing extensive parking of pre-tax income in superannuation accounts.

The minimalist reform approach would raise sufficient funds to offer marginal tax relief to middle-income earners while also freeing the government to prosecute a massive scare campaign against Labor, claiming its negative gearing policies would smash the economy, wiping $278 billion off the national balance sheet through a 5 per cent plunge in housing values.

The government's final package, due to be presented within weeks, will not restrict negative gearing to new houses, as Labor has proposed, but merely impose caps on the dollar amount of losses claimable, while also reducing the amount able to be directed into superannuation contributions.

The proceeds, perhaps just a few billion per year, will be available to fund an upward adjustment of the $80,000 tax threshold, providing relief to only the top 25 per cent of earners.

The government again struggled to get its lines right on Wednesday, after Assistant Treasurer Kelly O'Dwyer contradicted Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's prediction of falling house prices under Labor's policies, by declaring they would actually rise.

"They have got a policy that will increase the cost of housing for all Australians, for those people who own a home and for those people who would like to get into the housing market through their negative gearing policy," she told Seven's Sunrise program.

Fairfax Media understands the Coalition has seriously considered and rejected a scheme that would have taxed all superannuation contributions at the taxpayer's marginal rate minus a discount, which most likely would have been 15 percentage points.

The Prime Minister and colleagues were concerned that although the scheme would have been fairer, extending the same discount to all taxpayers, it would have made earners in the $37,001 to $80,000 bracket slightly worse off, taxing their super contributions at 17.5 rather than 15 per cent and exposing the government to a scare campaign.

Instead they have opted to tighten the generous caps on how much high earners can contribute to super out of pre-tax income. At present $30,000 for most taxpayers and $35,000 for those over the age of 50, the annual caps would be cut to nearer $20,000. Fairfax Media has been told they are also looking at tightening the separate, so-called non-concessional cap that allows contributions out of after-tax wages of up to $180,000 per year.

Mr Turnbull's office declined to comment when asked.

The measures will go some way to delivering on Treasurer Scott Morrison's promise of ensuring that superannuation is used for retirement incomes rather than estate planning.

They will leave untouched the tax-free status of super withdrawals and super fund earnings in retirement.

The government has also rejected the option of more fully taxing capital gains, opting instead to curb negative gearing "excesses" by imposing a generous limit on either the number of properties that can be negatively geared or on the dollar value that can be deducted. One limit under consideration is $50,000 per year.

Mr Turnbull said Labor's policy of allowing negative gearing only on new properties might knock 10 per cent off the price of a typical home.

"If it comes down by 10 per cent, that family will have lost one-third of their net worth," he said. "The honourable members opposite ask us to believe that that is not going to have any impact on their investment, on what they will spend, they have. We all know what will happen."

The minimalist approach set to be adopted by the Turnbull government will allow it accuse the opposition of recklessness while raising a small amount of money to spend easing bracket creep.

Calculations by the Grattan Institute suggest that it would cost only $600 million to lift the entry point for the second-highest tax bracket from $80,000 to $85,000. The sum is small because only about one quarter of taxpayers earn more than $80,000 and because the jump between the bands is only from 32.5 to 37 per cent.

The Prime Minister and Treasurer might be able to fund deeper tax cuts by winding back allowable income tax deductions. They are waiting on a report on deductions they commissioned from a House of Representatives committee. However, they are understood to be unenthusiastic about the idea because they don't want to create aggrieved losers.

The package will be sold as an attempt to clean up abuses rather than recast the system. Decisions about some measures, including the company tax rate, may be postponed until after the election.

Anidav posted:

In a Shorten vs Shorten. Who wins?

Anidav posted:

In a Shorten vs Shorten. Who wins?

Gorilla Salad posted:

Holy poo poo,I thought you were making that up.

Anidav posted:

In a Shorten vs Shorten. Who wins?

Birb Katter posted:

I loving hate how bigots try to co-opt the language of the repressed to try legitimise their views. You're not being repressed, it's an attempt to nullify your repression. If you're the one who is treating someone like poo poo busting out crocodile tears is a loving low game.

Maybe we should start stoning straight people to death for a millennia or two so you can understand what it's like to be repressed. When straight couples fear walking down the street because they want to hold hands with their partner, then you can have a voice in the matter.

https://twitter.com/LyleShelton/status/702620415919652864

Anidav posted:

In a Shorten vs Shorten. Who wins?

QUACKTASTIC posted:

At least every response so far is calling him out.

Gorilla Salad posted:

Holy poo poo,I thought you were making that up.

starkebn posted:

I can accept this, because it's a judge's job to decide if something criminal has happened. It's offensive, yes, but nearly every one of us from this thread would be locked up if it was criminal to insult others.

The Monthly posted:

A tissue of lies: Paul Sheehan and “Louise”

“When she gave me verifiable facts, they were verified,” wrote Paul Sheehan, in the article that was teased on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald on Monday morning.

His column, called “The story of Louise: we’ll never know the scale of the rape epidemic in Sydney” now carries this correction online: “Many details originally contained in this story were unable to be corroborated to Fairfax Media’s satisfaction. These details, including untested aspersions against an ethnic group and untested allegations of inaction against the NSW Police, have been removed from this story.”

I don’t remember ever seeing a correction quite like this one. Isn’t that corroboration supposed to happen before publication? And what are the “details”, anyway? According to Sheehan, “Louise” was the victim of a horrific crime in 2002. A nurse from St Vincent’s Hospital, she fell asleep in her car after a shift, still wearing her uniform. She was then attacked by a group of six Arab-speaking men, who broke her bones in 79 places, raped her (orally, vaginally and anally), cut her throat, urinated in her mouth, knocked her teeth out and left her for dead. Finally, a group of homeless men (one of whom described the attackers as “Middle Eastern Raping Cunts” at a later date) somehow got her help.

Police then failed to interview “Louise” in hospital, or collect any evidence. Even though she was conscious, they did no subsequent investigation into the gang rape and attempted murder. The hospital did nothing either. She was admitted as a “Jane Doe” (terminology not used in Australian hospitals) and apparently never identified during her stay. On release, she was sent to a women’s shelter and then became homeless. Months later, she subsequently tried to report the assault at a Sydney police station, and was turned away by a duty officer with a bad attitude.

This story, as presented, would be one of the most extreme failures of public services ever seen in Australia. The New South Wales health service failing to identify one of its own traumatised employees in a major hospital? Police not investigating a gang rape and attempted murder? These things seemed scarcely believable to anyone familiar with protocols around violence. Still, Sheehan stressed the credibility of “Louise”. “She says she has a degree in psychology,” he wrote.

Many people read this story with a growing sense of incredulity. For a select few, that incredulity was especially deep. They had heard this story before. Even those who hadn’t known “Louise” for long had already heard many variations of it, and it seemed to become more distorted with each telling.

“Louise” even made a variant of these claims at a Sydney Reclaim Australia rally in April last year. The event was filmed. She was a last-minute inclusion in the speaking order. Her speech recounted the attack, this time claiming she was in hospital for four and a half months. She also described carloads of Muslim men setting homeless people on fire, and “black brothels”, where stolen children are prostituted. Attendees at the rally were initially sympathetic and befriended her, but then found her claims increasingly difficult to believe.

She would change details, or add a kidnapping. Sometimes the kidnapping happened in 2005, sometimes in 2007. During this ordeal, “Louise” said she was held for four days in a room with children, that she escaped but was unable to rescue them. Police were not informed of this incident either. “Louise” also told her new friends about her degree in psychology. She mentioned degrees in nursing, accountancy and criminology as well. When confronted, she was unable to account for discrepancies in her stories. Reclaim Australia members regret putting her on stage. “I wouldn’t give her a microphone in a karaoke booth,” one says now.

The “googling” Paul Sheehan claims to have carried out would have shown that “Louise” had previously told her kidnapping story to another journalist from the Herald Sun, in 2014. It would have uncovered her Facebook page, which details altercations with Muslim men that occur with unusual frequency. It would have shown that she operates a multitude of different online personas, several of which have repeatedly tried to engage the attention of the media. It would have shown that she also claims to be suffering from leukaemia.

I was not surprised, then, when one of the media staff at St Vincent’s hospital told me he had never heard of an attack like this on any of their nurses, and found it very difficult to accept that it could occur as described with no media attention or police follow-up.

I was not surprised by the conversation that I had with “Louise”, though I was intrigued. She had definitely spoken to Paul Sheehan, except they weren’t speaking any more. “I think that Paul Sheehan wrote that story of Louise with a little bit of self-service,” she told me. “He’s writing a book. And what better way than to try and advertise it with a story like this. Anyway, I’m angry with him now.” She is also writing a book. She says she has witnessed murders.

I was not surprised that when I pressed “Louise” for any detail that could verify her story, she ended the conversation. So far, my lines of enquiry with the police and Sydney hospitals have not produced any corroboration for any part of her story. I would like to know, for example, what happened to the car left abandoned next to a bloodstained crime-scene outside St Mary’s cathedral.

But I am surprised that a story like this got anywhere near the front page of a newspaper like the Sydney Morning Herald. Because when I read that piece, I suspected it should never have been published, and I wasn’t alone. And after 15 minutes of investigation, I was sure it should never have been published. And after an afternoon of research, its publication now seems unbelievably negligent. Negligent to Louise, to the hospitals named, to the police. Negligent to rape victims. And above all, negligent to every Muslim subjected to this inflammatory canard and its consequences.

It’s no secret that regular columnists get scant editorial attention. But they are examined much more carefully when their columns are moved to page one. And it was exactly the sensationalist and – let’s be clear – racist nature of its content that had it bumped to the front of the paper. Senior eyes, considered eyes, made that decision. They made it relying on the journalistic integrity of an agenda-soaked writer who believes in magical water, and the word of a woman who would have been cast into extreme doubt by just a Google search or a single phone call.

“In the story recounted to me by Louise,” wrote Sheehan amid the litter of excuses in the mea culpa he published last night, “she made insulting references to rapes committed by Middle Eastern men. I had wrongly amplified this insult by including her words in the column.”

Again, that’s not true. Because the whole piece was an insult. It was a bald accusation that dozens of Muslim men were going on rape sprees without detection, and that the police were ignoring it. It was an accusation made on the flimsiest proof, at the maximum volume. By the time this crawling pseudo-correction was made, the column had already been shared 11,000 times. It’s all too little, and much, much too late.

Solemn Sloth posted:

Surely to loving God Sheehan and the senior editors have to get loving fired (into the sun) for that

QUACKTASTIC posted:

freebooter posted:

I knew that thing must have been made up when Paul loving Sheehan was the investigative journalist

hooman posted:

My rocket into the sun venture is getting very crowded.

Luke Simpkins posted:

I have never met anyone that displays an extreme or irrational fear of homosexuality. I have an army background and a sporting background and never have I met anyone who has such fears.

A Big Cock posted:

Senator Bullock, a member of Labor's right faction, told News Corp it was a terrible program.

"This program is so narrowly focused on homosexual issues that it doesn't provide the sort of balance one would hope," he said.

Anidav posted:

Balance??????????



??????????????????

Birb Katter posted:

Just in case you thought Libs had a monopoly on Safe Schools we find out that the programme designed to help LGBTI people feel safe in schools spends too much time focusing on the G part and that means it should be shut down.