Jumpingmanjim posted:

https://twitter.com/SkyNewsAust/status/727007711133474821

Julie Bishop is all like: is this nigga serious?

Jumpingmanjim posted:

https://twitter.com/SkyNewsAust/status/727007711133474821

Julie Bishop is all like: is this nigga serious?

Negligent posted:

The budget will come out and the polls will be restored to the proper order of things

Jumpingmanjim posted:

Negligent posted:

or i could just poke myself directly in the eye

Cartoon posted:

Probably the more interesting question is why maintain close ties with a power that is actively stirring up trouble in the region (The US). The Chinese don't want to fight anybody and will continue to pursue 'peaceful' integration. If we want any say in how that is conducted we probably need to be having constructive talks with China not popping our heads out from behind uncle Sam and poking our tongues out occasionally.

quote:

Police have questioned an elderly man who flouted new laws aimed at stopping protesters from harassing women outside abortion clinics.

The man was spoken to by two police officers after reports he was praying outside the Fertility Control Clinic in East Melbourne about 4pm.

Laws passed last year making it illegal to harass people within 150-metres of abortion providers came into effect on Monda

For the first time in 25 years, the group of anti-abortion protesters who have picketed the Wellington Parade abortion clinic six days a week were absent and women were able to enter the building without first being forced to run the gauntlet.

"Usually we have patients coming in who are crying, we may have partners who are angry, we might have children who are upset," clinical psychologist Susie Allanson said on Monday. "Today has been delightfully uneventful."

Periphery posted:

I have found a solution to the issue of buying expensive military equipment form other countries:

Abandon all our military capabilities except for the SAS (probably need to keep some guys with guns around and you may as well keep only the "best" ones) and replace it with an emergency response force that helps people instead of murdering them. Retrain and equip them to quickly respond and assist in the recovery/rebuilding of places effected by natural disasters and humanitarian crisis'.

Essentially, make a professional, fully funded and full time version of the SES that has expanded capabilities to not only help Australia, but also other countries.

From a selfish point of view, not only would they be able to actively help Australia in times of disaster but as an added bonus more of the training they receive will be relevant and useful to society after they leave the service. Plus they couldn't be worse at creating enemies and perpetuating terriorism than the current military.

Any extra funding from current levels can be spent on education, health and other good poo poo.

Jumpingmanjim posted:

A second asylum seeker has set herself on fire on Nauru

Anidav posted:

Meanwhile in the ALP Party Room

"Hey what if we treated brown people as you know, basic loving human beings?"

"Shut the gently caress up"

*Union Laughter*

EvilElmo posted:

Who would you prefer in Government? ALP or LNP?

EvilElmo posted:

Who would you prefer in Government? ALP or LNP?

Anidav posted:

There is a third option and they are called The Greens who are like the ALP but have this one vital difference in that they don't pretend to be progressive to win working class votes. They actually are and will continue to gain ground so long as the other half of the ALP tries to be LNP Lite.

quote:

Here's a question: how many actions, rallies, meetings or door-knocking campaign activities for refugee rights have taken place in the swing Labor/Liberal seats that determine government in this country?
For those struggling to understand why both major parties have supported offshore detention - the Liberals as a punitive measure to discourage "people smuggling", Labor ostensibly to police a dangerous migration zone - it's because PEOPLE VOTING IN SWING SEATS SUPPORT THESE POLICIES.

As of last year, 77% of Australians were either untroubled by refugee policy, or thought - wait for it - that it wasn't harsh enough.

As of this year, a mere 7% of Australians rate concern for the appalling treatment of refugees as a priority voting issue. That's even less people than who vote for the Greens.

Australians in marginal seats are actually mobilised to vote AGAINST humane asylum seeker policy, to the point where they elected TONY FREAKIN' ABBOTT on the basis of his "stop the boats" stance.

Let's repeat that: voters elected Tony Abbott BECAUSE he promised to "stop the boats".

Yet for all my years standing in the rain, waving a placard, crying at the disgraceful fate of the world's most vulnerable people inflicted by some of the world's privileged, NOT ONCE have I found myself at any kind of action to persuade the voters themselves to think differently. There's been a lot of shouting at the Liberals, and lots of cries of "shame, labor, shame!" - and after FIFTEEN YEARS, it has got us precisely to this point, where for all the shouting and denouncement, the voting public are fundamentally UNMOVED on this issue - because the refugee rights campaign is not working. The refugee rights campaign is not changing hearts and minds, it's not talking to the people it needs to talk to, and it certainly isn't addressing the cause of the anti-refugee sentiment in the electorate. I wrote in my Guardian piece yesterday about who marginal seat voters are; they are beneath the national average graduate level of education, they earn beneath national average income and - this is the most crucial bit - they are statistically likely to labour in casualised industry.

That means not just individuals, but families, extended families and communities live their lives subject to whether or not they get a call from the shift manager telling them they're on the roster this week. The interconnected economy of people in these areas - who has a job, who doesn't, whether shops stay open or close - is determined by unstable income conditions. In at least three marginal seats, the youth unemployment rate is also around 20%. The economic reality is ANXIOUS. Why wouldn't it be?

And we know throughout all of human loving HISTORY that economic uncertainty foments xenophobia and racism. Have a look at the kind of people who go to Reclaim Australia/UPF rallies and you tell me that these are people living in secure economic conditions. Laughing at the poor reason of their racist conspiracy theories is actually an indictment of where they are placed in the economy as unskilled, expendable workers. No wonder all you have to do is wave the notion of someone else "getting something for nothing" or "coming over here and taking our jobs" as the mythology goes to incite their resentment and tribalism. Overcoming that anxiety is possible but it takes organisation, commitment, a willingness to communicate WITH PEOPLE YOU MAY NOT PREFER TO SOCIALISE WITH and a goddamn *authentic* solidarity with their situation.

The innercity bourgeois standing outside the state library of victoria, decrying the leaders political parties while they order a latte from a coffee cart - and I am one of these people, I have purchased a latte from a cart at this precise kind of demo - are achieving NOTHING, FOR NOONE. These are self-conscious displays of self-assigned moral superiority and - just like voting Green, as I myself did for twenty years, oh so loudly and avowedly, because of this issue - they HAVE NOT WORKED, because they are NOT targeted to where a difference can be made. The result of fifteen years of gestures substituting for strategy is that the movement is shrinking, not growing; LESS PEOPLE care about the treatment of refugees than ever before. The lack of meaningful campaign infrastructure is the reason why Abyan can happen, Lady Cilento can happen and this horrific loving self-immolation in a goddamn death camp can happen and still - STILL - the VOTERS OF AUSTRALIA ARE NOT ON OUR SIDE.

I will go to the refugee demo in Brisbane today. I will cry the same tears and wave the same placards for the poor, ruined bastards rotting in the goddamn camps. But I am not yelling at politicians anymore about this issue - not even Liberal ones. I have come to realise that exercising a refugees protest vote for the Greens in my latte-belt seat of Melbourne all these years was merely me yelling at a cloud - it achieved nothing for refugees but with their other policies did help to further fray the denuded welfare state that is the last threadbare-thin protection against the total collapse of Australian egalitarianism. I will wave and cry because of the horrible sadness that everyone - everyone, apart from the remnants of living humanity currently trapped and smashed and beaten in the camps - let the whole loving shitshow gently caress up to this point.

And the only hope I hold onto is my union card. Why? Because not only does the union movement of this country have the best refugee policy on the record, not only have the union movement built in their membership the confidence to speak out and resist at the battle-lines of human rights abuses - for press freedom, for conscientious objection, for physical sanctuary... But because the union movement is fighting the very conditions of the fear, making the goddamn door to door argument that economic fairness - the right to work, the right to welfare, the right to live with the confidence of secure opportunity - is not an ideal, it's a SOCIAL loving NECESSITY.

EvilElmo posted:

Some Guardian columnists Facebook.

EvilElmo posted:

Anidav posted:

The Greens will never be in Government because people don't vote Greens because they will never form government because

Nuclear Spy posted:

aka Bad Badbad

edit:

EvilElmo posted:

Well, they're not a third option. They've hit double digits for the first time at the last election and are on path to return to under 10% this election.

So again, ALP or LNP?

ewe2 posted:

Oh yay its Mr Boring with your weekly dose of one-eyed idiot ALP flag-waving, well there's more than two choices Mr Boring, and the electorate will avoid your favoured ones enough to keep things interesting. Too bad so sad eh

Cleretic posted:

Here's the super fun and great thing about Australia's political system: we're allowed to have more than one answer about who we prefer to be in government, because of something called preferential voting! Maybe you've heard of it.

It's pretty doubtful that anyone here whose name is not related to felines is going to put the LNP above the ALP. But for those of us here who would prefer the greens to the ALP--which is most of us I think--we're not squandering our votes, because we are, thanks to the system of voting, allowed to say 'if the Greens don't get in I'd prefer the ALP' and have that belief actually matter.

It's almost like you don't have to base your entire vote on the lesser of two evils!

EvilElmo posted:

Well, the one-eye Green flag waving needs some variety.

A tiny amount of the electorate will go for another option.

EvilElmo posted:

Would you prefer the ALP to have the Greens asylum seeker policy and remain in opposition or for them to have the current policy with a chance of forming Government?

EvilElmo posted:

Well, the one-eye Green flag waving needs some variety.

A tiny amount of the electorate will go for another option.