BlitzkriegOfColour posted:

Have you considered that great power imperialism is only ever kept in check by other great power imperialism, and with the US being so much more insanely powerful (and also, insane and powerful) there is literally nothing to keep its imperialism in check? I mean, if you really assess the situation, you'd be willing to let the Russian/Chinese empires expand a little in order to check the US. Otherwise they're just going to continue to encircle everyone, as they do now.

quote:

MLA Larisa Lee allegedly used Government vehicle she was loaned by Chief Minister’s office to aid in killing cow on private cattle station

INDEPENDENT MLA Larisa Lee allegedly used a Government vehicle she was loaned by the Chief Minister’s office to aid in killing a cow on a private cattle station, the NT News can reveal.

The cattle-duffing incident happened last week at a station near Tennant Creek with a four-wheel-drive vehicle that was provided to her by the Chief Minister after her electorate vehicle was taken away in June for allegedly allowing an unlicensed minor to drive it because she had been drinking.

The June matter is still before the courts.

The NT News understands the 2011 Toyota Prado is registered to an employee in the Chief Minister’s office.

The manager of the cattle station told the NT News he came across “two young blokes” on his property chopping up the slain cow on the night of August 6. It is understood Ms Lee was in a nearby car at the time.

The manager, who asked not to be named, said he told them if they didn’t pay for the cow he would call the police and press charges.

The unidentified youths gave him false names but he followed them to the edge of the property where he took down the licence number of the Toyota Prado.

The NT News understands after being contacted, Ms Lee and the two young men agreed to pay the station manager $600 for the cow. The station manager confirmed he received the money and considers the matter over.

Ms Lee agreed to prop up the minority Giles Government in October 2015.

Chief Minister Adam Giles said in a statement that he “considered it was fair and reasonable for her to have access to a Government vehicle to get around her electorate.

“Once it became known that she had been using the vehicle outside her electorate, she was immediately asked to return it.” That decision overruled Speaker Kezia Purick’s decision to take the previous taxpayer-funded vehicle away for misuse. A police spokesman said no criminal investigation was expected to occur over the cattle-duffing.

“The matter is civil between the owner of the dead cow and a female involved,” the spokesman said.

It’s the latest in a tumultuous first term for the Member for Arnhem that saw her dabble with two different political parties and finally sitting as an independent, force the evacuation of a hotel after a garlic bread heating mishap, rack up questionable expenses on Government-issued fuel cards and a conviction in 2014 for beating her niece in the street because she allegedly engaged in an extramarital affair with Ms Lee’s husband.

She did not respond to questions yesterday. Ms Lee is seeking re-election in Arnhem on August 27.

Ms Lee was mentioned in Katherine court last week for the June incident in which she was charged for allegedly allowing her 17-year-old unlicensed nephew to drive her taxpayer-funded vehicle because she had been drinking.

Ms Lee’s lawyer had the matter held over until after the August 27 election because it was inconvenient for her to attend before that.

SynthOrange posted:

Also UQ scientists try brew beer from vegemite. They get horrible awful swill.

open24hours posted:

I've heard they do that in prison, but I'd have thought even remote aboriginal communities would have access to something that would actually make drinkable alcohol. Like a bag of sugar or a bottle of cordial.

BBJoey posted:

For real tho do the people who are subsumed by China and Russia 'expanding a little' get a say or are their needs secondary to ensuring the great video game that is international geopolitics is well balanced?

Scarecow posted:

Yes lets just roll over and accept our fate

SynthOrange posted:

Queenslanders try brew beer. They get horrible awful swill.

WhiskeyWhiskers posted:

What's the worst thing that happens if we do? Germany fucks around and claims some borderlands possibly disrupting trade, they might be emboldened and we basically kick the can down the road until the next crisis. The worst thing on the other side is another world war.

WhiskeyWhiskers posted:

Better than a war.

Senor Tron posted:

Media Watch posted:

The CEO would come complaining after the event: ‘Why did you run that bleeding heart story? Leave it to the ABC.’ They’d never direct you beforehand, but you knew pretty quickly what was expected.

Then there’d be the complaints that you don’t know what ‘real people’ are thinking, you don’t know what issues they care about. And you’d think, ‘I’m being told this by senior executives who live in waterfront suburbs earning millions a year. What the gently caress would they know about real people?’

— Former TV News Director, 12 August, 2016

Ten Becquerels posted:

Prior to David Leyonhjelm being in the news with this 18C crap, I didn't know what he looked like and I was content not to know. I blame this thread for causing me to be subjected to his visage. He looks like an alien wearing a human suit inspired by humpty dumpty.

I didn't know it was possible to have so many wrinkles on one's forehead, although his forehead does extend all the way up to the top of his head.

Cartoon posted:

This will do nothing but raise the stakes with the Chinese hawks. Any difficulties that the central committee might have had with military procurement are now overcome. This is what starts arms races and eventually someone decides they have to make the first move.

quote:

News just in!!! FTAs are poo poo and we should stop signing them.

This is getting to be too depressing and relentless.

BlitzkriegOfColour posted:

Have you considered that great power imperialism is only ever kept in check by other great power imperialism, and with the US being so much more insanely powerful (and also, insane and powerful) there is literally nothing to keep its imperialism in check? I mean, if you really assess the situation, you'd be willing to let the Russian/Chinese empires expand a little in order to check the US. Otherwise they're just going to continue to encircle everyone, as they do now.

Anidav posted:

Don't dox me fairfax:

Police were left mystified after a pork roast fell from the pants of a "heavily intoxicated" man during a callout on the weekend.

Dutton Park police were called to a local bus stop to find a man who police said seemed "not too pleased" to see them on the weekend, Senior Sergeant Greg Bishop wrote on a police blog on Tuesday.

They tried to help the "rather large" man to his feet and as they did so, a 2.5 kilogram uncooked pork roast fell from the man's pants.

Seemingly as confused as the police officers, the man asked 'where is that from?' before leaving the bus stop.

The mystery of the pork roast remains unsolved.

open24hours posted:

About as valuable as Mensa.

Redcordial posted:

Has anyone here ever attended an event, or been a member of the Golden Key Society? Even if you know someone who has, any information would be extremely helpful, thanks.

Redcordial posted:

I figure this will be most peoples responses, but if there are even one or two great networking opportunities in the coming years of studying, I think it would be worth it.

I'm often wrong, but all you need is one good peer within a group to make associating with it all the worthwhile.

open24hours posted:

There are plenty of other groups you could join that would offer similar, and almost certainly better, opportunities. You're studying psychology right? Why not look into something like http://www.psychology.org.au/ ?

Frogmanv2 posted:

never try pineapple *shudder*

Redcordial posted:

I've looked into the APS and am really interested in becoming a member, I'm just finding it hard to scrape the money together for it considering it's only a yearly membership. It's not a lot of money, but I've been unemployed for quite a while and unsuccessful interviews are causing me to drink more beer = even less money left over.

The GKS is only a once off payment of a similar price, so before I spend any money I'll make sure to attend the initiating events and assess the worthiness.

If I don't like what I see, I will become a member of the APS within the month.

MysticalMachineGun posted:

Wonder who the former news director they featured on Media Watch was.


N o i c e

Serrath posted:

What is it you're trying to do with a professional membership? Registration in the APS as a student is less than $100/year but there are psychology professional groups, student psychology groups, and APS groups on facebook that don't require any paid membership anywhere. If you're trying to scare up job opportunities, in the clinical psychology interest forum there are jobs posted all the time (although I don't know what the requirements are to join that group). Individual universities also usually have a facebook group devoted to their psychology cohort where job opportunities/professional networking sometimes takes place.

For what it's worth, someone mentioned Mensa; Mensa employs psychologists for psychometric testing for application purposes which is surprisingly lucrative because testing people of high ability is without any real complexity (and the people requesting testing tend to be people able to pay whatever you ask).

quote:

Labor to play hardball with pairing and test Turnbull government's working majority

Labor will test the Coalition's claim that it has a "working" majority in the new parliament and has not entered into a formal "pairing" arrangement, which could effectively deny government MPs holidays or even sick leave.

In a move designed to test the stability of the Turnbull government, which holds the slimmest possible majority of 76 seats in the 150-member parliament, Labor has rebuffed initial requests for the government and opposition to enter into a "pairing" arrangement.

The approach - which puts the onus on government whips to decide when MPs can be absent - is similar to the hardline approach then opposition leader Tony Abbott took in the hung parliament between 2010 and 2013 in which he insisted, at least initially, on knocking back Labor requests for pairs except in exceptional circumstances.

A parliamentary "pairing" is an arrangement that allows an MP from each of the government and opposition to pair off and both be absent for votes in the chamber of the House of Representatives - for example, when an MP is sick or travelling - without having an effect on the outcome of a vote.

The arrangement was not in place in the 44th parliament, between 2013 and 2016, because the Coalition had a sizeable majority.

But following Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's declaration the Coalition had been returned with a "working majority in the House, the first government to be returned with a majority since 2004", Labor has decided to test that claim out.

Manager of Opposition Business Tony Burke said that since Mr Turnbull had made that claim - and insisted the new parliament was not like the hung parliament under Ms Gillard - Labor would take him at his word.

"If Malcolm Turnbull believes for some reason the government is less stable than he has claimed, he should say so publicly," Mr Burke said.

"Labor is taking Malcolm Turnbull at this word and following the usual conventions [which means no pairing arrangement] for each party granting leave to its own MPs.

"Labor has already granted leave to some of its MPs and we would expect the government will do the same as per the usual convention."

Coalition frontbencher Christopher Pyne quickly responded to the threat, tweeting: "In the 43rd Parliament the Coalition ALWAYS paired ill MPs or MPs facing family emergencies."

crikey posted:

Abbott ready for his Ruddy comeback (and he's still fighting the culture wars)

Bernard Keane
Crikey politics editor


What people have forgotten about the circumstances of Labor’s removal of Kevin Rudd in 2010 was that, initially, it was very successful: while Labor still led Tony Abbott’s opposition when Rudd was knifed, under Julia Gillard Labor entered the election a few weeks later with a much stronger poll lead — by one poll, 55-45 in two-party preferred terms. For the first week of the campaign, Labor looked headed for an easy victory. But Rudd soon fixed that, with an extraordinary act of leaking.

That would set the pattern for the next three years: Gillard managed to cling on to power despite Rudd’s treachery, but any time she looked like developing some momentum, he or his supporters, with the help of compliant journalists, would hurl a bomb. The process became like clockwork.

Tony Abbott has adopted a very different approach in the wake of his ouster. There’s been little leaking, no treachery, no behind-the-scenes undermining of his conqueror. His acts of dissent have been in public, on policy issues. He’s been disingenuous, of course — the whole “staying in politics to represent my electorate” thing — but that’s politics. But Abbott has been altogether cleverer than Rudd, because it’s become clear that, while Turnbull enjoyed a Gillardesque honeymoon in the immediate aftermath of knifing of Abbott, it has been Turnbull who has inflicted the greatest damage on the Turnbull government. Abbott has only had to sit back and wait patiently while his successor has lurched from stuff-up to stuff-up. The fact that, courtesy of his own inexperience and subtle undermining from Turnbull, Scott Morrison has vanished from leadership calculations is an unexpected bonus for Abbott.

Now, with virtually no help from Abbott, Turnbull is in almost the exact position Julia Gillard was in, give or take a couple of seats: he’s just a division away from disaster in the House of Reps and he faces a difficult Senate that will require all his negotiating skills. At least Gillard didn’t call a double dissolution election and change the Senate voting system with the express goal of removing obstacles in the Senate.

On Friday in Adelaide, Abbott used a speech to the right-wing Samuel Griffith Society to ramp up his campaign of public dissent and burnish his own credentials, albeit delivered with the air of a penitent admitting his failings.

What caught media attention was his statement that he should have supported the Gillard government’s “Malaysia Solution”, as “it would have been a step back from the hyper-partisanship that now poisons our public life”, and his returned enthusiasm for amending section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act just as right-wingers in the Senate are pushing the subject once more.

It’s a little hard to pin down Abbott on the subject of hyperpartisanship, despite the fact that his time as leader of his party, in both opposition and government, was defined by it. He appears to wants to take credit for the Gillard government’s success in passing so much legislation compared to his own government’s legislative failures, as if in opposition he was waving through Labor bills rather than hyping each one as a threat to the nation. But he then — in what is the clearest poke at Turnbull — praised Bill Shorten for supporting him on national security. “I could invariably count on Bill Shorten’s support on national security issues,” Abbott said. “On deploying the armed forces or strengthening anti-terror laws, there were cabinet ministers harder-to-persuade than the Leader of the Opposition!” (the exclamation marks are Abbott’s). And Abbott — the man who stood in front of that “Bob Brown’s Bitch” sign — in all seriousness laments “the loss of civility” in public life.

But if Abbott now improbably longs for a kinder, gentler polity, he’s still keen to fight on in the culture wars:

“A few weeks back, I addressed my old school and spoke briefly about the debt that the modern world owed to Christianity: how democracy rested on an appreciation of the innate dignity of every person; and justice on the imperative to treat others as you’d have them treat you; or to love your neighbour as you love yourself. The subsequent questions, I have to say, focussed on the alleged cruelty of the Abbott government’s border protection policies, the inadequacy of its climate change policies; and the insensitivity of its approach to same sex marriage! And why wouldn’t these be students’ concerns, given teachers’ preoccupations with multiculturalism, reconciliation and global warming? At least the Safe Schools programme isn’t yet mandatory at Catholic schools in NSW.”

“Alleged cruelty”. Oh and that’s the Safe Schools program Abbott himself funded, by the way. As has often been the case with Abbott’s policy dissents since he was dumped, he offers a case of “do as I say, not as I did when I ran the country.”

The speech — which concludes with “I won’t try to persuade you that there’s never been a better time to be an Australian” — shows Abbott’s signalling to colleagues and the right-wing commentariat what another Abbott prime ministership would be like: perhaps less aggressively focused on picking partisan fights wherever possible, but essentially the same as the last one. Abbott still wants to fight the culture wars, still wants to “upset thin-skinned activists”, still wants to withdraw the Commonwealth from areas like education (alas, Tony, you don’t get to complain about state curricula having too much climate change in it if you take the Commonwealth out of education), and still wants to couch everything in the name of security. The current parliament will need to be sensible on “economic security” like the previous one was sensible on national security, he urged. Remember, after all, this was the man who as prime minister responded to a question about the economy by talking about how he’d stopped the boats.

The Abbott shingle has been hung out. Colleagues know what they’ll get if they return to him: more of what he provided when he was prime minister. All he has to do is wait for the Turnbull government to stumble yet further into oblivion.

MiniSune posted:

He waits in the dark, waiting to strike.

quote:

Colleagues know what they’ll get if they return to him: more of what he provided when he was prime minister.

Anidav posted:

Prime Minister Hunt would be a coal miners wet dream.

MiniSune posted:

Scott Morrison has vanished from leadership calculations is an unexpected bonus for Abbott