Mad Katter posted:

I thought it was funny because Rize Up Australia is unfortunately simar to Rise Up Australia, the National Socialist party

Amethyst posted:

LOL!!!! stupid IDIOT took part in a domestic violence awareness campaign!

Recoome posted:

excuse me but I sexually identity as an apache attack helicopter, when will you respect my rights

Lid posted:

BBJoey posted:

yeah sorry but the plebiscitepostal survey is going to fail, guys

the australian swing voter is retarded enough to uncritically accept "if you allow same sex marriage, then the gays will turn your son trans by making it illegal for them to wear pants". another victory for prime minister dutton.

Lid posted:

The recently released Chinese student’s recording of the argument he has with his teacher about using the word “Taiwan” illustrates how issues of sovereignty and territoriality can be very emotional for Chinese students.

In the video, the Chinese student says, in a calm voice: “You have to consider all the students … Chinese students are one third of this classroom. You make us feel uncomfortable.” He goes on to argue, “You have to show your respect.” The discussion becomes somewhat unclear, but it sounds like the student then says, “It really makes us feel terrible.” His next comment sounds like he is getting frustrated and upset: “Why do you always keep saying that? ‘Taiwan!’ As if it is a separate country.”

The teacher responds: “From where I am standing, Taiwan is a separate country. If you feel offended, that is your opinion.”

The student replies: “You should consider our feelings. You don’t have to mention it many times, and like hurt us once again.” He finishes with, “It is our bottom line, and you keep touching on it.”

It is not clear from the video exactly what the teacher said that caused the student such offence; however, Newcastle University said in a statement that the lecturer was using material from a Transparency International report “which used the term ‘countries’ to describe both countries and territories”.

What is immediately notable is that while the student is not satisfied with his teacher’s position, he does not even attempt to deploy what he may consider to be relevant facts or rational counter-arguments to support his own case. He is not trying to draw on his understanding of history, or setting out what he might see to be the relevant details of the “one country two systems” arrangement that currently governs the relationship between the mainland and the island.

Rather, the student repeatedly appeals to emotion, in particular, how referring to “Taiwan” as a separate country hurts the feelings of Chinese students.

The mantra of “hurting the feelings of the Chinese people” is not new. This emotionally charged phrase is used regularly in the Chinese press, with varying degrees of vitriol when, for example, a foreign politician meets with the Dalai Lama. In another case, singer Bob Dylan was warned not to “hurt the feelings of the Chinese people” when he toured China before he had even arrived in the country. In a similar vein, my Chinese friends and colleagues would tend to react with great emotion if they felt that China was being criticised by an outsider – even in relation to topics like the weather or the traffic.

Research by Victor Mair in 2011 into this phenomenon found that an internet search on the phrase “hurt the feelings of the Chinese people” resulted in 17,000 hits, as compared with replacing the “Chinese people” with the “Japanese people” (the next many hits, at 178) or 17 other nationalities which came up with zero hits. In an earlier search on google.cn of the terms “humiliation” or “bullying” (qifu: 欺负) and “disrespect” or “looking down” (kanbuqi: 看不起), anthropologist and historian Pal Nyiri found 623,000 entries with the term “qifu Zhongguo” (欺负中国, bullying China) and 521,000 with “kanbuqi Zhongguoren” (看不起中国人, looking down on Chinese people).

This tendency to be easily offended taps into the narrative of “national humiliation” which many Chinese subscribe to – the idea that the outside world deliberately carved China up during the opium wars of the mid-1800s, leaving it weak and vulnerable. President Xi Jinping’s “China Dream” of rejuvenation is a direct response to this view.

Some Chinese people have explained to me that the tendency to take offence when an outsider comments on China in a way they perceive as a criticism stems from the idea the country and the family are conceptually conflated such that they are understood as deserving equal loyalty. In a conversation with one Chinese scholar on the matter, I said that when Australian government policy was criticised internationally, it generally did not make Australians feel “hurt” in the same way Chinese people seemed to react when China was criticised. He said, “Because, you know, so many (western) people don’t understand how the relationship between people and state in China is like a family!” He explained how even the Chinese word for country, guo jia, is made up of the character for country/state, and the character for family (国家).

The Chinese students I taught in Beijing also felt very strongly that the idea of guojia, or “country-family”, expressed the relationship between people and the state in China very well. In their view, the state was an extension of the family, and should therefore be accorded all the obligations and loyalty traditionally due to family. My students felt strongly that while it may be acceptable for them or other Chinese people to comment on shortcomings or mistakes of the Chinese nation-state, it was entirely inappropriate for those outside to do so. Students took external criticism of China very personally, explaining their emotional response in terms of being “offended” or of experiencing hurt feelings.
Wrong China policy: White House calls Xi Jinping president of Taiwan
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Officially, the status of Taiwan is a “core interest” for China. That is to say, most Chinese consider the idea that Taiwan is an indisputable part of China is sacrosanct. They learn it at school, and in almost everything they see and hear as they grow up. To them, Taiwan is a family member; that is why discussions about its sovereignty tend to be emotional. Many Chinese students find it difficult to articulate why they feel the way they do about Taiwan – particularly because they have not had much training in debating or critically arguing a point. And they find it impossible to fathom that foreigners cannot understand their position on Taiwan.

There is another fascinating question the release of this video raises: why did the student record and publicise this moment? What was he trying to achieve?

The Chinese student’s lecturer was right to say that his course could not cater to any particular group, and that navigating different views and opinions is an integral part of the learning experience. But it is very difficult for many Chinese students to accept that “the Taiwan issue” is in any way a matter of opinion.

Dr Merriden Varrall is the director of the East Asia Program at the Lowy Institute.

I would blow Dane Cook posted:

Plebiscite on next Logies location, I vote West coast of Tasmania.

BBJoey posted:

yeah sorry but the plebiscite is going to fail, guys

the australian swing voter is retarded enough to uncritically accept "if you allow same sex marriage, then the gays will turn your son trans by making it illegal for them to wear pants". another victory for prime minister dutton.

hooman posted:

Australia will finally be confirmed as the worst of the ex-british empire.

I would blow Dane Cook posted:

Client liaison is on in twenty minutes and I have nothing to throw at Tom Tilly

hooman posted:

Shoes.

I would blow Dane Cook posted:

Client liaison is on in twenty minutes and I have nothing to throw at Tom Tilly

You Am I posted:

Gonna be tough to beat Apartheid South Africa.


But gently caress we are trying our best to beat it.

Konomex posted:

Also, legally not recognising Aboriginals as people, but rather fauna?

Tarantula posted:

Lol Chinese nationalism is hilariously thin skinned, quick someone tell the students the Chinese Nationalists fought better than the Communists against the Japanese!

ModernMajorGeneral posted:

Eh, this is pretty debatable, there was massive variation in quality and effectiveness within both Nationalist and Communist forces.

Since it suits the CCP to downplay internal divisions in favour of stirring up nationalist, anti-foreign sentiment, the KMT is now more portrayed as the first generation of patriotic precursor revolutionaries to the CCP rather than civil war enemies, so it wouldn't upset Chinese people nearly as much as Taiwanese independence or freeing Tibetans etc.

ModernMajorGeneral posted:

Eh, this is pretty debatable, there was massive variation in quality and effectiveness within both Nationalist and Communist forces.

Since it suits the CCP to downplay internal divisions in favour of stirring up nationalist, anti-foreign sentiment, the KMT is now more portrayed as the first generation of patriotic precursor revolutionaries to the CCP rather than civil war enemies, so it wouldn't upset Chinese people nearly as much as Taiwanese independence or freeing Tibetans etc.

Tarantula posted:

Huh I had no idea they had changed their attitude to the KMT, kinda thought that would never happen. Still, "hurt Chinese feelings" will always be funny.

meteor9 posted:

Slight veer-off: Anyone got any experience with ME Bank? I guess it's an industry superfund credit union, but since it's the SDA that was emailing me about them it makes me worry if they're actually any good. Also their internet banking seems to be down , good first impression so far. Still I'd like to replace my ANZ accounts eventually, so, thoughts?

EDIT: It's been almost a decade since I moved here but I'm still claiming "american" as a defense for not knowing poo poo.

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/north-america/bill-shortens-biggest-challenge-is-to-make-himself-more-likeable-20170908-gydbcl.html posted:

In 1996 Paul Keating went into the federal election with 45 per cent of voters preferring him as prime minister over the 40 per cent who preferred opposition leader John Howard. Yet Howard won the election convincingly. The election result in 1996 was strikingly similar to last week's Newspoll that gave the Bill Shorten led ALP 53 per cent of the two-party preferred vote to Malcolm Turnbull's Coalition's 47 per cent.

A quick look at the history of Newspoll's preferred prime minister statistics shows this is not an aberration. John Hewson went to the 1993 poll as preferred prime minister but the incumbent Keating won a handsome victory. In July 2013 Kevin Rudd was preferred by 53 per cent of us compared with the meagre 31 per cent who wanted Tony Abbott. And we all remember how that election, a few months later in September, turned out.

It's stats like these that are consoling some Labor people around Parliament House in Canberra in the light of the big drop in Bill Shorten's preferred prime minister figure (down from 33 to 29 this poll) despite the ALP's 19th consecutive month of leading the two-party preferred vote, with that margin increasing markedly in recent months.

Providing these figures hold, Bill Shorten looks like he will romp in at the next election. On this week's Newspoll, with its 2.5 per cent swing to Labor, Shorten would win 13 seats, giving him a seven-seat majority over the Coalition and able to govern without needing the five independents.

There is a growing confidence among the party's senior people that this will happen, whenever the election is. They point to the government's constant gaffes and own goals, its lack of policies on, for instance, critical issues such as energy, and its destructive internal civil war, all of which point to making the Turnbull government increasingly unelectable.

Against that, Shorten has presided over a tightly focused team that is displaying the kind of discipline that once would have seemed impossible for a faction-ridden Labor Party. He has also committed several acts of political bravery, promising policies such as winding back negative gearing and moving on capital gains tax and family trusts that conventional wisdom once would have seen as political suicide.

In other words, Shorten seems to be running a tight show, with a good team and a suite of policies that the punters like or agree are needed.

So what could go wrong?

In politics, anything can. And often does.

Back in 2001 Kim Beazley was sailing towards the prime ministership when a boat called the Tampa appeared in the Indian Ocean and a few weeks later two planes flew into the World Trade Centre in New York. Labor's primary vote, which had been as high as 45 per cent in June, collapsed to 38.7 in the November election.

Who can say what the political impact would be of a local terrorist attack, an outbreak of war or, heaven forbid, a nuclear exchange on the Korean Peninsula?
In such circumstances would voters opt for continuity or would they see Labor as more competent to protect us? We simply don't know.

But hoping no such calamitous events happen, and our next election is business as usual, it's Shorten's to lose.

And the biggest challenge for the Opposition Leader seems to be not to maintain his tight ship but to make himself more likeable.

You hear it all the time, people saying, "There's something about Bill Shorten I just don't like". The party's polling shows it, as does the government's.
People can't necessarily put their finger on precisely what it is. Some will say it's his voice, or his delivery, his lame zingers, or the way he shouts when he's giving a speech. Others say that he's not trustworthy, or that he is unauthentic. This unease, this dislike, is widespread. The question is, given Labor's commanding lead in the polls: does it matter?

It's an article of faith in US presidential politics that to win, a candidate must have "the Elvis factor". He – and maybe this is why Hillary Clinton could not get over the line – needs to be a bit of a bad boy, but with a streak of something appealing. A loveable rogue, like Bill Clinton or George W. Bush. I'm not sure if Donald Trump fits this pattern, so perhaps the mould has been broken.

Do Australians feel such a fervent need to like their prime ministers? Do we prefer competence? Lack of BS? Someone who knows where they want to take the country, and can take us with them?

Even an initially very popular prime minister like Kevin Rudd was not really liked. You have to go back 30 years, to Bob Hawke, to find a prime minister who was really liked and politics was different then, and Hawke was hugely popular before he even entered politics.

Most people, even – perhaps especially – a lot of Labor voters, initially liked Malcolm Turnbull. A great many people still want to be able to like him but their overwhelming feeling about the Prime Minister is one of disappointment. He has let them down, he has not delivered, he has not performed well.
Malcolm Turnbull is preferred as prime minister to Bill Shorten (46 per cent to 29 per cent) but the punters are not satisfied with the way either man is doing his job. Both leaders have a satisfaction rate of minus 20.

His senior colleagues maintain that Shorten is growing on people. Now just one month shy of four years in the job, voters are getting used to him, they say, as they get to know him and his family, to appreciate that he is offering relevant policy alternatives to the chaos that is the federal government.
Tanya Plibersek, the deputy leader, has assumed responsibility for Labor's policy development process and for instituting the internal cultural changes that were needed to ensure the party puts behind it the instability of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years. This division of labour is designed to enable Shorten to concentrate on being the Leader, especially the retailing of himself to people around the country through the 53 town hall meetings he has done so far.
He plans to keep doing them.

They "energise him", several people told me.
These meetings, the most recent of which was last week in Bundaberg, have given him a great deal of self-confidence as well as plenty of first-hand stories about the economic and other experiences of everyday Australians that he is able to put to good use when doing media, especially his recent one-on-one interview on ABC's Q&A.

His best route to popularity, say his colleagues, is for people to get used to seeing him just continuing to do the job. People will see that stability has replaced the revolving door of leadership that led to Labor being turfed out in 2013, and they will begin to appreciate Shorten's substance over Turnbull the show pony.

The trouble is that this is not being reflected in Shorten's approval ratings and that makes some in the party nervous. As does Shorten's inability to get Labor's primary vote above 38 per cent. This means Labor needs the minor party preferences to flow exactly as the polls currently predict in order to win.
There are a lot of "what ifs" involved which is probably one reason Malcolm Turnbull still confidently asserts he can win the next election.
What can Bill Shorten do?

Given the Leader of the Opposition's job is to oppose the government, Shorten is obliged to be constantly negative, something voters don't like.
"He gets marked down just for doing his job," says a colleague.
Shorten has tried to counter this with his face-to-face engagements, relentlessly travelling in order to meet as many punters as possible. It paid off during the 2016 election campaign when a relaxed and smiling Shorten, totally at ease with people, produced warm and positive media images. And came close to winning the election.

Shorten has two things in his favour: this track record of almost winning and the fact that while he might not be liked, he is not Tony Abbott. He is not hated.

He needs to win trust by constantly presenting himself as alternative prime minister. Travelling to South Korea and Japan with Penny Wong, the shadow foreign minister, the first time he has been to an international political hotspot as Opposition Leader, is a good move.

He needs to engage people with how he will deal with Australia's economic problems, especially wages and energy. He needs, in the words of a Labor elder statesman, to be able to tell a story.

And if he wants people to really listen, he needs to stop shouting. He's not Ben Chifley on the back of a truck addressing a rally. It's 2017 and no matter how many town hall meetings he does, most people's exposure to Bill Shorten will be on television where if he lowers his voice and talks with, not at, us people might start to respond.

meteor9 posted:

Slight veer-off: Anyone got any experience with ME Bank? I guess it's an industry superfund credit union, but since it's the SDA that was emailing me about them it makes me worry if they're actually any good. Also their internet banking seems to be down , good first impression so far. Still I'd like to replace my ANZ accounts eventually, so, thoughts?

EDIT: It's been almost a decade since I moved here but I'm still claiming "american" as a defense for not knowing poo poo.

You Am I posted:

Gonna be tough to beat Apartheid South Africa.


But gently caress we are trying our best to beat it.

tithin posted:

"We simply don't know" translates to "We know, but we're not allowed to say it. Vote Liberal."

Schlesische posted:

Didn't ME Bank (used to be Member's Equity; I was with them when I was 12) change into Bank Australia?