Auspol August: Half-baked enraged drivel

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Auspol August: Half-baked enraged drivel

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

Mostly economics chat for LesAffaires benefit. There are many many links that I didn't put in, sorry.

Paddy Manning, Crikey posted:

The next subprime mortgage crisis in the making

It is a bit of myth that Australia dodged the global financial crisis because we had tougher lending standards than the United States, where ticking-bomb subprime mortgages were packaged up into toxic derivatives like collateralised debt obligations, slapped up with dodgy AAA credit ratings and on-sold to financial institutions investors all over the world.

OK, we didn't yet have NINJA loans -- mortgages made to those with no income, no job or assets -- but that was probably more down to luck than good management. However, we did have a snowballing problem with subprime mortgages in Australia -- low-doc home loans flogged to struggling borrowers by conflicted mortgage brokers -- and we were lucky it didn�t do more damage. Lucky that our banks were well enough capitalised (propped up by the taxpayer through the deposit and wholesale funding guarantees) to ride out their bad debt problem. Lucky that emergency low interest rates post-GFC meant borrowers weren�t subjected to the big repayment resets from introductory honeymoon rates that -- in the United States -- caused the rise in defaults that started the crisis in the first place.

Also helping was a fundamental difference between the US and Australian mortgage markets: there, lenders do not have recourse to the borrower, so when the bank decides to foreclose, they wear any shortfall between the sale price and the value of the loan; here, if the bank does not recover the loan balance after a forced sale, the borrower in default remains liable for the shortfall. Australian mortgagors can�t walk away, so they have a real incentive to keep up with their payments. It is often said Australian families will go without food before missing a home loan repayment.

That is, if they can afford it. Swept under the carpet in Australia during the GFC was the prevalence of loan application fraud, a form of predatory lending that consumer advocate Denise Brailey has been campaigning to expose for years. A prime example was Mortgage Miracles -- a large-scale scam in Western Australia in which borrowers (some on welfare) were given unaffordable bank loans after Mortgage Miracles' highly successful mortgage broker Kate Thompson falsified income and asset information.

The transfer of responsibility for consumer credit laws was transferred to the Commonwealth under the National Credit Act 2010, with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission taking over regulatory responsibilty. ASIC's view was that there was no systemic predatory lending problem in the banking system. One of the odder moments during the recent Senate inquiry into the performance of ASIC -- which was rightly preoccupied with financial planning scandals in the Commonwealth Bank -- came when Brailey appeared on the afternoon of February 20. ASIC chairman Greg Medcraft had appeared earlier that morning, in the main event. The committee members either had half an eye on the clock or were simply unconvinced by Brailey's argument that there was still a systemic problem with predatory lending, particularly for investment.

CHAIR: You are saying there is a large, wide-scale problem. You have been sitting here for the last two days and, in particular, you would have heard the questions that were asked of the two consumer law centres, who deal all the time with people in the consumer credit, housing and insurance markets. Their advice to us was that the incidence of that type of problem was virtually non-existent.

Ms Brailey: Yes. Very worrying.

CHAIR: So how do you reconcile the reports of those grassroots consumer organisations with yours?

Ms Brailey: That might suggest that one of us is lying!

CHAIR: No, I am not suggesting anyone is lying.

Ms Brailey: Or misleading. They know about this. When I talk behind the scenes they all agree they know.

Senator WILLIAMS: Who is 'they'?

Ms Brailey: Whether I am talking to ASIC commissioners or the Ombudsman, these people know what I am talking about.

Brailey runs the Banking and Finance Consumers Association, and her warnings cannot be dismissed. She has first-hand experience dealing with hundreds of victims of dodgy lenders and is right to sound the alarm. Continued low interest rates, upward-spiralling residential property prices propped up by self-managed super funds, and deteriorating lending standards are all adding fuel -- and with that comes the risk of fire.

In May CHOICE warned against risky lending practices, with banks extending 40-year loans worth a terrifying 120% of the value of the property -- so the borrower starts off with negative equity. Yes, it is tough for young borrowers to get into our inflated property market, but this sort of lending cannot end well. Better to fix the underlying problems in the housing market -- like negative gearing, which undermines government revenue, entrenches advantage and pushes up prices artificially -- than shovel young borrowers into a lifetime debt trap.

Yet we learned in this must-read piece a fortnight ago that the big banks are resisting the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority�s move to toughen up lending standards through its draft prudential practice guide for residential mortgages, which includes a bunch of good advice on how a borrower's income is verified (especially when self-employed), proper use of interest rate buffers, how living expenses are estimated for the purpose of loan serviceability requirements, limitations on the use of lending policy overrides, and oversight of applications from third-party loan originators like mortgage brokers. For example: �a sound oversight process � would include ensuring that all material facts are contained within the application and that the borrower is not asked to sign incomplete application forms for later completion by the third party�. You don�t say!

APRA says loan to value ratios over 90% are associated with increased risk of loss; the guide warns against use of desktop or automated property valuations and states the bleeding obvious: �... attempts by an [authorised deposit-taking institution] or third-party lending staff to pressure valuers to over-value properties are an indicator of poor practice and improper behaviour�. The guide also calls for tougher stress-testing of loan portfolios, and recommends that mortgage brokers who originate bad loans should have their commissions stopped or wound back.

Conflicted mortgage brokers -- paid with exactly the same up-front and trailing commissions that have been the long-running, underlying cause of a string of mis-selling scandals by financial planners over the past decade -- have a direct financial incentive to maximise the volume of loans they originate. Now, five years after the GFC, with property markets booming and interest rates irresistibly low, the non-bank lenders are returning to the market. A sign came in July, with Mark Bouris� Yellow Brick Road bulking up to take on the big banks, bidding $36 million for RESI Mortgage.

The Australian Bankers' Association say APRA is being too prescriptive. They are wrong. We will have missed the lesson of the GFC if we just pat ourselves on the back. Loan standards must not be a casualty of a welcome renewal of competition. Already glowing from their wind-back of the previous government�s Future of Financial Advice reforms, the big banks chasing growth at all costs must be saved from themselves.

The tl;dr is that behind the scenes there is a lot of bad lending going on. The banks won't lose either way, in fact they stand to gain from a dive in the market. Other financial institutions may not be so lucky.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2014 09:17

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 18:02

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

We'll be ok we've got TWIGGYBUX

# ¿ Aug 1, 2014 09:51

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

Endman posted:

Ricky seems like a decent bloke, to be honest. He doesn't deserve to be subjected to the Australian Parliament.

You know things are bad when you're sympathising with the clueless new bloke. It also says something about the mindset of the "staffers".

# ¿ Aug 2, 2014 03:24

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

IronicBeetCriminal posted:

Yeah I had a look for it afterwards, I guess my point is it's not being splashed out there and the majority of voters probably will never hear about it.

It had passed me by too, but it's guaranteed to be blown away by Aaron Lane's twitter comedy, particularly nice because Napthine was in Bendigo on Friday and it also blew away his attempts to gee up the Northern Region candidate as well :allears:

# ¿ Aug 2, 2014 13:09

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

AVeryLargeRadish posted:

Yes, and that was a bad thing. The fact that women get help with various aspects of their lives via the government is a good thing.

They think its a wedge issue to banish "socialism". In their tiny minds the government is just a rent-collector that builds roads apparently and spends the money on torturing refugees.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2014 13:31

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

It's often known as the "Golden Age" fallacy, you may as well say we hosed up when we came down from the trees.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2014 14:55

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

Gough Suppressant posted:

I was going to post Stewart Lee on the UKIPs but it seems BBC has taken down all the videos of it.

Bloody Neolithic people coming over here...reality is too full, ah those nothing times.

So I watched Insiders, didn't I? What a fool. Highlights were well-off journos wondering why people aren't going for a miner's critique of welfare payments, and what's the problem with a welfare card anyway, and cheerfully expecting the Budget to pass, it's just going to be "complicated". Oh and the government moving refugees around and some terrible stories about Nauru oh noes lets look at cartoons.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2014 01:23

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

Bomb-Bunny posted:

"The welfare card isn't that bad and people won't be singled out"

So it won't work then? I mean, given that psychological humiliation is the exact loving point of the policy.

Abbott literally did a Yes Minister on it in a presser; as one Insider remarked, it only got attention when it was being applied to white people. As much as they'd love to implement it, they have some political survival instinct left enough to avoid that trap. Still, Hockey is trying to play Mr Nice Guy again with crossbenchers like Lambie and at the same time Abbott is playing Mr No again, so they're loving up their messaging again and won't be shifting electoral opinion any time soon.

The surprising thing about the Forrest report is that, aside from ridiculous card ideas, it actually proposes proper training and support programs for jobseekers that cost money. That is guaranteed to never be implemented, of course. Still, the take-away for me was that well-off journos didn't for a second ask why is a miner who doesn't pay tax suddenly the best choice for a welfare program review.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2014 02:34

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

Bomb-Bunny posted:

If you look at it from Twiggy's point of view it's not, it's another subsidy for him, government pays for training that, I'm sure, would conveniently be in the areas he needs skilled workers. I'm not saying that should negate the bleeding obvious, that job seekers should get real training. But as Malcolm Farr pointed out on Insiders, we need something like the old Commonwealth Employment Service, so that unemployment services aren't vulnerable to market manipulation and scamming. This thread alone is a font of evidence that that is not currently the case.

Absolutely, Twiggy benefits from it, but how interesting that the journos sell it as if it isn't. They leave out the part "by the way, he totally benefits": Tingle actually put it as if we're all forgetting the good part. And we'll never get the CES back as long as neoliberals shout it down with the dogma that government-run services are BAD and INEFFICIENT

quote:

I'm glad that these things are getting a societal backlash, but I wonder whether the tories constant "WHERE ARE THE OTHER OPTIONS!" rhetoric won't get to wearing on people eventually.

It's already worn down most journos who simply aren't interested in tackling the dogma. Keep in mind that the debate itself is already so right-wing that even a centrist argument looks lefty.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2014 04:04

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

Business head calls for fewer uni students

quote:

Australian universities are enrolling too many domestic students who should opt for vocational education and training instead, a leading business figure says.

Catherine Livingstone, the new Business Council of Australia president, said a large number of school leavers would be better off undertaking education and training that gave them job-related and technical skills first.

At an Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce lunch in Sydney last week, Ms Livingstone gave her first major speech as BCA president to argue that building innovation infrastructure would ensure a strong and competitive economy in a rapidly changing world. She said better teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics was an essential part of this push.

In an interview she said urgent intervention was needed in the education and training system as early as kindergarten, to protect future prosperity.

Now I'm certainly in favour of vocational training. We're not all going to be engineers doctors lawyers or scientists. But when you take away vocational training funding and demand the private sector cover the short fall, you're not going to get much sympathy for this kind of yap. If it's not a class war you're waging, why not actually boost funding not cut it?

ewe2 fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Aug 3, 2014

# ¿ Aug 3, 2014 23:37

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

You Am I posted:

No, your children will be. I already have my vaccinations. FYGM

What is going on with so many people talking at Israeli hosted events recently?

People should really ignore what comes out of organisations or institutes like the IPA, BCA and other self interest groups.

Sorry about the errant BB quote. This kind of connection really destroys the message, doesn't it. Talking about education at a We Support Children-Bombers rally is going to be lost in the WTF.

# ¿ Aug 4, 2014 00:01

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

Today I got a foot in the vocational teaching door with a part-time gig in a community house teaching basic IT to older adults. Well, that is, if we can get 6-8 people interested. It's not much but I get to design the teaching and it's likely to be freeform since interested learners will probably dictate what they want, there's no actual structure to lean on. But I'm stoked to be doing something positive anyway and getting experience! And hopefully I can use that to sell myself to other community orgs!

# ¿ Aug 4, 2014 06:43

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

Mattjpwns posted:

Congrats! I thought about this as a potential career pathway for a while (I learn best when teaching others, have had to coach in corporate environments, accrued most of a Cert IV in Workplace Training & Assessment while doing it), so I'd love to hear what your experience is like. At worst, you're going to get some good resume fodder from it.

Will do, that's exactly how I see it - an opportunity to learn from learners and buff my selling points. The whole deal behind TAE (I dunno why its TAE and not TAA any more) now is "employability skills", this is also being rammed through in the Adult and Community Education sector too, its already part of their framework and the national modules are being redesigned for them. We're all going to be hearing about transferrable skills till we're sick of it but that's the push behind a lot of adult education now.

edit:

Thanks, too, TOML, it's been a bit of a positive couple of weeks for me and I'm out of a hole I was getting too comfortable in.

re: Hackergate, here's the substantive part of Crikey's report today

quote:

As part of its reporting, The Weekend Australian named two Whitehouse Institute staffers whose emails it had obtained, whom it quotes as conspiring to leak Frances Abbott�s scholarship.

Speaking to Crikey this morning, both New Matilda editor Chris Graham and contributing editor Wendy Bacon declined to confirm whether The Weekend Australian had correctly named their sources. "We can�t say whether or not they outed our sources,� Graham said. �But I can say there�s a stark difference here. We seek to not assist police investigations, and apparently The Australian seeks to assist them.�

Bacon similarly defends New Matilda's reporting, saying it shed light on how the government's public education policies would transfer millions of dollars to the private sector, which would benefit the institution that gave the Prime Minister's daughter a scholarship. She adds that all journalists rely on leaks that come from confidential emails, which are then reported on if they are in the public interest.

She says she was asked questions by The Weekend Australian about her contact with the sources of the story, but declined to answer those, though she did respond to other questions. �Ask any other journalists whether they�d go into their discussions with confidential sources -- of course they wouldn�t," she said.

The Weekend Australian�s report was illustrated with a photo of Bacon and depicts her as a central part of the story. But she says she only had a contributing reporting credit, and that most of the credit for the investigation should go to Graham and New Matilda staffer Max Chalmers. "It was New Matilda�s story -- they pursued it, and they should get the credit for it."

In a response posted on New Matilda this morning, Graham says the claim that 500 students were hacked is false. "How do I know? Well, I�d love to tell you, but at this stage, I have no intention of weighing into a police investigation, nor of providing information which may assist it."

ewe2 fucked around with this message at 08:02 on Aug 4, 2014

# ¿ Aug 4, 2014 08:00

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

Quantum Mechanic posted:

I just got preselected

At last at last it begins.

# ¿ Aug 4, 2014 12:57

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

Peter Martin shoots right back at Joe Hockey:

The Age posted:

Malevolent? The Treasurer says Fairfax Media's reporting of the budget has been sometimes "quite malevolent".

Fairfax has been trying to provide the public with what Joe Hockey has not. It's a table that has been in each of the past nine budgets and was missing in this one. Introduced by Hockey's mentor Peter Costello in 2005 it was at first called "benefits of new measures for families" and later "detailed family outcomes".

It displays the changes in real household disposable incomes expected as a result of all of the budget measures taken together. It lists the results for up to 17 different family types, among them sole parents, single and double income couples and couples with and without children.
It wasn't in this year's budget, replaced by a table that compared incomes in 2013-14 with those expected in 2016-17 and noted that by then incomes would be higher. What it didn't do is to outline which family types would be better off in real terms and which would be worse off, as used to be done.

So using the freedom of information process Fairfax asked for whatever so-called cameo analysis the Treasury had prepared, whether or not it was included in the budget.

The Treasury had prepared quite a bit: a 56-page "initial cameo and distributional analysis of prospective policy measures considered in the 2014-15 budget" in April and a 21-page "cameo analysis of the impacts of the 2014-15 budget measures" on budget eve.

Neither was provided to Fairfax, because they were "brought into existence for the dominant purpose of submission to cabinet and were so submitted".

Which means cabinet knew. It knew which household types and income groups would be made better off or worse off and kept it to itself. Treasury did provide a separate smaller piece of analysis that showed high-income Australians lost less money as a result of the budget than low-income ones. It is, as the Treasurer told breakfast TV, limited.

Joe Hockey says this analysis ''does not represent the true state of affairs''. That seems unlikely, but if he wanted to back up his claims the Treasurer could make public the 56- and 21-page documents.

It would be surprising if they were incomplete. The Treasurer is able to release them, even though for whatever reason he decided not to release their conclusions on budget night. Until then it is reasonable to assume that the Treasury has come to the same conclusions as other analysts who have attempted to work out how the budget affects different households - that it hits low-income and disadvantaged households harder than high-income ones.

But it's easily cleared up.

BAM.

# ¿ Aug 4, 2014 23:21

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

Ragingsheep posted:

http://honisoit.com/2014/08/young-libs-exposed-the-ambition-faction-the-left-and-the-uglies/

Kinda expecting more that this tbh.

Pretty sure definite skulduggery was lawyered out of it. I've read about student politics for years, but the Libs are very good at hushing their stuff up, getting even this is a big deal. It underlines that Young Libs become Big Libs and almost always get preselected into the Federal Parliament. It's important to understand what goes on before they get there.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2014 01:13

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

Such complication wow

# ¿ Aug 5, 2014 07:15

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

monolithburger posted:

Depends what stream your friend is in, the more barriers to unemployment you have and/or the longer you've been unemployed the more funding you attract and higher the stream you get put in.

From memory of a post in last months thread, stream 2 (unemployed 6 months) was a couple of hundred dollars, but that is by no means definitive.

But definitely encourage your friend to push their JSA for some kind of subsided training, it's basically all JSAs are good for in my experience.

Cassa, the problem is the Cert 4, if you want a cert at the same level you'll have to pay for it, they can only subsidize the next level up. So unless there's a Diploma, you'd be out of luck.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2014 07:28

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

quote:

@s_bridges Well, @mrgrumpystephen and I always said 5k followers would be the signal to wrap it up.

Albo eat Kevern

rip @Rudd2000

# ¿ Aug 5, 2014 09:25

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

Cassa posted:

Ah poo poo, really? Not even if the cert is in a different industry?

I'm going to push them to hassle their JSA about more support anyway.

You might get some subsidy but nothing like a full one. They cut the subsidies anyway, I was lucky to get my Cert 4 before the beginning of the year, people are paying twice as much for the same cert now.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2014 09:41

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

18C: A Sad Tale or How to waste internets with Shalcar and ewe2

Bohemian 18c

Is this just real life? Is this just 18c? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality
Open the site look down at the polls and seee
I'm just a poor George, I need no 18c cos I'm easy come easy go little Hunt, little Joe
Any way the Tone blows, doesn't really matter to me, to me

Mommaaa, just killed a bill, put a gun against its head, told the Senate that it's dead
Mommaa, Rupert had no fun and now he's going to throw us all away
Mommaaa oooh didn't mean to make a crime, if I can't be a bigot this time tomorrow carry onnn carry onnn
as if 18c mattered

Too late, the time has come, a conference with the press OMG its all a mess
Goodbye everybody, I gotta go. Gotta leave my books behind and face the truthhh
Mommaa, oooo, didn't mean to vilify, sometimes I wish I never been spawned at all

*guitar solo*

I see a little short potato of a man SCARE HIM OFF SCARE HIM OFF MAKE HIM PASS LEGISLATION
ANDREW BOLT THROWS LIGHTNING VERY VERY IPA
tony abbott tony abbott tony abbott figaro magnifiquooooo
weathervane weathervane will you let George go
NO BRANDIS NO WE WILL NOT LET YOU HAVE 18C
WE WILL NOT, WE WILL NOT LET YOU HAVE 18C
WE WILL NOT, WE WILL NOT LET YOU HAVE THE 18Cccccc
no no no no no no no!
oh Tony Abbott, Tony abbott, Eric Abetz let it go
Bealzebub have the Greens fought for 18c, 18c, 18cccccccc

* guitar heroooo *

SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DOUBLE-CROSS THE IPA?
SO YOU DUMPED ALL MY CHANGES ILL TELL THEM TODAY!
OOH BABY! IPA GET YOU BABY!
JUST GOTTA GET A BOAT, I NEED A BOAT OUTTA HERE!

* special guitar heroooo *

Nothing really matters, weathervanes are free
Nothing really matters, nothing really came of 18ccccc

Any way the Tone blows *crash*

ewe2 fucked around with this message at 11:29 on Aug 5, 2014

# ¿ Aug 5, 2014 11:16

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

Bomb-Bunny posted:

Andrew Bolt on: that time I was foiled by the Jews.

Tomorrow: Labor, inherently nazis?

Thats remarkably inarticulate by Bolt standards. He's losing it.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2014 13:07

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

It's definitely a cry for help, not even a clever dog-whistle at that. I've read his horrid book and his prose was much better.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2014 13:34

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

Gough Suppressant posted:

Hahaha Daily Tele online doesn't mention 18C anywhere on its mobile front page but Mike Carlton is one of the top stories.

Same on the Hun.

The Australian has three stories on Carlton and one mention of 18C.

Sharri Markson has been trumpeting her success about it on twitter this morning. She put together a pdf of all of Mike Carlton's responses as proof of his abuse. She forwarded 15 of his emails to the SMH editor, who then pressured Carlton to resign.

So how did she get the emails and what was Carlton responding to? :iiam:

I don't think the guy was smart to do what he did, because clearly Murdoch Ltd has decided if they can't win the circulation wars, they'll just whittle down the other side.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2014 02:00

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

Doctor Spaceman posted:

ICAC is back, and it's as good as last season. Really impressed with how the writers keep coming up with new material.

Probably got them by asking the people involved; there were quotes from them in the articles.

And Fairfax is quite capable of loving itself without News' help.

I likr Carlton generally, but sending a bunch of abusive emails and tweets is pretty indefensible in his position.

Yeah I thought of that after I posted, which sounds like a deliberate trap. It's making himself an easy target by biting back, and meanwhile we have a story about offensive journalists instead of the real offence which is Israel's continuing genocide by a thousand cuts.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2014 02:53

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

deathofmusic posted:

''It's not what you're doing on the internet, it's the sites you're visiting, it's not the content, it's the sites that you've been,''

The site's you're visiting have nothing to do with what you're doing on the internet!

He's been told to say this. But with data retention, you don't have to look at people's computers. You only have to set up a proxy that gets everything they're doing and filter it for urls and keywords at your leisure later. It's bullshit designed to comfort people who don't understand networking.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2014 04:13

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

New improved team australia from @somersetbean

# ¿ Aug 6, 2014 04:23

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

Oh by the way I've cracked the code:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-0TEJMJOhk

# ¿ Aug 6, 2014 08:29

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

Gough Suppressant posted:

I think it's supposed to be "my friends and I we've cracked the code"

# ¿ Aug 6, 2014 08:39

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

Speaking of funny videos check this out

George Brandis on Sky News "explaining" metadata

Gives Mad As Hell a run for their money.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2014 09:23

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

Chris Berg has been unintentionally funny the last couple of days, he's so mad at the government.

Jumpingmanjim posted:

Is it unusual for cabinet to be leaking like a sieve like this? Who do you think is the guilty party?

No, but what's lovely is that they're leaking to the Guardian. You can bet the Oz is feeling cheated. When they're not crowing over stitching up Mike Carlton. As to the culprit, usually "moderates" are blamed, but this time it could be anyone ambitious. Turnbull's been very quiet, but I would not put it past Scott Morrison.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2014 10:02

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

Those On My Left posted:

The full thing is amazing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N4vAdS4xT4

C'mon do a proper comparison:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjLK9ug6MB4

Francis Greenslade much more understandable.

In local news, the fallout from Jack Lyons is utterly hilarious:

quote:

FORMER Liberal and Nationals candidates Lisa Ruffell and Steven Oliver won't say if they have been approached to replace Jack Lyons as the Liberal candidate for Bendigo West.

Mr Oliver achieved 21.7 per cent of the vote as the Bendigo West candidate for the Nationals in 2010.

He said his response would be "no comment" as to whether he would run for the seat with the Liberal Party.

"I haven't run for 15 years. My knees are no good anymore," Mr Oliver said.

Three other candidates from other parties are also ruling themselves out, its a mess. But Greg Bickely the Liberal candidate for Bendigo East who spent shitloads and still didn't win in the Federal election added some weirdness in the paper edition that didn't make it online. In addition to saying he'd made comments to the Guardian and The Age in support of the Bendigo mosque (which some were linking to the Jack Lyons disaster), he remarked

quote:

"I made a number of comments about Bendigo's rich multicultural heritage. I'm very proud of it. I don't think it's necessary to reiterate those comments". He said he was not responsible should the publications choose not to publish his comments.

Candidate makes comments no-one reports but :iiam:

why

So 4 months out from an election and we still don't have a major candidate. We have a Greens candidate tho! John Brownstein must be quietly confident.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2014 05:52

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

sidviscous posted:

So, if a netflow style solution were to be implemented then it would still track all your sessions (https or http). A VPN or a tor style connection would of course obfuscate the traffic - you'd just see the VPN endpoint or the tor nodes you're connecting to.

It would need to be something like this, but if ASIO wants deep inspection the poo poo hits the fan anyway.

Have a Grundle

quote:

Rundle: Team Australia would love to have free speech, but there's a war on

Welcome now then, Team Australia. Prime Minister Tony Abbott launched the new meme on Tuesday, at the press conference where changes to the Racial Discrimination Act 18c "insult and offend" clause was dropped, and the catch-all spy powers, metadata, surveillance and anti-terrorism bill was introduced. With the new threat to Australia from 150 people who had journeyed to Syria -- allegedly to be jihadis, though we have been given no proof -- we all had to come together for Team Australia, and anything that disturbed that unity had to be ditched -- and that included 18c.

Today we doubled down on that with memorial services for all 298 victims of the MH17 crash/shooting down, with the PM announcing -- on near-continuous loop on ABC morning news -- that "this is a day of national mourning". And on it will go for quite some time.

The truth is that the government's record has been trashed on every single initiative. Every single one. The budget is a mess and is heading for a chaotic showdown, for which the only governmentally sensible course -- but a politically disastrous one -- would be a minibudget. Operation Bring Them Home is becoming a gruesome slapstick version of Antigone, with the area degenerating into an impassable war zone and making it impossible for Abbott to keep his promise. Asylum seekers have landed, briefly, on Australian soil, taking the gloss off that promise. And now, relatively minor but all the more significant as a political defeat, an abandonment of the changes to 18c -- and by that token the defeat of Andrew Bolt and News Corp.

That last defeat has been the pivot on which the government has shifted its pitch. With a measure of desperation it has reached for national solidarity, the voluntary minimising of dissent, state measures as "beyond politics" -- all wrapped up in a green-and-gold Team Australia bow. This is the Right channelling the other side of its politics, the real business -- letting the market and capital run free, while using the heavy hand of the state to impose a single order based on a fantasy consensus.

Mind you, there were pickings for political connoisseurs. I loved the way in which Abbott presented the abandonment of 18c changes as "a luxury we could no longer afford". It managed to evoke both the Blitz spirit of rationing and Churchill's "truth with a bodyguard of lies" remark. A more open public society -- what the Right call '"free speech" -- had been the principle we would stand for, Voltaire, rhubarb, etc -- and now that very principle had to be defended by relegating it to luxury status.

For Abbott, channelling this is easier than most. He's from a tradition -- the Catholic Right -- that was as close to a clerico-fascist/Phalangist movement as Australia came. Abbott's mentor, B.A. Santamaria, was a supporter of both Franco and Mussolini, and the Team Australia rhetoric is simply a mild Australian repurposing of the corporatist-nationalist mindset that underlies those movements. Any self-respecting liberal should gag at the notion that a nation-state can be compared to a sporting team -- yet there this morning at Timmy Wilson's Free Speech Freedom Jamboree, there was Freedom Boy giving the opening address (Brandis was meant to do it but pulled out as following his Sky interview yesterday -- he had appointments all day curled up foetally at the bottom of a wardrobe, weeping) -- and referencing "Team Australia". Ironically? Didn't sound like it.

Like many on the :eft who supported changes to 18c, I got a lot of schadenfreude from the 18c car crash -- actually, together with the Sky interview, car crash doesn't cover it, it's more like those '70s extravaganzas where Evel Knievel jumped a bus over some other buses and failed to -- while also being irritated at the crudity, stupidity and blind self-satisfaction of the government's approach. Brandis killed the bill with his "right to be bigoted" remark (which most heard as "it's all right to be bigoted") and then his reply to Penny Wong: "A lot of the things I have heard you say in this chamber are ... extraordinarily bigoted ...'.

What Wong meant by bigotry was the remark that ruins your day, sends your kids crying from school (or not wanting to go), cuts deep in, and wears you down with repetition, because it is about your embodied self, what you most deeply are. What Brandis meant by bigotry was people saying things he disagreed with about the carbon tax. David Leyonhjelm strikes the same note at the Freedom Jamboree today, saying that he "refuses to be a victim". Oh really, white, male, professional First World man? You've withstood the terrible racism directed at Swedish-Australians, have you smorgy-boy? How brave you are. Well, that's the end of the matter.

This strain of self-pitying, self-satisfied white guy whining that presents as its opposite has been at the heart of the 18c push from the start -- inevitably since it was constellated around Andrew Bolt, who embodies that European petit-bourgeois whining self-pity so absolutely, you'd think there was just a pile of clothes and a permanently on air horn where he sat. It was always going to do badly in a multicultural society -- and the government ensured that would happen by continuing to suck up to multicultural society and treat the speech of individual Australians as something to be controlled by "community leaders". When Brandis went to Muslim leaders to combat "radicalisation", he treated speech not as a thing of freedom, but as an infectious agent, which could seize and transform people in occult ways. The "bacillus" model of "radicalisation" was an even more repressive model than the "material hurt" model of speech that lies at the root of 18c. Once done, that was it. Once you have a multicultural society with anointed "community leaders", you have to have something like 18c -- for you have constructed the social space as one of a negotiation between groups. Conversely, you can only get something like 18c abolished by going up against multiculturalism itself and insisting on the classical liberal notion -- straight out of the 17th century -- that the public sphere should be an open space in which individuals trade ideas like commodities.

You wouldn't want to to underestimate what a defeat this 18c stuff up is for the Right. The 18C clause survived the Howard era because it didn't throw up a major case like the Bolt one and could be left in place. In that respect Howard had helped consolidate major remnants of a model of Australian state and society cemented in the Hawke/Keating era. This was the first major challenge to it, and it needed a Team Liberal who had an understanding of the society they were campaigning in -- and some respect for the claims of the opposing arguments, which derived from liberalism also, albeit of a different kind. They didn't even begin to step up. The survival of 18c confirms -- as a real Australian substantial belief -- the notion that certain types of collective regulation enable freedom. Keeping 18c helps keep plain packaging, helps the push for stronger food labelling, and much, much more.

That is, in effect, what the Abbott government has now switched to -- a Right form of collectivism around nation, based on an external/internal emergency, the enemy within. Whatever special attention is needed to some young men returning from the Middle East, the push for this extreme and omnibus bill is political in nature. So too is the ghastly funeral pomp around MH17. No matter what Abbott says, it isn't a national day of mourning for 300 people in one air disaster once, 40 of whom were Australian. To them I feel a faint connection, for the others simply a fleeting sadness. To bundle the Australian dead into this national process is questionable enough; to say we are mourning 150 Dutch people as a nation is absurd and ghoulish and has cynicism at its heart. It's time someone in the churches -- who get used for this sort of stuff -- started speaking out against co-opted ersatz grief, for it demeans the true thing itself.

In the meantime, we will see how the liberal intellectual Right reacts to this government turnabout. Will the endless bleating about the nanny state find any register for the mass collection and access of metadata, and the criminalisation of anyone travelling to Kurdish northern Iraq -- which is currently running a global tourism campaign for godssake? Rather than the occasional "loyal opposition" piece, will they come out and identify the new reactionary and repressive character of the government they supported? Don't wait up for it. They are, by and large, cowardly and sycophantic people, eager to huddle in corporate-funded lobby group/think tanks, conformists who holler about individuality, market fanboys who have never gained an income in it, people who get more inspiration from Ronald McDonald than from William Wallace. That's why they lost this round and will lose the next. As always, opposition to a new round of reaction will come from the much larger, better organised and more courageous progressive forces around the country.

Also have an editorial by Jeff Sparrow on the Carlton thing

quote:

Fairfax turns on Carlton as we increasingly shoot the messenger

A popular but polarising Fairfax columnist let go after an intemperate outburst on social media.

No, not Mike Carlton in 2014 but Catherine Deveny, back in 2010, dumped from The Age because of some off-colour tweets -- and, more importantly, in the wake of a long-running campaign by the Right.

The cases aren�t identical, of course, but they�re sufficiently similar to enable comparison between the treatment of controversy in the liberal and conservative press. Think of Tim Blair�s recent "frightbat" stunt. As Jane Gilmore notes, Blair -- the sometime opinion editor of The Daily Telegraph -- is "notorious for inflammatory personal attacks posted on his blog, particularly against women with a public profile and strong opinions". Her account of how that trolling has affected its victims makes for a grim read.

But the indulgence Blair�s shown by News Corp seems the rule rather than the exception, applied equally to Joe Hildebrand, Miranda Devine and all the other specialists in the transmutation of online outrage into clicks.

At Fairfax, however, they do things differently. The Carlton case is particularly egregious because of the context: the appalling slaughter in Gaza. What does it say about the Australian media landscape that the most high-profile columnist to denounce the mass killing of children loses his job a week later, whereas all those who cagily hemmed and hawed about the most disproportionate and brutal war in living memory keep theirs? Just where have we arrived, if it�s now beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse to write passionately against the fourth-largest army in the world deploying heavy weaponry on civilian neighbourhoods?

Oh, of course, we�re told Carlton�s offence pertained not to his column but rather his salty interactions with aggrieved readers � but if you believe that, there�s a nice bridge in Sydney you might want to buy. Had Carlton produced the usual liberal boilerplate on Palestine ("really, they want Israel to drop bombs on their kids") and then cussed out a reader who objected, does anyone really suppose he�d now be on the unemployment queue?

There�s a pattern emerging, both here and internationally, where the harshest punishments are reserved for those who expose or publicise crimes rather than those who may have committed them. The same day as Carlton resigned, we learned that police had charged a 21-year-old student for allegedly accessing confidential files pertaining to the scholarship awarded to Tony Abbott�s daughter. The revelations about alleged special treatment at the Whitehouse Institute of Design seem to have had no consequences for the PM -- but now the woman accused of blowing the whistle faces a possible two years in jail.

"We tortured some folks," explained Barack Obama breezily, earlier the same week. But only one CIA agent has gone to prison over the torture program now acknowledged by the president -- and that�s John Kiriakou, the man who revealed what was happening.

These are not times that encourage journalistic bravery. The shortage of jobs and the proliferation of casualisation (much harder to let a columnist go if they�re actually on staff!) encourage what Jay Rosen calls "the view from nowhere": an editorial perspective that settles lazily in the midpoint between polarised views.

Furthermore, as we�ve seen in this case (and as we�re seeing with New Matilda�s coverage of "Daughtergate"), writers who step outside the acceptable consensus will face a concerted attack by right-wing pundits who, unlike their progressive counterparts, are confident of their proprietor�s backing.

Obviously, Fairfax worries about its economic future, as well it might do. But what�s the bigger threat to the ongoing viability of liberal media: the yapping of the Murdoch attack dogs (most of whom have precisely zero influence outside the political class) or the establishment of an editorial blandness that quails at views other than those reflecting the ghastly Insiders mindset?

I've seen some pretty self-righteous poo poo written about Carlton all of which are the worst kind of tone argument to apply: that he was rude and he represented his employer. Ignoring the fact that the gleeful collection by Witchfinder Sharri Markson were all from private emails somehow accidentally on purpose sent to her (gee what a coincidence) and we of course don't know what was sent to generate those responses.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2014 06:50

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

If I'm to believe reports (transcript isn't up yet), Turnbull went on AM this morning and said the "metadata" is client IPs and nothing else, they just want ISPs to hold it for longer. So yet another definition of "metadata". The best reason I've heard for letting Turnbull out now is that they didn't want to share the credit if people liked the idea. :allears:

# ¿ Aug 7, 2014 22:59

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

And in more Carlton news, the gloating page from the Oz used an interesting source for its picture:

The second is a Boston bombing picture from the Boston Globe. Classy as gently caress.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2014 23:16

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

Pope even better

adamantium|wang posted:

Jesus Christ

e: Jesus I just saw Abetz's comments:

The latest excuse is that they "edited" that. But hey, he's not a doctor.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2014 23:53

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

Crikey Editorial. I'm laughing so hard I can't read the rest of the email.

quote:

Crikey says: and now, a word from our Senate leader

Senator Eric Abetz writes:

Hello-uh, this uh Senidah Ericuh UhBetz here, very uh grateful to be given the uh uhppurtunity to uh say a few things to the uh Crikeyuh audience uh aboutuh free speech and uh free thought uh. Sadly uh this is uh under uttack these days uh from those who would uh constrain uh the Minister uh of the uh Crown and uh leader of the uh Senate from uh thinking uh out loud on a live TV cross about uh a disease that uh affects uh one in 12 uh women, and uh throwing doubt on the uh whole sciendiftic edddifissss that underuhpins modernuh medical treatment.I uh will be uh encouraging uh every uh branch of uh government and uh industry to uh adopt uh a similarly sceptical uh approach to the uh so-called settled so-called uh science.

From uh now on uh I am happy to say that the our uh minerals and uh energy departments will be employing a uh cadre of uh "young earth" geologists, who will search uh our wonderful 6000-year-old uh continent to find new mineral wealth using the uh Old Testament because uh no one uh saw the cooling of magma so-called uh 4 billion uh years ago so how would we uh know.

Here is uh one for the Greenies and Ferals. From today there will be uh no animal uh testing for uh medical purposes because what are the odds that Jesus would have uh made us all the same way and have you ever uh seen a fossil don�t answer that. Ha ha instead we will be testing on boat people and it will uh also be uh a job that uh young people can uh apply for as part of their uh 40 days and uh nights uh sorry uh jobs a month. Truly, the Lord provides.

Finally, because the uh science of cancer is uh so unsettled, I am also pleased uh to announce that for my uh next uh prostate exam I will uh going straight to the uh Roman uh Catholic uh Church, the experts uh in this uh trade. Although as far as uh the unemployed, poor, pensioners, students and many more this government is uh proving to be uh dab hands.

Heil- Hello. Goodbye,

Uh Eric

# ¿ Aug 8, 2014 04:35

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

Keane and Dyer offer some advice to Joe Hockey

quote:

Stop whining and focus on fairness: a letter to Joe Hockey

Dear Joe,

We couldn't help but notice your outburst this week, in which you complained that the media was "polarised" and against you, Labor weren't providing bipartisan support for you, and the business community was "weak" in its support. As you're the steward of our economic fortunes and a successful Treasurer is an important part of a successful economy, we thought we'd offer you some thoughts on how, with your first anniversary in the job looming, you can make the rest of your time in the job more successful.

1. Stop whingeing. Even your colleagues are starting to notice that you're given to complaining about your lot. There are plenty of them who would happily have your job. No one cares about a politician lamenting how tough his job is, anyway. Being Treasurer is supposed to be tough: you are looking after the 12th or 13th biggest economy in the world, with a AAA credit rating. You are not entitled to anything other than the pay and perks. And you have to earn those.

2. Accept that your economic challenges aren't that great compared internationally or even to your predecessors. There's no Asian financial crisis, like Peter Costello had. There's no global financial crisis, like Wayne Swan had, or the task of landing a mining investment boom without an inflationary breakout. In fact, some of your problems, like a strong dollar, are ones that reflect Australia's economic success. You have a low inflation, low interest rate, low public debt, high-skilled economy with low trade barriers positioned next to the growth region of the 21st century. Ask your visiting counterparts in November how many of them would like to swap places.

3. So stop talking down the economy. Henny Penny is a terrible look for any minister, but especially a treasurer. You must remember how Kevin Rudd continued sounding like an opposition leader long after he became prime minister. You're doing the same, looking for the cloud in every economic silver lining and blaming your opponents for it. If you want to know what impact a Treasurer talking down the economy can have, look at what you did to retail sales in May.

4. Acknowledge the budget is unfair. Seriously, your stoush this week with Peter Martin was utterly unbecoming and brought to mind your attempt to bully David Peetz over WorkChoices in 2007. You are not Paul Keating, not even Peter Costello, who both liked to pick up the phone and hector journalists. You've already lost the fairness argument, probably lost it before you'd sat down on budget night. Time to admit yes, the budget is unfair, but it's because low- and middle-income earners receive far more from the government than high-income earners and companies and cuts to government outlays are inevitably going to hurt the former more than the latter.

5. Flag that the tax review will directly tackle the rapidly growing cost of superannuation tax concessions, which flow disproportionately (wildly disproportionately) to high-income earners, and that high-income earners will in the future benefit less from super. That will do something to offset the perceptions of unfairness dogging you.

6. Yes, the media environment is polarised. You say you've never seen that before -- maybe because you benefited from the polarisation when you were in opposition. Media outlets that "abandon the argument for good reform" because they're being partisan is exactly how News Corporation behaved from the moment Labor was elected, so don't lament something that you benefited from (similarly, stop demanding bipartisan support for your policies, when you gave zero support to Labor's reforms or budget cuts). Remember that when John Howard decided the Press Gallery was against him, he innovated and went around them.

7. So, for example, understand that in an increasingly fractured media environment, effective communicators have to simplify their message to cut through. Assembling a long list of controversial reforms and trying to run them all at once, which was your budget approach, is never going to work in such an environment because you can't concentrate on making the case for individual reforms while fighting spotfires across a number of fronts.

8. Forget about business support. Voters already think your party are too close to business and mainly interested in doing its bidding, ahead of what would be best for ordinary Australians. The support of business carries no weight outside the tiny readerships of the national dailies. And the quality of the contribution of business peak bodies to public debate is lamentable. It's either the same incessant whining about IR, or rent-seeking demands for handouts and winner-picking.

9. Smile. You used to be very popular with voters because they could see a decent bloke poking through the political exterior. The plummeting in your approval numbers has coincided with an angrier, harder public persona. If nothing else, people are more likely to listen to you if they see a bit more of the Hockey of old rather than a beetle-browed fiscal disciplinarian.

So use your one-year anniversary to press the reset button. Much depends on your performance -- not just the government's fortunes, but more important things too, like the economy, the jobs of 12 million workers and our 23 years without a recession.

# ¿ Aug 8, 2014 04:44

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

Doctor Spaceman posted:

Not sure what happened to change his mind.

Hint: doing it to Americans and not filthy browns.

# ¿ Aug 8, 2014 04:54

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 18:02

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

Haters Objector posted:

Point 4 claims that the budget is unfair because low-income earners receive the most government assistance, and point 5 correctly says that we spend a catastrophic amount of money on tax welfare for millionaires. How do the authors reconcile these two points? Why is welfare for rich people considered a different class of expenditure than welfare for poor people?

You know, now that I look at it, it looks like an awful typo. It doesn't make sense. I have tweeted @BernardKeane for clarification.

# ¿ Aug 8, 2014 05:07

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Auspol August: Half-baked enraged drivel

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