Ler posted:

Dr Kevin Bonham has a small analysis of the upcoming NSW election/polling here: http://kevinbonham.blogspot.co.at/2015/02/new-south-wales-roundup-is-even-this.html

quote:

While just voting 1 seems senseless in the context of a single election, in the long term sometimes exhausting your vote can be a tactic to force your preferred major party to lift its game.  Both in Queensland and NSW in 2011-2, many Green voters may well have exhausted their preference in disgust with the sorty state of Labor in both states.

quote:

Assistant treasurer Josh Frydenberg still sees no need for a royal commission into financial advisers despite the scandal that has rocked National Australia Bank.

Renewed calls for a royal commission came after the bank’s financial advice arm NAB Wealth confessed last month it had quietly paid out as much as $15m to 750 customers during the past five years because it “didn’t get it right the first time”.

NAB sacked 37 advisers and the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) is further investigating the bank.

It follows a series of other scandals, including the nation’s biggest bank, the Commonwealth Bank.

A Senate inquiry last year urged a royal commission into the sector but this was dismissed by the government, a decision Frydenberg is standing by.

“That’s my view,” Frydenberg told ABC television.

Ragingsheep posted:

Like he gives a gently caress.

quote:

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has contradicted Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s claim that the President gave him an indication that he might soften his stance on the planned executions of 11 prisoners, including two Australian drug smugglers.

In an interview with daily business newspaper Kontan on Friday, the President reiterated that he would not commute the sentences imposed on drug traffickers as the country was in a state of emergency caused by drug abuse. He insisted that the executions of the convicts would go ahead as scheduled. On Thursday, the government had initially kept silent after Abbott issued his statement.

“Our position is clear: our laws cannot be interfered with,” the newspaper quoted Jokowi as saying. 

Abbott said he spoke with his “friend” Jokowi on Wednesday evening and claimed that the Indonesian leader “absolutely understands our position [...] and I think he is carefully considering Indonesia’s position”.

Abbott called Jokowi on Wednesday evening. It was part of the “damage control” conducted by the Australian leader after his earlier remarks, which linked Australia’s huge financial aid to Aceh after the 2004 tsunami to the executions of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, angered many Indonesians.

However, as reported by Reuters, Abbott declined to reveal the details of their telephone conversation. “I don’t want to raise hope that might turn out to be dashed,” said Abbott, who attended the inauguration of Jokowi as the country’s seventh president in October last year. - See more at: http://m.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/02/28/jokowi-denies-abbott-s-claim-about-executions.html#sthash.Lsj4l25F.dpuf

MysticalMachineGun posted:

Hello thread. It's a shame all this build up to the NSW election is just going to lead to a retained Lib government.

The QLD election was such a nice surprise

So the censure against Brandis pretty much means "the sitting government disapproves of what you did". Seems fairly toothless.

Trapezium Dave posted:

I'm not sure with Abbott if he's wilfully lying (because even Abbott wouldn't be dim enough to try that with the Indonesian president). It could be that when people are diplomatically polite with him he interprets that what he wants to hear rather than paying attention to what they are actually saying.

Sulla-Marius 88 posted:

Oh yeah, I think that's it. Isn't it wonderful when you misremember a PM's fuckups as pure incompetence and then it turns out they were just lying... Incompetently

quote:

Australia is in the midst of an “unprecedented level of industrial action” within the public service, as workers refuse to accept pay offers put forward by the government, according to a trade union.

The departments of defence, employment, agriculture, human services and veterans’ affairs, as well as the CSIRO and tax office, have all moved to take industrial action over pay and conditions.

The Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) said industrial action is now on the cards for agencies that represent half of the commonwealth’s nearly 160,000 public service workers.

“In over 20 years of enterprise bargaining, it is unheard of that not a single agency can make an offer that staff can accept,” the CPSU national secretary Nadine Flood told Guardian Australia. “It’s an unprecedented level of industrial action.”

Flood said public servants have been asked to trade away working conditions for a pay rise of 1% or less.

Employment minister Eric Abetz has rejected that.

“The CPSU consistently misrepresents and exaggerates matters to do with wage bargaining,” Abetz told Guardian Australia.

He said protected action to date has not been widespread.

“Most public servants appreciate the need to work with the government under the current budget conditions and would prefer a minimal wage rise with job security, rather than engage in the CPSU’s outlandish pay claims and its industrial actions,” he said.

“The CPSU should stop standing between public servants and wage outcomes which are affordable. The sooner the CPSU adopts a reasonable approach to bargaining, the sooner public servants will benefit from affordable deals which don’t endanger their own jobs.”

Shadow employment minister Brendan O’Connor said the offers made to public servants is not good enough.

“The Abbott government has shown its contempt for the public service by offering employees from several departments an unreasonable cut to their hard-won conditions on top of a pay cut in real terms,” he told Guardian Australia.

“The government cannot expect the Australian Public Service to function effectively when large numbers of staff are being sacked and those left behind are forced to fight for the most basic workplace entitlements.”

Flood said she “struggles to identify” a time when an employment minister has been so reluctant to negotiate.

The last time they had a face-to-face meeting was January 2014.

“Senator Abetz refuses to meet the CPSU and discuss bargaining. That is very unusual,” Flood said. “I think it’s bizarre. It’s bizarre to have a minister who won’t even discuss the problem.

“We are happy at any point to sit down and have a sensible discussion,” she said.

A spokeswoman for Abetz said the CPSU had been misguided in repeatedly writing to the minister as the bargaining agent for most of the various agencies and departments.

“The minister has said he will not discuss bargaining as he is not the agent. The minister is agreeable to discuss other matters,” she said.

Comstar posted:

QANDA first question: 1% of the world owns 48% of the wealth. How can fix that?
Random person who is on the show for some reason: I don't believe that figure, who said that?
QANDA first question: Credit Swisse.
Random person who is on the show for some reason who clearly didn't want to hear the answer: I don't believe that number means anything...

I stopped watching TV at that point.



In other news, I hope the ABC keeps showing Mad As Hell in their actual news segments.

Lid posted:

If it was a man it was Josh Frydenberg (assistant treasurer), if it was a woman it was Trisha Jha (from the Centre for Independent Studies libertarian think tank).

Edit: lol at this qanda profile

Comstar posted:

Cambell Newman got his revenge on the Trex.

TheMightyHandful posted:

They are doubling down on the flags. EIGHT!!

Freudian Slip posted:

Does anyone have a link to the Sussan Ley announcement?

I have just had another loving paper modelling the second part of Medicare part B accepted for publication. gently caress this Government - keep your policies long enough so that we can peer review them!

MysticalMachineGun posted:

Front page of the Advertiser today screams "LIVES FOR TREES".

Curious what the hell this meant, I had a brief look at the article and it's about "greenies" not allowing the road safety authority to remove roadside trees in the hills/country and this is causing driver death. Not drink driving, inattentiveness or speed, nope, it's the trees that are to blame

Found the full article:


Look, if the tree is in the bitumen then it should go. But it seems like there's so many other factors to tackle first.

quote:

“It is the greenies in the Adelaide Hills who are really unrelenting in keeping all the trees at the expense of all those lives,’’ he told The Advertiser.

[...]
“Council has not received any correspondence from Roger Cook or the MAC regarding traffic safety concerns in relations to roadside trees,” he said.
[...]

Mr Cook, whose only son Andrew, 22, died in a car accident,
John Robertson, who lost daughter Luci, 18, to a tree crash near Clare five years ago

markgreyam posted:

Also it's home to officially Australia's worst drivers.

Quantum Mechanic posted:

The NSW Government are selling the poles and wires because we decriminalised sodomy.

Jumpingmanjim posted:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-04/agents-bewildered-by-forced-sale-of-39m-sydney-mansion/6279270

Anyone wanna kick in a few dollars for the Auspol Mansion?

Seemlar posted:

Prime Minister for Women and Malfunctioning Robot Tony Abbott was VERY excited about this

quote:

More than two dozen research facilities are preparing to shut down as administrators warn Australian science is suffering “immense” damage as a result of the federal government’s refusal to guarantee critical infrastructure funding.

About $150m in funding for 27 research infrastructure facilities promised in last year’s federal budget has been tied to the Abbott government’s higher-education changes, which have stalled in the Senate.

The facilities have no guaranteed funding past 30 June and up to 1,700 jobs are at risk if they are forced to shut down.

Among the sites funded by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Scheme (NCRIS) is the Australian Microscopy and Microanalysis Research Facility, where scientists invented the Nanopatch, a needle-free vaccine delivery patch that could dramatically slow the spread of viruses during a pandemic.

Another NCRIS-funded site, the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF), is developing a system to mass produce the revolutionary patch, but will have to shut its doors if funding isn’t renewed.

[...]

Even if the education minister, Christopher Pyne, relents and passes a bill funding NCRIS, the damage will already have been done, Hicks said. “Obviously we’re losing people. I’m being asked for references.”

Some of the facility’s 94 staff – all but three of them researchers or technicians – will take jobs overseas, and one has already left for Canada, she added.

[...]

[The] exodus of highly specialised skills has begun and will only accelerate as the end of the year draws closer,” the letter said. “Furthermore, many of the facilities cannot be viably maintained if taken offline for significant periods.

“This means that if operational funding for 2015-16 is not confirmed in the next two months, the government will be effectively decommissioning high-cost public infrastructure that in many cases has years if not decades of productive working life remaining.”

About $40m worth of data-gathering instruments could be stranded in Australia’s oceans if the June deadline passes without renewal, Tim Moltmann, the director of the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS), said.

[...]

Pyne said in January that the Senate would need to pass his higher education changes to guarantee funding for NCRIS, as well as government support to Tafe students and the Future Fellowships scholarship scheme. “It’s a high-stakes game,” he said.

Joe Hockey posted:

So how can the government help? Well we need to enable consumers. Consumers are on the march, consumers are changing the world through the use of technology. They are disintermediating every day life and government and regulation, and consumers need to be empowered. They need to be sovereign. We’ve got to facilitate change rather than restrict change and that is a problem facing governments everywhere in the world

Chris Bowen posted:

The previous policy that this document refers to is not the policy of the previous Labor government. The previous policy in this document is from the mid year economic forecast (Myefo) which the treasurer himself brought down, including $14bn of extra spending, including $9bn to the Reserve Bank, the doubling of the deficit.

quote:

The Greens are going to move to change the charter of budget honesty to ensure the parliamentary budget office does future intergenerational reports rather than directed by treasurer.

Avshalom posted:

MIGF! Please stay, this is the thread for you.

cpaf posted:

Pyne is using the same strategy Morrison used, except, where Morrison is an expert and well-practiced bully, Pyne is a spineless nobody with the authority of a wet fart

spamman posted:

Apparently during that debate staff from Scott Morrison's office and department passed Muir's phone number to asylum seekers in Manus and Nauru and encouraged them to get their kids to ring him and plead to him for their freedom. I can't really hold it against the guy.

Birb Katter posted:

Zetsubou-san posted:

he looks so happy

quote:

...
When we asked them for food or water they said ‘if you don’t like this situation you have to [go] back to your country’.”

“They kept us in very bad situation and some of the women were sick … but they just laughing at us.”

The bail form refugees were required to sign commits them to a surety of $500, to be paid if the refugee fails to appear in court when summonsed, or if he or she breaches bail conditions. The handwritten bail conditions are: “to keep peace and not to re-offend”.

The bail form does not say with what offence they have been charged, or if they have been charged at all. Refugees, who are given an allowance of $180 a fortnight, have said any fine would be an impossible to pay. Those who have found jobs earn about between three and four dollars an hour.

According to a directive issued by the Nauru police director, Corey Caleb, breaching the peace includes gathering in groups larger than three. Any protesters who fail to disperse when ordered can be jailed.

Refugees are also restricted in where they can go on the island. They cannot go to schools, the hospital, airport, harbours or parliament.

Nauru’s constitution guarantees “every person in Nauru ... freedom of conscience, of expression and of peaceful assembly and association”.

Guardian Australia called Caleb several times on his mobile phone, but calls were not answered.

Nauru’s president, Baron Waqa, said police had not been violent towards refugee protesters, but that they would not be allowed to demonstrate on the streets. He said “faceless people” in Australia were inciting resistance on Nauru.

“Refugees [are] safe in the country and talk to the contrary is blatant lies spread by Australian advocates and lawyers,” he said in a statement.

Australia’s immigration minister, Peter Dutton, said the protests on Nauru were a matter for local authorities, but that Australia’s offshore resettlement policy would not be influenced by protests.

“If people who have been resettled on Nauru believe that these activities will change Australia’s position – they are wrong ... those who come illegally by boat will never be settled in Australia.”

He said refugees should treat the people and government of Nauru with “gratitude and respect”.

Gough Suppressant posted:

So Joe Hockey farted from his mouth the idea of allowing people to draw from their superannuation to use as a deposit on a first home.

Much like the treasurer of australia, my only economics qualifications come through relation, but off the top of my head I can think of a number of problems with this.

- Like the first home owners grant it serves mainly to continue inflating the price of houses thus not making anything more affordable.
- People are at the best of times really bad at assessing future benefit vs immediate benefit, and will value a $50k deposit now far more highly than $50k when they retire
- People will think of a $50k deposit now as actually only being worth $50k, rather than $50k + 40 years of compounding interest.
- It decreases the value of your super, your second most valuable asset, to put into your house, your most valuable asset, leaving your total wealth less diversified and more at risk to market failure
- It encourages people to take out more ambitious mortgages to take advantage of "FREE MONEYS", with less consideration to whether the loan is appropriate to them in terms of income, job security etc
- You wind up with people retiring at 65 70 75 120 with less money to fund their own retirement and thus having to go on the pension starve in the streets

Like jesus gently caress, this is probably the dumbest policy Joe Hockey has ever thought of and it is sure not for lack of competition.

Lid posted:

HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Burn it all.

Periphery posted:

A horrible idea by a horrible person:


What could possibly go wrong?

quote:

"If we locate many of our water intensive industries to the Canning Basin where there is yet none we'd barely dent its huge water carrying capacity," he said.

"Each year its recharges is literally topped up again like a bath tub. Take it out at one end, its topped up again the other."

open24hours posted:

I don't know why he keeps getting given a platform for his harebrained schemes. First welfare reform and now this. I wish I was a loudmouth billionaire so people would put my halfbaked ideas on TV.

Cartoon posted:

A slight update on the peddo van business. One of my sources was down in the area and reports that the man in question had two foster children removed from his care three years ago and this is why he is a person of interest to the police. They didn't sight the van however. The person has not been charged of any crime (related to children) at any point and I am now effectively just spreading rumour.

In NSW election news the LNP are guaranteeing power prices will fall if they privatise the poles and wires and have banned speaking in Abrabic in prison if you are a 'terror' offender.

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/03/08/hazzard-imposes-arabic-ban-goulburn-jail
Chilling. Welcome to the new police state! Dog whistle included!

Misguided Muppet State Government.

Orkin Mang posted:

what's phonics exactly and why is it bad? i'd never heard of it until now and it's sort of weird that conservatives would be advocating for a particular language teaching strategy. you guys all say it's discredited but you don't say why.

Anidav posted:

Can anyone else see Tony milking IS for a narrow election victory?

Anidav posted:

Goons Christopher Pyne is at QUT today and I asked him to attend a Something Awful dot com meet up this month and he decline by saying

"I know what you guys do."

Hello Chris.

Ler posted:

quote:

We're not looking to provide evidence. We're just looking at information of where there's likely to be an issue," he said.

When pressed by Mr Moss over allegations that Save the Children staff encouraged asylum seekers to self harm, Mr Mitchell provided no specific evidence, instead citing a previous report from former operations manager at Nauru, Greg Lake.

"I'm feeding back to Lake's comments in July," Mr Mitchell said.

"He says he knows this goes on. Coaching absolutely does go on."

Mr Moss said more clarification was needed.
[...]

"I think it was either the 28th or the 29th of September," he told Mr Moss.

"I was approached by someone from the department ... [who] just said that we're interested in anything you've got on Save the Children."

Birb Katter posted:

Has anyone found a way to kill Australia because it deserves to die

quote:

Immigration department delivers three boxes of mail to barrister Julian Burnside – six months after he was assured it was being distributed to detainees

[...]

By November last year the matter had moved to the department’s acting assistant secretary, Kylie Scholten, who emailed Burnside advising him that if he wanted to follow this up with the relevant postal services, “I recommend you search online.”

She added: “In future if you have any feedback about offshore processing, please contact the department’s global feedback unit” and provided a web address.