Crikey posted:

Census Battles Over "No Religion"

The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ decision to place the option of “no religion” above the list of different religions in the upcoming census has ruffled feathers in some Christian communities, with people concerned that an increase in people identifying as “no religion” will adversely affect their religions.

The ABS made the decision to change the order of options on the question to try to capture a more accurate record of people who do not hold a faith in Australia, believing that when “no religion” was the last option on the census, many who were no longer actively involved in a religious organisation listed the faith they were brought up in.

In an opinion piece in Catholic Weekly on Friday, Monica Doumit criticised the Atheist Foundation of Australia’s campaign for more people to check the “no religion” box, and while the piece focuses on what constitutes Christianity, it does make the case for people to tick the “Catholic” box:

“Encouraging people to answer ‘Catholic’ on this census is not about winning a numbers game against the atheists (as sweet as that victory would be!) It is about reminding people who would be tempted to think that their lives are such that they could never be part of the Christian family that there is nothing which can separate them from the love of God.”

It’s not just the Catholics. Christian website Salt Shakers has written about an email that is being forwarded that includes the following information:

“Bear in mind that although many Australians have no religion these days, the Muslim population in Australia will all declare that they are Muslim and this fact will be counted to ascertain what type of country we are in regard to religion.

Even though you may now have no religion, please consider entering the religion you were christened or born into, when answering this question. Otherwise in time Australia will officially be declared to be a Muslim country — because the Australian Bureau of Statistics Census will reflect this.

Just imagine the repercussions if that were to happen. For Australia’s future please pass this message on to your family members and friends.”

While Salt Shakers quotes the email, it doesn’t seem to endorse its contents.

Salt Shakers encourages readers to talk about Muslims who feel afraid to declare their religion on the census. At the last census, 22% of Australians identified as having no religion, the largest number in the population except for Catholics, who were 25% of the population.

kirbysuperstar posted:

Seek assistance.

ScreamingLlama posted:

August thread is open for business.


Hey, I had to get my revenge somehow.

Lid posted:

Coalition MPs have warned the Opposition Leader's push for a treaty with Indigenous people would be a "bridge too far" for many white Australians and could "confuse and harm" their precious white person feelings.

Frogmanv2 posted:

It is effective from next year. July 1. How much more time would you want to give them?

tithin posted:

I defended Llama a few times.

Jumpingmanjim posted:

Yes it's real.

freebooter posted:

If anyone was following the Melbourne Ports battle, pick up a copy of the St Kilda News and check out Michael Danby's two-page post-election opinion piece, which is literally nothing but a huge red-raced rant about the Greens. No "thank you for your confidence in me" to the electorate, no "I will be fighting for the people of Melbourne Ports in Canberra," etc. Just a loving massive dummy spit. What a detestable man.

St Kilda News posted:

CAMPAIGN DIARY

By The Hon Michael Danby MP
Continuing Instability is the outcome of this election: As well as the re-election of Senator Pauline Hanson; election of Senator Derryn Hinch; (who is urging a vote against 18C the anti -harassment provision- Racial Discrimination Act).

Even Malcolm Turnbull must have realized that only half the normal quota (of 14.6% of the vote) was required in any State to elect a Senator. The constitutional manoeuvre of a Double Dissolution was designed to see the Liberal Government add to the numbers in the Senate and House so as to pass legislation against unions at a joint session. In fact there not the numbers in a joint sitting of Senate/ House to pass the Libs anti- union bill about which the election was ostensibly called. So the raison de’tre of the whole election was farce.

Labor may not quite have the numbers in the H.O. R. Libs 90?76, Labor 55?69 (If the coalition doesn’t force a dodgy by-election in Herbert). Now the new Senate apart from providing “stable” government, will require 10 of the 11 non Labor, non- Green, Independent “fruit bats” to vote for any legislation to pass both Houses’. “Confusion to our enemies?”, the problem is that this confusion affects not our enemies, but the Government of Australia representing the people of Australia. Australia is more difficult to govern, as the result of Turnbull’s insistence on this Double D.

Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, after insisting on privacy and sunset clauses, will be called on in all crucial security issues to support the Government with the security of Australians. Labor will act, no Orlandos, no Brussels, no Paris attacks here in Australia. No thanks to the irresponsible Greens, who oppose all legislation affecting the security of Australia.

Locally, the 8 week campaign sucked me into a vortex. Dorothy arrived very quickly from Kansas. My year- long campaign against Victorian Liberal Party Chief Michael Kroger and his prospective deal to give the Green Party preferences ahead of Labor, was widely discussed around the country. Danby attack ads appeared on Kroger, linking him to the Green Party. Major Liberal donors were pressuring Turnbull, “to do a Howard” and overrule against preferencing the “far left” Green Party over the “centre left” Labor Party.

3 weeks of advertising pressured Kroger. My campaign culminated in an address to the Sydney Institute just before the cold wet weeks of pre polling commenced.

My speech catalysed the critique of Kroger’s plan to direct Lib preferences to the Greens. To a hall in Sydney packed with judges, business people, journalists and other Cognoscenti. I explained my purpose …” Surely, Liberal voters are diametrically opposed to the Greens Party on all matters political, socio-economic and national security. There must be some ethics in politics.”

I pointed out that the Liberal’s second longest – serving Prime Minister, “John Howard has been warning against such a deal since 2010”. Howard told me at the ASPI security conference in Canberra in April, that he opposed such a policy. Later he told Paul Murray on Sky, 25 May, “The Greens are the real extremists in this election… (They) are not in Australia’s interests……..” Malcolm Turnbull, “I told the Sydney Institute”, unlike Mr Howard, “Malcolm Turnbull is sitting on the fence”. Does Turnbull think so little of political beliefs and differences, that he would be complicit in this Green- Liberal deal? If Michael Kroger instructs Liberal voters to preference the far-left Green Party in Batman and Wills”, I told the Sydney Institute, “Mr Turnbull should follow the advice of his mentor, former Prime Minister Howard, and rule out this plan”.

“It is sheer Chutzpah for Malcolm Turnbull to rail against the prospect that Labor would agree to a Labor-Greens coalition in a hung Parliament ,(Bill Shorten has ruled it out),while his agents (Kroger) negotiate actual deals to give the Green Party a “ leg-up”, I urged.

A day and a half later, Turnbull in one of the few decisive actions he took during this election, ordered Kroger to stand down. No Liberal preferences in Batman and Wills would go to the Green Party. Peter Khalil and even David Feeney were saved. Who says individual members of parliament can’t affect the general course of events?

Back in Melbourne Ports, Owen Guest, heir to the Guest biscuit fortune was the latest absentee landlord with whom the Tory hierarchy tried to saddle us. The Victorian Libs hierarchy figure Ports is unwinnable, while I’m the member. Despite it being the wealthiest by per capita income seat held by Labor in Australia. Kroger and co usually outsource it to some rich bozo who can self- finance the campaign.

Firstly we had the famous Fiona Snedden, who told the first Gay Forum in Melbourne Ports that “her gardener was gay, her hairdresser was gay and her manicurist too”. We had the well-heeled David Southwick in 2004 subsequently given the consolation prize of the State Seat of Caulfield. More recently, we had the underwhelming heir, the Held Optometry fortune- Alan Held. This time East Melbourne’s heir to the Guest biscuit fortune was the pea, that the Tories got to run their formularic campaign, e.g. illuminated billboard on Kingsway (at $35,000k) a month – Feb, March, April & May.)

Guest’s notoriety is as the president of the Royal Tennis Association (as in the Tudors). He’s built and paid for a Royal Tennis court and advised the plebs in Ports, that the game is “vigorous” and “not to be played by sissies”. Kroger, like Julie Bishop, who turned up at the pre-poll, are both very angry with me because of my unrelenting expose of their policies. Polling shows the Green Party lost the local campaign when their candidate refused to speak at a Jewish forum. At previous similar forums, during the 2010 & 2013 elections, the Greens Party attended and the debates were unreported. No bad publicity.

Kroger turned up to the Jewish debate that the Green Party boycotted, which was hosted by the weekly Jewish News.” Kroger stood grimly at the back of the AJN forum, behind the two or three hundred audience watching his latest candidate parrot his rote speech. It was ugly. I said Guest’s Dad, a Vic Upper House MLC, was a nice bloke. The Liberal Candidates response was “Danby never achieved anything, he was insufficiently supportive of the 20% plus of the local Australian Jewish community”. Guest barked out his strictly learnt rave. People groaned. Even the Libs in the audience thought this was a bridge too far. However, Owen’s lowest point came later, at Pre-poll in East St Kilda, when he drew me aside and begged me to distribute the “How to Vote Card” where the Greens were preferenced behind the Liberals after people were asked to vote for me and Labor as Number 1.

The Green Party debated me at 2 further forums before the election which was unremarkable except for their poor attendance. Di Natale’s speech at the National Press Club became contentious at one forum. Di Natale said the Green Party would negotiate with the Liberals to participate in the Plebiscite on Marriage Equality. This was exposed by me to a small LGBTQI forum. Green Party supporters squealed that it was unfair to point this out. Unfortunately this Libs/Greens collaboration seems to have not been widely understood by local voters, who only read about it in a Candidate Survey published on election day. (see below)

The Green candidate this time was from Green Central Casting. She moved into a flat in Elwood from Daylesford and she insisted to voters running the gauntlet at pre polling, that she was “Local Green Candidate”. Even producing a Youtube, extolling the virtues of St Kilda Pier and other local delights, which the hipster colonists from across the Yarra and Daylesford had just discovered. All the double barrelled anglo names Hanson-Young, Whish-Wilson & Hodgkins-May used to be Tories, now they are Green Party. What is that? During the 3 grim weeks at pre polling, a large male from the Hodgins-May family, Daylesford, and attendant serfs would arrive each morning. Just like they were back at the family property, the imports came banging in stakes, advertising the wunderkind and the magic Green triangle, to help seize the electorate from the locals. It is annoying when an apparatus from across the Yarra tries to impose its alien culture. No local media, especially the hopeless Leader Newspaper chain, had the wit to report that the local candidate was actually a serial candidate previously from Ballarat at the 2013 election.

Far from being an environmentalist and lawyer, as she touted herself, Steph Hodgkins May was just off the staff of Green boss Senator Di Natale. But the oddest aspect of her campaign was her peculiar partner, Ogi. He kept taking pictures of Labor Party polling workers, even posting pictures of a senior citizen and Elsternwick Branch member on his Twitter. Strangely, Hodgins-May was anxious to announce that the Green Colonists were running Ogi & other Greens in the new (& idiotic) 3 by 3 Council Wards for Port Phillip in the upcoming November Council elections.

It’s now clear that the 3 feeder parties which preferenced the Greens Party were at least publicly staffed by paid polling booth workers, or by Green satellites. Few of the Marriage Equality workers were identified by members of the local gay community and some admitted to local LGBTQI community activists that they were paid to hand out pamphlets. Animal Justice is another feeder party orchestrated to assist the Greens in Prahran and now in Melbourne Ports. As one of the leading activists in Parliament for Labor on Animal Welfare, local Labor was struck by the deceitful behaviour of the local candidate Rob Smyth who met with Labor both at a National and local level to negotiate preferences. Yet they already had a predetermined plan.

Strange political behaviour didn’t end there.

The Minor parties were very agitated about the Green Party’s collaboration with the Liberals to exclude them from the Senate. Strange isn’t it that, at the last election in Melbourne Ports, the Sex Party scored nearly 5% of the vote. (70% of their preferences came to me at the last Federal Election.) Yet this election there was no candidate in the seat where they polled the highest House of Reps vote! Perhaps it was because Meredith Doig their Senate Candidate was long ago a member of the Socialist Left and bitter about my preselection 20 years ago! It was clear to me from Doig’s close relationship with the Green Party candidate that something was afoot. Firstly, the inexplicable absence of a Sex Party candidate for the HOR in Ports undermined the vote for their own Senate candidate. Of course their absence did the Green Party a practical favour, seeing no protest vote came to me in Ports. To pursue such a tactic, to the extent of dragging down their vote for their own Senate candidate (who obviously wasn’t elected), is a new twist in politics.

I won’t go into the robo calling and push polling by the Greens Party & Liberals during the election. Except to say that twice the Age newspaper eagerly megaphoned their Green claims. First, during the election, the Age highlighted the Greens push polling. Then, after the election, the Age ran a story that Melbourne Ports was a “shock loss”. Explained by the Age journalist’s ethics in failing to contact me or the office to ask what was actually happening at the post- election scrutineering in Port Melbourne. The post election “shock loss” story was given legs by both Michael Kroger and the Greens as both were very angry with me for bringing undone their neat little plan in Ports, Wills and Batman.

Last point, unnoticed by most commentators is the sociological change that is right across the Labor Party towards the Green Political Party. At the 2013 elections, my expose of Green policies on the Death Tax, on closing Zoos and on Senator Rhiannon’s Stalinist past led to Bob Brown saying he would have me defeated and ”sent out to grow cabbages”. My tough attitude to what the German’s call “DIE GRUENEN” was not as extensively shared in Labor as it is now. Labor made a mistake under my friend Julia Gillard in entering into a pact with the Greens. But now my ideological & practical criticism of the Green Party’s role is widely shared. Embracing the extreme left” GRUENEN” is political death for Labor. The Green Party is practically our enemy as they spend all their resources in 20 seats in an effort to undermine the Labor alternative government.

The pervasive Labor attitude towards the Greens is now that of Paul Keating; who stated during Anthony Albanese’s campaign launch in his incisive manner , “They’re a bunch of Trots and opportunists, hiding behind a gum tree and pretending to be the Labor Party”. If they spend a million dollars at the next election attacking Labor in Melbourne Ports Ports, they will have the exact same effect they had in Higgins – driving voters into the arms of the Liberals.
Authoritative research by Uttings shows after 7 terms, I have a high profile locally, 43% positive, 28% negative, 20% undecided, only 8% never heard. Amazing only 28% bitter enders after 7 terms. I hope Labor can repeat the success in the future but one thing I know, the Greens will never win this Federal seat south of the Yarra.

Jumpingmanjim posted:

Nice meltdown.

freebooter posted:

Yeah that's it. The print version also had a picture of the front page of the Jewish News or whatever it was with a photo of Steph and all the anti-Semitic accusation nonsense.

Doctor Spaceman posted:

Hanson is anti-union, yeah. Who the gently caress knows how she'll vote though.

Cory Bernardi posted:

South Australian senator Cory Bernardi responded to Scullion’s comments in a statement to the ABC, saying there were “too many Je suis Charlie hypocrites”, a reference to the millions of tweets posted after the attack on the Paris magazine, Charlie Hebdo in January 2015.

Recoome posted:

http://www.vice.com/en_au/read/we-asked-some-artists-to-respond-to-bill-leaks-racist-cartoon

Recoome posted:

i feel like it's reflective of Australia tbh

Kat Delacour posted:

I thought their argument was all aboriginals are deadbeat parents, but I guess that's only an inferred meaning until 18C can be repealed.

edit: hrm, now I'm stuck. Should I refer to dog whistling as implied or inferred? It's obviously implied, but officially would have be inferred.

Lizard Combatant posted:

The term is gaslamp, not light

Vladimir Poutine posted:

Really, I could have swo-

oooh, you're good.

Birdstrike posted:

No you're not.

Anidav posted:

Queensland Premier Pauline Hanson.

Lid posted:

"Much of Mr Bolt's language was hyperbolic, such as ... 'Australians aren't stupid'

tithin posted:

what was the can of worms emoji again

Jumpingmanjim posted:

https://twitter.com/eevblog/status/762978777668268033

Did someone say load testing?

Vladimir Poutine posted:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2100806-lead-in-australias-drinking-water-is-leaching-from-brass-taps/

Milky Moor posted:

yeah

shut the gently caress up recoome

Senor Tron posted:

Media Watch posted:

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

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

— Former TV News Director, 12 August, 2016

MiniSune posted:

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

QUACKTASTIC posted:

Just heard about this on the radio:

Manus Island: Children in detention 'unacceptable', WA Premier Colin Barnett says

West Australian Premier Colin Barnett says his Government would be prepared to accommodate asylum seekers from Nauru, ahead of the closure of the Manus Island Detention Centre in Papua New Guinea.

The state Liberal leader has weighed in over the fate of asylum seekers on Nauru, amid renewed concerns about conditions on the island.

The Federal Government has repeatedly ruled out resettling refugees from offshore processing centres.

But Mr Barnett said if the Commonwealth changed its mind, his state would be prepared to accept asylum seeker families.

"The answer to your question is that particularly for families, as long as they don't present a security or safety risk, I do welcome them being in Australia," Mr Barnett told the ABC's Lateline program.

"The one thing I find unacceptable is children in detention."

Mr Barnett stopped short of demanding the Federal Government reconsider its position.

"I wouldn't call on the Federal Government but if they decide to do that we would certainly accommodate a number of them [asylum seekers] in Western Australia and we'd certainly support them as a state government."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-18/wa-govt-opens-door-to-nauru-refugees-ahead-of-manus-closure/7760854

QUACKTASTIC posted:

Energy companies withholding supply to blame for July price spike, report finds

Fossil fuel electricity generators in South Australia withheld their supply to push up prices and reap bigger profits, according to an analysis of the causes behind the extremely high prices there in early July.

The findings suggested some solutions proposed ahead of this week’s Coag energy council meeting for the so-called “energy crisis” like increasing the supply of gas in Australia won’t help the situation at all.

The three things often pointed to as possible causes of the price spikes, especially on 7 July, have been the closure of the Northern power station, the main Victoria-SA interconnector being down and wind farms not producing much power.

But in a report commissioned by GetUp, energy analyst Bruce Mountain showed the generation capacity that was available in the market still far exceeded the demand. However, besides those owned by Origin, all other fossil fuel generators continued to operate far below their capacity, only offering electricity to the market for a very high cost.

more:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/17/energy-companies-withholding-supply-to-blame-for-july-price-spike-report-finds

MysticalMachineGun posted:

I can't find an online article about it but reading the Advertiser at work this morning it's amazing how bare faced they can be. In regards to SA's power crisis of late, nowhere do they mention that soaring power prices have to do with deregulation and privatisation.

Au Revoir Shosanna posted:

Remember when Gerry Harvey advocated for a dictator for Australia to sort it's poo poo out?

What a loving nob.

Solemn Sloth posted:

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/no-short-skirts-no-makeup-no-sexy-selfies--school-accused-of-slutshaming-20160819-gqwq6m.html

V for Vegas posted:

SynthOrange posted:

Lol today's newspaper headlines. 'Allahu akhbar attack'

open24hours posted:

https://twitter.com/theboltreport/status/768382226010558468

Latham looking haggard.