Capt.Whorebags posted:

This is all just student politics writ large. Win the news cycle, have a good week, embarass the other side.

Frogfingers posted:

Next time you have libs talking at you about "personal responsibility" and "self-reliance" thank them in finding common ground about a 99% inheritance tax.

some Crikey bastard posted:

Bill Shorten appears to be edging closer to Kirribilli House with every passing day as Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and the Coalition melts down following the defection of rogue Cory Bernardi and with questions swirling around the Liberal Party's approach to One Nation preferences.

All is not as it seems, however.

The Murdoch media has been desperately trying draw attention to the fact the National Left within the Australian Labor Party are moving rapidly towards ascendancy for the first time since the era of Gough Whitlam. The National Left has changed significantly since the late 1960s and early '70s, and now represents the solid centre-left progressive views of the vast majority of Labor members and voters.

The Australian Labor Party is on the cusp of a new age of National Left dominance within the national conference and national executive, as well as an era of National Left leaders like the popular Anthony Albanese or Tanya Plibersek contesting general elections as leader of the party.

The Right now only control New South Wales branch comfortably. In both South Australia and Victoria the Right require alliance partners to ensure stability. Every other branch is dominated by the Left.

If the New South Wales and/or Victorian state conferences were to fall to the Left that would spell complete national control for the Left, such is their importance. But the Left don't even need to take control of those two branches in order to assert dominance in the next few years. It has already been reported that the National Left now controls the crucial National Policy Forum, which will formulate the next federal election policy platform.

I can reveal most of the names of those who will make up that powerful deliberative body. The list of names excludes two Right-aligned parliamentary delegates and three national conference elected officials whose names I was unable to attain.

The Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union and United Voice dominate the Left majority, and together they will carry the Left. Anthony Albanese and Tanya Plibersek have significant sway within the AMWU Left and along with National AMWU president Andrew Dettmer will largely determine the Left's positions, in conjunction with UV's Mark Butler and national UV secretary Joanne Schofield.

The once untouchable Kim Carr is aligned with AMWU, however nationally the AMWU back the Albanese and Plibersek national bloc over Carr's small breakaway Left faction. It's almost certain he will not be a power player this time around, but the man known as Kim Il-Carr has a way of getting what he wants.

All over the Shoppies

The increasingly less influential Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association, by sheer weight of their rank-and-file numbers, dominate the minority Right-aligned grouping. So that's the National Policy Forum covered.

Albo: 1, Shorten: 0

Next comes national conference floor and its 400 delegates. Until last national conference each branch's conference elected their entire delegation to national conference. New rules dictate that each branch must directly elect by ballot of the rank-and-file at least as many delegates as there are federal seats in each respective state or territory.

Bad news for the Right.

The rank-and-file on the whole have a history of voting for Left principles, as was the case when 60% voted for Anthony Albanese as federal leader.
Labor branch stacking becomes an arms race, with Stability Pact a possible casualty of war

If we assume current branch conference floor proportions remain the same and add to that the realistic result of 66% of rank-and-file elected delegates falling for the Left. Not including the fairly even smattering of leaders and officials who are delegates, Left would hold 113 to the Right's 122 state and territory elected delegate positions. While a result of 66% to the Left in rank-and-file delegate elections would gift them 99 delegates to the Right's 51 delegates. All up, Left would hold 219 of 400 delegate positions or 54% of national conference floor.

Albo: 2, Shorten: 0

This at a time when recent votes appear to indicate the New South Wales Left might be looking at an increase in their next delegation to state conference. Shorten may be the Right's last shot out of the locker. Should he flounder Albanese will gladly inherit a party controlled lock, stock and barrel by the National Left, while the Right lick their wounds and wonder how and where it all went wrong. We could be looking at the awkward possibility of a Prime Minister Shorten, an AWU Right stalwart and former moderate union leader, implementing a Left faction-driven agenda in government. Just one of the many things that must be on his mind as he takes it up to the wounded Turnbull government and goes in for the kill.

quote:

We were talking about the relentlessness of everything. I told him I’d thought over Christmas about hanging up my boots because the universe we both inhabit now feels hostile to humanity, it now roils like a cauldron. Spend too long in a cauldron and you end up as essential nutrients for a witch.

His response to my expression of mental exhaustion has imprinted itself on my consciousness during the dysfunctional, desperate, pumped-up opening to the federal political contest in 2017: he said politics is now unsustainable for normal people.

By normal people, the MP meant balanced people, people who need to be people as well as politicians, people who think, and read and connect with loved ones and people outside the cauldron.

His reflection went a little further. If politics becomes impossible for balanced people, there are practical consequences.

The profession will attract only a narrow type of personality, the pumped-up pugilists who thrive on adrenaline and gain their power through cycles of destruction, people who can’t function without the constant affirmation of being a public figure, and the endorphin rush of being front and centre.

Politics will, in essence, winnow out its best and brightest and most reflective people, and replace them with a production line of heavyweight boxers looking for the KO, and a cadre of show ponies – enough about you, more about me.

You can see why that’s a clarion thought.

Tokamak posted:

I had to look it up and

quote:

The pond is long over Catholic confession - down there with transubstantiation - but after encouraging anyone who'd listen, and many who don't, to have nothing to do with News Corp, the pond now has Foxtel in the house.

How did this treachery, this betrayal, come to pass? No matter how it tries to pretend otherwise, the pond feels cheapened, soiled, dirty, worn and used.

At the same time, the pond has a new landline in the house too, and nobody knows the number and nobody calls it, and the pond has lost its lifeline of being able to have friendly chats with kindly Indian folk who call in to discuss the worrying way gambling has corrupted Indian cricket (well, they also try to help with the computer, but that never goes well).

Here's the deal. For absolutely no cost, a man turned up with a box and hooked the pond up, and thereafter, the pond receives a reduction of thirty bucks a month in the cost of obtaining broadband, it having given The Optus The the flick, though Optus keeps on trying to bill the pond for a service that was supposed to be cancelled. To put it in German, Die Optus Die ...

This thirty bucks is cash in the bank, for a wretched low rent service of some 40 totally useless and dire channels that Foxtel has priced below thirty bucks, and for good reason. The picture quality is appalling, below a good pirate YouTube service, and with absolutely zilch by way of content, as access to the Bolter counts for zilch with the pond.

Now there's a reason for the deal. Pure desperation ...

Foxtel lost around 100,000 subscribers in the six months to December 2016, underlining why News Corp chopped the value of its stake in the pay TV operator of A$300 million (US$227 million) in the quarter.
News said in this morning’s financial results release that Foxtel had “more than 2.8 million subscribers as at December 2016. That compares with “approximately 2.9 million” reported at the end of the first quarter at September 30 last year and “more than 2.9 million” at the end of June 2016. Foxtel said closing cable and satellite subscribers numbers were flat compared to the prior year period. In the second quarter, cable and satellite churn was 15.6%, “which was comparable to churn in the fiscal first quarter, primarily driven by newer customers under no-contract offers and seasonal sports disconnections.”
And that subscriber weakness, increased competition in the Australian market, plus weak revenue and earnings growth, or falls, helped drive the big non-cash write down in the final quarter.
“As a result of Foxtel’s performance in the first half of fiscal 2017, the competitive operating environment in the Australian pay-TV market and management’s revised projections, the Company determined that the fair value of its investment in Foxtel declined below its $US1.4 billion carrying value to $US1.2 billion. The carrying value had previously been written up in connection with the acquisition of Consolidated Media Holdings Ltd. (“CMH”) in November 2012 and at that time a non-cash gain of $0.9 billion (US$900 million) was recognized on the Foxtel investment.”
Looking at the results for Foxtel, News said revenues for the second quarter increased US$4 million, or 1%, to US$602 million from US$598 million in the prior year period, But in Australian dollars Foxtel revenues fell 3%. But Foxtel’s net income of US$24 million is more than halved from US$52 million in the prior year period, primarily due to a US$17 million loss resulting from the change in the fair value of Foxtel’s investment in Ten Network Holdings and US$5 million in losses associated with the continued operation of Presto. (more here).

That's why the Chairman is paying the pond to keep the facade, the farce, of numbers up.

No doubt the bean counters hope that the pond will upsize - a better HD signal costs more, channels that have actual content cost more. But by the time the pond gave up counting, the pond had well over 10,000 movies in the house, and YouTube delivers any other content it might want - no wonder the chairman hates Google - and if there's any time left over the FTA's are always there, and not via the shoddy, silly, antiquated Foxtel remote control and interface.

The logarithms feed the pond classical music, Air Crash Investigations (what need of Nat Geo?) and CNN, with all the useful American hypochondriac medical and drug ads that have allowed the pond to discover many new ailments, without any of the international editions useless insights into the world. Anyone wanting to discover what a weird insular cultural bubble Americans live in needs to watch the domestic service ...

As soon as a better broadband deal comes along in the street, the pond will be out of there, and it'll be goodbye landline and goodbye Foxtel. Anyone who subscribes, thereby paying for the pleasure of watching advertising they can watch on FTA for free, and any advertiser who thinks they're buying genuine eyeballs as opposed to faux pond eyeballs, should think again. Like the lizard Oz's blather about its readership figures - as they throw away newspapers wherever they can find a perch for the tree killer product - it's a gigantic hoax, a Ponzi scheme of nonsense ...

In the meantime, the pond has clicked Foxtel on once, clicked it off, and said sayonara suckers, as it took the discount and ran, a sordid, shabby exercise in fraudulent bundling. But hey whenever the pond sees a free copy of the lizard Oz, it picks that up too ...

I would blow Dane Cook posted:

omg google homo sapiens

I would blow Dane Cook posted:

http://www.afr.com/brand/rear-window/aba-anna-bligh-collateral-damage-in-scomos-sasha-grebe-shocker-20170219-gug71f

adamantium|wang posted:

First Dog:

gay picnic defence posted:

I thought this was interesting

Les Affaires posted:

Its not even that they cant trust the LNP, its more that the political position of each party is becoming irrelevant to the climate change debate, because regardless of whether there is a law or court precedent or whatever, board governance has to operate on the assumption that there is otherwise they can expose themselves to a whole lot of poo poo.

You Am I posted:

gently caress I hate Australian Mainstream/Commercial media.

Pauline Hanson or one of her moron candidates does something disgraceful: "Oh that's our Pauline/One Nation! What laughs! Here's Pauline again with an awful sound bite. Remember Pauline is the only alternative to Labor and Liberals"

The Greens: Either deathly silence or OMG RABIT LEFTIES WANT US TO EAT MUNG BEANS AND poo poo IN A HOLE while totally misunderstanding most of the Greens policies or handwaving them off as "extremist leftie views".

And this isn't just the Murdoch media, Fairfax, ABC, SBS and online sites like Buzzfeed and sometimes even New Matilda are guilty of this.

AgentF posted:

These "politicians only squabble all day" types need a sense of history instead of shrugging their shoulders and deciding that all politicians are equally bad. The pervasive pattern is that there is a neutral issue, then the Libs politicise it and attack Labor with it, then Labor defend it (what else should they do? concede to every new attack?) and then it looks like two equal sides squabbling with each other.

iajanus posted:

I'm on our treadmill and gizmo is watching me and I'm pretty sure he's mocking me



E: wait this isn't the good thread

Anidav posted:

Zenithe posted:

This had shitter effects than old Who, which I think we'll all agree is an impressive feat.

Ora Tzo posted:

I think she's gonna encounter bad writing.

ungulateman posted:

There's a reason I referenced the Contras; it's a Cold War allegory. The message is just confused because the good guys need to simultaneously be part of the New Republic and scrappy underdogs, while the bad guys need to be the leftover remnants of the Empire turned terrorists and also the Big Bad Evil Empire. The movie kinda glosses over what makes the Republic not the Empire outside of 'doesn't blow up planets', which is the world's lowest possible bar

You Am I posted:

The Liberals are really doing their best to dance around the Negative Gearing elephant in the room.

JBP posted:

Anyway what I'm saying is gently caress boomers they can suck a dick.

Solemn Sloth posted:

https://twitter.com/clivefpalmer/status/834336677636091905

G-Spot Run posted:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/23/tony-abbott-takes-aim-at-turnbull-and-lays-out-conservative-manifesto

quote:

Tony Abbott has used a book launch to unveil a sweeping conservative manifesto for the next federal election, declaring the Coalition needs to cut immigration, slash the renewable energy target, abolish the Human Rights Commission, and gut the capacity of the Senate to be a roadblock to the government’s agenda.

Doctor Spaceman posted:

Morrison would have been the Tories' first choice had he not supported Turnbull over Abbott (and done a poo poo job as treasurer)

Lid posted:

This was all done under the deluded contention that the political debate in Australia has been hijacked by the Left.

Backed by the tailwind of a gushing and fawning conservative media, Abbott had every opportunity to set a new highwater mark for the right in Australia.

But as his own conservative colleagues publicly abandon him, it is a sign of Abbott's utter failure that he has even made this unfashionable.

Scylo posted:

Annabell Crab wrote something not terrible for once

Moon Atari posted:

Hey auspol thread, I stopped paying attention to australian politics awhile back because it was all too depressing, but I want to get back into following it now for some masochistic reason. Are they any sources or blogs you recommend? I used to get most of my news from abc but they have gone to crap, and I don't want to pay for crikey.

You Am I posted:

Sit back and watch the fireworks in my book. If Shorten says anything, the Liberals and News Corpse media will try to paint him as one of the faceless men during the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd days.

Doctor Spaceman posted:

So we're just going to overlook the fact that Bernardi likes to be called the Dark Knight?

snoremac posted:

Someone tell a simpleton why politicians freak out about polls years before elections to the point where coups are a natural state of affairs these days.