quote:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...e05d_story.html

It should have been one of the most congenial calls for the new commander in chief — a conversation with the leader of Australia, one of America’s staunchest allies, at the end of a triumphant week.

Instead, President Trump blasted Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over a refu­gee agreement and boasted about the magnitude of his electoral college win, according to senior U.S. officials briefed on the Saturday exchange. Then, 25 minutes into what was expected to be an hour-long call, Trump abruptly ended it.

At one point Trump informed Turnbull that he had spoken with four other world leaders that day — including Russian President Vladi­mir Putin — and that, “This was the worst call by far.”

Trump’s behavior suggests that he is capable of subjecting world leaders, including close allies, to a version of the vitriol he frequently employs against political adversaries and news organizations in speeches and on Twitter.

“This is the worst deal ever,” Trump fumed as Turnbull attempted to confirm that the United States would honor its pledge to take in 1,250 refugees from an Australian detention center. Trump, who one day earlier had signed an executive order temporarily barring the admissions of refugees, complained that he was “going to get killed” politically and accused Australia of seeking to export the “next Boston bombers.”

U.S. officials said that Trump has behaved similarly in conversations with leaders of other countries, including Mexico. But his treatment of Turnbull was particularly striking because of the tight bond between the United States and Australia — countries that share intelligence, support one another diplomatically and have fought together in wars including in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The characterizations provide insight into Trump’s temperament and approach to the diplomatic requirements of his job as the nation’s chief executive, a role in which he continues to employ both the uncompromising negotiating tactics he honed as a real estate developer and the bombastic style he exhibited as a reality television personality.

The depictions of Trump’s calls are also at odds with sanitized White House accounts. The official read-out of his conversation with Turnbull, for example, said that the two had “emphasized the enduring strength and closeness of the U.S.-Australia relationship that is critical for peace, stability, and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region and globally.”

A White House spokesman declined to comment. A senior administration official acknowledged that the conversation with Turnbull had been hostile and charged, but emphasized that most of Trump’s calls with foreign leaders — including the heads of Japan, Germany, France and Russia — have been both productive and pleasant.

Trump also vented anger and touted his political accomplishments in a tense conversation with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, officials said. The two have sparred for months over Trump’s vow to force Mexico to pay for construction of a border wall between the two countries, a conflict that prompted Peña Nieto to cancel a planned meeting with Trump.

Trump told Peña Nieto in last Friday’s call, according to the Associated Press, which said it reviewed a transcript of part of the conversation, “You have a bunch of bad hombres down there. You aren’t doing enough to stop them. I think your military is scared. Our military isn’t, so I just might send them down to take care of it.”

But even in conversations marred by hostile exchanges, Trump manages to work in references to his election accomplishments. U.S. officials said that he used his calls with both Turnbull and Peña Nieto to mention his election win or the size of the crowd at his inauguration.

One official said that it may be Trump’s way of “speaking about the mandate he has and why he has the backing for decisions he makes.” But Trump is also notoriously thin-skinned and has used platforms including social-media accounts, meetings with lawmakers and even a speech at CIA headquarters to depict his victory as an achievement of historic proportions, rather than a narrow outcome in which his opponent, Hillary Clinton, won the popular vote.

The friction with Turnbull reflected Trump’s anger over being bound by an agreement reached by the Obama administration to accept refugees from Australian detention sites even while Trump was issuing an executive order suspending such arrivals from elsewhere in the world.

The issue centers on a population of roughly 2,500 people who have sought asylum in Australia but were diverted to facilities off that country’s coast at Nauru and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. Deplorable conditions at those sites prompted intervention from the United Nations and a pledge from the United States to accept about half of those refugees, provided they passed U.S. security screening.

Many of the refugees came from Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Somalia, countries now listed in Trump’s order temporarily banning their citizens entry to the United States. A special provision in the Trump order allows for exceptions to honor “a preexisting international agreement,” a line that was inserted to cover the Australia deal.

But U.S. officials said that Trump continued to fume about the arrangement even after signing the order in a ceremony at the Pentagon.

“I don’t want these people,” Trump said. He repeatedly misstated the number of refugees called for in the agreement as 2,000 rather than 1,250, and told Turnbull that it was “my intention” to honor the agreement, a phrase designed to leave the U.S. president wiggle room to back out of the deal in the future, according to a senior U.S. official.

Turnbull told Trump that to honor the agreement, the United States would not have to accept all of the refugees but only to allow them each through the normal vetting procedures. At that, Trump vowed to subject each refu­gee to “extreme vetting,” the senior U.S. official said.

Trump was also skeptical because he did not see a specific advantage the United States would gain by honoring the deal, officials said.

Trump’s position appears to reflect the transactional view he takes of relationships, even when it comes to diplomatic ties with long-standing allies. Australia has sent troops to fight alongside U.S. forces for decades and maintains close cooperation with Washington on trade and economic issues.

Australia is seen as such a trusted ally that it is one of only four countries that the United States includes in the so-called “Five Eyes” arrangement for cooperation on espionage matters. Members share extensively what their intelligence services gather, and generally refrain from spying on one another.

There also is a significant amount of tourism between the two countries.

Trump made the call to Turnbull about 5 p.m. Saturday from his desk in the Oval Office, where he was joined by chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, national security adviser Michael Flynn and White House press secretary Sean Spicer.

At one point, Turnbull suggested that the two leaders move on from their impasse over refugees to discuss the conflict in Syria and other pressing foreign issues. But Trump demurred and ended the call, making it far shorter than his conversations with Shinzo Abe of Japan, Angela Merkel of Germany, François Hollande of France or Putin.

The Australian Embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.

Amoeba102 posted:

Turnbull probably has to back Trump or Bernardi will have a tantrum and quit.

hooman posted:

My view is that very few people really wants to smash the gays and women into the dirt, we like those people, we just don't like all our jobs vanishing and getting ripped off constantly by "free trade deals" that make everyone locally lose their jobs in order for big companies to make fatter profits and pay workers less.

I met a few dyed in the wool trump supporters through work and that was all they were talking about, jobs and corporations. Not women and gays and abortions.

MysticalMachineGun posted:

Globalism and free trade deals mean that the immigrants don't come here and take your job, corporations take your job and off-shore it so they can pay some poor sucker far less than Aussie minimum wage

Les Affaires posted:

But even then, in the minds of many they shouldn't need to move around just to find employment. Having to skill up is one thing, forcing your family to relocate just to survive is another, and getting more necessary over time. That pisses people off when they try to put down roots.

AgentF posted:

It is never the duty of a newspaper to so blatantly take sides with the welfare of a particular political party. They've clearly made it their agenda to proactively demonise potential threats to the LNP. This is not the behaviour of a reporter of news.

Doctor Spaceman posted:

Bernardi's going to announce his vanity project in the Senate in a few minutes (they're just going through some admin stuff).

It's on

norp posted:

Because it stood at the time he was running for senate, which was unconstitutional.
Basically he lied on the application form

Graic Gabtar posted:

Marshal of the drone air force, Ahmed Fahour is worth a pretty penny...

http://www.theage.com.au/business/senate-committee-denies-australia-post-attempt-to-keep-ahmed-fahours-salary-secret-20170207-gu7n05.html
That's a fair bit of coin whoring for eBay.

A very weird cat is good old Ahmed. Leaves you wondering why he would be trusted with a burnt match let alone a bank/postal service.

quote:

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-polit...207-gu7t06.html

"As the Prime Minister and a taxpayer, I've spoken to the chairman today. I think that salary, that remuneration, is too high.

quote:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/08/derryn-hinch-backflip-on-abbc-may-disadvantage-some-building-companies
Building companies risk losing government work immediately if they fail to renegotiate industrial agreements to meet the government’s strict new code after a backflip by senator Derryn Hinch.

[...]

The amendment means the about 3,000 companies with union-approved enterprise agreements will miss out unless they renegotiate deals, a change aimed to punish those that gave conditions more generous than the code and reward builders who resisted union pressure, such as Kane Constructions.

quote:

https://www.theguardian.com/austral...e-politics-live
When he was a regular dinner guest at Raheen, with Dick Pratt, did he knock back the crystal? I don’t think so, there was never a union leader in Melbourne that tucked his knees under more billionaires’ tables than the leader of the opposition. He lapped it up, yes, he lapped it up. He was such a sycophant, a social-climbing sycophant, if ever there was one.

There has never been a more sycophantic leader of the Labor party than this one and he comes here and poses as a tribute of the people. He likes harbourside mansions. He is yearning for one, he is yearning to get into Kirribilli House. Because somebody else pays for it.

Konomex posted:

Radical idea. Government raises revenue, much like facebook seems to think the Police do, by fining the poo poo out of people. But rather than small petty fines for parking somewhere you shouldn't. The government places masses fines on things like 'chronically and systematically underpaying staff and somewhat criminally forcing staff members to do dodgey poo poo like give their pay back or selling places to foreign workers'.

Not paltry fines. Huge fines. Make them pay back all the money to their staff, then all the dividends for the shareholders for that period of time, and the CEO was pay all of their money they were earning in that period of time as well. Plus any remaining profits.

If doing something lovely means no one higher than a basic employee gets paid, CEO's will be encouraged not to be poo poo, shareholders will be encouraged not to support lovely ideas wittingly or unwittingly and managers will dread being poo poo because they'll be out on their arse.

Hearing of how much of this crap goes on from the micro level (small bars) to huge million dollar companies, I feel like we'd quickly be back in surplus and then, fingers crossed, have few problems like these in the future.

quote:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-14/closing-the-gap-malcolm-turnbull-indigenous-progress-not-enough/8268736
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has tabled this year's Closing the Gap report, which again shows slow progress to improve the health and wealth of Indigenous Australians.

Some of the targets covering health, education and employment have stagnated and others are going backwards.

But Mr Turnbull said he would continue to talk about the strengths of Indigenous Australians.

"Being an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australian means to succeed, to achieve. To have big dreams and high hopes," he told Parliament.

Mr Turnbull said despite having successive state and Commonwealth governments committed to closing the gaps faced by First Australians, there was much more work to do.

"We have not come far enough," he said.

More than 61 per cent of Indigenous Australians aged 20-24 had completed Year 12, up from 45 per cent in 2008, Mr Turnbull said.

Mr Turnbull said the literacy target was "narrowing and achievable".

But only one of the eight literacy and numeracy benchmarks was being met by Indigenous students, the report said.

In a concerning update, progress on decreasing Indigenous child deaths appears to be plateauing.

For the first time in several years, that target is marked as not on track, Mr Turnbull said.

"We are also reminded of the fragility of life and the heavy burden of families, communities and governments," he said.

"I am very saddened and disappointed that the target to have the gap in Indigenous child mortality is not on track."

The Government's target to halve Indigenous unemployment by 2018 will not be met, but the Prime Minister said it would be re-evaluated in partnership with Aboriginal organisations.

At a Closing the Gap breakfast in Canberra, National Congress of Australia's First Peoples co-chair Jackie Huggins told the Prime Minister it was another round of disheartening news.

"Respectfully your disappointment will not compare to our old people and what they feel at the repeated news that our lives are still shorter sicker and poorer than other Australians," she said.

"We have seen many reports and inquiries over the years make important recommendations — 400 in fact — without the required attention or response from government."

The National Congress of Australia's First Peoples — a member-based Indigenous representative organisation — this morning hosted a breakfast at Parliament House and delivered its blueprint for change to the nation's political leaders.

Mr Turnbull, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten and Greens leader Richard Di Natale all attended.

The Congress urged them to support the Redfern Statement, an 18-page manifesto released during last year's election campaign.

"That's about resetting the relationship, working with us, acknowledging that we have the solutions and value our experience and our expertise within our service organisations and within our communities," Congress co-chair Rod Little said.

"We are looking for a renewed relationship."

The Redfern Statement calls for dozens of changes, including reversing Abbott-era budget cuts, adding a Closing the Gap target aimed at reducing imprisonment rates and establishing a standalone department for Indigenous affairs.

quote:

"It's not by accident; it's by a carefully contrived but disingenuous mind control program, melded together by two Norwegian homosexuals who graduated from Harvard – one of whom has since prematurely passed away.

"It's by a design convert to the general public but fully practised and promoted by the LGBTIQQMA/P community.

"Utilising many of the strategies developed by the Soviets and then the Nazis, they have gone on to apply and perfect theses principles so as to make them universal in their application – but with devastating results considering the counter productive nature of such "unions"."

quote:

https://thewest.com.au/politics/carbon-tax-just-brutal-politics-credlin-ng-s-1674127

Peta Credlin admits the climate change policy under Julia Gillard's Labor government was never a carbon tax, but the coalition used that label to stir up brutal retail politics.

Credlin, the former chief of staff to Tony Abbott when he was prime minister and now a political commentator for Sky News, said the coalition made it a "carbon tax" and a fight about the hip pocket rather than the environment.

"That was brutal retail politics, and it took Abbott six months to cut through and when he did cut through Gillard was gone," she told Sky News on Sunday.

quote:

https://www.crikey.com.au/2017/02/13/swiss-say-no-to-company-tax-cuts/
For countries where the debate has turned to the benefits of engaging in a race to the bottom on company tax rates, the fate of a Swiss attempt to cut taxes has more than a little political interest.

Switzerland, of course, is the home of up to 24,000 multinationals that headquarter in many of the country's 26 cantons (Switzerland is a federation, remember) to benefit from special low-tax deals struck with cantonal governments -- deals local companies were unable to enjoy. Some of the world's biggest companies pay virtually no tax above an effective federal tax of 7.8%. The Swiss have been under pressure for years from the European Union and OECD to do something about these deals, and in 2014, the country agreed to abolish them by 2019.

Under a proposal put to voters on the weekend by the Swiss government, the cantons would have continued to compete to offer companies the most favourable tax rates, but multinationals would have paid the same rates as other businesses by cutting rates for non-multinationals. For example, multinationals with “auxiliary status” in Geneva (there are around a thousand of them) pay an average corporate tax rate of 11.6%, compared with the 24.16% for ordinary businesses, one of the highest rates in Switzerland. Geneva’s main corporate tax rate would have halved to 13.49%.

Plainly this would have big revenue implications for the cantonal governments -- Geneva would have lost revenue estimated at more 440 million euros a year from the tax cut. The national government pledged to give cantons an extra 1.1 billion Swiss francs (US$1.1 billion) to help cover expected the ensuing revenue shortfalls. The government and business argued -- just like the Business Council and the Liberals here -- that without reform, foreign companies would quit the country for tax havens like Luxembourg.

But voters didn't believe it: on current reports from the weekend vote, 59.1% of voters said no. Supporters of the proposal claimed the vote meant that the anti-globalisation, anti-establishment mood seen in the rest of Europe, Britain and the US had hit Switzerland. But local media reports suggest it was nothing of the sort: polls suggest voters did not believe the government assurances about funding and feared the corporate tax cuts would end up seeing services cut or income and other taxes raised on individuals. And the no camp -- led by the Social Democrats -- claimed the tax breaks would create a 3 billion franc hole in budgets, much larger than that claimed by the government.

The changes also included an array of tax write-offs that further upset voters: these would have allowed multinationals tax relief for research and development or income from patents and on shareholders’ equity. Critics argued they would have simply boosted the income of tax advisers, lawyers and shareholders and cost local residents even more as the budget shortfalls rose for the cantons, leading to higher local taxes.

What's interesting from an Australian point of view is that the Swiss focused on an issue almost entirely ignored here by tax cut advocates: if you cut taxes, it has to be paid for either by increasing other taxes or cutting government services. Advocates here, when pressed, resort to Laffer Curve nonsense about faster growth generating more revenue, but they generally prefer to avoid the question of who -- especially at a time when the budget is in deep deficit -- will make up for the lost revenue.

I would blow Dane Cook posted:

AFR reporting that the government is looking at cutting the capital gains tax discount.

quote:

Waleed Aly — that darling of the Left — has become seen as infallible. He is ordained with a gold Logie. Every time he opens his mouth, online news sites rush to report on what he says. His word has become gospel and people apparently want it on tap.

According to the headlines attached to these articles, Waleed most often “nails it”. But he didn’t nail it this week.

His snobbery was in full view on Monday night when he and fellow panellists on The Project joked about a job advertisement from a Perth business specifying no “bogans” or “rough people” should apply.

“The other thing,” Aly piped up, ready to deliver another pearl of wisdom that would land him on the Daily Mail site.

“If you are not taking bogans, where will you get good admin people?”

Haha. Boom Tish. Admin workers are uneducated and wear ugg boots and drive Commodores. Geddit?

People are growing tired of all manner of occurrences being blamed for the rise of Donald Trump and his contemporaries, but this is a good example. It’s elitism — pure and simple. Just as Hillary Clinton claimed “half of Trump supporters” were “deplorable”, Aly has maligned unskilled workers as bogans.

Your ruse is up, Mr Aly. We know who you really are now.

He’s usually the bleeding heart type. He loves to bleat about the poor refugees and how we’ve locked them. He cries that they just want a better life.

But to hell with anyone working in an office so they can send their children to a private school.

And there’s the rest of the grab bag. Aborigines, Muslims, women, etc.

Aly tells us they’re all so hard done by. We ought to feel sorry for them. And he is more than happy to virtue signal, showing us just how compassionate and warm he is.

But on Monday night, we had a little peek into his soul. His cold, elitist, snobbish soul.

In all fairness, this is not unique to Aly. It is typical of the chardonnay socialist Left, who get about complaining about how awful the world is while driving to dinner parties in expensive European cars.

They’ve turned left-wing politics into the domain of the wealthy, excluding and sneering at everyone below them. They infest the Greens and profess to love the downtrodden. Their hearts go out to the friendly neighbourhood Muslim refugee who faces epidemic levels of Islamophobia.

But, of course, there is no friendly neighbourhood Muslim refugee within 10 postcodes of where they live. They’re living out with the bogan admin workers.

And they cry for the poor Aboriginal children trying to stay out of prison. When did they last speak to an Aboriginal kid? The closest most of them get is to peer at them out the window of their BMW as they pass them on the footpath.

They don’t really care about the poor and downtrodden. It’s more about looking fashionable and trendy. It’s all just a performance to gain the admiration of their peers.

Which is why they hate lower-socioeconomic people when they happen to be white. People don’t nod while swigging expensive chardonnay when you mention that.

Instead, they’re bogans. White trash.

We’re not talking about unemployed bums frittering away their dole money on booze and cigarettes. Aly specifically mentioned admin workers, who are earning their keep, supporting their families and trying to keep their heads above water.

They have committed the crime of not being university educated and living in the inner city. To the great surprise of much of the inner city set, people actually live and thrive in the suburbs.

So desperate is Aly to keep up appearances that he rents a home in Melbourne’s Richmond — because he can’t afford to buy.

Oh, the struggle.

I’m sure the bogans will sympathise.

Recoome posted:

The WARC has caused a large rift in the pro-abortion movement in QLD through their (implicit) profression of Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism, which has alienated a lot of potential people from attending/supporting the cause publicly. This reared it's head when the WARC chose not to support any counter-protest to the anti-abortion rally, citing that they did not want to incite a counter-protest to their event (they copped a lot of flak anyway, so they might as well have supported us).

Recoome posted:

I'm not sure if you are just being an obtuse idiot on purpose or whether you just aren't getting the whole "implicit" part.

WhiskeyWhiskers posted:

WhiskeyWhiskers posted:

I don't. I just know your posting.

e:Like if a newspaper interviewed Recoome, would that make you accept it?

Recoome posted:

A whole bunch of transgender people came out and said "I am being excluded from participating in WARC debate", "the focus the WARC is taking is excluding transgender people", and a person even said "I don't feel safe being at a WARC rally due to me being transgender".