quote:

A former executive at the National Broadband Network has predicted that many of the copper wires laid down in the NBN rollout will have to be ripped up and replaced within a decade.

quote:

The minister’s legal obligation was to make a decision on refugee applications within 90 days, but most decisions took between three and five years, and some people are still waiting for a final outcome.
One of RACS’s clients Mehdi* fled Taliban persecution in Afghanistan after he assisted foreign military forces in the country.
He was recognised as a refugee – with a well-founded fear of persecution – and should have been eligible for permanent protection which would have entitled him to, one day, reuniting with his wife and three young children, who were sheltering in Pakistan.
However, an extraordinary delay in processing his visa meant that Mehdi missed out on permanent protection, and instead was granted only a temporary visa. Under the current regime Mehdi will never be able to live with his family again. He has never met his youngest child.

quote:

Turnbull questioned why the government should be “bullied” by “a tiny minority” of people who want to change the date.

quote:

The documents were in two locked filing cabinets sold at an ex-government sale in Canberra. They were sold off cheaply because they were heavy and no-one could find the keys. A nifty person drilled the locks and uncovered the trove of documents inside.

quote:

Senator Gichuhi replaced former Family First leader Bob Day ... Family First was absorbed into former Liberal senator Cory Bernardi's new party, Australian Conservatives ... Senator Gichuhi decided to remain as an independent ... Crossbench senator Lucy Gichuhi has defected to the Liberal Party.

quote:

Malcolm Roberts Seen Finishing People’s Empties At New Year’s Eve Party


It has been reported that former senator and climate change expert, Malcolm Roberts, was seen at a Sunshine Coast New Year’s Eve party moving from table to table, finishing the remaining dregs of other people’s drinks.

The New Year’s bash at a private residence was attended by many One Nation staff and representatives, including party Senate Whip Brian Burston, who says Robert’s drink of choice was not the only strange behaviour exhibited by the Indian born former senator.

“He finished off the last of my XXXX which was strange, but it was the way he looked at me afterward and made this sort of low grunting sound that seemed to come from deep within his chest that I didn’t like. I can honestly say I was scared.”

Party host and Queensland One Nation Leader, Steve Dickson, says his Buderim home is used to hosting a lively crowd but believes the limits were tested by Robert’s particular style of partying.

“When he wasn’t finishing off the last of peoples beer or champers he was acting rather odd. He walked around handing people individual Corn Flakes that had words like ‘anal’ and ‘discharge’ written on them and kept asking the DJ to stop the music to put a Joe Rogan podcast on.”

“Then, later on, he just bolted out from behind a corner yelling ‘RUN!’ We all thought the cops were coming so Rosa Lee Long quickly slammed all the coke she had in one go. Wasn’t even anyone there.”

Reports state that after helping himself to more unfinished drinks, Robert’s tried to force the entire party to play a game of Risk with him, grapple tackled a staffer he believed responsible for leaking his citizenship documents and insisted on yelling “Happy Batman” instead of “Happy New Year.”

Partygoers were unable to find Roberts between 1:02 and 2:15 am, until he was later found in the kitchen pantry playing Russian Roulette with David Oldfield and Robin Scott.

Later, it is reported Robert’s was asked to leave after trying to persuade Peter Georgiou to do a shot of bong water and calling him a ‘mussy-loving pussy’ when he refused.

“There weren’t even any bongs at the party so where he got the water from is beyond me.”

It is reported that after being asked to leave he was later found on the roof of a neighbouring home, yelling spoilers for Star Wars: The Last Jedi at exiting partygoers, citing he was allowed to do so ‘because of free speech.’

Roberts himself is yet to comment on his behaviour but his employer Pauline Hanson has some theories.

“I think being unemployed has really hosed with him. He keeps editing his Wikipedia page and is still really upset he’s never been invited to speak on Q&A again.”

“I think it’s a combination of those things and the likelihood that whatever David Ettridge was drinking gave him a bit more than he bargained for.”

Korgan posted:

Bad government.

Don Dongington posted:

Posting in a good thread before posters itt make it into a bad thread

Starshark posted:

Can someone paste this article? Saturday Paper reckons I've used my free article even though I haven't.

https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2018/02/03/playbook-the-culture-wars/15175764005757

quote:

Malcolm Turnbull is intent on launching the government into a series of Howard-era culture wars. The problem is he’s not very good at it. By Mike Seccombe.

A playbook for the culture wars.

Jobs and growth, as Malcolm Turnbull is wont to remind us, is no longer just a Liberal Party election slogan. It’s an outcome. The economy is humming along. More than 400,000 new jobs were created in the 2017 calendar year.

So why, then, does the government continue to languish in the polls? It’s a question that puzzles many. But not Ian McAllister, professor of political science at the Australian National University, and director since 1987 of the Australian Election Study, the most comprehensive survey of Australians’ evolving political opinions.

It’s not just that the economic gains are shared unequally and that at the household level most people are not seeing their incomes rise, even as their bills get bigger, he says. It goes deeper than that.

Most people just don’t believe that government has much capacity to influence the economy anymore.

“THE DEFEAT OF THE CONSERVATIVE FORCES ON SAME-SEX MARRIAGE AND EUTHANASIA, ALONG WITH THE TARNISHING OF ORGANISED RELIGION, HAS PUT THE CULTURAL RIGHT VERY MUCH ON THE BACK FOOT.”
McAllister points to a chart on page 51 of the 2016 election study, which records voters’ responses when they were asked to predict the effect of government actions on the economy.

Just 13 per cent of respondents thought government would make things better in the coming year. Another 20 per cent thought the government would make things worse. And a whopping 67 per cent thought the actions of the government would have no effect on the economy at all.

“It was the lowest figure we’ve ever recorded,” McAllister says. “Even Coalition voters in the 2016 election mostly didn’t think a Coalition government would be able to do much for them.”

The result, he and other political scientists and social researchers suggest, reflects an understanding in the electorate of the huge influence on the economy of global forces, substantially beyond the control of government.

It’s a problem for both sides of politics, and part of the reason for the decline in the vote for major parties. But it is a bigger problem for conservative parties, because the claim to superior management of the economy has traditionally been core to their electoral appeal.

And it’s a bigger problem given evidence, found in the election study and elsewhere, that voters increasingly favour stronger government action to redistribute income. Thus the persistent lead in the polls for Labor, which voices those concerns about economic inequality.

What to do?

The time-honoured response, says Carol Johnson, professor of politics at Adelaide University, is “to use culture war arguments to wedge off a section of Labor’s traditional support base, to split off socially conservative members of the working class”.

She says, “It’s an old technique that John Howard used very successfully.”

In contrast to the effective warrior Howard, says Johnson, Tony Abbott was an enthusiastic but clumsy one. And Malcolm Turnbull wasn’t really one at all during the early part of his leadership. Then he had the near-death experience of the 2016 election.

“And since then,” she says, “we see these culture war issues rising again.”

Last year, particularly in the latter half of the year, they dominated politics. This year is starting out the same way. Before 2018 was a week old, Turnbull got himself tangled in the issue of an Australian republic, suggesting a postal plebiscite, à la the same sex-marriage vote, but only after the current queen expires.

In short order after that, he launched a defence of the Australian flag – ironic, given he once supported changing it, just as he once supported the republic. Then he declared he would not be “bullied” by a “tiny minority” into changing the date of Australia Day, notwithstanding the fact many Indigenous Australians see it as marking the start of their dispossession by white settlers.

And then, in response to the revelation that former immigration minister Scott Morrison had directed ASIO to delay the security clearances of refugees so as to deny their legitimate claims to permanent protection in Australia, Turnbull virtually channelled John Howard: he made “no apologies”, he said, for “securing” Australia’s borders.

If Turnbull’s performance in the political silly season is any guide, we could be in for a combative year in the culture wars. And possibly a turning point in the culture wars, after two decades of dominance by political conservatives.

Before we get to the reasons for that, though, let’s give some consideration to what “culture wars” actually are, for they are far more often alluded to than defined.

On one interpretation, says Ben Oquist, executive director of the progressive The Australia Institute, all political and economic positions are ultimately an expression of cultural considerations.

Another take on culture wars comes from Toby Ralph, self-described hatchet man, marketing bloke and sometime propagandist, who has worked on scores of elections around the world, including all of John Howard’s campaigns.

His view is more cynical: they are a means to keep a party’s base activated by providing “political alternatives to the tedium and predictability of major party policies and narratives”, which are otherwise “as boring as batshit”.

It is characteristic of culture war issues that they generate more heat than light and tend to be steeped in “vitriol” and “sanctimonious outrage”. They serve as a populist proxy for broader political debate, says Ralph, and can have “a significant impact at the polling booths”.

As the eminent public intellectual Robert Manne noted a few years back, cultural warfare tends to be a tool of the political right, adopted from the United States Republican playbook, that plays to conservative values of “a proud national history, the Western canon, the traditional family, Christian virtues, patriotism, a unified national culture”.

In reality, anyone of any political stripe can play at cultural warfare, although it’s easier to make an emotional plea for the status quo than a rational case for change. It is easier to appeal to fear for what might be lost than hope for what might be gained from change.

A bit of political history makes the point. Social researcher Rebecca Huntley, of Essential Media, harks back to the end of the Keating Labor government.

Having engineered big economic changes, Keating had moved on to championing major cultural changes, but failed to bring the electorate with him.

“The social research from the tail end of the Keating era suggested that Australians by then had had a gutful of economic reform and engagement with Asia and republicanism and multiculturalism and Indigenous reconciliation, and there was a kind of fatigue,” Huntley says.

John Howard recognised this fatigue and won big by offering a small vision, limited to sober economic management and cultural stasis.

Aside from “a brief moment under Rudd, who dared talk about big issues like climate change and the apology to the Stolen Generation and engagement with China”, major party politics has barely touched these bigger cultural issues since, she says.

ANU political scientist Dr Jill Sheppard agrees. “The lasting impact of the ’96 election,” she says, “was that everyone retreated into their shells and didn’t want to talk about wholesale social reform.”

The Liberal Party was remade in the image of John Howard, overtaken by social conservatives. In response, Labor has been wary of attack from the conservatives and their right-wing surrogates in the media.

The result, according to the various sources spoken to for this story, from Oquist on the left to Ralph on the right, and the data-informed academics and researchers in between, is that the cultural attitudes of the public have moved way ahead of the politicians.

The evidence is there in the graphs of the Australian Election Study. Ever since Howard was elected in 1996, Australia has been moving consistently leftward on the political spectrum, and the rate of that move has sped up considerably since the current government lucked into office on the back of Labor Party disunity in 2013.

Electors are increasingly dissatisfied with the nature of our democracy, increasingly inclined to see no real choice between the major parties and to believe that powerful vested interests have too much sway.

Once Australia overwhelming preferred tax cuts to increases in government spending. We no longer do. We are far more progressive on a whole range of social issues, from abortion to drug laws to crime and punishment in general. We are far more in favour of government support for Indigenous Australians and land rights, less hostile to asylum seekers, and vastly more inclined to see climate change as a serious threat.

“A lot of things are happening in parallel,” says Sheppard, who works with McAllister on the election study and who also is primary author of the ANU poll of social attitudes and behaviours.

“We are at a weird juncture in which we are increasingly sceptical of governments’ economic impact, where we are increasingly liberal on social issues, but where most of us still are voting for our parties of habit.”

But that will change, and the change will be seismic.

“That elector passivity that parties have relied on for so long is breaking down and the younger generations in Australia are driving social change so much faster than anything we’ve seen for decades,” Sheppard says.

“All signs seem to point towards social issues becoming much more important in political choice.”

Rebecca Huntley detects the same thing in the focus groups she conducts, and sees last year’s same-sex marriage survey as a “massive loss” for the conservative culture warriors, with ramifications far beyond that single issue.

“People have a new appetite for larger issues,” she says, and the postal survey showed them they could effect change from outside the established political process.

“We’ve got a culture war led by activists, through new media channels, which is different. The role of organisations like GetUp! has no precedent.”

The old culture warriors are desperately scared of the campaigning power of these new activists, she says, which explains their recent rush to change electoral laws, to “squash the model that GetUp! represents”.

This mood for change will not be limited by sly donation laws, however. Huntley cites the debate over Australia Day, on which she did significant focus group research.

Far from being a “tiny minority”, as Turnbull said, the mood for change is strong.

“What we found was that roughly one third of people thought Australia Day celebrations on January 26 were shameful. Another, slightly smaller cohort … had little empathy for Indigenous pain or thought it was a token issue which obscured the real issues of Aboriginal disadvantage. Then there was another disengaged but pragmatic third, whose attitude was ‘as long as there’s a day where I can have a holiday and a beer with my mates, I don’t care what day. Change the date if it upsets you.’

“I think the mood is there to have conversations about a range of issues: about reconciliation, Uluru, the republic, other things. There is definitely a greater energy about these questions that relate not to the economy or what we import or export, but who we are as Australians.

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some of these issues become quite critical in the next election.”

Ian McAllister, likewise, sees a new mood abroad in the wake of the same-sex marriage debate. “It suggests to me that in the next five years or so there will be a lot more discussion of these moral issues, unless the economy really goes south. I think education, religious education, funding for religious schools, the whole role of religion, perhaps.”

Certainly, Oquist says, the progressive forces are at last ascendant in the culture wars.

“The defeat of the conservative forces on same-sex marriage and euthanasia, along with the tarnishing of organised religion as a moral force as a result of the child abuse royal commission, has put the cultural right very much on the back foot,” he says.

And it’s hard to argue with that. The old issues so deftly exploited by John Howard just don’t seem to cut through the way they did. The biggest of them historically – the alleged threat to national sovereignty posed by asylum seekers – has receded in the public mind, ironically because the government succeeded in stopping the boats. Despite the government’s best efforts to dehumanise the people left bunged up on Manus and Nauru, public attitudes have softened, even among those who would not see a change in policy.

Peter Dutton’s attempts to pick a fight with New Zealand over its offer to take some of the detainees are increasingly perceived as a desperate effort to gin up a fading issue.

So what else have they got? The long campaign to make an issue of the Racial Discrimination Act quietly expired without much change. Safe Schools? It’s hard to see any great mileage left in that one, particularly as the religious right’s efforts to conflate it with same-sex marriage fell so comprehensively flat.

As we noted at the top of the story, Turnbull’s recent forays into the issues of the republic, the flag and Australia Day got little traction. Indeed, they served to underline the contradictions between the old Malcolm Turnbull, of whom voters initially approved, and the new one, who is beholden to the hard right of the Liberal Party.

“At least,” says Carol Johnson, “voters knew where they were with John Howard, knew that he was consistent in his convictions, whereas they don’t see Turnbull as completely sincere on these things.”

There remains, of course, the issue of climate change and energy policy, but the polls indicate the government is losing that one as well.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, Turnbull delivered what was billed as an “agenda setting” speech in Toowoomba, spruiking the creation of those 403,100 new jobs last year. He claimed it was the result of his government’s trickle-down company tax cuts.

In the absence of real wage growth, though, there’s Buckley’s chance he’ll get any real poll bounce out of it. Ian McAllister speaks with the authority of 30 years of electoral surveys: “Jobs haven’t been an issue since the 1990s recession.”

What’s left is culture war. But as much as he tries, Malcolm Turnbull is not much good at it.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on Feb 3, 2018 as "A playbook for the culture wars".

Lid posted:

Re: law degree chat
A lot of people did do law not for law but as a glorified arts degree, the mistake Turnbull made was not realising 99% of law degrees are combined degrees so you do law and one of the other things - languages, philosophy, commerce etc.

woofbro posted:

AgentF posted:

Do the Australian Conservatives have any sway in Queensland? I thought they were made out of Cory Bernardi (SA) and Family First (SA).

quote:

Rural real estate agents are criticising a decision by the Federal Government to force them to try selling properties to Australians before offering them to overseas investors.
Their critique comes as a South Australian farmer, priced out by Chinese investors when trying to bid for a nearby farm, said this week's Federal Government changes would do little because overseas buyers were too cashed-up for locals to compete against.

Treasurer Scott Morrison announced on Thursday that Australian farmland worth more than $15 million would have to be marketed to prospective local buyers for at least 30 days before it could be sold to international buyers.
The new 30-day advertising clause becomes part of guidelines the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) considers when assessing the sale of farmland.

Agent 'flummoxed' by changes
Danny Thomas from CBRE Agribusiness, Australia's biggest commercial real estate agency, said the laws already favoured local buyers and the proposed changes would not encourage more Australian investment in agricultural land.
"The government has already weighted things in favour of domestic participants and the recent changes have got me a little flummoxed," he said.
"The scales are already weighed heavily in favour of a domestic purchaser because they don't have to go to a third party, the FIRB, to get an approval to buy it.
"But a foreign investor with more than $15 million invested has to get that approval, which adds time to settlement."

Off-market transactions may feel impact
The United Kingdom is the biggest owner of Australian farmland, followed by China second and then the United States.
It is the latest regulation to be added to Australia's foreign ownership laws is as many years, with the Federal Government in 2015 lowering the threshold for scrutiny of farmland from $240 million to $15 million.

Alex Thamm from Colliers International in Adelaide said the latest changes would impact private sales and possibly, prices.
"Some property owners prefer to transact off-market because they receive a good offer from a foreign investor, and now they are prevented from doing that if they have to take their property public," he said.
"Off-market transactions, a lot of the bigger deals, happen in an off-market manner and this has the potential to influence how those transactions are conducted."

Mr Thamm said it could also prevent farmers from receiving "opportunistic offers" from investors who identify a property they want and approach the owner, even if the owner has not considered selling it.
He also questioned what the reforms could mean for farmers looking to enter into joint ventures with foreign investors.
"In a situation where you are a passive investor from offshore who puts money into a business in order for that family or enterprise to grow, if it's as sizable investment, that potentially will have to become an on-market scenario," he said.

Too early to tell if clause will have impact on property prices

Mr Thamm said the 30-day local buyers' clause could have a negative impact on property prices, but that it was too early to tell.
"If you are a property seller and you want the best value for your property then you don't want anyone limiting your abilities," he said.

Federal Labor agriculture spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon said the changes were pointless and send a bad message to investors.

"A farmer selling his or her land will always seek the highest bidder," he said.
"Therefore, they will advertise or seek interest both domestically and overseas. This makes no change whatsoever."
Mr Thomas from CBRE Agribusiness agreed, saying the most important factor for any vendor and agent was the price.
"The cash doesn't have a colour or nationality; from my perspective, and it doesn't from a vendor's perspective," he said.

Increasing regulation could offend overseas investors
Mr Thomas also warned that Australia's increasing regulation of foreign investment could offend overseas countries and force buyers to look elsewhere.

"We have got something they certainly want," he said.
"If we continue to make it hard for them or frustrate them or make them feel like their money is not worth it then all of a sudden, countries that look less attractive might start to look more attractive."

Treasurer Scott Morrison and the Treasury Department have been contacted for comment.

Reforms will not stop foreign investors: farmer
Don Herrmann, from Frances in South Australia, said he wanted to buy a property across the border in Victoria to expand his mixed sheep, potato, and lucerne farming business, but could not compete against a Chinese bidder.
He said regardless of the changes to help local buyers get in first, he thinks it is still too difficult to overcome the big wallets of foreign investors.

"This won't make any difference at all; investors will just wait the 30 days then still buy it," Mr Hermann said.
"We would have loved to have bought the neighbour out to upgrade our farm but the Chinese were able to go far higher than what we could afford, or even above what it was worth.

Mr Herrmann said even forming a consortium of local landholders to bid for the property had not been an affordable option.

"You can't pay the prices they command," he said.
"I don't blame the farmer, he is after the best he can get, but it just wasn't viable to buy it.
"I just think there should be no foreign investment in local farm land. It makes it too hard for the locals."

Foreign investment 'an emotive issue' says agent

Mr Herrmann said the long-term risk was that it would push surrounding property prices up "higher than what is really necessary".
Mr Thamm from Colliers International said farmers who sold to foreigners often used the money to invest in more farm land, which helped the industry and community to grow.

"We have had a very long history of positive foreign investment in Australian agriculture, which has helped to develop large areas of our countryside," he said.
"Historically, we don't have that much to fear, but it has become an emotive issue."

Starshark posted:

Can someone paste this article? Saturday Paper reckons I've used my free article even though I haven't.

https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2018/02/03/playbook-the-culture-wars/15175764005757

Halo14 posted:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2018-02-03/australian-real-estate-agents-concern-foreign-investment-reform/9391394

'Arrogant' Australia risks scaring-off foreign investors wanting farmland as new reforms favour local bidders

You Am I posted:

Still wearing a blue tie as well.

Halo14 posted:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2018-02-03/australian-real-estate-agents-concern-foreign-investment-reform/9391394

'Arrogant' Australia risks scaring-off foreign investors wanting farmland as new reforms favour local bidders

LIVE AMMO ROLEPLAY posted:

Australia should decide if it wants to be xenophobic or not.

I would blow Dane Cook posted:

We do not like asians but we do like their money.

quote:

A Tasmanian state election candidate has been disciplined by Labor after it emerged he photographed himself with a mobile phone between his buttocks.
Darren Clark, who is contesting the regional seat of Lyons in next month's election, was reprimanded by the party over a crude photo taken several years ago where he reportedly posed with another persons mobile phone held between the cheeks of his bottom.

LIVE AMMO ROLEPLAY posted:

Australia should decide if it wants to be xenophobic or not.

bandaid.friend posted:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-03/row-over-labor-candidate-posing-with-mobile-phone-in-buttocks/9393512

Could this be the tamest scandal for 2018

DancingShade posted:

Put Member for whatever DJ Astro Labe in a chair near Abbot in parliament and just watch the magic happen.

VodeAndreas posted:

I am greeted with this as an ABC story this morning in my Just In news feed:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-04/the-famous-faces-that-could-spice-up-reality-tv/9390576

What the gently caress is this, please just give me news. Is there any way to filter this crap out and just get actual new news?