AusPol July - Due to penalty cuts and tax hikes all wit is suspended

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > AusPol July - Due to penalty cuts and tax hikes all wit is suspended

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Recoome: Nov 9, 2013; Matter of fact, I'm salty now.

Kommando posted:

"the age of entitlement is over."
-Joe Hockey 2014

Safe place to huff bags for boomers

# ? Aug 1, 2018 00:29

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Apr 29, 2024 12:16

Jezza of OZPOS: Mar 21, 2018; GET LOSE❌🗺️, YOUS CAN'T COMPARE😤 WITH ME 💪POWERS🇦🇺

Synthbuttrange posted:

Didnt need to see this today

One of these is down the road from me, ironically placed atop a relaxation centre

# ? Aug 1, 2018 00:58

Doctor Spaceman: Jul 6, 2010; "Everyone's entitled to their point of view, but that's seriously a weird one."

starkebn posted:

Clive is just an internet troll with a shitload of money

He helped JBP get elected twice and people are far too forgiving of that.

# ? Aug 1, 2018 01:06

starkebn: May 18, 2004; "Oooh, got a little too serious. You okay there, little buddy?"

he saw that Trumps garbage campaign won in the US (lol Russians helped) and thinks "why not just give it a go?"

# ? Aug 1, 2018 01:09

Resident Idiot: May 11, 2007; Maxine13; Grimey Drawer

In answers to questions nobody asked:

The Sydney Morning Herald posted:

The Turnbull government's ordinary showing in the Super Saturday byelections looks like triggering a new round of leadership speculation.
The pressure for the moment is off Bill Shorten. Instead it is Malcolm Turnbull who is again seen as being vulnerable and exposed.

Media commentators are already re-energised by the prospect of a fresh outbreak of instability.
They include Professor of politics at University of Western Australia Peter van Onselen, who in the wake of the byelections has published an article in which in passing he sums up the possible alternative leaders of the federal Liberal Party.
The good news for Turnbull is that each alternative leader is found to have a serious flaw.

Tony Abbott, for example, "is well and truly yesterday's man".
The list of flawed contenders also includes Finance Minister Mathias Cormann. Being a Senator he is, van Onselen suggests, "in the wrong chamber".
But is this truly an objection?
A possible Mathias Cormann ascension from the Senate, were it to occur, would not be unprecedented. It would mirror events which happened exactly half a century ago this year.
At the end of January 1968, Australia had a brand new prime minister in Senator John Gorton.

Gorton had become leader of the federal Liberal Party following the disappearance before Christmas of his predecessor Harold Holt.

Prime Ministers can come from the upper house but they cannot sit in it. So on February 1, 1968, Gorton resigned from the Senate. In a byelection held on February 24 he filled the vacancy in the House of Representatives caused by Holt's disappearance.
The parallels between then and now are striking.
Harold Holt was the Malcolm Turnbull of his day. Together with his wife Zara he offered the promise of a fresh start after the aged Sir Robert Menzies retired in 1966 just as Malcolm and Lucy once embodied the prospect of an exhilarating era of innovation following Tony Abbott's stint as PM.

Holt won a khaki election at the end of 1966 but he did poorly in a half Senate election held towards the end of 1967.
Against a backdrop of government despondency the Canberra media corps began to detect leadership murmurs.
The angst continued after Holt drowned at Cheviot Beach.
Like Turnbull today, Holt seemed to have no clear successor as Prime Minister. There was no other Liberal Party member in the House of Representatives who came across as a viable replacement.
Faced with this situation the Liberals simply bypassed the House of Representatives. On January 9, 1968, they elected John Gorton, a cabinet minister who was government leader in the Senate, as their new leader.

There is nothing to prevent today's crop of Liberals from following the Gorton scenario.
Turnbull is chronically hapless but, like Holt before him, he is not seen as having a viable successor. As commentators such as Peter van Onselen freely acknowledge, his lower house colleagues who may have leadership ambitions – Abbott, Bishop, Morrison, Dutton - turn out to be unacceptable to either their party colleagues or to the wider public.
But that still leaves the Senate and Mathias Cormann. He can do a Gorton on his colleagues.
There is no doubting Cormann's credentials for the top job. For almost five years as Finance Minister he has been involved at the highest level in the federal budgetary process and in government decision making.
He is leader of the Government in the Senate and has served as Acting Prime Minister.

Cormann is skilled and respected as a negotiator and deal maker. His work ethic is prodigious. As a foreign-born person he can draw on themes of diversity and resilience in developing the grand narrative that a good Prime Minister has to command.
Cormann, along with Peter Dutton, currently forms a Praetorian Guard protecting Turnbull against a final leadership meltdown. But in imperial Rome, in the days of its decadence, it sometimes fell to the Praetorian Guard to slay the Emperor.
Turnbull would immediately resign as federal member for Wentworth should he lose the Liberal leadership and yet the Gorton precedent suggests that this is not an inhibiting factor at all.
John Gorton had no connection at all with Holt's old seat of Higgins in Melbourne and yet victory in the resulting byelection was no problem for him.
In a similar way, Cormann, who would need to move to the House of Representatives, could be slotted into the seat of Wentworth as Turnbull's replacement.

Fixed boundaries mean little to him. He comes from a region of Europe that has been swapped between Belgium and Germany according to the fortunes of war. He studied in England before migrating to, and flourishing in, Perth.
Every time Cormann moves to a new city he fits in with the local lingo and mores. Sydney's eastern suburbs would be no exception. He would speedily shake off the dreaded tag of being a blow-in. He would be an entirely credible candidate and member for Wentworth. Leaving the Senate would remove the only serious objection to his becoming our next prime minister.
And so after 50 years the Gorton precedent is suddenly very much alive again. It is certainly worthy of consideration.
Stephen Holt is a Canberra writer.

# ? Aug 1, 2018 01:12

Stevefin: Sep 30, 2013

Anidav posted:

Coles has hoisted a white flag in the face of angry shoppers aggrieved by having to bring their own bags or pay 15¢ for a "reusable" one, and has promised to give plastic bags away for free indefinitely.

The supermarket chain and its rival Woolworths removed thin "single-use" plastic bags from their checkouts in July and late June, respectively, as a growing number of state governments ban the environmentally damaging items.

But offering only thicker, "reusable" plastic bags for 15¢ each has elicited howls of outrage from some quarters, and led to a series of backflips - including giving the reusable bags away for free for a short period of time while customers adapted to the changes - to quell the outcry.

In the latest backflip, a Coles spokeswoman confirmed on Wednesday that the supermarket would give the 15¢ bags away for free indefinitely.

“When Coles phased out single-use plastic bags on 1 July in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and WA, some customers told us they needed more time to make the transition to reusable bags," she said.

"We’ve been delighted to see customers grow more accustomed to bringing their reusable bags from home so they are relying less on complimentary bags at the checkout.

"Many customers bringing bags from home are still finding themselves short a bag or two, so we are offering complimentary reusable Better Bags to help them complete their shopping.”

Customers will continue to pay 15¢ for the reusable bags in Tasmania, where single-use bags have been outlawed since 2014, and in South Australia, where they have been banned since 2009, the Coles spokeswoman said.

This just brings us back before the bag ban, I have a feeling it won't be long before one of the states that did ban the single use bags recently will sue/fine them for breaking the law, as they have just become single use plastic bags again

# ? Aug 1, 2018 01:41

Don Dongington: Sep 27, 2005; #ideasboom; College Slice

Stevefin posted:

This just brings us back before the bag ban, I have a feeling it won't be long before one of the states that did ban the single use bags recently will sue/fine them for breaking the law, as they have just become single use plastic bags again

There was nothing stopping people from using the old style plastic bags more than once. See: every trash can in my house that was once lined with them.

I mean call me insane, but that's where most of the OG plastic shopping bags ended up, right? Full of garbage at the tip, as opposed to larger and slightly more expensive purpose-built bin liners? gently caress this, make enviro bags the only option and if you're too old and lovely to figure out how to use them, starve and loving die.

Resident Idiot posted:

In answers to questions nobody asked:

I still think it's hilarious that the LNP's only hope of winning another election is a leader they won't support because she was born without a penis.

# ? Aug 1, 2018 01:49

BBJoey: Oct 31, 2012

Don Dongington posted:

I still think it's hilarious that the LNP's only hope of winning another election is a leader they won't support because she was born without a penis.

Extremely advanced view of the internal politics of the LNP

# ? Aug 1, 2018 01:56

avshalemon: Jun 28, 2018

i hope dad's genetic records have been sold to the cops, they can talk to him about his powerful danish blood, someone has to

# ? Aug 1, 2018 01:58

avshalemon: Jun 28, 2018

he mostly got excited because one of his clairvoyant friends had a vision of him as a scandinavian nobleman lying dead in the snow, having been assassinated (she somehow surmised from the vision) by one of his oldest friends. now he's probably going to go to denmark and start laying claim to swathes of it and i'll have to bail him out of prison, he's that sort of man

# ? Aug 1, 2018 02:00

I would blow Dane Cook: Dec 26, 2008

Get your dad some lego he'll love it.

# ? Aug 1, 2018 02:00

avshalemon: Jun 28, 2018

I would blow Dane Cook posted:

Get your dad some lego he'll love it.

we used to construct elaborate lego civilisations together when i was a child but now he's more into mandalas

# ? Aug 1, 2018 02:07

I would blow Dane Cook: Dec 26, 2008

But is your dad a great dane?

# ? Aug 1, 2018 02:10

avshalemon: Jun 28, 2018

he's more of a well-intentioned basset

# ? Aug 1, 2018 02:14

G-Spot Run: Jun 28, 2005

If nobody does August by later today I'll make something up.

# ? Aug 1, 2018 02:25

avshalemon: Jun 28, 2018

i swear if my family ends up in dutton's camps because of ancestry.com.au

# ? Aug 1, 2018 02:29

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

Just lol if they think the CormannBot is a future PM. Cartoonists will be able to afford to put their kids through university if that happens.

# ? Aug 1, 2018 02:30

I would blow Dane Cook: Dec 26, 2008

avshalemon posted:

i swear if my family ends up in dutton's camps because of ancestry.com.au

What if you found out you weren't Jewish?

# ? Aug 1, 2018 02:32

avshalemon: Jun 28, 2018

I would blow Dane Cook posted:

What if you found out you weren't Jewish?

ariel would have departed from my soul with a great conflagration as if of white phosphorus, killing me instantly

# ? Aug 1, 2018 02:51

MysticalMachineGun: Apr 5, 2005

G-Spot Run posted:

If nobody does August by later today I'll make something up.

oh yeah, it's August

Remember when there used to be a scramble to be the OP for the next month? :allears:

# ? Aug 1, 2018 03:03

avshalemon: Jun 28, 2018

technically speaking i'm not jewish. my great-great-grandmother was jewish; she had only one child, a son, who died early, and because it's passed down on the mother's side his children (who were also half-chinese) were not considered jewish. however after he died their mother ran away with someone named john manly and they were raised by their grandmother in the culture, so the break is only minor and serves to make things more interesting imo

# ? Aug 1, 2018 03:20

Anarchist Mae: Nov 5, 2009; by Reene; Lipstick Apathy

I'm sure we're all destined for Peter Duttons extermination camps anyway. Jewish or not.

# ? Aug 1, 2018 03:28

Starshark: Dec 22, 2005; Doctor Rope

Can't you also be Jewish if, y'know, you want to be Jewish? You don't have to have a lineage?

# ? Aug 1, 2018 03:30

Cartoon: Jun 20, 2008; poop

avshalemon posted:

ariel would have departed from my soul with a great conflagration as if of white phosphorus, killing me instantly

No! You only get the white phosphorus treatment if you are Palestinian you big silly.

# ? Aug 1, 2018 03:35

Kafka Syrup: Apr 29, 2009

MysticalMachineGun posted:

oh yeah, it's August

Remember when there used to be a scramble to be the OP for the next month?

We haven't done an old fashioned "who you vote for" poll in a while, or even a "who to follow on twitter" op. Heck its been months since we did a party comparison OP.

(i'm not volunteering)

# ? Aug 1, 2018 03:36