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Budzilla posted:Has there been any good news for the LNP this year? Dutton ran his biannual "I'm actually a really nice person when you get to know me" piece in Fairfax
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Dec 6, 2022 08:05
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Big loving lol at the Murdoch media's ongoing campaign against Andrews, prediction of a wipeout, absolute confidence that there'd be a voter backlash against lockdowns etc, and the end result was... https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/dec/08/victorian-labor-could-surpass-2018-danslide-after-claiming-victory-in-pakenham ...Labor increased its majority.
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Dec 8, 2022 21:16
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JBP posted:Josh Burns is a good guy. I'm glad he's doing this. So glad loving Danby is gone and also replaced with one of the party's more decent younger members I would blow Dane Cook posted:
I love it when the subbies get sassy and make an objective-but-subjective headline. I think my favourite one ever was something about a utility company facing bad profits, resulting in a headline along the lines of: CEO: WORKERS MAY BE "ASKED" TO TAKE A "TEMPORARY" PAY CUT
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Dec 14, 2022 08:32
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He's revolting 
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Lol apparently it's a really strong liquor and you're only supposed to sip it but he skulled it (so honestly, respect)
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Dec 17, 2022 09:57
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ShoeFly posted:Happy new year to all of you humbugs. 2022 was a bit poo poo, but a bit less poo poo than 2021. Hopefully the trend continues! Personally I had a great 2022, and I think Australia did too since the Liberal Party ate poo poo both federally and in Victoria. Happy new year!
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Jan 1, 2023 07:41
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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jan/17/queensland-and-victoria-resist-push-to-replace-stamp-duty-with-land-taxesquote:Queensland and Victoria have no plans to replace stamp duty with a New South Wales-style annual tax, despite experts saying a change in policy would help more young people buy their own homes sooner. Clicking through and checking the opposition's policy, it still only applies to first homebuyers: quote:New South Wales Labor has pledged to eliminate stamp duty for first home buyers purchasing properties worth up to $800,000 if it wins the March state election, in a bid to counter the Perrottet government’s tax changes. I'm in favour of this in general as a better-than-nothing approach, but it shits me that we view it all through the prism of first homebuyers, of some 1950s notion of newlyweds moving into their forever house in the suburbs at age 25. Go ahead and tax the hell out of landlords, but most people are going to be moving around multiple times in their life, and owner-occupiers should not be obliged to find a spare $30,000+ to give the state government every time just for the privilege of doing so.
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Jan 16, 2023 20:08
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Capt.Whorebags posted:Targeting incentives at first home buyers isn't about subscribing to a John Howard 1950s view of newlyweds spending their first night together in a new home. It's a recognition that the first step on the property ladder is incredibly hard. Saving a deposit whilst paying rent and watching prices climb faster than your saving capacity, only to be slugged with a stamp duty, puts it years further out of reach. Once you have that first home, even with a crazy mortgage, you have equity building up and it is so much easier to then use that equity to buy a bigger home if/when you need it. Oh I'm not against it being waived for first homebuyers, I just don't think that's the best thing we could do to address housing affordability and don't think we should stop there either. There are a huge number of reasons someone might want or need to move: work opportunities, family crises, or even - just totally picking something at random here that definitely doesn't apply to me - because they just bought their first place and it turned out to be a lemon and they're unhappy with where they live. If people are owner-occupiers just using their home as a roof over their heads - and yeah I realise it's impossible to participate in the Australian housing market without being complicit in turning your home into an enormous chunk of your financial assets, but it's not like the owner-occupier has a choice in that - I don't think they should be stung as much as they are for the mere privilege of relocating. Especially when stamp duty hasn't been adjusted to account for housing inflation so the brackets are completely out of whack. A young couple in Sydney or Melbourne who have bust a gut to save a deposit and buy their first 2-bedroom apartment or 3-bedroom house at the very fringes of the city, for 600 or 700k, are not going to find 40k in stamp duty to be a trifling sum. (Whereas I imagine someone buying a property at the same value in the 1990s probably would have.) If the state absolutely needs its revenue that badly then I'd take the NSW Libs' proposed land tax any day of the week, for the basic mathematical fact that it would take about 15 years for us to have ended up paying more than we would have in a stamp duty if we sold.
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Jan 17, 2023 20:12
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Capt.Whorebags posted:We need a serious fall in house prices until mortgage repayments (and by extension rent) is back to some reasonable fraction of average earnings, but there is so much wealth tied up in the asset class that it's political suicide. Even before becoming a homeowner and thus having skin in the game, I would have said we need like a 10-year plateau in prices to allow wages to catch up rather than having values drop, on account of the risk of collapsing the economy. But a) lol wages are not going to do that, and b) we have a perfectly good Reserve Bank trying to crash the economy for us anyway. Capt.Whorebags posted:boomers who will insist that their properties should be grandfathered and only apply going forward 100% confident this will happen. Like, not just the insistence but the implementation of the grandfathering (Actually who knows - maybe there'll be one of those sudden pivotal moments when all of a sudden the millenials outnumber them and mainstream political policies swiftly change over just a few election cycles)
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Jan 18, 2023 09:00
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Resident Idiot posted:I remember we thought that in 2013. The '13 result stemmed more from "hatred of Julia Gillard" rather than "love of Tony Abbott." Not discounting that Abbott was instrumental in stoking that hatred, and the tactic might be useful again, but not its practitioner. We've been there and done that and Australians mostly dislike him, and if the Libs want to try the pit bull method again they need to pick a more unknown backbencher to do it.
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Jan 21, 2023 00:09
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Resident Idiot posted:To be honest I don't know if they do hate him so much any more - I think he's largely forgotten, and Scott Morrison has absorbed most of that contempt. Tony Abbott has almost been redeemed a little by comparison. Abbott at least in my mind still represents the purest form of the Liberal Party's creepy old-school misogyny, which is an even worse look in 2023 than it was in 2015. I don't doubt they'll parachute him into the Senate, I just don't think that's a good idea for them. Abbott's brand of conservatism is less popular with every passing year and every old fogey who dies and/or young person who turns 18. When the Liberals win government again it'll be in spite of culture warriors like him, not because of them.
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Jan 21, 2023 01:37
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G-Spot Run posted:Right, well, that sucks for the hospital system. At least the parking fee is still less than most private gaps I've ever paid. It's fine to attend the hospital for things that aren't life-threatening but do require treatment. Just don't call an ambulance to get there.
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Jan 28, 2023 03:52
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You don't actually need to preface your long article about how yes it is actually more difficult for millennials with a million words that are just boomer whining, but to do so with a boomer who was left $2 million from a corrupt company is a staggeringly funny self own. Meanwhile the real scoop flies under the radar: quote:And for Gen X borrowers that bought 16 years ago in 2006 , he says mortgage repayments peaked at just over 30 per cent of the average household disposable income, when taking out the average-sized loan at the time.
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Feb 6, 2023 07:06
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Opinions sought, since probably a lot of people here have HECS debt: is it worth making a voluntary repayment before EOFY since it's pegged to inflation and for the first time in forever, inflation is going to be loving 8% or something? It obviously depends on your personal financial situation whether you have money sitting around in the first place (I personally could only stump up a few grand) but since the conventional wisdom is that there's never any point in making voluntary HECS repayments, it was a "huh" moment for me when a friend pointed this out to me today. I also bothered to log on to MyGov and check the last few CPI indexations for HECS payments on June 1: 2018 - 1.9% 2019 - 1.8% 2020 - 1.8% 2021 - 0.6% 2022 - 3.9%
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Feb 12, 2023 08:46
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Electric Wrigglies posted:On broker advice, who is good to talk to for investment advice? I have nearly all my life's savings in a Commbank account, and I get anxiety at the thought of investing in anything even though I know it's the stupidest thing. I'm like Comstar that all the bad noise about brokers/investment scams has me terrified. Read Scott Pape's book. (Not joking.)
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Feb 13, 2023 20:37
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Paid $40 for a GP appointment today because everywhere has stopped bulk billing. Feels real bad!
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Feb 15, 2023 07:56
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Recoome posted:Not protesting in the right way eh? Correct, when "no cops at pride" is itself a contentious opinion within the LGBTQ community, it shouldn't be one of their straight allies who decides to protest by jumping in front of a float and disrupting the parade.
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Feb 27, 2023 07:29
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Jezza of OZPOS posted:its only contentious among the wealthy board of directors because it impacts event sponsors and even there its a hotly debated topic. I dont appreciate you erasing the very real community opinions that call for it every year and are shot down No, it's contentious at the 500+ member AGM, where it's been put to a vote three times and has been voted down all three times https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/dec/05/sydney-mardi-gras-members-vote-against-banning-police-from-2021-parade
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Feb 27, 2023 12:17
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Breakfast Burrito posted:thanks for posting this, a good reminder to myself that when thinking "what does the lgbtqia community at large think" to check in with the American Express Mardi Gras. Gotta make sure I don't forget to road test my views on queer liberation with Deloitte! The AGM is open to members, anyone can become a member, and 78ers get free life membership. Feel free to cite any polling in the broader queer community, as far as I can see none has been done.
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Feb 28, 2023 06:59
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Breakfast Burrito posted:this an extremely funny way to gauge what the australian queer community's views on the police might be freebooter posted:Feel free to cite any polling in the broader queer community
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Feb 28, 2023 10:56
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Breakfast Burrito posted:yes that's the bit of your post that is funny Even if "no police at pride" were a unanimous 100% view within the queer community I would still think it lovely of a non-queer politician to put themselves centre stage like this. I don't think Thorpe would be (or should be) copping anywhere near as much flak if she weren't straight.
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Feb 28, 2023 19:50
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Megillah Gorilla posted:Two things can both be incredibly lovely, hth. The difference is that only one of these countries' governments will permit you to publish a book, a newspaper article or even a Twitter post about its historical and ongoing atrocities. hooman posted:This is my point. Our defensive strategy relies not on military procurement but on creating strong bonds with nations that could crush us, so that they have an incentive to protect us if someone else decides to get grabby. With that in mind why are we only yoking ourselves to the US and why are we funnelling huge amounts of money to them while antagonising China? Because (see above) the US is a free country that shares our liberal values, while China is a totalitarian dictatorship. If the US and China go to war and the US loses - and assuming this outcome somehow avoids a nuclear holocaust anyway - the future is going to become bleaker for Australia irrespective of whether we have or have not "antagonised" China by picking the other side in a conflict. That's the same reason Japan, South Korea and many countries in SE Asia are also strengthening ties with the US, and the same reason Poland and the Baltics are the most vocal European supporters of Ukraine. I have no clue whether the Aukus sub deal is specifically a good idea or not, but I have no trouble seeing why, in general, we should clearly be siding with the US over China and doing it sooner rather than later.
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Mar 20, 2023 06:53
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Recoome posted:https://www.betootaadvocate.com/world-news/nazis-not-marching-in-brisbane-for-some-reason/ quote:What is interesting is that these brazen displays of neo-Nazism aren’t taking place in stereotypical ‘redneck’ cities Perth or Brisbane – where majority of anti-fascist activism actually doesn’t take place on Twitter, and may be considered ‘problematic’. Only a deep and abiding sense of state-level cultural cringe could lead someone to the conclusion that, Actually, WA or Queensland are less right-wing than Victoria
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Mar 20, 2023 08:59
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Recoome posted:It’s satire, champ It's bad satire, because the actual answer to the leading jokey question in the headline is "they already have a right-wing government" The Lord Bude posted:Maybe not Queensland as a whole but Brisbane itself is pretty drat left wing at the moment. I mean remind me again which city elected 3 federal greens MPs at the last election? Let's check back in on the comparative righteousness of Brisbane and Melbourne after the Voice referendum
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Mar 20, 2023 10:35
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Recoome posted:Also I've posted about it before but I can't remember the last time we had an honest to god group of nazis marching around the city. They might have had some in the Sov cit marches but the last time I saw neo-nazis out and basically marching was November 2015. I actually don't know what the answer is to why Victoria (even compared to NSW, not just QLD) has such a prominent Nazi presence but someone posed the question on Twitter after the weekend and the most "common sense" answer (i.e., maybe this is totally wrong and I'm open to alternative suggestions) is that a more left-wing government/society breeds a more extreme right-wing grassroots response. It's worth pointing it that it's still, like, just a few dozen fuckwits showing up. Not that it shouldn't go vociferously opposed at every step, but it's not exactly a beer hall putsch. edit - does Melbourne possibly just have more of a public protest culture? In general? Probably a bit hard to tell through the skewed lens of the lockdown years. freebooter fucked around with this message at 10:40 on Mar 20, 2023 |
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Mar 20, 2023 10:38
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hooman posted:Ok, lets take a totally cynical route with no judgement about which is better out of the US and China, (I personally agree that it's probably the US, but also lmao that every criticism you levelled at China can equally be levelled at the USA, not to mention the military adventurism of the US in the middle east). Having a big "friend" which is also a totalitarian dictatorship would not bode well for Australia's long-term future. But you obviously aren't going to agree with that line of thinking if you also believe America is only marginally better than China.
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Mar 21, 2023 07:15
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hooman posted:Have you ever actually travelled to or worked in China? How about the rest of South East Asia? Have you worked in or been to the USA? Yes to all three except working. I've worked in South Korea and the UK but nowhere else (except Aus obviously). In terms of personal safety I feel safer e.g. walking down the street in China (and also pretty much anywhere else in East Asia) than in the US. In terms of feeling safe from the government, or picking a country to raise my children in while imagining what that country might look like by 2040 or 2050, America by a country mile. (And Australia above America by another country mile). I think it's telling that you rattle off the Howard Zinn view of America without a direct comparison to China. Do you think police in China are "accountable"? Do think China doesn't have a problem with lead in the water and poison in the air? Do you think the factory and sweatshop workers of China aren't also "enslaved to capital"? The difference - as I said earlier - is that we can have this very debate on a website forum hosted in the United States. We wouldn't be able to in China.
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Mar 22, 2023 11:18
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Ranter posted:It's not the harshest COVID lockdowns in the world, you said that was Melbourne VIC AU. ??? hooman posted:China is a lot more direct in the censorship of the media rather than the US's indirectness. However when you look at the influence that the government has over places like twitter and facebook in terms of saying what can and can not be published, and what is classified as "misinformation" the US is definitely tending towards the China's current policies, especially in republican controlled states. I mean even the TaxMan (Rip in piss) got visits from the US government if what goons were saying got too spicy. So while I agree the US is "better" it is a matter of degrees rather than a fundamental difference. This is just sheer whataboutism. Everything is always a matter of degrees, but the "degrees" in question here are basically at opposite ends of the scale. The US ranks 42nd in the Press Freedom ranking, while China is an abysmal 175th (almost dead last). The US is not disappearing booksellers or shutting down newspapers or routinely censoring vast swathes of the internet. The idea that there's any equivalency whatsoever between the US and China when it comes to freedom of speech (or lack thereof) is farcical.
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Mar 23, 2023 06:51
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GoldStandardConure posted:they're not, Stirling is awful and the council is basically 99% chuds. Isn't Stirling the one where the mayor's in the mafia?
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Mar 23, 2023 06:51
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hooman posted:Oooh loving press censorship, Australia has no formal press censorship, and yet shockingly, nearly all our press is dogshit bootlicking anyway! Stenographers, dogwhistles and ad copy disguised as news. There's the vast majority of all press in Australia. Concentration of press ownership censors our press for us instead of the state doing it. Telling the Hong Kong protesters about how we have it pretty bad too because of that awful Murdoch fella
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Mar 23, 2023 08:02
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hooman posted:Answer the question. I would pick press freedom/freedom of speech, because at least then you can agitate for healthcare. I would rank it above all other freedoms for the same reason. Now in turn, please answer in which country you'd prefer to: - marry a member of the same sex - practice whichever religion you like - apply for and be granted a passport without restrictions - move to another province or city without losing access to public services - write a letter to the editor of a newspaper denouncing the government - Read Wikipedia
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Mar 23, 2023 10:39
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hooman posted:If you want to amend it to "American imperial dominance is preferable to Chinese imperial dominance", sure, I'll agree with you. America, like Australia, is a liberal country because you can write/scream/protest as much as you like about the awful poo poo it did in Latin America in the 80s and 90s, and the awful poo poo it did in the Middle East in the 00s and 10s, and whatever awful poo poo it's about to do next, you're legally entitled to do that and no harm will come to you. Just like you can write/scream/protest as much as you like about Australia's historical and ongoing treatment of Aboriginals, or refugees in offshore camps, or Scott Morrison making GBS threads himself at the Engadine Macca's, and you're legally entitled to do that. Try standing on a soapbox in Beijing and talking about '89, or standing on a soapbox in in Xinjiang and talking about the ongoing Uyghur genocide. Try standing on a soapbox in Shanghai five years from now and denouncing whatever the gently caress's going to be happening to Taiwan by then. That is the difference between a liberal country and a non-liberal country. America is a free country and China is not. This is not a contentious point outside of tankie or tankie-adjacent circles, and I'm not really interested in arguing it any further, because at this point I think we're basically just butting heads against fundamental world-views.
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Mar 23, 2023 12:29
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hooman posted:Maybe you and I draw lines at different points but I can't look at all the above and say it still meets my standard. It's fine if it meets yours, we've poo poo up this thread too much already. Fair enough! But in terms of how it affects where Australia chooses to sit, like... putting aside where anyone thinks America currently ranks in liberal democracy ratings, I would completely agree that America is sliding backwards (Trump, abortion etc) but the thing for me is that it would have to keep sliding backwards for a very long time before it reaches the point where China under the CCP already is. Meanwhile China, under Xi, is unfortunately also going backwards and becoming more rather than less authoritarian. Which in turn, on the idea that "Australia doesn't have to choose" (very popular among Aussie politicians at least until roughly Turnbull), I think that might have been true for a while or might even continue to be true for another decade or so, but in the grand scheme of things, in the 21st century, will probably not be true. And as others have pointed out, you don't have to frame it as siding with the US; think of it as siding with basically every other country in SE Asia if you prefer. (Some of which are also authoritarian military dictatorships, but at least not powerful enough to swing their dicks around at their neighbours at the level China does.)
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Mar 24, 2023 07:25
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Comstar posted:We're going to see the Labor vs Greens come 2-3 Federal Elections from now. No, we're going to plough into a bad inflation-and-interest-rate driven recession, lots of people are going to lose their houses and jobs and blame the Labor government, and the result will be a coalition landslide in 2025
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Apr 2, 2023 00:14
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lih posted:but of course many in the party are opposing it for broader reasons than just that It must be exhausting to be a right-wing politician and constantly have to mask your real opinions (or at least mask what you think the base wants to hear) behind some other technocrat bullshit. I wonder if they ever look at One Nation and think "gently caress it'd be nice to just say what we mean and mean what we say."
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Apr 5, 2023 10:12
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G-Spot Run posted:Lowe thinks capitalism is good. Lighting up a cigarette in my trench coat in a multistorey carpark at 2:00am and informing a journo from the Guardian that the Governor of the Reserve Bank thinks capitalism is good
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Apr 6, 2023 12:37
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NEOM is the only sponsored ad I'll never block. Shine on you crazy sheikhs
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Apr 14, 2023 09:10
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quote:“She came in with three other people. And she was just Lidia Thorpe. Lmao
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Apr 17, 2023 08:45
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bee posted:Ugh. I was thinking about this today and I'm probably gonna throw all my rainy day savings at my hecs next month just so that the voluntary contributions I've made over the last year don't get completely eaten up by the indexation Wait until the budget is announced - whatever a Senate panel says, there's still the slim chance Albo makes a captain's call. bee posted:No, the voluntary payments reduce the hecs debt total at the time you pay them, if you log into the ATO and view your hecs details you can see this. It's only the involuntary payments that come out of your regular income that the ATO hoards and applies to the debt after indexation is applied. This is correct, though it's also worth noting that having HECS come out of your paycheque each fortnight is also voluntary. I've just been paying mine as a lump sum at tax time for years now. Same amount of money, it just spends the year in my bank account instead of the ATO's.
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Apr 17, 2023 21:00
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Tomberforce posted:The stage 3 tax cuts are especially galling in the context of the desperate rush to ostensibly reduce spending and cool demand by hoiking up interest rates. Yeah definitely. I also find it kind of annoying that HECS indexation is what's grabbed alumni's attention and caused a media stir. I appreciate that 7% inflation/indexation makes people sit up and take notice, but the far more hosed thing (and what I would prefer Labor to remedy) is that the repayment thresholds have not only not been raised to account for inflation, they've been actively lowered. That is far more unjust and far more onerous for graduates earning 45-65k a year than their debt level rising with inflation.
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Apr 18, 2023 12:17
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What's the justification for it? I know what the actual justification is (only old people matter as a voting bloc) but what are they saying the justification is?
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May 1, 2023 21:27
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