Australian Politics

[WtOB?]

remember that totally honest and ethical carbon tax scare campaign?

[Birds in Hell]

Not exactly a comparable scenario! A scare campaign over a policy that actually exists is a rather different thing to one in response to a policy that's completely fictitious. It's so deeply cynical.

[zeb]

Both parties run scare campaigns every election, Spenno. No one talks about their own policies.

[Kaius]

Sounds familiar.

[Birds in Hell]

Sure, scare campaigns based on the opposition's actual policies, eg. (using Adam's example) "Labor's carbon tax will send us all broke", etc., but this was something of a very different character.

Threatening that the Liberal Party will privatise Medicare is based on nothing (and doesn't even make any sense) - and what's worse is the ALP know it! Nobody in the ALP thinks that the Liberals had any plan to privatise Medicare but they wager it might put enough fear into the elderly and the politically unengaged to get them over the line.

This isn't mock outrage, I'm really astonished at seeing the ALP drag our political debate so deeply into the gutter and causing further damage to the public's precarious faith in politics and politicians.

[zeb]

Analogous to the Coalition beating the "Rudd-Gillard-Rudd!" drum to death on every doorstop and television interview. They all do it. No single party has dragged anything into the gutter all on their own.

[Birds in Hell]

There is a genuine distinction between those things.

[zeb]

Children overboard?

[Birds in Hell]

The difference in that case is that the Howard government genuinely believed that it had occurred at the time, it was only discovered in retrospect that it hadn't (though I think from memory it wasn't entirely baseless either, just perhaps not exactly as it was claimed).

Shorten and the ALP know that they're being dishonest but figure it's electorally advantageous to do so.

[WtOB?]

as someone who works at a public hospital, i can tell you there were genuine rumblings about a task force being set up by the government to look into privatising Medicare after the election. before labor had said anything about it on their campaign. seems to me like the government had decided not to after considering it and then pretended they never even thought about it. surely there's as much chance (if not more) that labor genuinely believed Medicare was in danger under another liberal term as there is howard genuinely believed the children overboard story. i can tell you first hand that the public health system is certainly in danger under another term. There's nothing left for them to rip out, yet they still plan to. The public health system is on the brink of collapse.

[WtOB?]

very proud to be a Tasmanian today, we voted well.

[LetMeSleep]

If I remember correctly in the late 90's the liberals went hard on how a Labor government would increase interest rates hitting each Australian mortgage holder hard.

Australian politics suffers due to a relatively idle voter base and a headline seeking media. Both parties get played by the likes of Ch7 and 9 every time, chasing the headline and playing tit for tat politics.

[zeb]

Exactly.

Another good example - from this most recent election cycle - was the Coalitions scaremongering re: negative gearing.

[Birds in Hell]

Again, however, that's a legitimate campaign in response to a policy held by their political opposition, not something invented virtually out of thin air.

It's the political equivalent of "so when did you stop beating your wife?" - no matter what Turnbull says in reply, the idea that our health system is under threat is already out there in people's minds.

I'm glad to hear this has been referred to the AFP, despicable behavior by the Queensland ALP:

as someone who works at a public hospital, i can tell you there were genuine rumblings about a task force being set up by the government to look into privatising Medicare after the election. before labor had said anything about it on their campaign. seems to me like the government had decided not to after considering it and then pretended they never even thought about it.

The Liberals researched whether it would be viable to outsource the backend processing of payments to the private sector, it's my understanding this was something the ALP had also considered last time they were in power. If anything, the Liberals were trying to look at ways to maintain Medicare's long-term viability which will continue to be stretched by our aging and growing population.

[LetMeSleep]

Let me also say this about Labor’s supposed “scare campaign” on Medicare. The prime minister was so outraged about it that he thundered, on election night, that the police would be called in! (This made Turnbull look unhinged and un-prime ministerial. He should have left such claims to his special minister for state or attorney general.) On this “scare campaign”, the Coalition ought to have a Bex and a lie down. They did freeze the bulk billing rebate. They did raise fees on pathology and radiology. They did raise the cost of medicines. They did have a task force to privatise the Medicare billing system. They did privatise Medibank. They did try to charge a co-payment for all GP visits.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/03/shorten-fought-on-policies-while-turnbull-sat-back-waiting-for-the-people-to-elect-him

How many people flashed back to "we won't touch the abc, etc" when they said "we wont touch medicare". I know i wasn't the only one. I am really enjoying this.

[Birds in Hell]

http://doesaustraliahaveagovernment.today/

[zeb]

Ha ha.

[zeb]

[Redemption]

Australian politics suffers due to a relatively idle voter base and a headline seeking media.

You just described every major democracy on the planet.;

It doesn't (and hasn't) worked without the State focusing on education.

For the majority anyway.

[Redemption]

So is Aussie politics based on who can box the kangaroo the longest?


Or whatever criminal family you are descended from? Like who did the worst crimes back in the day?


Or is it who can be the most crude or crass? Or what guy name they can stick an "a" at the end of to name their daughters?



Or how filthy and slutty and dirty their daughters can be?


Or who can lie the best?

Or who can appropriate the best? Fuckers be stealing shit to this day.



So far, they only good thing i've seen from that prison colony is this dude....

Spoiler: show

also crowded house