Dear ALP
Lately, I have been thinking back to election night, 2007. I was in Brisbane that night. I’d gone up because I had an early flight to the US next morning, and things being as they are where I live, things like, for example, the treacherous stretch of pot-holed goat track we call the Pacific Highway, if one has commitments such as overseas flights one can only be sure of keeping them if one allows oneself twenty-four hours to drive 300ks. Occasionally, even that isn’t long enough.
Be that as it may.
I returned to the hotel room with Mrs Chook when it was all over, and you had won government. We turned on the TV, danced, drank champagne from the mini bar (what a waste of money that was, in hindsight) and felt, like many others, the terrible oppression of John Winston Howard’s lengthy reign lift off us. We were entering a new political phase, we believed, and our relief and happiness kept us awake for much of the night. By the time I boarded my flight the next day I was exhausted, but content.
It did not take long for things to sour. I believe my first major shock was when Kevin Rudd took that bizarre decision to send the Oceanic Viking, a ship carrying rescued asylum seekers, to Indonesia, where a lengthy stand-off ensued and it became clear that your policies on the question of asylum seekers were beginning to morph into something that more closely resembled those of the deposed John Howard and his right hand executioner, the pallid-complexioned Philip Ruddock. (The one who collected stamps from all the countries whose displaced peoples he locked up indefinitely in Woomera and Baxter, along with their children. He kept them in a Chinese cabinet his wife gave him for Christmas. The stamps, not the people).
One remembers such odd facts.
Things have gone frightfully down hill since then, but I cannot bear to list the litany of offences you continue to commit against those who are legally seeking refuge in this country, as is their human right, and as we continue to invite them to do. You are, ladies and gentlemen, fucking hypocrites on this matter.
I can say that I have never forgiven Kevin Rudd for initiating this downwardly spiralling breach of faith.
Then came the coup. Oh yes, much happened in between but if I’m to list every idiocy I will be here till the end of next year, and anyway, confronting you with individual disgraces is not my intention.
What I do want to convey is my horror and distress, when I recall the great tide of support and enthusiasm that swept you into power in 2007 and compare that to where you are now. That win was miraculous. You could not put a foot wrong. It was the triumph every politician dreams of.
SO WHY HAVE YOU FUCKED IT UP?
I believe you’ve fucked it up because there’s not one among you of any influence capable of putting their ego to one side, and focussing on the greater good of your party, and this country. You’ve had some good policies. You’ve done some good things. But none of this gets any airtime because you are so busy publicly brawling among yourselves that you have become the dominant narrative, with your scandals and your betrayals, and not, as it should be, with your policies.
Nobody can hear the good things above the noise of you fighting like fornicating possums trapped in the roof. You have thus wickedly squandered all your hard-earned capital, and for what, I ask you, for what?
Again, I cannot bear to list the insults and disappointments you have dished out to those of us who elected you, because of your blind, ego-driven hatred of one another. I cannot bear to detail the extent of the self-harm, the cutting of your own arms and legs with blunt razor blades, the public purgings, the binges of self-destruction, the poking out of your own eyes with burnt sticks, the gut-spilling, the incessant factional wars, the eating of yourselves and your leaders, nobody could make this stuff up.
Obviously, you came to power divided and unsettled. Obviously, you are more heavily invested in your internal political hoo haa than you are even in getting yourselves re-elected. Even now, at this eleventh hour, you will not shut up & Mr Simon Crean (no, I will not refer to him as The Honourable) recently and inexplicably found himself compelled to enact yet another attempt at sabotage from the back benches, to whence he was so recently banished after his bizarre efforts to get rid of one leader and replace her with the leader you already got rid of, who has hung around ever since you fatally stabbed him, like an unhappy shade unable to grasp that it is actually dead.
Well, let me tell you, a punter can only take so much before she ceases to give a damn. And sadly, I have now reached that point. I no longer care what you do. Feed on yourselves. Gorge until you vomit like dogs. Do yourselves as much harm as you can manage before you finally collapse in a bloodied heap of lacerated, putrid human flesh, on the opposite side of the house, where you will no doubt languish for decades, and it serves you fucking well right.
Oh, yes you can cry foul, and blame the media. I admit, they have not been on your side. But did you have to make it so easy for them? Did you have to drip feed their malice?
I will vote for Janelle Saffin, my local member, as I have done for some time. This is not a vote of confidence in you, ALP. It is a vote for a damn fine local member who, god help her, has the misfortune to belong to you, and whom you recently demoted because she supports Kevin Rudd, even though she was doing a damn fine job and I resent it that you took her job away from her.
As for the rest of you, quite frankly I wouldn’t piss on most of you if you were on fire.
Sincerely, and more in incandescent rage than sorrow,
Jennifer.
No Place For Sheep 
Come come, calm down. It isn’t that bad if you look at the broader picture.
.
1.Australia has one of the lowest unemployment rates of the OECD.
2.Lowest inflation rates of the OECD.
3.Low government debt.
4.The introduction of Carbon tax that only taxes the polluters with a lowering of our carbon footprint already proved.
5.The introduction of plain packet cigarettes. The world first.
We remain a recognized economic wonder, the envy of the world with standing ovation for the world’s voted best treasurer.
Unfortunately, many still remain ignorant and persist in getting their ‘stuff’ from The Daily Telegraph and 2GB.
It is true. Australia is decades behind ‘modernity’ and quaintly old fashioned but some might actually appreciate that and see it as attractive.
Do you really think Abbott will chase improving our education standard (Nr 27 in the OECD)?
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I am venting my despair at the ALP. No I don’t think Abbott will be any better and that doesn’t help!
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Kevin 07 wasn’t the Messiah? And now Julia isn’t Boudicca riding her chariot over all that isn’t decent or unsightly?
Well time to woman-up, Princess; the real world requires choices between the lesser of two evils most of the time.
And tell that idiot with the H pseudo to learn that lesson as well. I wash my hands of him/her and the perpetual anger over not very much.
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Also, that unemployment rate is BULLSHIT! Look around you.
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That may well be, but I don’t think anybody really believes that Labor’s popularity slide is simply the product of a grand conspiracy. They’ve either failed to articulate their message or to listen to what’s coming back at them from the electorate. If you asked most of us we’d probably say that its a bit of both.
Labor could’ve been as divisive as their opposition has, if only they’d pick a side and go with it. They might have supported same sex marriage and done the about face we’ve wanted them to on the asylum seeker issue. Then they could challenge the bastards in the LNP for the moral high ground. The fact that they haven’t begs the question that if they are going to lose the election then what can we say they went down fighting for?
To me it’s always looked too much like poll watching, covering their arses and too little like standing for anything and to that extent I agree with Jennifer’s ire towards them.
The fact that Abbott can’t possibly keep the promises that he’s mooted with the policies he’s put forward in opposition while even pretending to balance the budget means whatever happens if he does get a turn at the helm will inevitably be even worse. We know that there has long been a huge black hole in their costings and that their teas partying divisiveness has dragged the centre further to the right than ever.
Sadly it’s in the nature of the beast that is politics that Labor have in government been almost like an opposition party in that they’ve lacked the numbers to exert any real control over the political agenda. Thus here we are, left open to a situation where Abbott walks into office on the back of a get rid of Gillard vote and very little else by way of coherent effective policies.
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But if readers are to see anything new, besides ” bla,bla,bla, anyone but Abbott “lesser of two evils” end of days” crap, in your words, you need to acknowledge a few relevant things.
Firstly that JW is right.This is self inflicted demolition.
Self inflicted, if unelected union power base interference is acceptable to those struggling to let go of the coldest political corpse in decades.
The other thing which needs to be acknowledged is also touched on by JW.
The media.Gillard has had bad press.Labor HAS had bad press.
But mostly (when it comes to the most damaging) self inflicted.
And seriously, you would have to be a frigging toss-pot who reads IA only, to say that the MSM or any media recently has gone hard on Gillards Labor.The opposite is true.
Lastly, the chances and opportunities blown.
Poll after poll,warning after warning, voter after voter,blog after blog, all areas and individuals free of the straw-man, ‘media-brainwashing’ argument have warned Labor to step away from the union controllers, and jettison Gillard and restructure.
This is a totally self inflicted misery whose repercussions will haunt us all.
A strategic fuck up to out fuck up all fuck ups.
Gillard will and must go and hopefully she will take the rest of the ignorant morons with her.
Abbott winning will be 110% down to them.
Stop blaming the public.
Stop blaming the media.
Stop shooting the messenger.Man up.
Gillards ALP is going for dozens of reasons which distil down to one massive core reason.
Because they do not deserve to further fail the people of Australia.They have NOT earned or issued respect.
Fuck them all.May they all suffer anxiety for the rest of their days for the wilful political and social damage inflicted on us.
And not for 1 minute to I buy the argument that they haven’t been able to sell their message.
They never owned the message.The message comes from behind the scenes and is delivered with such insincerity and lack of a single breath of conviction.
Some Ministers have owned a slice of the action and showed some passion, but on the whole Gillard has jumped obediently through hoops, and nailed the auto cue time after time.Her greatest asset is her ability to read and remember other peoples words.That is not leadership.That’s is subservience.
Julia willingly parted the waves and Tony waltzed right in.Ten Commandments tucked under his swaggering arms.
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Did you forget to mention that you simply hate Gillard?
Nope! the whole things all about that and only about that for you isn’t it!
I tried to make a decent point that if Abbott’s going to be elected virtually unopposed with no costings and hardly a single policy that’s worth a pinch of shit, then that might be a bad thing.
And all we get from Hypo the brave, time and time again, is carping on about who to blame. Blame, blame and more blame. It’s not your fault Hypo. Congratulations!
It’s “them” isn’t it, Labor, somebody else but not you and apparently you Hypo don’t have any interest in much less responsibility for fixing the fuck up that we’re faced with. You can’t think of a solution, hope for one, work towards it perhaps?
What’s the use of discussing this with people who probably think it’s a such great big funny joke that they’re ready and willing to have a good old laugh at us all if Abbott gets in because their political opponents on a blog are embarrassed. And this despite the carnage we face because whether you liked it or not, when Labor failed, you failed too, because whenever somebody else fails to do the heavy lifting for you, well you just don’t give a fuck!
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Good to see you walk away from the usual pamphlet contents.
I, like hundreds of thousands, have been banging our heads on the ALPs brickwall to get them to listen.Which they did not.
Given you are the one here who has ordained that there are only two possible outcomes, Abbott looks like being Australia’s temporary solution courtesy of the ALP.
Not the reform agenda I would have chosen,or a good result on the whole.
But that is the fault of the PM and the idiots who thought letting the factions run the shop was a good idea.
The death of this Labor ‘is’ a part of this solution.You can thank Howes et al and Gillard and all the idiots who think that union hacks are the ALPs only talent.
Think of faux ALP as an annual crop.Once this harvest is over,we will leave the paddock to get infested with weeeds which will deal with at our earliest opportunity.
Hopefully our next crop is not a ‘volunteer’ crop like this last Labor disaster.If at the other side of this rebuild the ALP still play the stupid union bully game,they will no longer exist.
The Greens have never looked so good.
What with the drift to them, the spite vote and the usual fence sitters and Lib voters, the next parliament could look like anything.
What it won’t look like is a Gillard majority.
If the rusted ons and influential and cheer squad had shown and voiced disgust earlier instead of burying their heads the ALP might have had a chance.
Like I said a couple of days back,what’s to hate?
Gillard does have anything deep enough to justify it.
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What’s the third possible outcome? You keep banging on about it but it has no meat on it’s bones.
I keep telling you that the best the Green’s can hope for is the balance of power in the Senate, And with the NLP in the house its worth about as much as it was under Howard. A little but not enough.
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And “what if’ the ABAs and the AnyoneButFauxLabors all voted for someone else?
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And then a murcle happens? What are you on about? Do you expect that the Greens are going to go from 1 to 75 in the space of one term of parliament?
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No.Are you so thick that you cannot see that if the ABA mob and the disillusioned Labor vote went entirely to the Greens, that would completely reshape our political landscape?
No 75 will never happen in one hit.Did I say it would?
What I have consistently said is VOTE IN SUCH A WAY AS TO STAND BY YOUR OWN PERSONAL BELIEFS AND PRINCIPLES to which YOU answered.
Australia can deliver a starting point for either a real rebuild of real Labor or a new alternative, if idiots like you who think in black and white and who speak in grey, dared to support the concept of ‘doing the right thing’.
You cannot do it.Your mind is a circular corkscrew on this issue.
The spin doctors want the two big parties to dominate,the MSM do too, and the weak minded and lazy are happy to play ping pong with a choice between shafting this big lump of fellow humans or the other big lump of fellow humans.
WE MUST ALL VOTE FOR LABOR OR THE COALITION! EXCEPT DON’T VOTE FOR TONY.
Keep it coming.it’s so 22nd Century.
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EDIT,
….PRINCIPLES to which YOU answered,you will vote Labor, with (no commitment),just ‘maybe a Green vote in the senate.
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BTW
This
“WE MUST ALL VOTE FOR LABOR OR THE COALITION! EXCEPT DON’T VOTE FOR TONY.
is the message you and the apologist are sending, not me.
It’s the sardonic thing.DQ wouldn’t understand.
Best to point that out before it gets twisted.
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Hypo, this is recycled too, and capitalising it as if to shout won’t change the fact.
If you can’t get the Greens up in their own right, and I think we both know it won’t happen, and ABA is your intent then who in hell do you expect to wind up forming government?
Excuse my disappointment but I was hoping for something a little more realistic than that last cascade of responses.
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BTW knock yourself out voting Green, especially in the Senate, but in the house the Anti Abbott vote still has to preference Labor over Lib/Nat. So given that the welded on Laborites and Conservatives capture maybe as much as 70% of the vote the problem for your theory is that the prize pool of Swinging voters is probably too small to represent anything other than a potential distribution of preferences back to the ALP, and thus a third party boil over unlikely.
The idea is laudable, and capable of being wished for, but unlikely and harder to imagine than the prospect of the lesser of two evils vote complementing the anyone but Abbott vote when it comes down to it.
Especially if a leadership change is in the offing 🙂
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Gillard is a fucking freak show who is happy to jail babies for life and is the first PM of this country to be pleased about it.
She still prattles about procedure in refugee cases yet she has never bothered to find out the procedure and parrots fucking Fabulous Phil with her hatred and abuse of those on hunger strike.
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Prove the gaoled for life claim or retract the lie.
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Google Ranjini you fuckwitted moron.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/melbourne-refugees-in-second-week-of-hunger-strike/4631384
Do you think I say those things just to get a rise out of blind fools.
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4478524.html
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I’m obviously no good with remembering names, but if you go the the unleashed story and do a search for Hudson then you’ll see what I posted and the types of assholes I had to deal with when I did so.
It’s by no means a situation I want to defend but it seems to be an isolated case where the family’s in question are at a stalemate where they can neither come into Australia or go back where they came from. That leaves only the possibility, I assume, that we have to find somewhere else that they can go as soon as possible. And I sincerely hope we do, but that isn’t the same as passing sentence condemning people to a life sentence in gaol. And you’re mischaracterising it for effect does your cause no good whatsoever. You’re painting yourself as a hyperbolic rant artist with a bad case of Tourettes who nobody is going to listen to.
And if you go about calling people “fuckwitted” then it shows what sort of wits you have that when you should be at your most persuasive you choose instead to spout abuse. If your heart’s in the right place, as I think it is, then isn’t it about time that you grew out of throwing tantrums every time your precious ideology isn’t followed to the letter. If you keep carrying on like that then I shouldn’t be surprised if you do get shown the door here just as you were by Bob Ellis.
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There are 56 people you moron. No democratic country should jail people in this manner without charge or trial.
And if people are fuckwitted I will continue to call them fuckwitted.
You call me a liar because you are too friggijng lazy to find out the facts.
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Marilyn, Please I’ve had your abuse you’re a pig and a bigot: someone who, as a result of their prejudices, treats other people with hatred, contempt, and intolerance. And its about time you were told as much. Your Tourettes is intolerable and I’ve told you before that I’m not doing your research for you, if you want to make a point then make it, and while your at it do remember to present credible evidence and not something that you’ve hyperbolically exaggerated.
As I said before your heart may be in the right place but your bluster and abuse is all over the place like a madwoman’s shit!
I hope Jennifer will excuse me taking you to task so brusquely, but if she won’t then I have to cop it and frankly it has needed to be said for some time. Your grip on reality is slipping so badly that I’m sure some of us begin to wonder whether you may in all seriousness need to seek help.
Please Don’t reply!
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Well stated Hypo! The notion that Labor is entitled to govern no matter the ineptitude displayed is being challenged day in day out in all the avenues noted by Hypo yet nothing has been learned.
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I agree, but there’s also a real danger now that Abbott is almost entitled to take government regardless of whether he presents his costings or offers a decent set of policy alternatives.
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Paul Smith>”Well stated Hypo!”
Hudson Godfrey > “I agree”
And yet???
“Beware ye who enter the Rue de la Godfrey Cul De Sac, there is no way out.”
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Rubbish Hypo, you’re trying to put words in my mouth because you don’t like that fact that I’ve confronted you with the harsh reality that your Gillard hate is driving a self destructive impulse.
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The gall.You who claim ‘I’ put words in YOUR mouth.
You most repeated threat is that ALL who refuse to vote for Gillard are Abbott supporters.
You should get into the carpet manufacturing business.
With weaving like that you’d make a squillion.
You’ve exposed nothing but the resident unflinching adoration to the most opportunistic and damaging PM the country has ever had.
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Rubbish again! All I’ve been saying to you repeatedly over the past weeks is that if Gillard is bad then on the evidence as I see it Abbott is worse.
If anything less than complete and uncompromising visceral hatred towards Gillard is perceived as a “threat” by you then you do have a problem!
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Oh yes,I forgot mention your spare mantra.
Thanks for posting it.
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Yes, I think they are not good at selling themselves. I could not believe how the ALP has been so slack in countering the relentless negativity of the press and the sneering contempt by Abbott and Co. Perhaps she could have used his cruel and snide remarks to Bernie Banton better or continued with her flash of brilliance when countering Abbott in parliament with his overt misogynous behaviour. His idiotic remark about his daughters hymen being the ultimate gift to future husbands. How idiotic a statement for a future PM!
Abbott is a staunch royalist for Pete’s sake. Why did she not attack him on that? Fancy having a foreign Queen. Then the boat people debacle.
In any case, the relentless negative press is probably a hard act to fight against.
Perhaps a good writer should have been engaged.
However, I haven’t discounted that things could turn around very quickly. The NBN and now the billions of $ on education ought to get the swing that is needed. The biggest advantage for labor is the prospect of Abbott as PM. Surely we are not that obsessed with the perceived flaws of Gillard compared with Abbott?
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It’s exactly this sheep like approach to issues, ALP good, LNP baad, that emboldens the incompetents in the ALP.
Blanket mischaracterisation adds no value to any debate..
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There is currently no legitimate ALP, only a union dominated Trojan horse cheered on by a lazy chorus of principle free ‘Fair Go’ wrecking shape-shifters.
They will all change pseudonyms after the election or when the ICAC and other enquiries start taking out a few big scalps.Bring that on puh lease!
What an insult that this PM dared to want a seat on the security council.
And bases and troops in the top end, while she juggles Chinese balls.
The difference between fighting to save Gillard and fighting to save Labor separates the mundane from the humane.This faux Labor would not know the concept of humanity if it bought them lunch every day.
.
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Both of them were born in the UK, they were born to worship the foreigner because to them she is not a foreigner, she is one of them.
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True Abbott was Labor’s biggest asset but Gillard’s currently sitting so far down in the polls that she doesn’t so much need an asset as a miracle. Abbott’s mouth could be just that. But don’t hold out too many hopes given that the way the narrative goes in some quarters, now it’s Gillard who is Abbott’s asset.
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Oh yes.Because there is nothing which makes a spineless non-Labor PM more eligible than her counterpart tripping over his tongue.
Sterling policy strategy”.Howes Winning Government 101″.
I mean the Aussie people always leave the decision of who to vote for, till the last weekend, and tune into Australias Funniest Potential PM Edition Home Videos.Whoever has the most gaffs gets binned.
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negativity from Hypo, how novel 🙂
I asked you a direct question earlier about this mythical third way of your’s why don’t you see if you can’t find that one and answer it. I’m sure you’d revel in the opportunity to make a positive contribution for a change….
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I’ve answered a hundred times and once more before you posted this reply.
You and the apologists aren’t interested in alternatives scenarios.You only have one mantra.
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Yeah, that’s right Hypo I always ask questions that I know that answer to.
Would it hurt to make a positive contribution that much?
I recall at one stage that you floated something vague about Abbott and the Greens. But that’s just what it was vague and unlikely. Abbott won’t work with the Greens because he can’t. It isn’t in his DNA, he thinks everything they’re on about is crap and he struggles visibly to say otherwise.
Surely you’ve something better than that?
Are we really just going back in circles to the lesser of two evils for the umpteenth time, or do you actually think you might finally come out of your shell of negativity that you hide behind and brainstorm a few ideas?
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“Yeah, that’s right Hypo I always ask questions that I know that answer to.”
Annoying.Try not to.
“Would it hurt to make a positive contribution that much?”
Is going into your cul de sac your definition of positive?
“I recall at one stage that you floated something vague about Abbott and the Greens”.
I said how the fuck do you know?A crystal ball?
“But that’s just what it was vague and unlikely.”
Vague and unlikely.
Is that your family crest?
“Abbott won’t work with the Greens because he can’t. It isn’t in his DNA, he thinks everything they’re on about is crap and he struggles visibly to say otherwise.”
And yet you and the apologists claim he would do ANYTHING to gain power.
You want it both ways now.Hypocisy, p’raps?
“Surely you’ve something better than that?”
Better than speculation on your speculation?Why? Is your speculation special?
“Are we really just going back in circles to the lesser of two evils for the umpteenth time, or do you actually think you might finally come out of your shell of negativity that you hide behind and brainstorm a few ideas?”
I am not the one who wanks the rod of two evils to blister status.That’s you.
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I can’t believe you’ve now actually quoted me telling you to try and make a positive contribution for a change as the basis for yet another negative snide remark.
When you asked in effect whether Abbott would follow past form in his dealings with the Greens or institute his own stated policies you insulted your own intelligence by coming up with that ludicrous crystal ball remark. Nobody needs a soothsayer, he’d have taken office if he could strike a bargain with the Greens or independents, and voters are entitled to judge their politicians on the policies we’re presented with. That’s how politics works.
It may well be that Jennifer takes the odd angry swipe at Labor as do we all, but you don’t even seem to hear us agreeing with her. It’s all just negativity and frankly you’re starting to bore us with it!
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“… but I don’t think anybody really believes that Labor’s popularity slide is simply the product of a grand conspiracy.”
I’m not so sure of that. If you go to Bob Ellis’s blog, which resembles the baboon enclosure at the zoo a little more each day, you can find a solid majority of the regulars myopically convinced that this is a fine government with fine policies being undermined by a Satanic conspiracy between the Coalition, the MSM and the ABC, the whole thing personally orchestrated by Rupert Murdoch, who apparently directs each word and gesture Tony Abbott emits.
Of course, I know that Ellis is an unlicensed political clown rather than a commentator, but if you go to the Independent Australia website you can see this depressing syndrome in all it’s full-blown glory. This is not going to make it any easier for the ALP to reinvent itself, and I think now it’s a case of reinvention or extinction.
Every word of Jennifer Wilson’s rant above resonated deeply with me. I’m about as disappointed with this lot as it’s possible to be. The only time they seem able to rouse themselves from timid managerialism is when they’re ripping into each other. Wayne Swan, who ought to win the award for Most Insipid Political Personality of the Century So Far, has only ever sounded like he believed in anything when he was attempting to foreshorten Kevin Rudd with a chain-saw.
Their shameless attempts to try and manipulate the asylum seeker issue, which involves some of the most vulnerable people on the plant, who have been through horrors the rest of us can barely imagine, is only the most egregious example of their political gutlessness and inability to provide leadership.
Leadership? They don’t have the ingredients. And Rudd was no better at this than Gillard. As for political bottom-feeders like Stephen Conroy, pass me the sick bag.
I feel better after venting.
But that’ll wear off in about three and a half minutes.
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I grant you that nobody’s entirely sure what Ellis believes when it comes to conspiracy theories ever since he went through that stage of thinking everyone who disagreed with him was CIA. Though to be fair he does get trolled, mercilessly.
So yes I’ve been to Bob’s blog but as the Old Monty Python sketch would have it this here is the room for argument, Bob’s is often where you go for abuse.
I agree that Jennifer’s rant does resonate. And I could have left my comments at that, but I like to take the basic idea of a piece and try to expand on how it affects me. So the point I was making was just that all the things Jennifer says about the ALP in government are all the things we can also regret because they’re paving the way for the LNP to walk in sans costing and sans any real policies. And (as Bob would say) it’s a pity.
You’re entirely right to say that Labor lack leadership at the moment and I think it’s even worse than that. Would be string leaders are I think having their agenda’s eviscerated by the factions. So even if I think Carr or Shorten occasionally show a bit of promise I’m entitled to wonder if the leadership would destroy even that glimmer of hope. Too little too late…..
But I don’t leave the topic without saying that if leadership and ideas on the other side of politics counted for aught then Turnbull wouldn’t be sitting on his hands pledging allegiance to a toad like Abbott either. What says anyone to that?
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Well. I can’t disagree with you there. Abbott isn’t even the beginnings of a pimple on the arse of an actual leader, for all his bluster and posturing.
Turnbull is, but I wouldn’t vote for him myself and in any case he’s got Buckley’s of squeezing his behind into the seat of power this side of the apocalypse.
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Some would say that the analogy is apt between Turnbull and Gillard (or Rudd) each saddled with parties whose various factions and power-brokers seem to have more control than the person who’s supposed to be running the show….. Mind you, you’d have to be more generous towards Gillard than I think most here are inclined to be.
However if we ruminate on the theme of party disloyalty that cost Turnbull the leadership back in the heady days when Rudd just about delivered an ETS, then that is also what we’re agreeing has buggered Labor in terms of some of the things Jennifer mentioned. And maybe we could have known as much when Labor lost a comparatively young and talented bloke in Lindsay Tanner. But none of that is particularly likely to change the fact that Mr Rabbit’s set to descend upon us with his ears pinned back and his pointy teeth bared in a grimacing cry “stop the boats” and people are probably going to buy it!
Of course that’s what hurts our political sensibilities every time we think of it, but I do wish people would weigh this situation on its merits and take account of the facts of who’s going to suffer under an LNP government. If refugees are treated worse, Miners better, Public servants and Services cut so that we can have a surplus, and the environment treated as the “crap” that Tony truly thinks it is, while even things like the Royal Commission into Child Abuse will probably be threatened, then will somebody please tell me how we’ll be better off under Abbott?
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So now you know the Royal Commission into child abuse is being canned when Abbott gets in.
Can I have next weeks lotto numbers please?
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What you reckon he makes excuses for paedophile priests but he’ll be fine with implementing all the findings and ponying up the budget for investigating his mate Pell? There’s no credibility gap too big for your mate Tony to leap now is there?
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These are YOUR words
“things like the Royal Commission into Child Abuse will probably be threatened”
I responded thusly;
“So now you know the Royal Commission into child abuse is being canned when Abbott gets in.”
Then you did the usual word twist samba on my words.And built another straw-man around your perceptions.
And you accuse me of putting words in your mouth?
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I’ve no idea of the context when I wrote that so here’s the thing,….
If they’re my opinion then I think its an opinion I still hold. In that case treat it as opinion and refute it with evidence.
If theres some other evidence I presented in the context of the original posting that I can’t at the minute draw upon then you’ll evidently be able to find it and again you may try to refute it.
But seriously if you’re not turning into an Abbott supporter (which I know you strenuously deny) then you are nonetheless turning into something of an apologist for him. And if I could hazard a guess then its because you’re trying to assuage your conscience of being so obsessed with hating Gillard that you want to delude yourself (and us) that the alternative isn’t as bad as it seems. Well I ain’t buying it!
Abbott is and will be every bit as bad as he seems and I don’t need to be hyperbolic or exaggerated in my efforts to say as much. All you need to do is weigh up the contents and consequences of his stated policies. And you know what they are because they’re in the public domain and they’ve been pointed out to you dozens of times by myself and others.
What I’ve been trying to say is that I’m happy if you want to vote Green, and I hope somehow the numbers after the election dictate that it makes a meaningful difference if you do. But with the two party system dominant in the way that it is that’s hard to see happening.
I’m trying to ask whether changing leaders might persuade people to get back behind Labor, and at the same time whether a new helmsman would steer the ship differently.
And importantly, in response to Jennifer’s latest “Deat ALP” letter, to say that if nothing else then between now and the election if Labor have already fallen as far as we fear they may have then something still needs to be done to keep Abbott honest about his policies and costings.
Apparently that’s not good enough for you because none of these are ideological statements or something, but frankly your take on my thoughts is no uniformly adversarial that I stopped wondering what you expect of me quite a while ago.
Please just stop the hate!
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Well so fucking what Gerard? WE are jailing babies for fucking life and that is a crime that is not forgiven by having a cold hard economy.
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Yes, but the fucking cold hard cunt economy gives us a good fucking reason to vote for Gillard. Would the fucking arsehole, gutter prick of snatch-hole Abbott be fucking cunt sniding to poor old Benie Banton be any better, cunt, fuck and more fuck with Tasmanian map cunt images…fuck.
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The cold hard cunt economy does nothing for the poor, the disabled, the aborigines or refugees – people cannot live in a cold cunt economy.
If you think swearing will be a turn off you don’t know me.
An economy without fucking social decency is a bank.
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Gerard, 1-3 would have occurred if Blind Freddie had been leading the country since 2007. Howard had set up the economy for a failsafe journey through the GFC. The ALP despite their top heavy academic interference, have been mere annoying bystanders, watching workers keep the economy going while spending unwisely on sectorist projects. Roll on the workers revolution and let us return to a Coalition government. 4 is a huge mistake. 5 I agree with. gg
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Really nothing else to add to this, some great ideas to help the nation totally screwed over by petty infighting & factional crap. You pretty much said exactly what a hell of a lot of punters are thinking, sadly 😦
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Hear, hear!! “hear, all ye good people, hear what this brilliant and eloquent speaker has to say!”
In Spades!
And thank you, ALP, for delivering Australia unto Abbott and Pell, fuckwits!
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By Zeus, how I envy the sufferers of Tourette! To be able to use the word “fuck” with such abandon! What a splendid word! So versatile, so efficacious! So perfect in describing so many things! Nouns, verbs, participles, imperatives, you name it!
To paraphrase a few people:
Fuck you! (Alan Bond)
The world is fucked! (Abbott)
The fucking loonies have taken over the asylum! (Colin Powell)
Don’t be such a weird fuck! (Mungo Macallum)
You’re fucked in the head, mate! (Billy Connolly)
Let us go, you and I when the stars are spread across the sky like a fucked up patient in surgery! (T.S.Eliot)
That was a splendiferous fuck! (Zorba)
Aaaaaah, now that was a fucking good FUCK! By Zeus, I love you sweetheart! (Ato -to Mrs Ato!)
Sorry for the academic diversion, Jennifer!
You speak well about this anathema called ALP! Randy fuckers who can’t get enough things to fuck! But we’ll fuck them in September!
You mark my words, they’ll feel like a fucked shag on a rock in a Shakesperean, nay, biblical tempest!
You mark my fucking words!
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I see you have a great affection for the word, Atomou, as do I 🙂
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It’s such a great force of liberation!
I’m certain that was the real rallying cry of the russian rebels in October ’17, “Fuck the fucking Tzars!”
And of the french as they were storming the Bastille. “Fuck the fucking Bourgeoisie!”
And it’s what Marie Antoinette and Margaret Thatcher said about the poor: “Fuck the poor!”
Now we have the political duopoly screaming, “Fuck the refugees!”
Very effective rally word that one!
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As Jennifer Wilson has confirmed already in the comments to this blog post, her post is a ‘vent’, and a vent “more in incandescent rage than in sorrow”. Jennifer made the observation that:
“… [the ALP is] more heavily invested in
your internal political hoo haa than you
are even in getting yourselves re-elected.”
On Twitter recently, in what was an intendedly humourous exchange of banter, Jennifer declared:
If only people could focus more upon the value of ‘counting’, in its widest electoral generality, even if in incandescent rage at seemingly inexplicable collective political incompetence, then perhaps there could be arrival at an understanding of the presently incomprehensible. Or am I just whistling in the wind to suggest that here on ‘Sheep’?
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I’m more frugal with my fuck-words, I only shouted one fuck when I saw Mirabella’s face on my TV screen last night before turning the Q&A off…
I’m saving my expletives and tears if the unbearable Abbott is voted in….
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Well I just think it’s symptomatic of Australians (with a few notable exceptions of course) having a misplaced sense of entitlement resulting from their ignorance at how good things actually are. A government that can’t keep itself together despite the country it leads riding the crest of the global economy? First world problems indeed!
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If only ‘fucking’ was done in deeds rather than in words. Have you noticed that so many liberal ministers wear dark glasses and keep hands in pockets?
We all know, they read The Daily Telegraph and listen to 2GB totally ignoring their hairy palms and blindness. Incorrigably pulling their pudding while staring with jutting jaws at Bolt and listening to A.Jones. Did your mother not tell you to stop it?
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Well, I told mine it was fine, but like picking one’s nose, best done in private.
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Perhaps, but I was just about to ask Gerard when his birthday was.
Because I’ve thought of a great gift idea: http://www.fleshlight.com.au/
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Does it come with a wheelbarrow?
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Damn, I’ve always prided myself on having a dirty mind but I’m not sure I’m quite capable of processing that question…
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Think of ‘well hung’. By the way, does it come with Apps such as multi- grips?
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I see – obviously not in your league Gerard!
But actually there are a number of different interchangeable sheathes available to suit your personal requirements…
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Thanks for your offer Samjandwich, but you seem to have forgotten my 500 metres of glad wrap.
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In case you though that the ALP holds out a glimmer of hope which would indicate sanity within their ranks>
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-16/joe-bullock-takes-top-spot-on-labor-senate-ticket/4631430?section=wa
The pain will end sooner than you think JW.
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And if you hang around long enough the usual apologists will pop in and convince you to give Julia another shot, and that it’s all the punters fault and Julia can do no wrong etc.
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Sandy Hook massacre 28 dead and the Dow Jones barely moved. (Own guns)
Boston marathon 2 die and D.J down 2%. The biggest single day drop this year. Reason? possible foreign gun (bomb)
In the meantime ,how many got killed overnight in Iraq? Fifty or sixty? How many kids blown up in Afghanistan?
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And keep in mind that increased US troop numbers on our soil will increase the risk of terrorist attacks on our soil.
I cannot see an end to acts of terrorism, as long as humans behave like humans.
The death toll in Syria overnight will probably fly under the Radar,too.
The Boston explosion may even be home grown.Time will tell.
So much for ‘military intelligence’.Obama must be spewing.
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Compulsory viewing: 4 Corners. WIll be repeated tonight.
How the US and the UK secret services are totally stupid, trigger happy madmen in constant frenzy to fuck up the world.
The whole Iraq war began with a lie, uttered by a congenital liar who first talked with the Germans and who understood pretty early on that he was a liar and told the US that he was. Fabricator was the word used to describe him. From that one lie a whole industry of bumholes confused the hell out of the leading thugs of the Coalition of Killers and a million people slaughtered, displaced, deformed by depleted uranium, their land completely destroyed and made infertile for generations.
Compulsory viewing. Don’t miss it if you haven’t seen it yet!
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Pretty soon America will be in security grid lock.
This is the end result on where ‘patromania’ has taken them.
Some of the USAs greatest enemies are those within.
That goes for those daft security spooks, Tea Party types,anti-abortionists,extremist views within the NRA, KKK etc.
All believe they are upholding the Constitution and/or doing Gods work.
For all the good the US has the ridiculous swallows it up,time after time.
Innocent people watching a race, now blown to Smithereens.
Another chunk of American safety and freedom gone forever.
This could even be the work of someone railing against proposed gun law changes.
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That thought also entered my mind, hypo. This is, I thought a message to Obama. Probably took that form because security around him is now so tight that the assassin(s) couldn’t deliver it more directly and probably wanted to do so from the first day he appeared on the scene.
Who the fuck knows what goes on in the minds of the inner sanctum of some of these gangs! FBI+ Mafia?
Reminds me of the stock question a tv detective asks someone close to the victim: Do you know anyone who might have had a grudge against the victim?
I can just image the answer in this case: How long have you got?
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Yes and the Ranga gives condolences to Boston and doesn’t mention Iraq or Afghanistan.
Fucking racist suckhole.
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Four Corners is most illuminating about the inner workings of the bully machine. It makes one scream with outrage. All the demonstrations around the word meant nothing to these shits. All the truth shoved in front of their faces meant nothing. They wanted a war and they concocted the lies to get it.
Why they aren’t locked up to perish in some godforsaken jail, I have no idea!
Albright’s “justification” of the killing of a million babies (would she have stopped at 2 million? 3 million? Any number of babies?) describes so accurately the mindset behind these egregious shits!
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Well! What can have set off that diatribe, just as there really are big issues to discuss?
What about the comparative case regarding Broadband, now that the Noalition have shown their hand, to general derision?
What about the implementation of the Gonski reforms in education?
What about the continuing and pervading skunk odour around the misogynist sexist leader of the opposition, who also happens to be a homophobe and a protector of paedophiles?
When you have returned to your senses, Jennifer you might answer this post.
The one I call “Hypocrite” need not bother.
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A coward like you lowers the name of Quixote.
The truth is you’re a pathetic apologist with hundreds of pro Gillard pseudonyms.
Please provide links where DQ has admitted the failures of Gillard and her un Labor policies.?
There are none.Nada zilch,zip.
You’re her personal pooper valve.
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@ hudsongodfrey April 16, 2013 at 9:37 pm #
So as usual all you are saying is there are only two choices, but there is only one.
Australia ‘must’ vote 1 Labor.
Fuck principles,ethics,morals,beliefs,humanity,values.
My my, you are so deep.
Just remember that post election I will remind you of your support for this union driven version of a once proud Labor, every single time another scum-bag gets exposed as a crook.No matter what else Abbott does in govt the one commitment I seriously hope he upholds is setting up an extensive enquiry into the operation of the modern union movement,whose senior personnel have wrecked the entire concept of accountable unionism in the workplace.
And the more the faux Labor lovers scream about that enquiry, , the more they are exposed as impostors and hypocrites.
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No I never said that I said that when the choice you offer aren’t in the least realistic then they can’t be counted as choices.
Yes I told you you’d gloat!
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Not gloat,celebrate.
The party will be huge.The whole country is invited.Even you.
BYO ‘sharpened’ pencil.
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Drunk on Stupidity no doubt and not looking forward to the hangover 😦 FAIL!
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I am accused of never criticising Gillard. I plead guilty. She cops more than enough criticism from all sides, little of it merited.
Why should I join the Sheeps’ Chorus of Gillard baaaaad!
I leave that to those brain dead enough to think that they might be better off under Abbott or any other Liberal despot; Morrison perhaps.
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Oooh she can do no wrong.
The only people delivering Abbot the PM ship is Gillard ,Howes et al,and their obsequious sycophantic suck-hole supporters, of which you are the epitome.
Creme de la creme du felche.
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@hudsongodfrey April 16, 2013 at 10:40 pm #
Bore us?
What?You,DQ and the Scandinavian ‘anti Anglo,everything about Australia is bad’ tag team?
Very magnanimous of you.
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To HG : Snide remarks are all it is good for lately; I wash my hands of it and will not directly reply to it, and I recommend that you do the same. And I recommend that to Paul Walter and the Oostermans as well. Atomou – one may as well try to influence a bandersnatch, but he could do well to ignore it as well.
Sane discussion of the issues is difficult enough without a hate troll, for that is what it has become. Post after post are devoted to flaming and distractions. A pity; it was once an intelligent contributor, and still may be on other topics. (sighs)
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I should apologise for failing to tie my first response to Jennifer’s blog post to her opening paragraph. That failure makes my earlier comment appear almost off-topic, suggesting as it does that careful study of electoral mechanical considerations may go some way toward explaining the seemingly inexplicable political performance against which she vents.
Jennifer’s opening paragraph inspires me to think back to election night, 2007, too. Some of what I saw and thought at, and in the days that followed, the 24 November 2007 Federal elections, is recorded in a series of 19 posts by me to an OnLineOpinion General Discussion topic, ‘One in five Australians failed to vote …’, opened on Monday 26 November 2007. My first post to that discussion can be seen here: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=1306#23225 . Just click the ‘All’ button at the top of the page to which the link delivers you to gain access to the whole thread, which you will need in order to read any of my posts other than the first.
I am embedding the tweet that immediately follows as a mooring-post for a digital archivist, as much as for Jennifer’s (or anyone else’s) information:
The reason a digital archivist may need such a mooring-post is that the AEC Virtual Tallyroom 2007 Federal elections progressively updated web pages, to which I made reference and linked in my November-December OLO posts of 2007, have since been taken down. (Check for yourself by clicking the links.) One can only wonder why, given their importance as a matter of national record.
In reviewing my 2007 posts to that OLO thread, hindsight illuminates what could not have been seen as being particularly important at the time: two electoral Divisions included in my spot-check study of seven NSW Divisions were those of Dobell and Lyne, seats that were to come to be held by Craig Thomson and Rob Oakeshott respectively. That there, at least transiently, appeared to have been anomalies with respect to the reconciliation of the accounting for ballot paper issues in these two Divisions at the 2007 elections, in the light of the subsequent events of the HSU scandal and the 2010 hung Parliament outcome, is in my opinion a matter of potential concern.
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FG can you articulate in laymans terms what the paragraph below is alluding to?
” That there, at least transiently, appeared to have been anomalies with respect to the reconciliation of the accounting for ballot paper issues in these two Divisions at the 2007 elections, in the light of the subsequent events of the HSU scandal and the 2010 hung Parliament outcome, is in my opinion a matter of potential concern.”
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I’d suggest Forrest Gump is suggesting the results of the 2007 election, and by extension the most recent hung parliament situation, may well have been illegitimate, mate!
As in, “Rob Oakshott’s my illegiti-mate”!
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Still giggling!
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Well that would not surprise me.
Lets have another election then.
The celebratory drinks are already cold.
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One short answer, Hypo, is in the last few lines of this post to the thread to which I have already linked:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=1306#23334
“Of the 8,322 pre-poll envelopes issued in Dobell only 6,177 show as received. Why should there be any difference? Don’t pre-poll voters leave the enveloped vote they have claimed in the very place it was issued?”
On the face of it, over 2,000 genuine ballot papers perhaps able to at some point prior to finality of the count be substituted for other marked ballots without appearing to have violated any overall reconciliation of ballot paper issues.
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I doubt it. For 1 in 4 of the ones issued to not be returned is probably normal enough : Any Electoral Officers able to shed light on the procedure?
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Nothing wrong with the Dobell election and Thomson has done nothing wrong.
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I wasn’t trying to suggest Thomson has done anything wrong in relation to the HSU matters, Marilyn. If anything, I tend to give credit to his claims as to having been threatened with being ‘set up’, perhaps with the aid of forged documents. The point I would like to make is that perhaps there exists a covert ‘pre-selection’ process that operates across the political spectrum so as to largely filter out candidates considered immune to coercion.
I became even more believing of Thomson’s claims when I learned of the intimidating strip-search to which he was recently seemingly needlessly subjected in connection with the securing of his attendance at a court hearing in Victoria. That is one reason why I apprised him of suspected evidence of forgery elsewhere in electoral high places in these tweets:
You assert that there was nothing wrong with the 2007 Dobell election, Marilyn. On what basis? The official AEC VTR was, at the time, and for a time as it was progressively being updated, telling anyone who was watching otherwise.
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I live in the electorate of Batman. Would you vote for the ALP in Batman?
………and it makes no difference to me whether Georgie Pell becomes queen of Australia or whether Lizzie Windsor/Battenberg remains queen of Australia.
As Marilyn would say they both/all incarcerate innocent men, women and children, much as Obama does in Guantanamo and elsewhere.
These people who play at mouthing off about human rights wouldn’t know them if they fell into their laps.
We don’t have too many politicians who are worthy of being elected to parliament to “represent” us.
Mannie De Saxe
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The Sheep threads are monotonously similar- Jenny if you aren’t going to add some thing new, why continue to recycle the same old stuff you did last week, last month, last year.
Changing the title of the last ten threads is not the same as adding some thing new, why not just put a link announcing “last months” or “last weeks” to save us the trouble of having to read the same stuff again.
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I think that assessment a little unfair. Perhaps you don’t understand that blogging and the choosing of which blogs to follow is not necessarily a matter of wanting variety so much as of holding a more or less continuous conversation that swaps between the handful of topics that both writer and reader share and interest in. I find it as entirely unremarkable, though thoroughly admirable, that our host maintains a certain consistency in her views. You may disagree…..
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The truly monotonous thing is the perpetual Sheep contributor baa-ing its message of hatred and naivety “things will be be better if only we could change Prime Ministers” – many thought that, when Keating was voted out; they got John Howard.
This time they will get – wait for it – Tony Abbott! All of Howard’s faults and none of his (modest) competency. And throw in a Jesuit way of arguing and his adherence to the myths of religion.
Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire!
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Quite so, DQ but you mustn’t forget -and let’s face it, DQ, you idolaters of this non-Labor, DO forget- the self preservation interests of all political parties and, in this case, those of this non-Labor party: They will fall so badly that they’ll never want to fall again, so they will do what they will need to do to preserve the group as a whole party and not as a bunch of self promoting thugs.
The lesson they will learn, if they will do the right amount of introspection and I think this time they will or else they’ll be doomed for generations, is that it is not the personalities, it is not the self aggrandisement, it is not the blind bum-lifting to the Yanks, it is not the adoption of the slimy, regressive and oppressive values of the non-Libs/non-Nats that will see them in Parliament again, but the ditching of all of that and the development of new policies whose yeast is morality, intelligence, imagination: values of justice, a disciplined ego, humanity, compassion for all, not only for the filthy rich.
They will take the daggers back to the museum where they belong and will learn to talk in the caucus as human beings, unafraid and with respect, not only for each other and for the party but, far more importantly, for the non-filthy rich people of this country.
If this happens, Abbott won’t last a term, even with all the non-media rallied around him to do the arrow shooting for him.
To let this non-Labor bunch of conservative fools back in again, will mean to let them continue behaving the way they have been so far. Nothing will change and the bullshit (oh, our great economy!) will continue unabated.
No thanks!
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The Lord has spoken.All hail DQ.
I stand by my comments and behind one pseudonym while doing it.
Try it some time.
Your support for the destruction of Labor will not go unnoticed and unforgotten.
You admitted here you gave more a toss about Shakespeare’s origins,than many political issues.
You confessed here that your love of Howard extended to his hate speech on deciding how and who arrives here in times of desperation.No turn around and claim respect for Keating and use Howards name in 180 degree fashion.You’re a joke.
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Edit
“Now you turn around”
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How can an otherwise intelligent person get me so wrong?
I detest Howard and all his works and always have, right from his efforts as Treasurer under Fraser. I’ve lived through it all, from a childhood under Menzies, through the glories of Gough in the mid 70s, then the long fight to defend the advances made by that wonderful government, through Fraser’s backsliding and then Hawke’s trying to hold the line.
“Australia needs a strong leader!” they whinged. They got Paul Keating, as strong and focussed a leader with a vision as one could ever hope to come across in a generation; and what happened? They elected Howard! Miserable little toad, called a “lying fucking rodent” by men in his own ministry.
And re-elected the toad not once but twice more!
Curse the toad and his dead witch mate Maggie : he attended her funeral perhaps in grief, but I’ll lay odds that most who were there wanted to be sure she was really dead.
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At one level I would agree with you, paul walter, that ‘Sheep’ threads are monotonously similar. I see that similarity as being the frequency with which comments are posted that in no way derive from Jennifer’s blog post, comments that in turn attract responses which also largely tend not to attempt to tie the drift of discussion back to some aspect of the blog post itself.
I think Jennifer sees at least an aspect of this drift in much the same way, if I recall correctly a tweet she posted on Twitter just before she set up ‘The Happy Place’ blog space within the ‘Sheep’ site.
As the host of the ‘No Place for Sheep’ site, it is entirely Jennifer’s prerogative to determine the subjects, and any degree of repetitiveness related thereto, upon which she posts. If her choice of subject doesn’t coincide with an area of one’s own interest or knowledge, surely the thing to do is simply not comment, rather than hijack a thread. It should be borne in mind that contributors are allowed a lot of latitude on Jennifer’s blog with little or no posting limits, censoring of posts, or banning of posters taking place.
All that having been said, I sometimes wonder as to whether the agenda of some commenters on blogs that provide the sort of opportunities ‘Sheep’ does is to disrupt discussion and/or degrade a non-posting blog-reader’s experience. As a case in point, viewers could consider whether the exchanges between ‘Freediver’ and ‘Tao’ in the 2007 OLO thread to which I linked ( http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=1306#23334 ) were likely intended to put off OLO viewers that might have been, or become, interested in then-current electoral matters.
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Look, some people are just so interested in some things that no matter how many times they read an infinitesimally nuanced version of the previous thing they’ll still be utterly fascinated.
My favourite website in the whole world is bringatrailer.com. It’s a site where they put up an interesting car that’s for sale somewhere in the world, and people can comment on it (heh, I have a different pseudonymn there. See if you can guess who I am!). It’s invariably pretty much the same every day, save for the car. But if I happen to find an alert for a new Sheep article *and* a new BaT article in my inbox, then Sheep is gonna have a pretty tough time!
Butchyeah, the reason I like Sheep is because I think Jennifer’s captured a particular niche in personal politics – perhaps you could call it “elitist compassionism”- which more or less coordinates with my personal politics.
Meanwhile, I’m beginning to feel as though Waul Palter has no personal politics at all. If hypo’s the Angry Young Man, then Waul can be Nasty Dan – so that when you put them together you could call them Nasty Dan and the Angry Young Man… and they could start a band!
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Something concerning the Media Watch on the Murdoch press yet again grotesquely misrepresenting what a Labor politician,( in this case Simon Crean ) said might have been a more consructive slant,
Anything but (yet) again trying to blame Labor exclusively for something that is much the Tories doing as the ALP: where’s the effort at objectivity?
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Perhaps, pauly, this little paddock is the ONLY place where one sees a genuine “effort at objectivity!”
I said “perhaps!”
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And then there are ‘some’ people adhere to the Henry Ford School of Objectivity.
“Any objectivity you like, as long as it is pro faux-Labor.”
The next conspiracy of the desperadoes will probably be along the lines of “all the boats arriving from our north, are somehow a plot of the MSM and opposition, to destabilise the government”.
Guffaw,guffaw.
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Okay then. Riddle me this. Should we be reporting on boat arrivals as they occur or is it perhaps not in the public interest to follow the race to the bottom so assiduously?
If I think back to when Fraser was bringing in 20,000 refugees per year with bipartisan support there wasn’t the reporting of it, just as there isn’t with resettlement programs we participate in with African and Burmese refugees.
So what is this obsession with boats, and how can feeding it be called a good thing?
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I’m still trying to figure our whether this is a rhetorical question or not…
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Well it is certainly a question that could inspire rhetoric.
But the MSM keep reporting them so what are we supposed to conclude from that?
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No we shouldn’t be reporting it as if catching a boat to an island is somehow an aberration to be obsessed with.
The fact is that 14,000 sea borne vessels with over 800,000 passengers come here every year and are never mentioned unless they are the world’s biggest ocean liners or they run aground and cause an oil spill.
OUr media still do not seem to understand that it is perfectly legal for any person to sail on the ocean and there is legally not a single thing we can do about it.
The colonial mindset seems to be that we own the world because we are the special ones down under.
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And for once Marilyn I’ll just say that I totally agree.
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I’m in shock! We agree twice in the one day!
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“So what is this obsession with boats, and how can feeding it be called a good thing?
Riddle me this, ask Gillard and faux Labor what the obsession is, because they are the ones with duplicate coalition policy,minus TPVs and plus excision of mainland Oz..
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As far as I can see excision is a set of weasel words that has virtually no effect other than to give effect to removal of asylum seekers to Christmas island, Nauru or Manus. What Howard and Gillard have both done is virtually equivalent. So while it continues to betray our expectations of Gillard as a Labor leader, we also know that Abbott favours all of the above with TPV’s.
So doesn’t that make Abbott worse than Gillard?
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Pretty much your Black and Gold Gillard has a solar orifice response,HG.
Every time she destroys another ray of hope, you find a pathetic reason over the fence to save her arse.
How are TPVs worse than just doing what Labor are doing now,which is just sending Sri Lankans and Afghanis straight back?
Labor is using ASIO ‘security issues’ as their own rapid fire TPVs.
Your apologia is as almost as bizarre as faux Labors.
We have outlaw bikie gangs doing more harm in a single day, to thousands of Australians, than a boat load of refugees could do in a lifetime, even if they chose to.
The more Gillard is exposed as hypocritical filth by posters here, the more the ‘exposers’ are accused as being Abbott lovers.
It’s really exposing the depth of character (principle) of those who do that banal point scoring, in the first place.
Justifying the unjustifiable- ad infinitum.
Mega FAIL.
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Just face the facts that TPV’s pile on the pain to real people Hypo.
I’m sick of you complaining in hyperbolic terms against anyone who doesn’t condemn Gillard and the entire Labor party with her in terms that paint her as being worse than the LNP when the situation asylum seekers are faced with is going to be years under Abbott and Morrison!
I don’t think you can defend that position much as I see it can and does, as it should, play on your conscience when I confront you with it.
What you’re advocating doing would put us at a dangerous risk of inflicting an Abbott government virtually unopposed upon the Australian people and on asylum seekers. When one weighs the facts on their merits and recognises that as the worst possible outcome then it would seem sensible to conduct a different and entirely more reasonable exploration of how we go about improving the situation short of committing political suicide.
You seem unable to do that because you’re blinded by your all consuming hatred of Gillard. So please do try to berate me with your red herrings about bikies and “look over there” tactics. If people get sent back it is because on our assessment they don’t qualify for grant of asylum, and if that keeps more places open for genuine refugees then it may well be a good thing.
I’ve informed you otherwise on countless occasions yet you keep putting words in my mouth to defend your indefensible and frankly pathetic attempts to direct every last molecule of venom you can towards the object of your own hatred. Gillard.
You won’t accept the lesser of two evils argument l because you’re almost religious in your zeal for seeing Gillard fall.
I take the position that she’s almost as bad as Abbott because to me the matter of whether a politician deserts their ideology is almost immaterial at this stage. I’m old enough and ugly enough to realise that ill concealed ambition is their defining character trait despite the fact that it’s not a very endearing one. If Gillard goes Labor may well be the better for it. It is indeed perhaps even something to hope for. But almost as bad is not the same as worse. And I think others in her party who take a more progressive stance have far more chance of coming to their senses than the Liberals and their national party colleagues ever will of adopting anything that even resembles our point of view.
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No because Gillard just sent home 38 of the poor devils who made it all the way to Geraldton under cover of darkness and in breach of every known legal and civil right engraved in the migration act and common fucking decency.
She is also keeping families apart by releasing people on bridging visas with no right to work, no right to housing, no right to health care and for up to 5 years before they have their claims bothered with.
She is a cunt.
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And now they are using the ‘deprivation’ of legal advice on refugees.
Probably whilst they keep them away from any form of advocacy.
They are far worse than Howard and Abbott is not in power, so they are far worse than he.Anything else is political point scoring and grandstanding by those trying to desperately justify the faux ALP as it lurches further to the right.Anyone claiming this pack of arse-wipes under Gillard is progressive is as Gillard coined it, ‘internet troll or nutjob’.
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Nothing but bloody minded redneckery holds this country back, anon!
Nothing but snot-nosed rednecks makes even the smallest nations on the planet point their finger at us as a prime example of shameful inhumanity.
We have become the snivelling idiots in this global village.
Leadership? Morals? Wisdom? All subverted by Middle-Ages thinking. All subverted by a mind bent on bad trickery and failed illusions!
For some the Enlightenment didn’t happen. For some, 50 million years of evolution passed them by! For some, colonisation is their god-given right! For some, their omphallos is the most marvellous thing in the universe! For some inhumanity is a virtue!
We have become the world’s pit of shame in this. Bloody minded, small minded redneckery at its worst. The snotty little idiots in the global village!
Labor Party? My bum!
Lib/Nat Party? My bum!
Heartless, ruthless, inhumane shits.
Desiccated hearts on all sides except the Greens.
I will have to see a snowflake in hell before I give this coalition of killers anything but my very last preference!
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Anon Twas me^, missed the input bit
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Bastard! I thought we had visitors! 🙂
(Tried to be on my best behaviour!)
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What is decency “fucking” Marilyn? Or should I ask who? And what woman ever calls another woman a “cunt”?
You’re heart may be in the right place but you’re throwing away your own dignity splashing about diarrhoea like this.
Abbott and Gillard have been playing an unedifying game of “anything you can do I can do harsher” with the fortunes of asylum seekers for some time. The difference between the Abbott/Morrison TPV and the Gillard Bridging visa is simply that the former, so it is claimed, will be the same thing applied more widely and with no end date in sight. You have only to look at the difference in the language and posture that Morrison adopts to know that what he represents is a clear and present threat to the continuation of any semblance of the humanitarian programs we once had. I simply and unequivocally argue that we can’t move forwards by embracing regressive attitudes such as those.
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May one suppose that they were not “refugees” under the Convention or the Migration Act definitions?
Suggest that all of you read the Convention as I have, and the Act as well if you like, before shooting off your mouths.
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Suggest you finally deserve a bravery medal for outing yourself as a xenophobe, DQ…
And I’m now beginning to strengthen my view that Hudso is also deserving of the same medal; but I am still a little timid about that. Medals are often, even sometimes, if not occasionally and frequently, awarded quite, if not almost totally, undeservedly!
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http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4637140.html
This bloke usually knows what he’s on about Doug. I think we can say that they are refugees.
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They were not allowed to make a claim your fucking dingbat.
If they are not allowed to make a fucking claim who the hell will ever know.
This is the most brutal, criminal act committed by anyone in decades.
Your apologia for Gillard and her party of racist hacks does you no frigging credit.
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Marilyn,
Julian Burnside, who I gather is held in reasonable regard by many, says in his article on the Drum that they are accepted as being refugees. Do you dispute him?
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Show me where Burnside says that the ones just sent back were genuine refugees.
I read it twice, and he says no such thing.
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Everyone should watch the report from the NZ parliament on the passing of the gay marriage laws and then compare it to the two humourless bigots who lead our major parties.
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I did, and I compare it with one humourless bigot, and a woman who has advocated and allowed a conscience vote in the Parliament.
Well done the NZers, we will follow within a few years. It will happen.
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No I think Marilyn’s right on this one you can’t blame Abbott for having his party vote to form while Labor failed to vote its official party position as earlier endorsed by the national conference. It was and remains as spineless act and a shame.
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Ask Penny Wong,Shouldn’t she be the faux Labor loud hailer , championing for gay marriage.
Not a peep.
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No I disagree and she was ably defended in that regard on Q&A by Graham Richardson.If you want to support Same sex marriage then it would be biting off your nose to spite your face if you were to crucify the very person who’s most likely to be your best ally.
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Can you please point me to her powerful public speeches advocating this cause?
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Penny Wong is the finance minister. That’s her job, she’s not the designated voice of stridency on this particular issue. She leads by example rather than by activism and I guess that’s her choice of how she things she can be most effective.
She’s a great example of how this issue isn’t about flamboyant radical kicking at the traces but of ordinary Australians wanting reforms that would allow them a share of basic human dignity. Why would you want to change that?
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Hudso, above all she is a member of a party. One that has a great deal of work to do to gain some moral fibre and to defend even some basic principles. She is a member of a party whose heart has been left to shrivel beyond repair. What should she do in that party? What should all its members do in a political party? Above all else, they most not be little “yes boys” and “yes sheilas!”
They must speak out, loudly and clearly and, if the issue is important enough, like going off to some shitty war, treating desperate refugees like scum, treating gays and lesbians like lesser, beings, if their party is turning their country into a paradigm of shame, then they should not hesitate to resign! Just get the fuck out of that quagmire of nastiness!
If one or two of tem do that every now and then, the non-leaders, the dictators will take some notice, perhaps even mend their ways.
But you’d rather keep things rolling along as aways, going back all the way to the dark ages.
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What would you ask her or any of them to do, desert the sinking ship like rats or just commit political suicide when her leader won’t stand up for this cause. Maybe the only way forward is to get Labor a decent leader. Like everyone else here I’m tiring of Gillard’s stance on a range of issues, even if I am one of the few who remains convinced that a poor Labor leader is better than a Liberal in the Abbott mold.
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Of course Wong should just do what the union boys tell her.That way SHE gets to live and prosper in ‘their’ privileged world.
Real leaders speak out.What a pathetic apologia, HG.She is the sort of lame ineffectual duck which has dragged Labor down.A significant non achiever who has failed in all her portfolios and on gay marriage she is a weak mute.
If not Wong who?
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If not NOW, WHEN?
Mannie De Saxe
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Domani, e domani, e domani,
Insinua in piccoli passi da un giorno all’altro,
Per l’ultima sillaba del tempo;
E tutti i nostri ieri hanno illuminato stupidi
La via per la morte polverosa.
Domani!
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Capire?
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Clue: Shakespeare
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Not tomorrow, but its time is coming. There are plenty of fools being lighted the way to dusty death.
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I admire Penny Wong for the way she goes about her politics and how she carries herself with a quiet dignity around this issue. A dignity that is perhaps neither granted nor diminished by somebody else’s social institutions.
However I support gay marriage and would support her should she choose to be more vocal about it. Unlike you I don’t go about insisting that others make the ultimate sacrifice of committing political suicide to justify a few comments I make on a blog.
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So now stating your beliefs is political suicide?
That shows exactly what has become of Labor.
Why is it Wong a Lesbian with a child, and who is a Minister is too weak to voice her opinion loud and often on this, and yet ane x unionist(Doug Cameron) is always advocating a fair go?
One excuse after another, for one failure after another.
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I think you’ve got a cheek expecting so much of others after the fashion that you do. Penny Wong obviously believes there are other ways to go about things in politics than just the crude tactic of nailing your flag to the mast.
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“Penny Wong obviously believes there are other ways to go about things in politics than just the crude tactic of nailing your flag to the mast….”
Waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting…
Nope! Can’t see anything happening there, Hudso. Can you? Maybe Wikileaks will reveal something of her plans.
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That seems in a nutshell to be the problem with a couple of you here that you want others to virtually crusade for the virtues that you assign to a brand of politics that you support as long as somebody else is making all those sacrifices for you. Pathetic!
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No, I’m fully prepared to do the sacrificing, if sacrificing is what needed; but it’s not! Nothing of the sort! What’s needed is a clear and meaningful expression of dissent on issues which should be the quintessence of its raison d’etre! Some exhibition of conviction, of heart, of courage.
I’m not in the party, she is. My scalpel is dull, hers is surgery quality. I believe in something, she waffles about something. That is not dignity, that is cowardly appeasement.
She could do well to look at the deeds and character of one of her political progenitors in her State, Don Dunstan! What she wouldn’t learn from that man, ey?
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Yes yes of course the scalpel is dull for we who live smaller lives perhaps that those who make it in politics, but that also means that we’ve less to lose than they have. And this is I think an issue already fought and won whose time is just waiting to be right in the eyes of leaders who are to blame for appeasing the religious right. Why blame Wong when the source of the last and only opposition to this reform is so obvious?
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I blame Wong because it is she who is the Parliamentarian and the member of her party just as I would blame the soldier who didn’t shoot the enemy to save his side. She joined the party for what, if not for protecting it from corruption -from within, as well as from without? Her job is what exactly? So far, other than pretty, telegenic smiles she has given the oz pop, what exactly? To be a closet neo-con? We need no more of them!
She is in the job of her choice and if she’s not, then she should vacate it for someone who knows what its description is and is willing to perform all tasks within it.
If she’s done nothing so far and if Gillard remains her leader past Sep, then nothing will be done for another three years. After that, it’ll be like the question about the Republic! No iron, no heat, no smith to strike, no horse shoes for the newborn colts!
Get the picture Hudso?
And… don’t use “we” after a preposition. The English language is as fucked as he ALP already! It’s “for us who live!”
Zeus help me!
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HA! Continue to torture the English language we do who would find new and interesting ways to piss Atomou off so mightily 🙂
I’ve told you who I think are to blame for this, and it the culprits are those who are actually opposed to it.
Never mind that the futile grand gesture that you demand so uncompromisingly will cost you and ally to your cause.
Never mind that you don’t know how hard Wong is working behind the scenes to persuade Gillard and others to rethink their obstinacy.
Never mind that the fight for the hearts and minds of ordinary Australians is already over with the majority supporting marriage reform by some considerable margin.
You just keep plugging your ideology, failing to read my critique on the subject and bemoaning the failure of others to live up to your expectations. But the fact is that neither Wong, the majority of Australians nor I feel that your expectations dictate the parameters of her job.
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Yes I can blame Abbott. And his mealy-mouthed statement today –
“after the election [too hard basket] the party room will decide”
Fucking brilliant! The fucking party room will decide who is leader as well – and it won’t be fucking Abbott.
What exactly is Abbott?
That should be clear enough to all of us as well:
Economically illiterate despite the University degrees, loud, obnoxious, bullying, misogynist, sexist, closet homophobe, committed to simplistic solutions to difficult issues, committed to social conservative views;
saddled with a rag-tag collection of used-to-bes, never-wases and never-will-bes as a potential ministry;
Add to that his Jesuitical thought pattern which can tell lies (not very convincingly, in my view) and then back away or brazen it out, whichever suits the occasion.
Add to that that he has convinced himself that he is telling the truth when his Big Lies come streaming from his mouth;
Add the likely case of pre-Alzheimers (or dementia pugilistica if you like) which derives from an amateur boxing career and too many rugby league football hits around the head;
And you get the flavour of this man who would be Prime Minister.
Unfit for office – any office.
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Are you so dull that you think the world does not know that promises are made before elections and broken after?
Commitments made and money not available after?
This is politics 101.
Gillard is wasting her time,Labors chance to win and our money trying to bend light into a time machine.
Honestly your addiction to faux Labor is a comic strip.
As for accusing Ato and I of demanding adherence to principles, you dumb feck-knuckle.
These are the same principles you HG,the Euro team and others were barking about and held sacrosanct until faux Labor were challenged.
Now you’ve dropped them like steaming turd.
As a newly formed Tea Party it turns out that faux Labor suits your hard core Howardesque values to the ‘tea’.
I just love the way the foam forms in the corner of your mouth when you say deranged.
Its a badge of honour Mr ‘anti-immigration’ Hanson, to be slagged by a sock puppet rent a crowd like you.No wonder you change IDs so often.
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Couldn’t have said it about a nicer bloke 🙂
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HG, this thread has become so convoluted that you may have missed my reply above – show me where Burnside says that the ones removed were refugees. I read it twice but see no such statement.
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“Right now, in Melbourne, there are 27 people who have just ended an 11-day hunger strike. They were protesting against the fact that they have been held for years in detention, despite the fact that Australia has officially recognised that they are refugees entitled to our protection.”
It’s about two thirds of the way down.
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They are not the ones removed. The “27” are still there. Apparently there are now 55 of them :
http://www.nationaltimes.com.au/opinion/political-news/refugees-end-hunger-strike-20130418-2i1mp.html
ASIO says that there are significant security concerns with this group.
They cannot be returned, no-one will take them; they cannot be released into the community.
No-one said it was easy.
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That’s as good a link as any and as such I’ll refer you also to the comments I posted to the Burnside article, which are probably best seen in their original setting just for the arsehole replies that I got.
~
Clearly this situation is unconscionable in the eyes of the public on a level that I think we need to make sure someone is accountable for it. To do otherwise is to place an extraordinary level of trust in ASIO given the consequences of the decisions they’re making.
We do regularly and deservedly lock people up and pretty much throw away the key within the confines of the prisons that hold some of our worst criminals.
So the assumption must be that these people are at least that bad. Marilyn elsewhere reminds me that one such person is a woman who gave birth to a baby in detention so I’m inclined to think that the infant probably isn’t comparable with Ivan Milat.
We can condone neither a mentality that argues that the life of an Australian is worth that of any larger number of foreigners nor a derivative thereof that would allow us to reject anyone with a minor criminal record or other stain on their character in terms that result in a disproportionately serious sentence. But of course at the moment we don’t know for sure that either are the case.
I think it should be possible for lawyers and a judge to sit down with ASIO and conduct a hearing in camera whenever this situation arises so that those facts in cases which have such serious consequences may be heard. And I think very few of these people would remain incarcerated indefinitely if we did.
~
I added later that if the lawyers needed to be granted security clearances to represent their clients and proceedings held in camera (and considered binding) then that would also represent an improvement on the current situation.
~
Your article (mainly the video) goes into some detail about possible use of ankle bracelets etc, that may well be worth considering.
I can’t help wondering whether we vetted arrivals at any previous time in the post WW2 era so stringently and whether our level of apprehension isn’t heightened in line with our level of dispassion towards coloured people in boats?
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8 of them are children, they should not be jailed at all.
Why on earth though anyone would trust the word of some dickhead in ASIO is beyond me, having secret claims made about someone and no court or person able to review them properly is what happens in totalitarian states, not democracies.
The 38 who were removed the other day were illegally deported after not being allowed to make a refugee claim and without being told their legal rights.
That is criminal thuggery.
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DQ, you can do this, if you can’t find a particular post:
remember a word that might have been used in that in that spot and do a “find”
1: Press ctr+F
2: A box will appear where you can put the word that you think is included in the post.
3: Press return.
If that word is used more than once, then you’ll see them all highlighted. Press return until you get to the one you want.
AND DON’T GET FUCKING INSANELY DERANGEDLY HYSTERICAL! YOU COULD BE WRONG AND EVERYONE ELSE COULD BE RIGHT!
The reverse doesn’t apply to me and Hypo…
Have a nice -pot-free- weekend!
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OR JENNY, OR MERILYN, OR MY MUM, OR MRS ATO!
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Point of order : I think you and Hypo are definitely in the minority on these refugee issues, at least. Perhaps not on this blog, but certainly in the real world.
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Why? It was Australia as a nation who wrote the fucking convention and ratified it and put it into domestic law.
Is it then just a minority that thinks we should uphold our own fucking laws Doug, or did you just make that up.
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Haha! Poor Merilyn!
Haven’t you figured it out yet?
DQ is fart who thinks he’s a wind! The noble wind that moves the windmills of the noble flour makers. The wind mills that the noble Don Quijote de la Mancha charged at with his spear!
Still, someone ought to tell him that this blog is not a lift!
Or a wind mill.
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We are all farts in the wind, atomou – some of us just haven’t realised it yet.
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Abbott is not a closet homophobe, just as Gillard is not a closet homophobe. They both hate gays, lesbians, transgenders, people with HIV/AIDS with a vengeance! and they are both hateful with a vengeance!
Mannie De Saxe
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Yep and they are both overtly anti environment,anti refugee etc, and yet strangely they use the term ‘border security’, while they give away the shit behind the border to foreign interests.Mining agriculture, real estate and and water. and all for political gain,community division and personal career advancement.History will at least reflect (at this site) those who support them.
It basically doesn’t matter which of these you choose, you get the same spew.
The faux Labor part of this mess came about when the factions demanded and got control.This would never have happened under Rudd because he had placed the factions on the outer.Which is why they conspired to remove him.
History will also accurately reflect that, even though the marionettes here have no capacity to do so.
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We are now paying Serco $1.8 billion a year while taking aid money from the starving.
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And you have evidence of that, do you? Please provide it. Or are you just hot air?
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NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell announced today that he supports same sex marriage.
As I say, it is only a matter of time before it is passed into law, unless you care to elect Abbott as PM – then it might not happen this decade.
Abbott for PM, anyone?
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Why is it a matter of time? Why is it not a matter of now?
CLUE: because with either of these bloody minded rednecks it will never happen!
Abbott for PM anyone? No?
Gillard for PM anyone? No?
Grrrrrreat!
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Neither Abbott nor Gillard rule the world : hence not “now.”
After your exchange with HG above, I wonder if in your way you are not as deranged as poor Hypo.
You seem to demand that everyone adhere to your moral standards and views, and damn them if you judge that they fail to measure up.
It is just not a viable point of view.
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Oh my god, can’t demand that Gillard or Abbott stop jailing babies.
What the fuck are you smoking.
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We are discussing same sex marriage. Politely.
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Atomou, Doug, Marilyn,
There’s a difference between the moral weight we apply to same sex marriage, detaining refugees or conducting the war in Afghanistan. They’re called consequences and most people here seem to have them well out of perspective.
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No moral consequences for the gays nor the refugees and certainly none for those under our bombs.
Nor do I have any scales that weigh morals.
Relativists, of course, and utilitarianists have constructed all sorts of scales to get them out of doing -or feeling- anything.
If you mean that morals should be judged by their effect on the political popularity of all the neo-cons and neo-nazis and neo-talliban in Canberra, who, unless we do something about their existence and influence- then, mate, I think you’ve been hanging around DQ for too long!
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No that’s not what I’m saying at all.
I’m saying that as in any era of politics that we have a kind of operating quota of political capital for progressive reforms. There’s an “it’s time” for change factor when a build up of tolerance occurs within societies. Sadly for us the quota has been in deficit from around the time of Howard onwards. So we have to deal with that by setting priorities that rely on judging things like severity of consequences.
If we can manage to see that and to persuade the other side of that as well then I think there’s a kind of reasonableness to asking for reform in even the most hostile environments granted that it may have to be done in a more incremental fashion.
Sitting back on your haunches and bemoaning the fact that you can’t have your own way within the very letter of your ideology is frankly disgraceful behaviour. It even goes so far as to say that our wounded pride in the once proud principles we thought embodied by the Labor Party will lead us to cast them to the wind and accept the inevitability of an LNP government so that we can once again feel self satisfied in our disdain for the enemy in our midst.
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Sorry, Hudso but all you’ve done is rephrase your previous assertions, to wit, “jam tomorrow.”
Typical Fabian bullshit that constantly moves the calendar for reform back with the outrageous excuse that, “the other mod did so much damage that we -who hold the pen that can consign all that shit into oblivion- will have to wait ’till tomorrow (to the last syllable of time) before we can do anything!” In the meantime, the atrocities continue at an even faster pace than before.
And don’t give me the insulting shit that I don’t have the right to demand correction of behaviour and principles, yeae, as I see them. I am a member of this state, a member politician of this polis. I demand certain things. If I don’t get them, in the end the democratic principle -majority in numbers- will win and will prevail.
You have a different view about what needs to be done (vote Labor no mater what shit they’re creating and no matter that they are cultivating the shit of the Libs) and that priorities like treatment of refugees, of gays, of the downtrodden are far lower of the list.
Well, good luck to you for holding such views. They are far easier to promote than mine.
But they are indubitably views with which the nasties can depucelate us most effectively and completely!
Time, Hudso, is not at anyone’s disposal!
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If there are some things for which time is of an essence then obviously we look at prioritising them. But the sense in which you or I or anybody in a democracy may simply rock up and demand their moral standards be satisfied by the collective sacrifice of others is simply non-existent in the real world. And you know that already or you wouldn’t be one of the ones trying to justify giving up on Labor already.
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Not MY bloody moral standards, Hudso, those of Labor! Obviously you haven’t noticed that they have been trampled into near oblivion.
What’s stopping these arseholes from signing a bill to allow marriage equality? Humane treatment of refugees, instead of the atrocities they commit upon them? What’s with the taking from the most vulnerable to give to the over bloated pigs of wealth? How much fucking time do they need?
Gillard certainly didn’t waste any time declaring Assange a criminal, allowing the yanks to trample all over our soil…
Time? They’re in fucking parliament. Let them do something! Something of some value and with some principles, I mean.
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Well I don’t know how much time they need. I think it’s a fair question, especially on marriage equality, or so it would seem. But if a minority government loses the support of one independent, the wrong Senator or perish the thought a backbencher then they’re sunk. Sunk that is along with any chance of a review process for refugees in limbo working, with the NDIS, Ginski, what’s left of the MRRT, and action on climate change missing without a trace.
If neither major party are any good and we don’t really expect a third party to govern in its own right after the next election then, seeing that you’re now asking what we can do in a timely manner, I’ve consistently presented this as follows. In a choice between these two evils, knowing that we’ll need to lobby and agitate quite hard to maintain what I have to agree with you seems like a mere modium of common decency, then who is more likely to either be amenable to reason or to bend to pressure. I don’t think it’s Abbott and that’s the main problem for the scenario that II think we’re realistically faced with here.
Sorry if we don’t agree. Lay off the righteousness pills though, most ideologies bear an uncanny resemblance to religious dogma and as such spook my baloney detectors from miles away. And lastly just think in practical and persuasive terms as to how we’re going to get more principled initiatives implemented and, because I most agree with you about what is desirable, I’ll be all ears.
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Apologies to Mr Gonski!
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HG, I did often wonder about atomou’s avatar. It seems remarkably appropriate lately, as the dummy seems to have been spat on numerous occasions.
One might also suggest that his views are throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
He speaks of punishment and of surgical removal, as if that is even remotely possible within the democratic pluralist society that is Australia.
The real world atomou. Not your imaginary Utopia.
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Spat the Dummy and threw out the baby with the bathwater, not to Labor an analogy too much?
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And spread vegemite, ribena and other substances similar looking but too revolting to mention all around his high-chair, up the walls and across the floor . . .
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Okay now that’s going a bit far. I don’t mind sharing a bit of wit or butting heads with others, but I don’t wish to personalise or be disrespectful of them even if we disagree….sometimes a little, and often a lot!
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Sorry HG, and atomou – I was a little carried away with the labouring of the analogy!
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Not even an analogy! It’s a metaphor! And DON’T DO IT AGAIN!
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I’ll raise you that metaphor and throw in a cliché.
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Your fault HG – I was too polite to say that it wasn’t really an analogy. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t accurate though! 🙂
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Time for Gillard an faux ALP fans to explain why they find this acceptable>
QUOTE
THIS list shows 36 jobs given to Labor politicians and union officials in the past three years.
Name/ Background/ Appointment/ Commenced/ Salary
Arch Bevis/ Former parliamentary secretary for defence/ Anzac Centenary Advisory Board member/ August 2012/ ?
Arch Bevis/ Former parliamentary secretary for defence/ Review of Student Support Services Guidelines chair/ February 2013/ ?
Arch Bevis/ Former parliamentary secretary for defence/ Defence Remuneration Tribunal member/ May 2011/
Arch Bevis/ Former parliamentary secretary for defence/ Defence Housing Authority board member/ October 2011/ $57,600
Anna Bligh/ Former Qld premier/ Medibank Private board member/ December 2012/ $44,000-$89,000*
Anna Booth/ Former union official/ FWA deputy president/ February 2010/ ?
Desley Boyle/ Former Qld tourism minister/ Telecommunications Universal Service Management Authority board member/ July 2012/ ?
Steve Bracks/Former Vic Premier/Considered for New York Consul General
John Brumby/ Former Vic premier/ COAG Reform Council chair/December 2012/Also sounded out for New York Consul General/ ?
Bob Debus/ Former NSW and federal MP/ Land Sector Carbon and Biodiversity Board chair/ November 2011/ ?
Cameron Dick/ Former Qld attorney-general/ Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Commission chair/ November 2012/ $162,000-$192,000
Verity Firth/ Former NSW education minister/ Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care board member/ April 2013/ ?
Andrew Fraser/ Former Qld treasurer/ Australian Sports Commission board member/ November 2012/ up to $60,000
Andrew Fraser/ Former Qld treasurer/ Moorebank Intermodal Company board member/ December 2012/ ?
Geoff Gallop/ Former WA premier/ International Education Advisory Council board/ October 2011/ ?
Geoff Gallop/ Former WA premier/ Australia Awards Board chair/ May 2011/ ?
Leigh Johns/One-time Labor candidate/ Fair Work commissioner/ March 2013
Kate Jones/ Former Qld environment minister/ Landcare Council board member/ December 2012/ ?
Duncan Kerr/ Former federal justice minister/ Federal Court Judge and Administrative Appeals Tribunal President/ May 2012/ $400,000
Craig Knowles/Former NSW Government Minister/Chair Murray Darling Basin Authority/February 2011/
Jeff Lawrence/ Former ACTU president/ Fair Work Commission deputy president/ March 2013/ ?
Tim Lee/ Former Australian Services Union general manager and Labor staffer/ Fair Work Australia commissioner/ September 2011/ ?
Sue Lines/ United Voice assistant national secretary and hopes to fill Chris Evan’s senate vacancy/ Aged Care Finance Authority board member/ August 2012/ ?
Paul Lucas/ Former Qld deputy premier/ Air Services Australia board member/ July 2012/ ?
Sheila McHale/ Former WA tourism minister/ Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission board member/ February 2013/ ?
Bernard Murphy/ Labor-aligned firm Maurice Blackburn chair/ Federal Court Judge/ April 2011/ $400,000
Roger Price/Former Federal MP/Consul General Chicago,USA/2011
Mike Rann/Former South Australian Premier and ALP National President/
Andrew Refshauge/ Former NSW deputy premier/ Australian Institute of Health and Welfare chair/ July 2011/ ?
Andrew Refshauge/ Former NSW deputy premier/ reappointed Aged Care Standards and Accreditation Agency chair/ July 2012/ ?
Bernie Riordan/ former official at Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union, and Electrical Trades Union/ FWA commissioner/ February 2012
Justice Iain Ross/ Victorian Judge and former ACTU deputy secretary/ Fair Work Australia president/ February 2012/ ?
Jon Stanhope/ Former ACT chief minister/ Indian Ocean Territories of Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands administrator/ August 2012/ $226,340
John Thwaites/ Former Vic deputy premier/ National Sustainability Council chair/ October 2012/ ?
John Thwaites/ Former Vic deputy premier/ Australian Building Codes Board chair/ November 2011/ ?
Christian Zahra/ Former federal MP/ Regional Development Australia Fund Advisory Panel chair/ WHEN/ ?
* based on figures in annual reports
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What and you think there was never a conservative politician who found his way into public life through the portal of the local freemason’s club. C’mon Hypo, the assumption that you’re making is that none of these people were qualified and perhaps even the best people available for the jobs they landed after leaving parliament. It would be just as remiss to say that all of them necessarily were, but the way that you turn this list into evidence isn’t to just quote it with a wink and a nod because you can you’d have to actually demonstrate interference in a way that even the Liberal party’s dirt diggers haven’t seen fit to allege.
Nobody’s perfect that’s true but nor are we given to believe that others are universally imperfect unless we’re motivated by particular kind of bias that is large vehement and frankly more than a little obvious.
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“What and you think there was never a conservative politician who found his way into public life through the portal of the local freemason’s club.”
Wrong.
The list is a very interesting cut and paste from elsewhere.No doubt you will cry MSM conspiracy.
And yet the data is real.
The assumption I am making is that that if you apply a different rule to one side you’re a fucking hypocrite.
And to keep making excuses for faux Labors hypocrisy, is the act of a desperate bullshit artist.
Apply the blowtorch evenly.That’s all I am saying, and it is what you keep shoving down other peoples necks..
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For fucksake Hypo just because I don’t have a list of ex Liberal’s whose jobs I might cast aspersions about doesn’t mean they don’t exist. But more importantly lists like yours don’t mean that the assumed corruption you’re alluding to does exist either. And it undermines your case to fail to present any real evidence of it beyond mere speculation about a list of names and jobs. How’s that meant to be proof, that’s what I’m challenging you on?
However one the balance of probabilities some suspicions of corruption will be both well founded and due to some very egalitarian foibles of human nature usually pretty evenly shared between politicians of all parties.
And that’s what I’m complaining about here. You producing a partisan list designed to smear people whom you have a grudge against and a soiled conscience about wanting to feel justified in shafting.
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Wrong again.
The list is an example of “FAUX” Labors way of doing things.The point(which you like to ignore) being that despite what the grass roots may want, or the ongoing hard work of already existing Labor candidates,FAX Labor is culling those without the ‘appropriate’ union connections.
I have no issue with unionists being in Labor.My issue(the one you ignore and like to deny) is that Labor (their power base and admin and decision making, and PM choosing) IS ONLY union.
And to just fob it off every time as ‘oh look the Libs are the same is the other personal point I am making to you.Just as the fuckwits in the coalition should not be laced with Freemasons,Ruperts mates or banker implants, Labor should not deceive its electoral followers,by plumping the ranks with thugs who have obvious red neck agendas, or just as insidious connection to and loyalty for big business..
Obviously you believe that what happens in NSW and what is happening now in WA is OK.
Well the election will tell you how everyone else feels about that.
And hows that budget surplus going?
The one the talented gay rights campaigner,come finance Minister, Wong, was defending this morning?
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EDIT
“Labor candidates,FAUX Labor is culling “
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Labor has always been openly a party with close Union ties and stated affiliations. I don’t think it is a big secret or matter of a corrupting influence to say that those links exist and function much as they might be expected to. People expect similar connections to be drawn between business associations and the Liberal party and I don’t believe they’re that hard to find either.
So it seems to me that, while there are matters of corruption in politics and life thereafter, it that can’t be pinpointed and criticised in terms of some of the stuff you’ve happened upon here because it isn’t evidence in itself of corrupt acts by these appointees.
Corruption is usually secret clandestine and unwarranted. When appointments are conducted openly, in line with people’s expectations and subject to scrutiny I then the criticisms of who gets what job and what influenced it behind the scenes is always possible but just as likely to be a case of sour grapes and vindictiveness unless and until a pattern of corruptly subverting the public interest actually materialises. As it has done in NSW and you now allege WA*.
~
As for the Budget $7.5 Billion is an awful lot of money if you want to measure it in terms of the amount of good it could do. If you want to measure it in terms of fluctuations in theGDP though, then it is in the order of about half a percent. So if you want to argue about what percentage of GDP finds its way into the public purse and how 2% of that matters be my guest, but lets not be too quick to get these numbers out of proportion just because they are so much larger than we’re used to thinking in.
~
I remain critical of the fact the you think you’ve found something you can use to kick heads with on a kind of partisan basis that I’m sorry to say sounds increasingly more than just anti Labor. It’s unbalanced in its bias to the point where whether you like it or not it offers comfort to an enemy. And this is not a fine and good thing you’re doing to try and hold Labor to a higher standard, it’s a petty act of almost self pitying, conscience assuaging bitterness.
* A news LTD reporter interpreting union leaders from opposing factions finding some middle ground as a bad thing is hardly proof of corruption though is it.
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Did I say corruption?
How about bullying,deception,manipulation,misrepresenting grass roots.
I love seeing the depths you are willing to plumb to protect the obvious un-Laborfication of the once proud ALP.
So be it.
Don’t bother to reply any more,HG.
You claim ‘I’ have a prism.That makes you blind,deaf and dumb given your denial,ducking and weaving.
I’ll let the election judge your political interpretations.I stand by mine.
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Okay I admit I mistook allusions to what I thought must be corruption for something more serious that what was there on the page.
But seriously bullying, deception and manipulation aren’t so rare in politics much less any other walk of public life that you mightn’t catch more than just a few select ex Labour members in that net if you chose to cast it widely enough….but you didn’t you only got who you wanted to get.
So if I’m to be called partisan for making an argument against a biased attack then I think you’re right to ask that we end this particular thread of conversation on an agreement to disagree. But not before I use the right of reply, that Jennifer kindly affords me, to say how disappointed I am with the increasingly fevered pitch of your attacks on all things Labor. Not mind you because I want to defend Labor’s faults, but simply because there’s nothing constructive being said here any more.
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This is a response to the readers, to close this playground banter.
Nobody cast a net to catch anyone.
Labor steeped in their own shit.
And it’s a pity that the likes of HG and other faux Labor folk are totally focussed on defending the indefensible.
As I have said many times before, to protect this form of Labor, confirms you were never really Labor in the first place.You were just anti any one but those who wear an ALP badge.
The faux Labor protectors only have 4 things with which to defend their actions.
Blame MSM.
Blame Abbott.
Blame world economics.
Blame anything you can.
The second sign of the ability to lead is the ability to confront the truth.
The first sign is the willingness to confront the truth..
My ‘ideological’ hypocritical’ ‘monochromatic’ friend keeps leaving both at home.
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And no I’m not going to let you have the last words if they’re to be “Blame fax Labor”. I want to say fix the Labor party and spare us from Abbott, and all Hypo wants to say is “fuck the Labor party we’d rather have Abbott”.
How do you like having words put in your mouth Hypo? I know I’m sorely fed up with you trying to put them in mine. Face up to yourself and your hatred of Gillard and do something about it other that spiting bile at me and others and looking for somebody convenient to blame.
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Faux Labor,
WA Style
http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/western-australia/alps-herd-mentality/story-fnhocxo3-1226624998782
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I don’t have a problem with former ALP or any other former pollies getting jobs, they have to do something useful with their lives surely.
What I object to is ASIO being able to make any unchallenged claim they want to about innocent people deemed to be in need of refugee protection and never have to explain it to anyone.
One poor devil faces a life in jail for a crime that does not exist, that he has not been charged with but ASIO claim he might do it again, even though he has never done it before.
And now we see that spivvy. Aussie companies are happy to make tens and hundreds of millions off the misery of refugees illegally jailed here. – $1.8 billion for SERCO alone and $8 billion across whole of paranoid government departments per annum.
And Swan reckons the budget has taken a $7.5 billion hit due to the high Australian dollar.
Try a hit due to the ignorant racists in parliament.
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The ALP finds itself stinking for many reasons.One is by way of giving people jobs because of silence or loyalty, as opposed to quality of the individual,experience or passion.
And the big one ‘principle’.This is not about ‘having a problem’ with ex pollies getting a cushy after politics reward.It is about the undue influence of unions during government,from within and without, and Nepotism.
Where do you think the racist attitudes and policies in these appointments emanates from?
It’s the right faction.Where all the greedy effluent is.The ones who are fellating big business while titillating workers with smoke and mirrors.
Faux Labor is as subservient to the church and big business as Abbot et al, if not more.
The likes of Howe etc have bullied their way into positions of power.
There is now no room in the cooling corpse of unionism for the solitary voices of reason, which is why the fair go is now defined as ‘what the bullies demand’.
SERCO has big unions finger prints all over it.
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Marius Benson
“The faint hopes of Julia Gillard and her dwindling band of loyalists now rest on the budget, schools funding and the NDIS. But they look like a troupe of jugglers who saved their best tricks for the finale, without noticing that the audience left at interval.
Labor is facing a long, cold winter with no expectation of September bringing any electoral spring”
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“We are all farts in the wind, atomou – some of us just haven’t realised it yet.”
It’s a pity that you seem to ‘follow through’ far too often.
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EDIT My ^ Reply above is for the windmill poking bloke riding the pony with a parsnip on its cruett.
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The Duopoly of fools http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xyz2Utj0j8w
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Interesting that your link didn’t embed, whereas mine to Youtube videos always do.
You don’t need to turn the captions feature on, but it can be even funnier if you do 🙂
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“hudsongodfrey April 22, 2013 at 8:44 pm #”
On this topic, you’re a blatant liar.
It devalues the quality statements you have often made here.
It is pathetic that you (and your desperate mates) always lower yourself to label those who have woken up to faux Labor as being Abbott supporters.
I can only put that down to your intellectual dishonesty or your own ideological hate of the coalition.Which combines irony and hypocrisy in equal proportions.
Pussy.
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And here we are back to the same thing that it seems is impossible to explain to you I don’t reject what the coalition represents as an ideological position I reject it on principles and consequences.
I regard all ideological positions as being basically flawed in a way that anyone with a little sense and reasoning can easily see through. And in case you still weren’t clear I explained it at length. And I’m sorry if it lacked the capacity to clear away the cobwebs and help you see things in a different light but to do any more would seem patronising.
The least you could have done in return is to try not to lecture others about intellectual honesty until you’ve tried it yourself.
As for your descent into abuse. It represents an emotional outburst which in your case can only be a good thing. I think of it as a distant echo of your conscience being pricked. You need to get back in touch with that conscience and think of something constructive and hopeful to say. I always figured that you’d eventually rant yourself out over Gillard and at some point where the tantrum’s over you’re either going to wake up to the prospect of a government you like a whole lot less and have to deal with, or you’re going to have to agree that reshaping Labor throughout an unlikely, but still possible, third term is the better way forwards……With or without help from our mates in the Greens.
P.S. yes I know that last bit was patronising, and again I don’t wish you ill, but at some point there are better ways to deal with abuse than just returning it, so in your case I’ve made a special effort.
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I consider than anyone but Abbott is as ideological as it can get.
As for my conscience,on this issue it’s rock solid.
I won’t support a party who has deformed into its own Nemesis.You do what you like.
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And you do what you like too.
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And I’ll do what I like, too… three… four… five… blast orf!
I will not ditch my principles, my ideals and my vision for a good, humane political system -principles I held all my life- just so as to follow a party into a bottomless faecal swamp of betrayals, bad tricks and sleazy tactics, all in the service of political expediency and pragmatism, simply because it calls itself “better than the other mob,” when that “other mob” is already nose-deep in that same faecal swamp.
Being chin-deep in the swamp IS NOT better than being nose-deep in it. The swamp will continue to pull you down until you become a part of it.
I will not go down with this pseudo-Labor mob! This neo-con job!
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It’s not about whether you compromise your principles or even about whether your principles and mine might be slightly different.
It is about where in political terms you’re most likely to see those principles put into action.
I’m suggesting that it isn’t with the LNP.
I’m suggesting also that if you can’t get all of your principles enacted through the government that we have then we elect to be represented by people who’re most likely to enact the greatest number of principled policies. And that’s not the LNP either.
Good luck getting anywhere voting Green if that’s what you want to do. I really don’t mind. I’ve voted for them myself in the past.
What I do mind is Labor supporters trying to justify to themselves and to us taking a course of action that will result in an Abbott government based on a sense of outrage and betrayal. I understand the outrage and betrayal part perfectly well, because if the truth be told I share it with you. What I don’t understand is failure to pull back from the brink of political suicide when faced with the consequences of giving up.
You may want therefore to get to where I think we’d all like to go via a different route than I would recommend, but I’m really struggling with what you think is wrong with trying as I think we must to fix the ALP rather than embracing the risk of what Abbott is set to enact. That is to say I think his principles aren’t ones that I can share.
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I’m sure we will all do what we like.
No-one has to give up any principles, not even their beloved ideology. Just accept that there is a simple choice to be made come September.
It is not rocket science ; who do you want to govern Australia for the next three years. The candidates are :
The ALP
The LPA
Think carefully, for the rest is but sound and fury, signifying nothing.
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DQ Bla bla bla, any ALP is OK by the rusty ones.
No thanks.I’ll send them a signal like the rest of those who really want a true opposing force, who opposes policies of the right, not adopts them and hardens them.
If Abbott rolls Gillard it is her leadership and your kind of mindless ‘support at all costs’ drivel that does it.
You are not truly Labor and never were.HG gets paid by the word.The two motives are no help.
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Let’s try a different tack then. Almost a different topic.
Any generalisation anyone makes will always have its exceptions, but in political terms they are occasionally useful given that parties and their faithful do adhere to core ideologies whether we prefer them to or not.
Nevertheless I’ll say this of our political parties for the sake of argument that Labor is generally held to be on the left of Australian politics and the Liberal party is held to be on the right. The Nationals are slightly further right than the Liberals and the Greens increasingly well left of Labor.
Our politics is more or less dominated and has been for most of the past century by the two major parties, their numbers in parliament being distributed fairly evenly between the ALP in its own right and the Liberal National coalition. Thus we can get down to brass tacks and say that the centre of Australian politics is very loosely defined by whether Labor’s right stays to the left of the Liberal’s left. Which is generally how they tend to posture with a few individual exceptions what I would argue are strictly a minority of policies.
So we might whine (incessantly) that the distance between the two parties is too slight but I think that it would be distorting things too much to say that they fail to know their brand or stick to their basic ideological roots. They generally observe a margin that prevents the centre actually crossing over so that the Liberal left finds itself in the invidious position of actually marketing itself in far more progressive terms than Labor’s right faction cares to endorse. Were the opposite to be the case then a small l Liberal like Turnbull might actually steal votes from frustrated Labor supporters.
History shows than in a very different political landscape Malcolm Fraser was also able to frustrate Thatcherites like Howard for a time. We don’t have anything like that political landscape today. Nor at the time did Fraser come to power because the centre overlapped. What happened then as now was that Labor’s political agenda, and their ability to deliver on it, lost the confidence of the Australian people. Beyond that comparisons aren’t particularly applicable. Whitlam’s reforms went down in the minds of many as long overdue. Whereas I don’t think as many of Gillard’s successes will be as well remembered. The real problem for people wanting a return to balance is that far from parties having a crossed over in the centre what we have waiting for us in the Liberal camp is a full on neo-Thatcherite tea party.
If the question in 1975 was who was going to steer Australia back from the excesses of the left then arguably the answer was Fraser.
But then you have to remember that for the generalisations hold in line with our expectations then Labor’s excesses are meant to occur in left leaning terms.
What we have today are Labor excessively leaning to the right, and the answer to the question of who’s going to redress that situation cannot be Abbott.
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Ah yes, but some want to send them a smoke signal.
Hiawatha and his braves are unhappy with Labor : “want take scalps!”
Are they so stupid as not see that an Abbott government would be worse on every count?
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Well I’m sure smoke, and mirrors, will be involved somewhere along the journey.
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“The answer to the question of who’s going to redress that situation cannot be Abbott.”
Nor can it be the election of this faux-Labor, which will legitimise and entrench, the Tea Party-ification of what needs to be a party which reverts to what it was at the time of Rudds ascension, and his suffocation of unelected union control.
Australia lived through 3 terms of Howard.The political hate in the electorate for what Gillard has done to Labor easily equals the rage back then.I seriously doubt the now ‘ex Labor’ voters are scared of a mere single term of Abbott (even if the Gillard muppets here are) if that’s what it would take to bury faux Labor and resurrect real ALP.
That is the political reality.
Despite dressing up your message you’re still pushing the Gillard barrow.
Because ABA plus only two choices(your ideology) = Gillard.
No thanks.
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You seem not to have noticed I’d changed the subject and keep bringing it back to your obsession with your own anti-Gillard rhetoric like a dog returning to its own vomit.
We agreed to disagree! Why not just stop?
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Stop what?
Stop the Votes?
I’d rather be a dog that eats it’s ‘own’ vomit, than a dog that swallows others.
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I’m not agreeing to anything. Australia suffered under 4 terms of Howard count them : 1996 to 1998, 1998 to 2001, 2001 to 2004 and 2004 to 2007.
I never – never – want to see a Liberal regime under several of Howard’s ex-ministers. I want them gone, all of them.
Come back, LNP, when you have got rid of them.
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It seems that people are saying “bring back Labor when Gillard and her union mates are dust” too.
In droves.
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(i) Dear ALP,
Please use disabled people as a political pawn as you rip us off to pay for your fuckups in order to keep Gillard and the union running this mess.
(You can even blackmail us with school kids!)
While you’re at it,don’t admit that the revenue stream from the carbon and MRR taxes could have been suitable,had you not shafted the Greens and let big business write their own cheque.
Tax the workers even more,we love poverty and struggle.
Hit us harder,hit us more.We love you,so much ALP.
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Me ^ (proudly)
To put into perspective the latest 12 billion dollar blow-out,if we charged the Yanks 200 million per annum to rent Aussie soil for it’s bases, it would take 60 years for treasury to recoup that 12 billion dollars.
Comparing Gillard to an alcoholic is a slur on all alcoholics.
I wonder if Tony Abbott has ever looked so popular to mainstream voters?
Could Gillards figures reach sub 20 in the next poll?
I predict it will within 2 more polls.Watch this space.
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The Mo Diaries (cont)
Larry : “I went on Fran’s little talkfest this morning, and she asked really hard questions!”
Mo : “(muffled) But you didn’t give away that the maternity leave thingy is pie in the sky?”
Larry : “Of course not! But I had to admit that yes it was to be paid for with a levy. It’s had to keep up levies baaaad when we propose one ourselves.”
Mo : “But our levy will be a good levy in a good cause – getting us elected!”
Larry : “True Tony, and I think I got away with it. Costello’s a pain in the arse with his dry as dust crap; why’d he have to go spruiking it now?”
Mo : “The Great Leader [Howard] told me Costello cost him the 2007 election with his dry economics. John would probably still be in Kirribilli House today, leading us all so well.”
Larry : “(God help us!) Hmmm. Maybe Costello wasn’t all bad.”
Mo : “Wash your mouth out! The Great Leader will have his portrait on my PM’s office wall, alongside Cardinal Pell and Lord Rupert.”
Curly : “Howard, Pell and Rupert (aside: The Unholy Trinity?)”
And so it goes . . .
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I see you’re busy with your hundreds of pseudos over at the Drum.
Good to see you still support faux Labor pushing the country to certain austerity measures and massive hardships for the entire community.(ALP voters included) Good to see you still worship Howards ways and his refugee hate.Good to see that you think it’s fair to use the disabled and children for political gain.
Leave the 3 Stooges alone.
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Larry calls Mo, “Tony?” Bit confusing, DQ.
You might need to go back to script writing school.
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When you get around as much as DQ,every written challenge is a stretch.
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We know them as Tony Abbott (Mo) Joe Hockey (Larry) and Andrew Robb (Curly).
The names are changed to satirise the guilty.
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From an expert on the art of changing names.
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