It was inevitable that any opposition by the ALP or Greens to Abbott’s reeking legacy, the proposed plebiscite on marriage equality, would provide the Turnbull government with the ammunition to claim (with confected indignation) that both parties are creating an obstacle that thwarts an opportunity for same-sex marriage.
There are bound to be those who accept this warped inversion, however they are likely to be the same groups and individuals that reject marriage equality anyway.
What this situation reveals yet again is the profound nastiness of the LNP. This nastiness (there really isn’t a better word for it, their attitude towards their fellow humans is as base as that) has been evidenced in Treasurer Scott Morrison’s decision to deprive the unemployed and pensioners in order to fix his budget, and the vengeful exercise of raw power as illustrated by Peter Dutton’s ongoing implacability over asylum seekers and refugees. It’s reflected in the image that heads this post: even the dead are perceived as new sources of revenue for the LNP.
I don’t need to go on, the evidence of their nastiness is everywhere we look, and it multiplies as we sleep.
Nastiness is the Turnbull government’s default position. From the apparent banality of nastiness all manner of evils flourish, and if you ever doubted that it is being enacted daily, for you to witness, in our parliament.
Though the Northern Territory can’t be ever be taken as typical, the carnage wrought on the CLP this weekend gives me small hope. Citizens can become sickened by nastiness, and they can wreak havoc on the party of nasty when they’ve had enough.
There is not one rational reason to deny marriage equality. We are a secular state: religious arguments ought not to influence our decisions. The unholy alliance of religion and nastiness currently hold sway.
It’s my hope that the ALP hold out against a plebiscite. No Liberal MP has any obligation to honour a yes result. Those who touchingly believe a plebiscite =marriage equality need to disabuse themselves of that belief, because it does not. We could well go through the torturous process and still have necessary amendments to the Marriage Act blocked by MPs who are not bound to accept a yes vote.
At the heart of the demand for a plebiscite is nastiness, and a poisonous hatred for anyone who doesn’t fit a narrow definition of “normal.” The influence of pure nastiness has been overlooked in our arguments yet it is a powerful driver of irrational behaviour and you’d have to go a long way to find behaviour more irrational than that of Turnbull’s government in just about any area you can name.
There are rumours again that Abbott is preparing himself to challenge Turnbull’s leadership. Not only are they nasty to citizens, they are exceptionally nasty to one another. I would take great pleasure in watching the LNP continue to cannibalise itself. I doubt it would affect our governance to any great degree: they aren’t doing much of that anyway.
It’s my hope that the fate of the NT CLP is the Turnbull government’s future. Barely enough seats left to form a party? I’d go for that.
No Place For Sheep 
All we can do is rail.It is up to the currently brain dead pocket voting public to wake up and vote accordingly.Any parent or grandparent voting LNP is basically cashing in on their children’s future.Ecologically and socially.
We are an island of self inflicted misery and greed.
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Little kids (and Jack Russell dogs) are automatically drawn to good people, they would pick better people to lead us than what we have done.
They would not want to have anything to do with these ‘adults in charge’ now… ‘they’s nasty’, a kid would say.
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Then I say let kids and dogs vote and take the right away from the morons who have created this mess, time and again.
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I can hear them now, after a plebiscite vote of 60 to 40 – “sorry but my conscience won’t allow me to vote for such a change in the law.”
In Ireland : “The referendum proposed to add the following text to Article 41 of the Constitution:
“Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex.”
Required because the Irish Constitution needed to be amended, this proposal was passed by a 62% to 38% vote of all Irish citizens.
Australia’s Constitution needs no such amendment – federal parliament has the power to make the change by a simple Act of parliament, and the High Court has already given decisions agreeing that that is the case.
Parliament should simply get on with it.
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Hear hear DQ.
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In regards to the end of Giles> the worst leader in NT history< ,no doubt the people of WA are hoping for the similar annihilation of Barnett's wasteful incompetent 'arm of business' govt.
The feds will throw all they can at WA, to avoid a domino effect.
Could the sheeple voters have awoken?
We will know in 12 months.If the hateful LNP regime across Australia is re-enabled our moral fibre is dead forever.
Sadly the extremists in the senate may make a freshly deceptive Abbott look 'paternal Howard-like enough, to go all gooey over.This would not surprise me ,such is my lack of respect for the electorate.
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Hypo, I really don’t think Abbott can ever be made to look paternal or Howard like. Those facial expressions and all that lip licking. Creepy.
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Reptilian paternal?
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Well even a lonely bastard goanna on a hillside on father’s day had a dad somewhere
Or something. There’s an axiom in there I can’t quite remember.
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All reptiles have fathers?
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I remember an Abbott family photo on the pages of Women’s Weekly: Tony in the middle, no adoring looks at the daughters, or poor Marge…
The family was a mere prop, only Abbott mattered, look at me…
I also remember how awkward Turnbull looked with his grandson.
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Did Uncle Fester make the photo?
Cousin ‘It’?
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Wonder if this ‘Corz’ and ‘Tones’ at the seminary boxing clinic?
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That’s before the plastic surgery.
Another early group photo of the Looters & Nutters:
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Hmmmmmm.. I suspect the one that looks like Hess is actually the disappeared Ian Macfarlane.
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The difference being; ‘this lot’ could not organise a wet spot in an orgy.
And the only part of the ‘attire’ which s brown is the PMs undies.
The rest of his foot soldiers have a resplendent yellow spinal streak to signify their rank.Or should I say,rankness?
[Post election Canberra>
Australia has created a monster and it began breathing today.]
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You have a colourful turn of phrase, Hypo.
I wish you’d write a book. You almost outdo Keating 🙂
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🙂 agree Jennifer
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What a wonderful compliment.Thanking you both.
Keating was ‘the man’.I am not worthy (but I’ll give it a bash , there in shadow of his awesomeness).
At least until the lights go out on the last vestige of ye olde, ‘fair go’, Labor.
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OK!! Excellent!
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If you have a strong stomach, this is the strange view from the other side of the fence:
http://www.massresistance.org/docs/gen2/15b/Ireland-marriage-vote/result-analysis.html
Expect the same sort of nonsense to be pushed even after a plebiscite gets 62%.
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Pass
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Know the enemy, Hypo!
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I might save this for later, DQ. When I’m not full of lunch.
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An army cannot march on an M/T stomach.
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Reblogged this on Townsville Blog. and commented:
Yes indeed almost the end of a very nasty era.
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I wish I had your optimism about this. I expect the reactionaries in the Looters & Nutters to push back. They always do.
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The problem with just blaming the looters and nutters is that many of the old bigot guard of catholics in the alternative looters are just as bad.
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and it’s a waste of time blaming the perps when there are enablers lining up at every poll at every election.
Labor also went there.Which in itself legitimised the cruelty to half of the pliable plebs.
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Looters & Nutters to push back. They always do. Yes Doug, I agree, the fanatics just can’t help themselves and the ultra right wing faction inside the Liberal Party will continue to make Turnbull’s life a misery, and as the ultra’s have the numbers to sack Turnbull and replace him with Abbott, it may all get to much for Malcolm, and he (Malcolm) may find himself in a leadership contest in which he is short of numbers and if he were to resign because the ultra’s made his position untenable and the government would then fall with Abbott as leader and no majority.
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I think Turnbull is terminal toast.He will slink into commercial reality and away from politics soon enough.The man had little cred to start with,but now he is totally devoid of any vaguely human qualities.His RWNJ mates are just having fun skinning him alive.Abbott won’t pounce,though, he will feign being pushed for the ‘greater good of govt and country’.
His second coming.The divine calling.Gods will etc.
One more terrorist event,real or manufactured should start the ball rolling.
Keeping in mind the vile brown shirted security ghouls and freshly uniformed border-force minions he enabled,all want to keep their redundant positions till they have us all trembling away in our underground bunkers,doing what Rupert tells us to do.
Discussions of this govt seem to constantly default to Godwins Law these days,such are the parallels with the ‘you know who’s’.
Whenever I see or hear Brandis, Bernardi and Abetz they are like a Jonathan Demme version of Hogans Heroes.
(Bogan Weirdos?)
Brrrrrrr
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What do you expect from a government like this?
Tax cuts for the rich whilst simultaneously cutting welfare for the poor?
And what stupid people, to try peddling rubbish to the public when it has had its majority smashed to virtually nothing after already coming the same raw prawn with this under Abbott.
But I digress.
The thread starter is about the nastiness of the government, something already well exposed through the long running asylum seeker saga and the continued despicable treatment of Aborigines and Muslims. We must therefore consider the likes of Morrison and Dutton, Cash, and dozens of others let alone mad dogs like Andrews and Abetz as structures within a toxic mechanism.
Then we can at last begin to glimpse the reality. They are losers, with nothing left but to drag others down with them.
Misery loves company, so we shall not be rid of them easily.
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PW, thanks, that’s an excellent way of framing it: *structures within a toxic mechanism* Yes.
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What I should have written was, “created of and creating”, it is a self reproducing mechanism.
Thanks for kind words.
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A poem for the LNP:
Oh what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive.
But when we practice quite a while,
How vastly we improve our style!
– JR Pope
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DQ I don’t think they’ve improved their style. I think they’ve gone backwards.
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Watching and waiting for Labor’s move.
Another good opportunity for Labor to differentiate itself from the LNP. Then all we need to do is work on Labor’s attitude to refugees, the environment, unemployed, disabled, children, habitat destruction and we may have something worth voting for in 2019.
And, yeah, the LNP is nasty – in the DNA or something like that.
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Tax office hiding which LNP sponsors, and pals, are evading tax?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-30/ato-refusing-foi-requests-via-right-to-know/7795896
More reasons to call out the census for what it is.
A harvest regime, with a set of rules to protect the rich while the plebs private cumulative data is a commodity for commerce..
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FYI
On SBS Insight tonight:
About the minority parties and declining membership of the 2 majors.
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/insight
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For all intents and purposes,as long as factions and RWNJs (also) control Labor, we have 1 major party.
Labor grovels just as obediently to the ACL .
Burke is a Catholic first,not last.
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The profound nastiness is in most govts from Howard on,but magnificently perfected by the right arm of the LNP, aka the servants of catholic church, and those who are allowed to break constitutional law at will.
(No separation)
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/liberal-party-members-behind-samesex-marriage-misinformation-campaign-20160923-grmvd6.html
Let’s see if Labor have the balls.If they do not emphatically rule out a plebiscite,now, it proves beyond all doubt they are on the other side of the same coin.
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I understand there used to be a lot of Catholics in the Labor party – do sufficient remain to cause disagreement on equal marriage?
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Hypo, someone here or on AIMN indicated that Burke was a Catholic, yet he also told us on Q&A that he was against the plebiscite.
Maybe in today’s world, even in Oz, it does not matter anymore in which church you were baptized; for me it was Lutheran, for Him , Catholic, atheist both of us…
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My question regarding the influence of religion in the Labor remains valid; Kevin Rudd continued the practice of Christian prayer at the start of discussion time.
And continued subsidising catholic and other private schools
nor did he or Gillard put a halt to the Chaplaincy programs…
As for what the Spanish or the Irish or the Italians have to do with this question? Well, I expect there are some Italians, quite a few Irish and maybe a Spaniard in the Labor party… Is this what you were trying to explain?
Then there is the problem of the dominance of the Labor right-wing faction, conservatives and religion are often in lock-step….
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…also The Irish are Catholic, as are the Spanish, yet they accept SSM, I believe even the Italians…?
Why can’t the Aussies, this is hardly a church-going population.
What’s our(their) real excuse for the plebiscite…?
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Imposing themselves on the public by its application to block resolution of issues they are not comfortable with..very tail wags dog.
As with the Tea Party obstructionists in the USA, the message is, “nothing gets passed unless it conforms to our whims”.
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Bullying by morally deficient bigots.
Because both parties are servants of this paradigm Australia is trapped in a Tea Party church controlled parliament.Pretty much forever given the ALP is a twin.
And the interference is totally against our constitution, but no sign of the AG defending the laws of the land.
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Bullying by morally deficient bigots
I’m sure there are bullies in the Labor party, bullies are everywhere.
While the LNP continue to demonstrate their lack of ethics or moral standing, not all of the Labor are morally deficient and bigoted?
Are they?
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If those inside the ALP are happy to allow (remain silent,go with the flow etc) the control to remain with an illegitimate power-base,at the cost of their credibility,morality,ethics and their members aspirations etc, then they are a part of the problem.The enablers.
So far the grass roots have been out-gunned at every attempt to reform.Between factions and bibles, the ALP are a bees dick away from the LNP on issues of high ground morality .
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LNP digs up the corpse of Mandela to drive policy of hate>
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-24/nelson-mandela-foundation-%27objects-misuse-of-legacy%27/7874382
These people are beyond nasty.After this,I’d say more like>evil.
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