Reflecting its confidence about its prospects in Victoria, Labor has traded in its existing prospect for the seat of Higgins, Josh Spiegel, for a higher profile model in the shape of barrister Fiona McLeod. That’s all I really have to relate at the moment, but a new federal politics and general discussion thread is required, and here it is. Note the new Brexit post from Adrian Beaumont below this one and, naturally, the latest New South Wales election post above.
There has to be some chance that May’s Deal is rejected again and the Parliament votes for revocation. This would surely entail the passage of No Confidence in May and the installation of either Corbyn or a Remainer Tory as PM and then new elections.
On the other hand, No Deal Brexit has already been legislated. This is the default result – a result that almost no-one in the Parliament supports.
Morrison gets a 30 minute prime time shot at trying to convince peeps he is not a morally corrupt politician who planned to sow discord in the general public about immigrants and refugees for political gain through various means including dog whistling…. and the whole thing felt like a dogwhistle.
The question is, why hasnt anyone in that meeting gone on the record to back up his claim? They are all on the same side. So why not? Either they want him to fail or they dont want to stab him in the back. Either way, if he cant get on the record corroboration; it is defacto condemnation.
“Ardern getting high praise indeed. This Opinion Piece is from the New York Times ‘Editorial Board’”
She is utterly and completely deserving of praise and support for how she has handled this. She’s a pollie yup,…….. and has grabbed a moment. The “political” conseuence for her will be massive embedded popularity.
But she has done a damn fine job in doing a very good thing for her counrty in a way that seems to have pretty much united all sides of politics in NZ. Thats leadership. Actually bringing people with you as far as possible and working from there. NOT dividing people and pandering to to the worst and most vocal elements.
Some people a have said that its becasue she is a woman with a womans perspective and I thinkl there is something to that. But more than that she seems to me to be simply a good person doing a good job in difficult times.
News.com.au seems to be far more balanced than the newspaper sites (The Australian and the various versions of the Daily Rupert). For the latter, the online version is far less feral than the paper version and in fact, in general, the actual news articles are less feral than the headlines.
From 2011 report.Little Grunt’s gushing a highlight 🙂
“I know Scott, and his style is deep compassion, he is deeply compassionate,”
Come on Jewelry, leak, you owe them a kick in the nuts.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-02-17/calls-for-morrisons-head-in-anti-muslim-row/1947034
Observer, “continue to rely on the poles and wires distribution to market (consumers) BUT those poles and wires need to be invested in because the existing poles and wires, absent coal, are redundant.”
Interesting point. There will still be a requirement for a network. Wind farms still need them and many people who have solar are usually still connected to the grid to sell excess and draw on when their own solar is not producing enough.
The trouble is every person who installs solar reduces considerably to the maintenance of the grid. Previously, something like 40-45% of their bill went towards this purpose. So every time someone puts on roof top solar, their contribution to the cost of maintaining the grid is shifted to all the other customers.
I cannot see the grid being abondoned, but I suspect there will a charge for having the wire going past your place, even if you don’t use it.
Simon² Katich®
says:
Either they want him to fail or they dont want to stab him in the back. Either way, if he cant get on the record corroboration; it is defacto condemnation.
_________________________________
There were enough in Cabinet willing to stab him in the back to source 3 journalists back in 2011. The difference is that then he was just a minister but now he’s PM and the sources don’t want to go down as rats helping bring down the government so openly.
“The question is, why hasnt anyone in that meeting gone on the record to back up his claim?”
Easy! 🙂 None of them know who of the others has notes from the meeting , what they might do with them, or who they may speak to. Condider that in the light of the mutual trust levels inside a Govt spinning down the gurgler???
Also, if anyone is inclined to “leak”, they will wait until this has died down a bit and ScoMo thinks all is well……..then drop it into the mix closer to the election. Or is that just my inner bitch speaking?? 🙂
Lizzie
This is one of the pictures for the item about the underwater restaurant.
I’ve been out and about for my weekly day release. The picture below seems appropriate for an octopuses garden (maybe for Bluey).
🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙
poroti @ #87 Friday, March 22nd, 2019 – 10:12 am
Thank you for the link. She is a world leader. (There was some discussion way back on what that is.)
I was thinking about some of these things this morning, particularly the role of Facebook, and another of BK’s lost links:
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/dont-blame-social-media-for-the-rise-of-nazi-shooters,12493
In that article Dr Martin Hirst argues that we should not blame social media for the rise of Nazi shooters.
That troubled me. My thoughts had reached the following point.
Guns don’t have agency, but they are an enabler of death. We restrict them. Does “Social Media” have agency? That question is open. I think it may but I am open to being convinced it does not. And to the question, are they an enabler of death? Like guns, I believe the answer is yes. In my mind it is not whether to restrict them but how.
The NY Times article had this to say.
But not one of them will back him on the record? Not a single one?
It must be in the minutes…. or every single one of them hates him.
or both
Simon² Katich®
says:
Friday, March 22, 2019 at 11:35 am
the sources don’t want to go down as rats
But not one of them will back him on the record? Not a single one?
It must be in the minutes…. or everyone single one of them hates him.
______________________________
Of course it’s fine to let him hang. But lie to help him? No way.
There hasnt been a rush of former PMs and cabinet members in that room that have backed Scottys version as yet.
imacca @ #106 Friday, March 22nd, 2019 – 10:33 am
Surfing analogy: Sometimes you have to catch the wave.
You’d reckon there would be some pressure to do so.
Kick backs? They cant all be made Treasurer or US Ambassador.
“CHURCH LEADER DENOUNCES CALL TO PRAYER
The leader of Destiny Church — a Pentecostal Christian organisation — claimed the prayer service was going too far.
“Two minutes of silence is okay but the Islamic prayer will sound? It contains this line ‘there is no God but Allah’, well I disagree,” Destiny Church’s leader Brian Tamaki said on Twitter.
“Jesus Christ is the only true God … this is not us!”
Tamaki also criticised New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern for “allowing ‘Allah as the only true God’ to be sounded in Muslim prayer across the airwaves in our nation”.”
https://www.news.com.au/world/celebrities-and-politicians-around-the-world-react-to-jacinda-arderns-gun-ban/news-story/e6048960e69403c0f8b465b9c1866335
Pentecostal gits. 🙁
I feel like there are at least two problems there:
1. Facebook and Twitter are platforms, not publishers. The publisher of social media is the end-user that posts (or reposts/shares) it. If publishers are to be held accountable for what they publish, you’ve got to go after the end-user, not the platform they’re on.
2. “Freedom of speech” doesn’t include the right to access any particular privately-operated, third-party platform for the purposes of amplifying your speech. Nobody has an entitlement to use Facebook or Twitter.
Ask Morrison if he supports the Destiny churches comments.
“Surfing analogy: Sometimes you have to catch the wave.”
Lol! 🙂
Or keep an eye for the better one coming in out the back. 🙂
It was 8 years ago. It just occured to me that even if the original report was true, maybe Morrison has convinced himself of the version he is claiming now. Memory can do funny things like that.
steve davis @ #119 Friday, March 22nd, 2019 – 10:43 am
Ask the Destiny Church commentator if he appreciates the rank hypocrisy in claiming offense over “there is no God but Allah” and then immediately following up with “Jesus Christ is the only true God”.
I’m guessing he doesn’t. 🙂
ScoMo in Geelong this a.m. Says Unions attend all meetings and decide the outcomes?
Steve
If I recall correctly early in the week Morrison or one of his team had a crack at Shorten for being in WA and not NSW this week.
I guess with the average voter seeming to have the attention span of a gnat the pollies just spew stuff out and know most of it is forgotten fairly quickly.
But your enemies don’t forget. Like what you said in shadow cabinet in 2010.
The Brexit deadline day is also a 50th anniversary of the publishing of Slaughterhouse 5.
.
.
From Dresden on the 50th Anniversary of ‘Slaughterhouse-Five’
When Kurt Vonnegut was at work on his hugely influential antiwar novel, “he was writing to save his own life,” his daughter said.
Published 50 years ago this month, the book became his first best-seller and made 47-year-old Vonnegut a star. Weird, wise, moral, profane and profoundly human, it remains a countercultural classic and one of the most enduring antiwar novels of all time. Not to mention a salvational act of self-therapy by a man who likely suffered from what would today be recognized as post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/books/kurt-vonnegut-dresden-anniversary.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage
Hunt went on the record, but then it was found he wasn’t at the meeting. So he is as credible as scumo on this.
I think the moderates are waiting until after the NSW election before they tip a bucket on Scotty over this. He will be just say “We’ll just have agree to disagree – I know what I said, and if they misinterpreted that then that can’t be helped. I’m focused on the future not the past. It’s not what you may or may not have said in the past, it’s what you are doing and will do, blah blah yap yap. etc”
60 days to go?
Due to the opaqueness of the Immigration system we have no way of knowing if an anti-muslim immigration policy has been implemented by this government. How skilled migration applicants are selected is a mystery, same with all the other visa categories.
Here is a list of the top 10 source countries for migrants coming to Australia during the financial year 2015/16, so year-end 30th of June 2016. As you can see, the list includes the numbers:
India – 40,145
China – 29,008
UK – 18,950
Philippines – 11,917
Pakistan – 6708
Vietnam – 5341
Nepal – 5095
Irish Republic – 4903
South Africa – 4337
Malaysia – 4265
Pakistan and Malaysia are the only Muslim countries listed, and I would say that most of the migrants from Malaysia would be Malaysian-Chinese and therefore not many Muslims.
imacca @ #117 Friday, March 22nd, 2019 – 10:41 am
Speaking as a Christian……
Allah is simply the Arabic name for God as understood broadly by many religions, including Islam, Christianity and Judaism. The Pentecostalists seem to think that what they think about God’s nature is definitive. I would think that God would take issue with that!
adrian @ #66 Friday, March 22nd, 2019 – 10:19 am
As Michael Daley said in his press conference, “They haven’t backed us for over a hundred years.”
imacca says:
Friday, March 22, 2019 at 11:41 am
“CHURCH LEADER DENOUNCES CALL TO PRAYER
The leader of Destiny Church — a Pentecostal Christian organisation — claimed the prayer service was going too far.
“Two minutes of silence is okay but the Islamic prayer will sound? It contains this line ‘there is no God but Allah’, well I disagree,” Destiny Church’s leader Brian Tamaki said on Twitter.
“Jesus Christ is the only true God … this is not us!”
Tamaki also criticised New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern for “allowing ‘Allah as the only true God’ to be sounded in Muslim prayer across the airwaves in our nation”.
They talk about the deity as if it’s real. They should be reminded that it’s all make-believe, and that when they ‘name’ the deity they’re using synonyms for a fantasy.
nath @ #128 Friday, March 22nd, 2019 – 10:50 am
A lot of Muslims in India – not all of them ended up in Pakistan after partition. Their opportunities may be a bit limited in India so I would think they are probably disproportionately represented in the Indian origin people in Australia.
“The Pentecostalists seem to think that what they think about God’s nature is definitive. I would think that God would take issue with that!”
The Pentecostolists probably understand it strictly as a commercial trademark issue. 🙁
The exclusion their dogma represents is nasty shit.
“most of the migrants from Malaysia would be Malaysian-Chinese and therefore not many Muslims.”
baseless, and I suspect probably not true. Just anecdotally the Malay Malaysian community in my area is quite large.
ajm
says:
A lot of Muslims in India – not all of them ended up in Pakistan after partition. Their opportunities may be a bit limited in India so I would think they are probably disproportionately represented in the Indian origin people in Australia.
_________________________________
perhaps there is a component, but the growth of Hinduism in Australia I think reveals that the majority would be Hindu, but yes Islam might make up a significant majority there.
Big A Adrian
says:
Friday, March 22, 2019 at 12:00 pm
“most of the migrants from Malaysia would be Malaysian-Chinese and therefore not many Muslims.”
baseless, and I suspect probably not true. Just anecdotally the Malay Malaysian community in my area is quite large.
___________________________________
It’s not baseless, it was just a theory based upon my own anecdotal evidence of knowing many Malaysian Chinese.
Gotta love KK!
SMH says it back Carr in 2003 (I would have thought 1999 as well)
https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/its-time-for-a-vote-of-greater-independence-20041008-gdjvnv.html
Allah is Arabic for God.
Brian Tamaki is a believer in “prosperity theology’ and as such has for years behaved like the money hungry pastors we see in US mega churches. So ‘say no more’.
He has form when it comes to ChCh.
.
Brian Tamaki tells followers, ‘the weight of human sin’ caused the Christchurch earthquake
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/watch-brian-tamaki-tells-followers-weight-human-sin-caused-christchurch-earthquake-hours-before-kaikoura-disaster?auto=5212114211001&variant=tb_v_1
.
Shorten presser.
“Morrison has got more out clauses than an insurance contract” .Zinger.
For as long as I remember (politically, about 50 years), on the day before a Federal or State election, the Sydney Morning Herald produces an editorial which is general a reasonable assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of both sides then concludes by recommending a vote for the Coalition. It has occasionally recommended Labor but that’s the exception.
imacca says:
Friday, March 22, 2019 at 11:41 am
“CHURCH LEADER DENOUNCES CALL TO PRAYER
The leader of Destiny Church — a Pentecostal Christian organisation — claimed the prayer service was going too far.
“Two minutes of silence is okay but the Islamic prayer will sound? It contains this line ‘there is no God but Allah’, well I disagree,” Destiny Church’s leader Brian Tamaki said on Twitter.
“Jesus Christ is the only true God … this is not us!”
Tamaki also criticised New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern for “allowing ‘Allah as the only true God’ to be sounded in Muslim prayer across the airwaves in our nation”.
Apart from anything else, stating “Jesus Christ is the only true God” is absolutely sh*t theology. Seriously, one of the things that bugs the hell out of me about so many Pentecostals is that their self-righteous certainty about the tenets of their faith is combined with the intellectual and religious sophistication of a golden retriever with a box of crayons. And it shouldn’t annoy me because I’m an atheist.
“Jesus Christ is the only true God
This self-satisfied delusion is as dangerous as it gets. It is used to justify any actions against perceived god-less non-believers. These people fill me with terror. They terrorise me.
Anyway the point I was making is that we have no way of knowing how many applicants for skilled migration are received and a country comparison of those selected. Neither do we have such detailed information on other forms of migration, such as the amount of visa applicants per country compared to those granted and by country. It seems to me that it would be very easy to run an informal discrimination campaign against any particular country or region. And we wouldn’t really know about it.
Steve
Bolt is always bitching about how news.com.au is too left wing. If you look at those bias-ometer studies, news.com.au is actually left of Fairfax and all Newscorp papers. Someone said it’s because they are for a young demographic. They really slammed ScoMo for his Aly interview.
Not that it matters at all, but the immigrants coming from India will likely include plenty of Sikhs. I know quite a few. They outnumber the Hindus.
The plaudits from many for the NZPM (including me) are not universal………..
How about this sarcastic and bile-filled bit from our local West this morning in the letters column???
Under the heading “The Kiwi juggernaut”, the bloke dips his pen in the nasty inkwell………………..
He says…..(and I provide it verbatim)……………”Is it just me, or is anybody else over – seriously over – the Jacinta Ardern juggernaut? There are people all over the social media calling for her to take over from Scott Morrison, Theresa May and so on…….”….(Now comes the sarcasm)……………”I’m surprised the Pope is not after her to replace George Pell, given the way she walks on water and maketh the lame to walk and the blind to see…………Can there be any doubt the woman is Mother Teresa, Shirley Temple and Posh Spice all rolled into one?…………..Let’s save the applause until she has actually achieved something………….” (Now the best bit)……….”To date all she has done is flounce about with a worried grimace on her face wringing her hands”……………
All one can say is the Tall Poppy stuff cuts in early in Oz.
The correspondent clearly wrote this before it looks like general agreement between both the government and opposition in NZ has been reached on some form of gun control.
Mind you in the same paper, local 6PR breakfast mouthpiece Basil Zempilas chimes in with………”Jacinta Adern’s leadership has rightly been acclaimed in Australia, but the line “I wish she was our prime minister is undignified and unnecessary. Let’s admire her without running down our own”………………
He has got the last bit wrong. It is not the comment that is undignified, but many of the actions of our said PM….
I work with some Indian migrants who are christian.
Diogenes+Steve
news.com.au also stands out for its lack of “gold bricking’ articles.