Never in Australian politics did the Australian public so unintelligently elect a series of right-wing governments over a decade that were rotten, to the core, infected with hatred for the less well-off but happy with the burden they carried. So ignorant of its incompetence. So willing to break laws and trash conventions. They were so utterly corrupted by lying that they sometimes knew not when or why they were telling them.
Australian parliamentarians are responsible for the wellbeing of Australia’s multicultural society but in the last eight months the majority have failed to understand the reaction of those citizens who have experienced colonisation, occupation and war. These Australians are more likely to identify with oppressed people, so they expect their parliamentarians to articulate commitment to international humanitarian law. And of course, as we know many Australians are opposed to militarism as a means to resolve conflict. It is important to recognise those few political representatives who have tried to initiate difficult debate about how Australia should respond when a hitherto trusted ally ignores international law to engage in ethnic cleansing? Australians want to see their representatives and senators engage in informed consideration of complex issues that require sensitivity and courage. Time is running out for many parliamentarians to fulfil their obligations and Australians are watching and waiting for greater responsibility .
Source: Why has the Australian Parliament failed to debate the tragedy of Gaza? – Pearls and Irritations
At least he’s safe from a spill for the simple reason that nobody wants the job. And at least he can content himself that he’ll be able to run a better campaign than Rishi Sunak, who announced the election in the rain and managed to get himself photographed standing under an exit sign.
Source: The Strangest Things About The Liberal Party This Week! – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Remember PINK BATS 5 people died. The LNP wanted standards set for our sparkies raised now he wants to drop the standards
“Rather than training young Australians and allowing them to build a trade and a career path, Peter Dutton wants to slash the wages of electricians in a cost of living crisis,” said Michael Wright, ETU National Secretary. “This cheap and nasty plan will dilute the living standards of electricians by making them compete with foreign sparkies on short term visas who can not enforce their labour rights.
Source: Dutton wants to slash electrician wages – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The news will no longer inform you, it will simply be a tool that politicians like Dutton utilise to amplify their latest lie or their latest culture war head-on-a-stick, so our hearts and minds and our neighbourhoods become divided every moment of every day.
Source: The lying game: Australia’s political landscape to come – The Shot
Since 2000 we seem to have been becoming increasingly more American. 21 years of LNP government has changed us an not for the better. The criminal invasion of Iraq, the Cronulla Riots, the Nope nope Nope coming of Abbott and now the referendum and “no”. There’s an 8-year gap in the life expectancy of Australia’s FNP which can be attributed to institutionalized racism and health no longer being considered a Universal Human Right by the LNP. Remember when Peter Dutton was voted the worst Minister for Health in the history of this country? He has been a racist all along. With his banana bender Colonial Squatter’s mentality he’s a living legend.
Racism is the main reason that America doesn’t consider healthcare a human right and provide it to all citizens, as does every other developed country in the world. Racist whites, particularly in the South, have worked for over a century to make sure that healthcare is hard for Black people and other minorities to get.
Social statistics indicate the very same applies and has increasingly done over 21 years of LNP government.
America is the only developed country in the world that doesn’t recognize healthcare as a human right, the only country with more than two-thirds of its population lacking access to affordable healthcare, and the only country in the developed world that has, since its founding, continuously enslaved and legally oppressed and disenfranchised a large minority of its population because of their race.
These things are connected.
The simple fact is that, were it not for slavery, white supremacy, and the legacy of “scientific racism,” America would have had a national, single-payer healthcare system in 1915, just 31 years after Germany put into place the modern world’s first such program.
Source: Is “Scientific Racism” Why America Has No Universal Healthcare System? | The Smirking Chimp
Australians had the opportunity to accept our invitation in the ‘Uluru Statement from the Heart’. Only they had the power to decide whether to accept or reject constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people by voting “Yes” or “No” on a representative body enshrined in the Constitution.
I hope I’m wrong, but everything around me is saying that today Australia will reject that invitation. It will choose to leave our hand outstretched.
Unlike elections, the thing about referendums is that there really is no hiding the truth.
Currently, the Voice has been ramped up as a major racial divide in a country in which the racial divide has existed since 1788. It was only recently that the LNP was insisting Multiculturalism was the nation’s biggest mistake in Australian Immigration in the 70s letting the Lebanese and other non-Anglos in. They now insist we should return to focus on who we let in and Assimilation policies instead.
Remember Australian Education needed to establish a degree in Western Culture and that black arm history not be taught in primary or secondary schools. Dutton made it perfectly clear that Muslims and Africans were unwanted and mocked Pacific Island neighbor’s fears of Climate Change . Boomgate revealed the true nature of the LNP and even showed Morrison the ad-man freaking out. Abbott wanted the return of Knights and Dames and us to be a part of NATO, not the Pacific or Asia. Morrison gave us AUKUS. He saw political advantage in promoting division. He used the Cronulla riots employing fear and bullshit to win his own preselection for the seat of Cook. The LNP has never really welcomed us being a Pacific Nation but has always preferred to see the nation through a European Western and a white Christian lens. Korea in the 50s, Indonesia, and Vietnam were a threat in the 60s, and the Chinese here, and China always a threat this century. Howard even stole Pauline Hanson’s Asian hatred out from under her, My god we had a ALP PM who spoke Chinese for god’s sake.
Division has been central to the LNP’s strategy and tactic and still is in order for them to maintain any political relevance. It’s why fear, fragmentation, and Voting No is so important to them
It has often been suggested that the LNP have always used an underlying fear and insecurity in the general public as a means of securing voting support on the basis that they offer better protection against external and internal threats. Typically, these threats are left vague, yet it is wholly evident that the main stream media is intent on ramping up China as an external threat and Middle East and youth crime gangs as an internal threat. Is Climate Change presented as a threat to our security? Rarely, and usually in an entirely non-systematic manner.
Source: Fearmongering: the media’s creation of fear in the general public – Pearls and Irritations
Tony Abbott private citizen took the Australian Model to the UK Tory Party and now they are employing Rwanda as their Off Shore detention center as we did Manus and Nauru. Abbott will go down on the wrong side of history for what he’s done.
Asylum seekers are human beings, but racism, prejudice and government policies prevent them from having the basic human rights we all revere, writes Frances Letters.
Source: One refugee in a surging tide
It was the LNP “the better money managers” that spent a decade reducing investment in the public grants programs
A major independent study released today examines the economic returns generated by research grants made under the funding body’s National Competitive Grants Program. It finds every dollar invested in Australian research under the program generates $3.32 in economic returns for the country.
Source: Three-fold return on investment shows value of research – » The Australian Independent Media Network
What does a Liberal vote mean if the ultraconservatives take over the party’s mechanisms?
Source: The insurgency within the Liberal Party – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Now let me make it clear that I have nothing against people being in business and making a buck. After all, this is a capitalist system and I’m not going to suggest that those benevolent employers who only exist to give people jobs should be the first to be lined up against the wall and shot when the revolution comes. However, it does strike me as a little inconsistent when businesses argue that they’re the ones taking the risks and so they should be entitled to great rewards, only to turn around and say that the risk didn’t work out so someone should do something because life shouldn’t be this unfair when they’ve taken the risk and started/taken over/inherited a business. We all remember how some businesses took the JobKeeper money and kept it, even though they made a profit and there was no obligation on them to establish that they lost revenue during the pandemic. They didn’t even have to prove their parental status.
Source: The Coalition Hate Childless People! – » The Australian Independent Media Network
So incensed was I with the Leader of the Opposition’s response to the Royal Commissions report into the Robodebt Scheme that for a brief moment, I actually felt sorry for him.
However, in an equally brief deliberation, I realised that it was us, the people, that my sorrow was better directed. We deserved more than what Peter Dutton gave us. The Leader of the Opposition’s standing is fundamental to our democracy because he leads the alternative Government and therefore represents its philosophy and policies.
But alas, when responding to matters of importance, he attacks with all the ferocity of an angry Abbott or a lying Morrison. Let me explain his reaction to the Commission’s report in four instances.
Source: A Robodebt response from a leader full of loathing – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Latest Polls show Dutton remains a massive loser!! Meanwhile, Albo’s honeymoon period as leader has been the longest of any prime minister since Bob Hawke and Dutton’s the worst. The LNP’s troubles aren’t over by a long shot so why are the mainstream media crowing and sounding more like Andrew Bolt? is it that bad news sells papers Or is because Andrew Bolt’s lazy journalism just falls in step with the conservative mainstream run by Murdoch, Costello and Stokes?
Support for the government also softened over the last month amid growing voter pessimism about the state of the economy and a fractious debate on the Indigenous Voice, but it retains an election-winning primary vote lead.
Source: National Times – ‘Antithesis of what Menzies stood for’: Turnbull… | Facebook
Just when you thought the Liberals might be running out of new ways to demean women, along comes Opposition Leader Peter Dutton with his “defence” of disgraced former NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian.
Source: Dutton’s defence of Berejiklian oozes Liberal contempt for women
Gladys Berejiklian’s friends, sympathetic followers and sundry political flunkies are unhappy the ICAC found she engaged in “serious corrupt conduct” – but consider for a moment the counterfactual: What message would have been sent if she had been cleared?
When a member of the IPA becomes a Politician he represents the IPA
The Coalition has used Sky News as a platform to maintain its policy of fearmongering, spouting misinformation and critcising the Labor Government, writes Dr Abul Rizvi.
Source: Coalition and News Corp attempt to keep fear of asylum seekers alive
Murdoch and The LNP come flying in punching down
But for the Coalition, the strategy is clear. It wants to reduce the tone of debate around constitutional reform down to the level of an undergraduate culture-war exercise. This is where Sky After Dark comes in. The AFR reported yesterday that plans are underway for a 24-hour news channel entirely dedicated to the voice. Imagine being unable to sleep – you’re restless just thinking about whether you can pay the next electricity bill and nervous about the Reserve Bank’s decision on interest rates – so you get up at 3am to make yourself a warm drink and flick on the television, only to find Rita Panahi shouting at you because a Lions Club somewhere has come out in support of the voice. It’s the stuff of nightmares – but sadly there is a market for it.
Source: “In case… – The Fiberal Party of Australia – Lies & Misdemeanours | Facebook
Nevertheless, this man was celebrated as a hero by the LNP with $5+B in subsidies. “Better Money Managers” who the fuck thinks so? Corporate Minders, Caretakers of Capitalism that’s the scam? Morrison’s devotion was to manipulation by media marketing no matter the cost and we paid for the inevitable failures.
Qantas has dropped dramatically from the top five in an annual ranking of the world’s best airlines, falling all the way to 17th.
Source: World Airline Awards 2023: Qantas plummets; Singapore Airlines takes top spot from Qatar Airways
The elect are always destined for heaven as they are chosen and can’t be blamed for it’s God’s choice.
Ignorance of former Prime Minister Scott Morrison over the alleged assault of Brittany Higgins was a moral failure that should have terminated his political career.
Source: Whether Morrison knew or not, he is an abject moral failure and should resign: FLASHBACK 2021
Australians are tired of neoliberalism. We are sick of that much talked about and ever-widening gap between the haves and have-nots.
Victoria became the most privatised of states after former Liberal Premier Jeff Kennett sold everything except the site on which the Victorian Parliament sits — though given time, this too may have been on the cards.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media’s most hated state leader, Victorian Premier Dan Andrews, has enjoyed a 6.5 per cent increase in support since the 2022 State Election, while the Liberal Opposition is down 6.5 per cent. It is not too much of a stretch to posit that the decision by the Andrews Government to restore the State Electricity Commission in Victoria has contributed to voter trust in his Government.
Liberal backbencher Bridget Archer has delivered a fiery speech in support of the Indigenous Voice, and in defiance of party leader Peter Dutton, who says it will divide Australia by race.
Satire, Truth in Humour, Irony, Punching up,
Now before the fact checkers get stuck into the headline, I’d like to withdraw it and admit that the Coalition did not leave a trillion dollar debt, it was, in fact, a mere $889,000,000,000. However, headlines aren’t about accuracy; they’re either clickbait or some sub-editor’s way of making some pun that is neither funny nor actually connected to the topic.
The LNP is well known for importing GOP policies to Australia for little more than political gain while having minimal support of the Nation. They have stolen the ground from right-wing minorities like One Nation, and have declared Muslims Africans, unwanted and Chinese spies.
Nazi Germany is well known for its treatment of Jews. The United States is becoming well known for its treatment of the LGBTQ+ community, people of color, and other minorities. A pity that.
Source: Opinion | Nazi Germany and the Contemporary Republican Party | Common Dreams
The facts are that the Liberal Party’s lurch to the far-distant depths of Right-wing politics began during the ’90s, so if anyone should claim credit for the inevitable destruction of the Liberal Party, it’s probably John Winston Howard.
How Howard screwed the Libs How Howard screwed the Libs John Howard somehow made his way into power in Australia, staying PM for 11 long years, yet his divisive legacy may marginalise the Liberal Party for far longer than that.
It’s true that Dutton is holding firm to the Coalition’s core policy framework, rooted as it has been in fear, hate and otherness, which helped to get Howard elected an inexplicable four times. And yes, this essentially unchanged platform also helped propel Abbott and Morrison into power, with a short stint from the not-quite-as-Right Turnbull thrown in.
But this extreme Right-wing stance was not really in full view until Morrison took it to new evangelical heights and displayed its glory for all to recoil.
Source: Slow implosion of Liberal Party accelerates under Dutton
Shadow attorney-general Julian Leeser has delivered a hammer blow to Peter Dutton’s authority as leader of the parliamentary Liberal Party on the very issue he had planned to unify it around.
Stuart Robert expressed it when he said ” As a Cabinet member I’m obliged to lie” and not represent the people of my electorate. Dutton agreed when he said under my leadership the Shadow Cabinet will not be allowed a conscience
A split is looming for the Liberals over the Indigenous voice to parliament as its architects warn the party’s opposition is a “vote for business as usual”.
Source: Liberal opposition to voice ‘business as usual’ – Michael West
That was one of those strange little bits of hypocrisy that the Liberals are so good at: in 1972 they opposed lowering the voting age because people under 21 weren’t mature enough to consider the issues but they were old enough to be conscripted into a war… or rather, “police action” because there was no war declared so that’s why it took so long for the Vietnam vets to get recognition from the government for many of their issues…
It is tempting to liken the conjugal embrace of the Murdochs’ News Corp and the Liberal Party to that of praying mantises – News Corp playing the female role of consuming the male after getting what she wants.
Source: How News Corp damages Liberal Party, and Australian democracy
The Murdochs’ local business model increasingly is that of its American Fox News organ, playing to a conservative audience and in the process pushing its political arm further to the right.
Source: How News Corp damages Liberal Party, and Australian democracy
LNP will do anything to take media attention off Robodebt
it takes the media’s attention away from Robodebt and the slim chance that they’d report the obfuscation, the inability of people to recall basic information and the obvious fact that it wasn’t incompetence that led to legal advice not being attached or passed on: it was a design feature of the standover merchant tactics that were employed by almost everyone involved.
Red Alert brings together five experts including Peter Jennings, former head of ASPI. None of the five is a China scholar or expert.
Source: The defence establishment and Fairfax take on China – Pearls and Irritations
Sydney is now one of the most tolled cities in the world. Every time you pay a toll, much of the money now flows oversees. Some people now pay hundreds of dollars a week in tolls, these pseudo taxes. It wasn’t that long ago that governments borrowed money to build this kind of infrastructure. The Harbour Bridge and Snowy Hydro come to mind. Sure, we were paying it off through our taxes for many years. Now we do it by paying tolls. But the taxes we paid for our infrastructure were far cheaper per person than the tolls.
We have been conned.
Source: We’ve been taken for a ride – » The Australian Independent Media Network
From African gang violence to persecuted white South African farmers, Peter Dutton has history when it comes to race-baiting and the craziest of claims. And ones, I suspect, that are baseless.
Source: Making stuff up – » The Australian Independent Media Network
George Pell’s funeral in Sydney has shown clearly the divisions within the Australian community at large, the Catholic Church itself, and the conservative side of politics. It all boils down to whether or not Pell was a decent human being. Aside from the well-known path from obscurity to eminence, there is the ongoing debate as…
George Pell has divided the country, and he will continue to do so. He was found to have facilitated the actions of known pedophiles, by consciously ignoring criminal behaviour, and by moving them on to fresh pastures.
He was charged with sexual offences against children, and eventually acquitted. This does not mean he was innocent. It means that the case was not proved beyond reasonable doubt.
On a moral basis, he spoke of having “not much interest” in hearing accusations against what were his ‘staff’. He seems to have had no understanding of what it takes to manage people, and to protect children. He appears to have had no insight into victims’ suffering, nor that of their family and friends.
For the conservative politicians who are swarming to support Pell, take a look at your own, contradictory position. Abbott, Howard, even Dutton are singing Pell’s praises, while apparently totally ignoring the findings of a Royal Commission.
As politicians they are aware of the legal and moral power of a Royal Commission, and yet two prime ministers and someone wishing to become one, dismiss the institution. I would call that contempt for Parliament, or contempt for logic.
A saint for our times? I would describe Pell as a rather shabby individual who failed on every measure. The fact that the conservative side of politics is now rallying around such a man, proves there is something rotten in our fair land. Children are our most precious resource, and look how they were treated.
Source: Was Pell a decent man? No – » The Australian Independent Media Network
“Know your place” is a phrase used in the past by members of the Liberal Party when they observed, in their view, members of the Labor Party acting above their station.
The lessons of the last election should have left an indelible scar on those involved in the Luddite politics of the past decade. Have they not understood that the people, in their judgement, said they had had enough of their rancid unempathetic behaviour? Yet they go on unmoved as if nothing transpired while trying to give the Leader with a public image of a racist bigot a personality transplant. Queensland excepted.
But the attacks led by the Opposition leader Peter Dutton could have a fatal effect on the proposal. He knows that history tells us that without the support of the opposition, the referendum won’t pass. That is unless the people vote as they did in the election and decide to confirm their thoughts of May 21 2022, with a resounding yes vote that shatters conservative negativity for decades to come.
Source: Know your place – » The Australian Independent Media Network
When Julia Gillard was Prime Minister, after every government announcement, action, or inaction the first line of most mainstream media articles on the subject – with predictable and monotonous regularity – began with; “Tony Abbott says …” or “The Leader of the Opposition says…”.
We haven’t been subjected to the same tedious announcements as much since the last federal election, but fear not, it is making its anticipated return.
Source: The Leader of the Opposition says … – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Hannah Dickinson, an asylum lawyer from the Asylum Seeker Rights Centre, is reported in The Canberra Times to “have rubbished suggestions people are seizing on huge backlogs of asylum applications to lodge bogus claims for protection”.
Source: Are allegations of bogus asylum claims valid? – Pearls and Irritations
“If you can’t be honest with yourself, you can’t be honest with anyone.”
Source: Liberal Party unable to be honest with itself, let alone nation
Yes the dirty shareholders profited in 2022
Public subsidies for coal plants are merely the icing on the cake of a triumphant year for multinational fossil fuel corporations operating in this country. Michael West and Callum Foote report on Fossocracy Australia.
Josh Frydenberg as treasurer and Scott Morrison as secret treasurer made a motza for foreign vulture funds in last year’s takeover boom and mega-sell-off of Australian assets. Who knew what when, and why are we flogging essential monopoly services to cuff-linked tax crooks? Callum Foote and Michael West report.
Source: Josh and Scott deliver Goldman Sachs the giant vampire squid a giant quid – Michael West
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