Yes, it is of course hardly surprising, given how much your income gets murdered by the tax man when it rises.

short term self interests vs long term common good interests
the debate rages however only one side can claim moral high ground

Now where is that quote about facts & reality having a left wing bias.....

Edited by Murdoch Rags Ltd: 21/9/2015 05:52:20 AM

Finally Smokin' Joe fucks off.

Let's see what this LNP can do now budget wise.

-PB

There are 2 plum jobs in Diplomacy. UK and USA. How Joe has pulled this off is amazing.

Either he's got some amazing photos of Turnbull with his pants down or he's said he'd spill the beans on something sensitive.

Just like the episode of the Hollowmen :lol:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1ik75u_the-hollowmen-0102-the-ambassador_fun

That ep was the first thing that came to mind when I heard about it this morning.

So sick of this left vs right binary argument that ignores reality.

There are cultural conservatives/progressives
There are economic conservatives/progressives

They exist on both sides of the spectrum.

Look at Turnbull - social progressive, economically liberal.

Look at unions like the SDA & CFMEU - they are the ones that prevented the ALP from adopting a binding vote on gay marriage.

"Leftists" do this! "Conservatives" do that.... what a load of rubbish.

How about we debate specific policies instead of creating an ideological strawman to feel morally superior to?

Spoken like a typical whichever one of leftie hippie or conservative dinosaur it's easiest to typecast you as.

Typical Rightwing dribble

Edited by vanlassen: 21/9/2015 05:53:29 PM

Some of the Questions on Q&A tonight. :-&

There were a number of cringeworthy questions about the trade union movement but I know people believe that crap so it was kinda good they were asked.

There was a crazy lady that talked about wind turbine syndrome. The rest were pretty soft questions.

Shorten spoke pretty well though.

The's the problem. There seems to be a vocal minority of whatever side that seems to ignore any kind of practicality as long as they have moral high ground.

Knowing some of the idiots in this country we'd take 3,000,000 refugees if it would win them an election.

Really?? to me it appeared the ALP spin machine had gone into turbodrive trying to make him look articulate, i felt that when he spoke he was underwhelming and lacked any penetration or conviction.....

go figure

I didn't expect you to think anything other than the above.

Wasn't enough to convince me to vote Labor next election but he talked like a human being and answered questions reasonably.

fair enough.......just being straight, and yes you are correct i don't like shorten. guy is a muppet, or a cock with a face painted on, apart from being another Union crony, for the sake of Australian politics Labor need to get away from the union career politicians.

and your thoughts of the 7.30 report last night?

The interesting thing about Shorten is that he is the ultimate machine politician - he has got everywhere in his career through backroom negotiations.

So he is a very effective negotiator and has the ability to "get things done".

The problem he faces now is that he is in a public election campaign against a charismatic opponent.

It will be interesting to see how he performs then.

The interesting thing about Turnbull is that the reason he is liked by the public is because he is articulate and moderate. But his party room is much more conservative than he is.

They won't budge on gay marriage, not believing in climate change etc.

Turnbull has planted his flag in the selection of his cabinet - nearly all moderates. The conservative warriors have been cleaned out.

How will Turnbull manage expectations of the public? Of the party room?

It's an open question.

I am just glad that it looks like we will see some more policy debates in the future, rather than 3 word slogans. That can only be a good thing.

I'm interested in this issue you have with Shorten being a "union crony". I personally am ambivalent about unions. Obviously there are unions who have issues with corruption (CFMEU obviously), but ultimately they are a necessary evil to balance against exploitative employers.

I see them as large bureaucracies (for good and bad) that balance against the power of other large bureaucracies (large employers).

The other thing about union corruption (particularly in construction) is that it works both ways - there are corrupt employers paying off union officials because it benefits them too.

I don't think the real issue is the need to get away from "career union" politicians.

The issue as I see it exists in both the major parties - both are increasingly filled with people who have only ever worked within the political party - straight from uni. So you have this political career elite who have never worked in the real world. They get involved in their party at uni, become staffers for their local member, work their way through the party (and institutional) structures, then become MPs.

We are steadily seeing a narrowing of career experience of the average MP. That is a bad thing.

It might be worth reflecting on this statement and which end of the political spectrum is typified by more evidenced based thinking. It is an interesting thing that academics are labelled 'lefties'.

Bang on, well said.

-PB

I am in the construction industry and have experienced first hand the unions manipulation.

the employers do not "pay off" the union to beat regulations or rules, they pay them off to avoid the militant strikes and industrial interference. the unions receive these and other payments that are payoffs as consultation fees or donations, everyone know neither are true, like since when has a union been more skilled to deliver WHS advice over a specialist in that area, the unions have softened their stance from the "bad old days", they limit the hostile and militant action and have targeted area's such as safety, they get union reps on the safety committee and hold the sites and builders to ransom, as no one ever questions a safety delay.....there is no benefit want or need for a business not to keep it's employees safe, WHS penalties, workers comp levies so on and so forth are more than adequate motivators to keep a site safe.

Agree on the career politicians.....

You seem to be talking about construction industry unions - the CFMEU in particular, rather than unions more broadly. Accurate?

I think lots of people including unionists have a problem with the CFMEU and the way they damage the broader movement.

CFMEU or the main agitators, however there are shitloads of union involved in the construction and other related industries,

almost one per trade......

Even though I've never been a fan of the Labor party, I don't see career union politicians as any worse than than career politicians on both sides. Most members of parliament these days leave uni, go to work for a pollie as a staffer, work their way up the public service and then stand for office on their own. None of them ever have a job in the 'real world'. You can't have a world view when you've only lived through the prism of party politics.

Labor would have contacted Q&A as soon as Turnbull won the PMship.

Its so sad how much money this government is wasting & how our future is being set back.

The long term cost of the NBN-lite will be at least $20B more than it would have been after a FULL fibre optic upgrade, but the Libs had to 'differentiate' themselves to Labor by offering something cheap & sub-standard in the short term, but more expensive in the long term. Utterly disgusting that the Liberal Party can so boldly waste such an incredible amount of money.
They also had to have a 'Direct Action' policy on global warming, just so they could say it wasn't a tax & again appeal to people's short term thinking, despite the fact that the taxpayer still pays for it & independent experts have all stated that it is more expensive than an emissions trading scheme. Let's also not forget their ongoing unwillingness to invest in the future of renewable energy & technology.
The Libs had to waste over $60M on a Royal Commission purely to boost their poll numbers by smearing their opponent, when we have an existing criminal justice system to deal with these issues that would have saved the taxpayer plenty. Once again disgusting that such money can be wasted.
Considering that independent economic experts have stated that we would have gone into recession if Malcolm Turnbull's ideological plan had have been followed during the 2008/09 global financial crisis - it is laughable the Liberal Party repeatedly pins its claims of economic management to the post. Repeat the lie enough & eventually he people will believe you.
He is a little before my time, but after watching the Kerry O'Brien interviews with Paul Keating, pound for intellectual pound Peter Costello seems like an economic illiterate by comparison.

Edited by Murdoch Rags Ltd: 22/9/2015 12:00:58 PM

I'm not voting for Christopher Pyne (my local member) either, on preferences I'll end up with Labor as the "lesser of two evils".

Don't need to convince me on the NBN, but you've probably baited rusty to write some tripe about how it's cheaper and better (disclosure he works for Telstra but not in a technical area). The Libs have been a disaster and have never been good economic managers.

Also I was around for the Keating era, and he had his flaws but he'd blow any politician in the current era out of the water.

Did you see the Keating interviews? His ability to grasp a cornucopia of economic issues and tie them together was impressive to listen to. A bit like unifying quantum mechanics & general relativity, from a physics viewpoint!! (so to speak). The problem is intellect like that isn't valued by society (yet).
I didn't realise that Australia didn't have capital gains tax before circa 1985! In this regard, I am glad we have become more economically free market (aside from all the other stuff like floating the dollar, deregulating the finance system, etc)

Yeah I watched it when it was first run. He's a different class of politician. Can you imagine any current politician going onto a shock jock's radio program, taking nut job phone calls and telling them where to go?
[youtube]pn1SnTVYe_4[/youtube]

some of these comments are just complete nonsense....or are you trolling?

Feel free to write the rebuttal.

-PB