"Terrorists" don't spring fully-formed from the ether, they become radicalised through a combination of disenchantment, disadvantage and being isolated. Vilifying a minority group is a sure-fire way to tick all those boxes. Being Islamaphobic won't stop terrorists who happen to be Islamic from committing atrocities, but it will put many more impressionable people at risk of becoming those terrorists.

I also hope you are being tautological with the phrase "terrible loss of life", in the sense that any loss of life is a tragedy, because terrorism barely registers on the death toll list in the first world. Only 113 Australians have died globally from terrorism in the past 37 years. Terrorism is notoriously bad at large scale loss of life. This doesn't mean we should ignore terrorism, but we shouldn't whip ourselves into a paranoia over it any more than going for a dip at the beach. We have a very effective department working on preventing terrorism, and we are very good at stopping large scale attacks without the need to incite the public to vilify a race or religion. Some will always slip through, people will always get taken by sharks, but we don't need to distrust Muslims any more than we distrust gummy sharks.

Like you mean how big businesses hide profits off shore to avoid paying tax in Australia? :lol:

-PB

change it to andrew bolt and this is how I feel about a certain poster

Albo for PM :lol:

Bill Shorten is pretty awful, it's good to see a few new strong ALP faces starting to show up.

They will win my vote at the next election if they stand against data retention.

IMO, Labor look as weak as they always do. Shorten would last six months as prime minister. Albo is no good. Plibersek seems a bit soft and Tony Bourke is punchable.

The liberals are still just a bunch of selfish out of touch private school boy wankers. As per usual.

We need a strong democratic party again.

Re: tax, I'd like to see a much lower income tax bracket offset by increased consumption taxes.

You're correct re: All of those. Jason Clarke is one to watch for the future.

My local MP is Andrew Giles, he took over from Harry Jenkins. Typical Labor, former organiser etc... But he seems to have a bit about him and he is doing a LOT of local work despite there being no election on the horizon. He also got thrown out of question time the other day. I respect and admire the work that he's doing so far, but he has a long way to go before I'll vote for him.

But but the gst punishes the poor!!! /australia

But yeah New Zealand implement something similar recently and its working well. Going to take a brave leader who tries to implement that though.

Yeah, phone autocorrelation

I did read some posts on reddit claiming to be responses from Bill Shorten and Tanya Plibersek regarding metadata retention saying (paraphrasing) that the need for law enforcement to be able to do their job needs to be balanced with people's right to privacy. Sounds promising but I'm extremely skeptical that they'll oppose it.

Laws are already overreaching, although in specific regard to metadata, Law Enforcement already have access to whatever they want with a warrant.

I do like the reddit mantra of "there is no such thing as metadata, all data is data"

I don't buy that government and our democratic, free, equal opportunity society are responsible for producing terrorists. Not everyone who is sad and lonely decide to become jihadis, there's clearly an indelible link between terrorism and Islamic doctrine and ideology. It doesn't matter how tolerant and kind we are with these people, just by being white, western, blonde, Christian, secular, democratic and equal we are the vile enemies of Islam and Allah, and they will do everything in their limited power to implement shariah, caliphate and their primitive value system, or destroy ours. So it's incumbent on our leaders to sound out the legitimate threat that fundamentalist Islam possesses and take reasonable action to protect it's citizens, rather than tip toeing around it fearing they cause some people to become upset. If someone is pushed over the edge because Tony Abbott says "Muslim leaders need to do more" you would have to reasonably conclude that person was 99.9% radicalised already. Far from vilifying the Islamic community the government has tried hard to differentiate moderate and radical Muslims, it's actually the imams and muftis themselves who've repudiated the government and requested not be treated distinctly from ISIS and their fundamentalist brothers.

As for comparing sharks and terrorism, sharks are rare attacks which affect only individuals and families, terrorism can potentially kill thousands and represent an ideological attack on our values which can inflict damage our national psyche and economy. We can't control whether a shark takes a surfer but we should try to control as much as possible stopping terrorist attacks for which the implications are far more severe.

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/feb/26/gender-pay-gap-in-australia-rises-slightly-to-188-abs-data-show

Hey guys, the gender gap is up again. Any guesses why? Larissa Waters is sure it's because we hate women.

Oh look, an article from a few months ago.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-16/increase-in-australian-birth-rate-for-first-time-in-five-years/5969900

I guess we should force all these new mothers back into full-time work in stressful, high-paying roles to keep pushing for that unicorn outcome equality number.

The fact that none of these items are already in the draft legislation is just more evidence of why this government is amongst the worst in our history.

You have serious problems.

The figures are for full time employment so the amount of women working part time or casually do not skew the results.

The article is actually very balanced - "However, it is important to remember that the national gender pay gap is a high-level figure that shows general differences in earnings between women and men across the board. It is not a like-for-like analysis of women and men doing the same job and, therefore, it doesn’t mean that women are earning 18.8% less than men in the same role,” Harris said.

The only comments reported from the Greens Senator are that the watered water down gender and pay reporting requirements for businesses with more than 100 employees would have provided “important gender equality indicators”.

What it means is that women are either working fewer hours and/or working in roles that pay less. There are multiple reasons for this including cultural, maternity leave and almost certainly a bit of ingrained sexism in some industries. But the above statement is important because I get the feeling that some people think that women are paid at a reduced rate for the same job.

The argument on this always gets skewed by both sides as a sexism issue (which is definitely a component) whereas the real discussion should be on what's keeping women out of the workforce. I know from my personal experience, the cost of child care even with the rebate is pretty pricey. There's really no way my wife could go back to full time work for quite a long time. Saying that, we have also made a choice that we think 5 days a week is too much for a 3 year old despite the fact she loves going but others should have the option.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/web/metadata-retention-laws-will-pass-as-labor-folds-20150226-13qd4m.html

What a great way to turn ALP voters into Greens voters.

I don't know how many left (no pun intended :lol:) would care. I assume many such as myself abandoned them when they started the race to the bottom regarding who can treat refugees the worst.

I just did what I usually do and gave my local MP a spray... Although I haven't explicitly threatened him with losing my vote before.



Probably could have been a bit tighter, I just bashed it out on my phone and sent it off without drafting or proofing.

Edited by Notorganic: 27/2/2015 02:52:20 PM

Yes it was terrible how they suddenly realised locking up thousands of kids and thousands dying in the ocean was a bad thing.

We need to get back the glory days of our humanity when boats full of children were sinking and we were hoarding them in detention by the thousands. We've truly lost our moral compass releasing all those poor kids from detention and eradicating the deaths at sea.

Always had to gauge, but a lot of redditors flagging that this is their jumping off point.

You forgot to add the bit about satellites peering into your backyard and collecting data without warrants.

The problem is too many vote for the major parties as first preference or second preference, as they flow eventually you end up voting for either Labor or Liberal and we all know the logical choice between those two.

Yes the party with a successful human rights record locking up thousands of children and allowing boats to sink killing those on board. The evil coalition have no conscience releasing thousands of children from detention and cutting out the deaths at sea.

Sure, and Scullin is a very safe ALP seat, but the Green creep is happening more and more - especially in the inner city.

Looking forward to being as loud as possible :)

Oh yeah if the Greens don't get their best result yet this coming election I'll be very surprised.