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General Australian Politics Thread


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Edit: Converted into a general-purpose Aussie politics thread, in the aftermath of the 2013 election.

 

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Right, so it's election night for the Aussies, and the Labor Party, headed by Julia Gillard, Australia's very first female Prime Minister, and the Liberal Party, lead by Tony Abbot, are more or less neck-in-neck in terms of seats won. Seriously, right now, as I'm typing this, both parties have about 46 seats each.

Honestly, I'm hoping that Labor comes through again in this election - I like Julia Gillard, and I wouldn't touch the Liberals with a ten-foot-pole because they'd scrap the National Broadband Network if they came into power. So screw them.

Edit: Just to note, for non-Aussies reading this topic - the Liberals are actually conservative. It's a hilarious contradiction, I know.

Edited by Shirou Emiya
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I wouldn't touch the Liberals with a ten-foot-pole because they'd scrap the National Broadband Network if they came into power. So screw them.

Based on as much info as Wikipedia managed to give me, that doesn't seem like a unilaterally bad thing.

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Based on as much info as Wikipedia managed to give me, that doesn't seem like a unilaterally bad thing.

Not really, the NBN will provide 100 Mbps at least to 93% of Australian homes. While the Liberals aren't gonna completely scrap it, it seems, it'll only be roughly 10% of the speed of Labor's plan. Pretty much everyone I've talked to about it seem to agree that the NBN is nothing but a good thing and really do not want the Liberals to touch it. It is somewhat expensive, yes, but it'll be worth it, fuck the haters.

Current status of election: Possible hung parliament. Normally, this election should've ended by now, but it seems it's incredibly close.

Edited by Masaru Daimon
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It also appears that it will allow the Australian government to act something akin to the Mafia when it comes to calling in "favors" from ISPs, forcing them to support controversial laws because the government is in a position that gives them leverage (similar to, but far more thorough than, when some European countries use their previous subsidization of ISPs to do the same thing). The same Australian government that seems to regularly get locked into "won't someone please think of the children" mode every couple years or so.

Pretty much everyone I've talked to about it seem to agree that the NBN is nothing but a good thing and really do not want the Liberals to touch it.

While I'm not saying this situation is (because, as I mentioned, looking over a Wikipedia page doesn't qualify me as an expert on this matter), that could simply be the result of ignorance. Like how the citizens who go out of their way to support Net Neutrality in America almost never have any idea what they are actually talking about, because they saw "equal Internet for all" and ignored everything else. Or, hell, that Mosque thing in NYC.

Edited by Tornado
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I just have this horrible feeling that if Abbott (or Rabbott, as he's been dubbed by my sister) becomes PM, he's gonna be the George W. Bush of Australian politics.

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I'll all depend on who the australian independants (and possibly some Greens) side with. They'll have to choose between a possible George W. Bush or the possible Socialist Australian version of Maggie Thatcher. I really don't envy them.

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I leave Australia, my home country, for 5 years... and a woman manages to snake her way to the top.

The people didn't vote for her to begin with, so it was really really unfair for her to become PM.

In past elections at home, we've been screwed one way or the other, but seriously, she doesn't deserve to lead.

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I just wanna add that election has hilariously ended in tie, or hung parliament. edit : even though gerk already kinda posted that, whoops.

if only I saw this topic last night when I was drunk and chatty, oh the fun times we could've had!

It also appears that it will allow the Australian government to act something akin to the Mafia when it comes to calling in "favors" from ISPs, forcing them to support controversial laws because the government is in a position that gives them leverage (similar to, but far more thorough than, when some European countries use their previous subsidization of ISPs to do the same thing). The same Australian government that seems to regularly get locked into "won't someone please think of the children" mode every couple years or so.

better then right now, where we essentially have company running all telecommunications in australia.
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I leave Australia, my home country, for 5 years... and a woman manages to snake her way to the top.

The people didn't vote for her to begin with, so it was really really unfair for her to become PM.

In past elections at home, we've been screwed one way or the other, but seriously, she doesn't deserve to lead.

To be fair to Julia, this whole mess wasn't really her fault, she more or less became PM by accident, forced into leadership by the rest of the party after they didn't seem to like what Rudd was doing.

But, yeah, a bloody hung parliament. This country hasn't seen that shit since WW2.

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Hung parliaments are not necceserialy a bad thing.

On the other hand, I voted for the lib dems in the british one, and don't care who they partner with as long as they have some power, so take my opinion with a truck of salt. :P

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Honestly, the big highlight is not who wins between Labor and the Liberals, but the Australian Sex Party/Family First Party Debate

Source: youtube.com/australiansexparty

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  • 3 years later...

Alright, the 2013 election has come and gone, so let's recap:

 

  • Gillard got kicked off the top spot by Rudd, who should have called an election there and then, but didn't. His mistake. Still, there was no avoiding the exodus of senior ministers who left politics because Gillard was voted off the party leadership... Granted, we also saw Communications Minister Conroy (mastermind of the ill-conceived net filter) leave as well, so good fucking riddance to him.
  • The next couple of months of campaigning went up and down, but it eventually ended with the Liberals securing the lower house, though Labor wasn't savaged too badly.

 

It is depressing that the Liberals won, but the silver lining is that they don't have nearly the numbers to control the senate. Labor/Greens needs four more seats to control the senate, but the independents have indicated that they're not keen on most of the Coalition's policies, so the ruling party is going be facing a hostile senate. And Abbot has stated that if he doesn't get his way, he'll request a double-dissolution, which will likely only make things worse in the Senate for him.

 

Plus, Abbot is an Bush-level idiot, and unlike in US politics, he can be toppled at any time if his frontbenchers lose patience with him. Too many mistakes, and if he can't get over the hurdle that is the Senate, the Coalition may likely implode like Labor did, and party unity was the only thing keeping them afloat against Labor.

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I'm very disappointed that Tony Abbot is now Prime Minister since I'm not a fan of his policies at all, but if there's a hung parliament at least that will keep him in check.

 

What's more disappointing is that most of the Australian media is Murdoch controlled and they were all pandering for Abbot. This is what happens when one company controls many media sources. ABC (Australia's public broadcaster) was probably the only voice of sanity among the media. They actually did a great piece on their Media Watch series about this too

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I am also disappointed that the Liberals won. I was actually hoping Kevin Rudd would make it again, but it seems the media brainwashed our voters. :( The Daily Telegraph really pissed me off with all this "Pro Abbott" stuff. It's not that I hate the Coalition, I just don't like Tony. I hope he gets overthrown.

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I haven't been keeping up with this all too well sadly, but I understand Tony Abbott isn't exactly the greatest of men. I was supporting Rudd because of a video which he discusses his stance on LGBT rights and he seems like a smart, liberal kind of guy. It's too bad the other guy came out on top.

 

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Waitaminute, have I got this right? Abbott, the one who opposes gay marriage, is the "liberal" one?

 

Australia is like the living embodiment of Opposite Day. Liberals hate gays, gun control works, the high minimum wage doesn't impact employment, the economy doesn't go down the shitter when the American economy fucks up yet again... shit's just crazy down there.

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  • 2 months later...

Well, considering the latest news, I might as well recap how badly Abbot's government is blundering so far:

 

  • The Climate Commission was scrapped, though now it's been reborn as a private organization.
  • The government has been scrapping several government bodies in the name of "cutting down bureaucracy", except they've also forced the CSIRO to cut a quarter of its staff, which severely limits its research capabilities (for perspective, the CSIRO invented Wi-Fi). It's also incredibly telling that the Abbot government doesn't have a science minister, something that also reeks of sheer idiocy - did they think the lack of a science minister wouldn't get them bad press? Seriously...
  • The government is also planning to relax environmental restrictions in parts of Queensland, the results of such threaten to potentially irreparably damage the Great Barrier Reef.
  • The government has been quiet on a lot of things. Too quiet. Despite their excuses, they've been blatantly clamping down on transparency, something that's been becoming increasingly unacceptable in the digital age, especially after the Snowden revelations.
  • And now, their latest failure - their plan to 'stop the boats' (concerning illegal refugees) has gone up in smoke now that Indonesia has told the Abbot government to fuck right the hell off. A diplomatic and political fuck-up in one!

 

Also, while Labor was originally considering letting the Liberals get rid of the carbon tax due to it being a potentially 'toxic' policy in their eyes, they've actually stuck to their guns and planted their feet down, meaning that Labor and the Greens by themselves can roadblock any efforts to get rid of the carbon tax (they barely have a couple more seats combined than the Coalition), meaning the Liberals would have to get the help of the minor parties and independents to pass it (this could be difficult, Clive Palmer, the leader of the Palmer United party, has no intention of helping the Coalition until the election process is revamped, because he's been claiming that the senate voting was rigged against his party, and many of the independents might not be terribly keen on the Coalition's policies). If Abbot actually makes good on his threat and calls for a double dissolution, the resulting fallout could be amazing.

 

Well, this is a right bloody mess. Could be worse, I suppose. Pauline Hanson could've gotten a seat, and the party she used to run, One Nation, was basically the Australian version of the Tea Party, except almost blatantly racist.

Edited by Shirou Emiya
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I'm sorry to hear that the Australian electorate has voted in such a terrible government. You have my sincerest condolences. With any luck, the public will wise up and kick these assclowns out of office before they ruin the Aussie economy and environment.

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As they say, "Australians don't vote for the Liberals, they vote against Labor" - as in, when the Liberal party seems like a lesser evil at the time. Kevin Rudd's retaking of the Labor leadership certainly saved his party from an even more disastrous defeat, but the Liberals took advantage of Labor's in-fighting. It also didn't help that the carbon tax was the result of Julia Gillard, who said there wouldn't be a carbon tax, being forced to compromise with the Greens to get anything done.

 

The latest failure for the Coalition certainly could make a lot of people wonder why the hell they voted for them, the way the incident was framed really puts them in a bad light, both with a failed policy and with a diplomatic blunder. Also, hilariously, Abbot could well have broken Indonesian law during his visit there due to certain restrictions on who could attend a certain event while he was there.

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  • 2 weeks later...

So, to complicate things further with Indonesia, as part of the recent NSA leaks from Edward Snowden, it turns out that Australia has been illegally tapping the phones of Indonesia's prime minister, his wife, and some other people since 2009. Indonesia is not pleased at all - they have suspended military cooperation with Australia, including intelligence exchanges, military exercises and naval cooperation.

 

The first thing that everyone would expect Tony Abbot to do would be to apologize about the spying on Australia's behalf and/or use Labor as a scapegoat, since the spying was done on their watch (though I don't know if it was done with the Labor party's approval).

 

Instead, he did neither of these things, as per his usual foot-in-mouth syndrome, resulting in diplomatic relations plummeting between the two countries to levels not seen since the events around East Timor. Now there's protests in Indonesia outright calling for 'war with Australia' if he doesn't apologize.

 

Seriously, Abbot had the perfect scapegoat to get him out of this mess, or at the very least he could've made a proper apology, and he still fucked it up. It would be rather impressive, if it weren't so utterly pathetic.

 

*Slow clap*

Edited by Shirou Emiya
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Under Abbot, Australia will be invaded and conquered by Indonesia, because that seems to be the direction this is all going in, and from what I'm reading in this thread he seems to be a bit of a Quisling character. ;)

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