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GremioPower said:
Bringing the conversation to a more fitting thread.

I have no idea how's the political division in Australia, but I get comments like yours from my friends on the Brazilian Left all the time. Despite their protests and lack of understanding, I side with the Brazilian Right.

My reply to them is always the same: "the Left doesn't have a monopoly on worrying about the poor." If over there is different, I cannot say. Here, it saddens me that they may actually think that.

I simply cannot stand anyone from either side who argues that his political side is THE virtuous one. Neither side is. When my friends on the Right criticize the Left as if left-wingers were up to no good, I step in against such a nonsense as well.

I am not a better nor a worse person because I am right-wing. I wouldn't be better or worse simply switching side. It all depends in what I do.

Politics is a conflictive-cooperative enterprise whose end is itself. The dispute is for everybody's sake. It is not supposed to end. Hence, both sides are necessary.
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The far left side of politics here was for years dominated by unionists from northern Ireland, Scotland and the north of England, who brought their ridiculous class wars to this country, class wars that had virtually never existed here, and negotiating with their foot in the door BS was just about impossible.

The late Bob Hawke did a sensational job in bringing parties to the negotiating table, and usually with positive results when he was in charge of the ACTU, but some of his replacements, particularly a woman named Jenny George set the union movement back decades with her in your face, all employers are campaigners, over the top and couldn't speak without spitting attitude. :thumbsdown:

Now for someone who either wasn't born at the time, was still attending primary school, or has only had exposure to one of the milder unions, getting all fired up to dispute those comments. ;)
 
1954 said:
The far left side of politics here was for years dominated by unionists from northern Ireland, Scotland and the north of England, who brought their ridiculous class wars to this country, class wars that had virtually never existed here, and negotiating with their foot in the door BS was just about impossible.

The late Bob Hawke did a sensational job in bringing parties to the negotiating table, and usually with positive results when he was in charge of the ACTU, but some of his replacements, particularly a woman named Jenny George set the union movement back decades with her in your face, all employers are campaigners, over the top and couldn't speak without spitting attitude. :thumbsdown:

Now for someone who either wasn't born at the time, was still attending primary school, or has only had exposure to one of the milder unions, getting all fired up to dispute those comments. ;)
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Unions I would argue now have terrible absolutely terrible people in leadership. It feels like a long time ago it had anything to do about the workers.
 

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FPPF said:
And which side do they add the UNDER employed on? I believe there was some talk a while ago about which side of the coin they add them to.
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No where. Its a guesstimate. Employed = 1+ hours a week. Unemployed = 0 hours per week.

There should be a stats endorsed by the OECD something like UE1, UE10, UE20 which reflects the UE rate for how many hours worked that week, ie 1 hour, 10 hours, 20 hours to get a better handle of under employed rates in the economy.

If you are asking a person in a survey, its not that hard to ask the hours worked and then categorize them. But its to much of a hot potato for pollies.
 
StrappingTape said:
Unions I would argue now have terrible absolutely terrible people in leadership. It feels like a long time ago it had anything to do about the workers.
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Was chatting with my Canadian mate who lives in Dallas about the election and the effect of unions in US, Canada and Oz as well as how the parties in North America use union infrastructure.

I looked up some stats and got the shock of my life that the percentage of the work force in Oz in 2016 was down to 14%, down from 51% in 1976. That's partly why the union leadership is do poor. They just dont get the cash flow in to attract good people like they used to.

1.5m people is still a lot of people and come election time is a handy source of help to get people to man polling booths etc but a lot of them just aren't engaged as its compulsory.

https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parlia...entary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1819/UnionMembership
 
When I first joined the workforce there was a plethora of unions, leading to so many ridiculous demarcation disputes. In the Commonwealth public service there were even different unions for clerical officers and clerical assistants/typists. I joined up when I wanted to support strike action over a 3% pay rise demand - 3% equated to 14 minutes of one day's pay at that time, so we went on strike for 14 minutes :$

I worked in the pay section at Dept Defence in those days and there seemed to be one union or another getting their own arbitration case through nearly every pay period, and then there'd be national wage case increases for everyone once or twice a year. This lessened greatly with the Hawke/Keating reforms and then subsequent goverments of both persuasions tying any pay rises to productivity trade-offs - no cost of living increases for you!
 
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RussellEbertHandball said:
Was chatting with my Canadian mate who lives in Dallas about the election and the effect of unions in US, Canada and Oz as well as how the parties in North America use union infrastructure.

I looked up some stats and got the shock of my life that the percentage of the work force in Oz in 2016 was down to 14%, down from 51% in 1976. That's partly why the union leadership is do poor. They just dont get the cash flow in to attract good people like they used to.

1.5m people is still a lot of people and come election time is a handy source of help to get people to man polling booths etc but a lot of them just aren't engaged as its compulsory.

https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parlia...entary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1819/UnionMembership
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They don't care about the members now they have the superfunds basically, it's allowed them to completely just spend their time being political/power hacks.
 
Grave Danger said:
Tanya P has decided that now is not her time to lead the Labor Party. Family reasons. Wonder what she would have done with the family if she'd become Deputy PM.
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Her husband's past would come under greater scrutiny if she ever gets the leadership.
 
Grave Danger said:
So could Albo's - might not be a "happy ending" for him either.
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Might help him bit like Rudd at a strip club in NY. Or was it more than a oncer?

Plibersek's husband's drug addiction has been out in the public, but its how he got a couple jobs that has been kept quiet.
 

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RussellEbertHandball said:
Her husband's past would come under greater scrutiny if she ever gets the leadership.
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For Pilbersek to lose interest overnight I wonder if the right wing of the ALP power brokers have got the message across that a leader who swings too hard to the left could very well leave them in the wilderness again when the next election comes around.
 
The only time since 1983 that Labor has won at least 50% of the seats in Queensland were Hawke's win in 1983 when they won 10 out of 20 seats. Keating win in 1993 saw 13 of 25 seats won by Labor (1996 was 2 of 26) and in 2007 when Rudd won and they got 15 of 29.

Labor can't win government when they are -12 to -17 seats in Queensland behind the coalition and Katter as the independent conservative in 151 seat chamber. There isn't enough net seats for them around the rest of the country given 4 or 5 independents looks like being the norm.
 
RussellEbertHandball said:
The only time since 1983 that Labor has won at least 50% of the seats in Queensland were Hawke's win in 1983 when they won 10 out of 20 seats. Keating win in 1993 saw 13 of 25 seats won by Labor (1996 was 2 of 26) and in 2007 when Rudd won and they got 15 of 29.

Labor can't win government when they are -12 to -17 seats in Queensland behind the coalition and Katter as the independent conservative in 151 seat chamber. There isn't enough net seats for them around the rest of the country given 4 or 5 independents looks like being the norm.
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I suspect that many the Queenslanders who voted for Palmer and Poorlean wouldn't have voted ALP anyway, so they were hardly lost votes as claimed by some.

I caught the tail end of something re the election wash up last night, I missed the intro so I don't know where it was, but it showed Bill Shorten making a beeline for two apparently working class blokes wearing hi-vis vests, and when he offered to shake hands they totally ignored him and kept their arms folded.

It's impossible to imagine Hawke or Keating being dissed like that!
 
1954 said:
I suspect that many the Queenslanders who voted for Palmer and Poorlean wouldn't have voted ALP anyway, so they were hardly lost votes as claimed by some.

I caught the tail end of something re the election wash up last night, I missed the intro so I don't know where it was, but it showed Bill Shorten making a beeline for two apparently working class blokes wearing hi-vis vests, and when he offered to shake hands they totally ignored him and kept their arms folded.

It's impossible to imagine Hawke or Keating being dissed like that!
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Yes and no. They have lost 1st and 2nd preference voters.

Labor's primary vote and 2 Party Preferred in Qld since Kevin 07
2007 42.9% 2PP 50.4%
2010 33.6% 2PP 44.9%
2013 29.8% 2PP 43.0%
2016 30.9% 2PP 45.9%
2019 27.3% 2PP 42.8%

In the seat of Logman which had a bi-election for one of those dual citizens - Susan Lamb the Labor candidate increased her vote and caused the nervous nellies in the LNP to push to dump Turnbull. Longman is about an hour north west of Brisbane in the Caboolture and Moreton Bay region the results have been;
2016 35.4% 2PP 50.8%
2018 39.9% 2PP 54.5%
2019 34.5% 2PP 46.9%

So that means in about 8 months, when the final votes are counted, about 5,000 first preference voters would have deserted Labor and about 8,000 on 2PP allowing for bi elections the turnout is in the low 80% versus low 90% in a full election.
 
And to understand Qld a little better, watch journo Alice Workman, from last night's Q&A. She is a bit of a leftie was an independent journo, think worked for Buzzfeed but has been working for The Australian for about a year and spent a lot of time before and during the election in Queensland and she picked the big swing away from Labor. She wrote an article in the Oz today which reflects what she said last night

You can watch her comments from 10.02 in the link below or if you can watch I have cut and pasted the transcript from the link.

https://www.abc.net.au/qanda/2019-20-05/11107730

ANGUS MULLINS
Thank you. It was predicted that Brexit wouldn’t happen, that Donald Trump wouldn’t win the presidency, and that the Coalition wouldn’t win a third term. With the silent majority being touted as a reason behind recent conservative successes, why is it that progressive parties, such as Labor, are so out of touch with the majority of voters?

..........

ALICE WORKMAN, THE AUSTRALIAN
Uh, Angus, great question. You can buy the paper tomorrow, ‘cause I’ve written a story covering this exact issue. I think one of the biggest problems with Labor’s campaign – and you can see the strategy between the two major parties – is that climate change means different things to people that live in inner cities than it does to people in Queensland. Labor saw the biggest swings in Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne, all in the inner city, where, to people there, climate change might mean something more about renewables and about saving the Great Barrier Reef, whereas in Queensland it means jobs.

And the LNP in Queensland, Scott Morrison allowed them, unlike only a few... A few months ago, when Super Saturday happened and the LNP had the opportunity to pick up some seats in Queensland, Malcolm Turnbull wouldn’t let the LNP run the campaign that they wanted to run on the ground, which was about jobs. And so it was run on innovation and these other ideas, even though they knew in Queensland that people didn’t like what Bill Shorten was selling.

And so, what they did this time, Scott Morrison let all 151 seats run their own campaigns. So in Queensland, what they did was they came up with flyers where they copy-pasted Labor’s policy about transitioning jobs from coalmining into renewables and they handed it out to people. They did their own modelling and said, “What does this mean in individual seats?”

There are seats up in the Whitsundays – uh, ballots I mean – ballots up in the Whitsundays where, last election, 2016, so not that long ago, they were voting 20% for the LNP. This is in Capricornia. Labor could have easily picked up this seat, and a lot of the tracking polling said they would, but the LNP ran a campaign hard. You know, George Christensen was standing up in pubs saying, “We’ll green-light Adani,” in seats...in places where the unemployment rate is 36%, saying, “We’ll green-light Adani, we’ll give you jobs.”

And when I asked a Labor person why, in the Whitsundays, the only place in the country that’s ever elected someone from the Communist Party, is now voting 50% on marginal, so primary votes in marginal seats – you know, a seat that was only held on 0.8% – why aren’t they voting for the Labor Party, when you’re meant to be standing up for workers? And he said, “Well, what’s the defence that we’re running? We don’t have a position on Adani.” And the Greens ran an amazing campaign, hijacking... Bob Brown went up into Queensland and convinced everyone who doesn’t live in Queensland that there’s only one mine in this country and it’s Adani, when it’s not.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE
But they did have a position on Adani – they had two positions.

ALICE WORKMAN
Well, and this was confusing.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE
Bill had a position in Melbourne on Adani and a position in North Queensland on Adani.

ALICE WORKMAN
And Labor’s candidate in Flynn had his hands tied. And he was asked many times... He lost friends over this campaign, because he couldn’t stand up in public say he was pro-Adani.

TONY JONES
Alice, we’re going to move on...

ALICE WORKMAN
Can I just say quickly... The CFMMEU was running with the LNP in Queensland, because 300,000 people across this country work in resources, and they believed that if the Labor Party was elected – whether it be true or not – that they would lose their jobs. And that explains a lot in Queensland and Tasmania, I think.





 
From Alice Workman's article

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/na...t/news-story/f4b9a937abee121d9a824542f25a7432
A modest roundabout in Sydney’s southwest tells the tale of Labor’s failed election campaign.
Located in Riverwood — just 13km from the Labor fortress of Grayndler — in the hitherto marginal Liberal electorate of Banks, the roundabout now under construction typifies how Labor was outmanoeuvred by a Coalition grassroots campaign in seats where the ALP had a fighting chance.

The story of the roundabout — which was singled out yesterday in a withering social media post by former NSW premier Morris Iemma — is further illuminated by a damning piece of electoral data: Labor’s vote decreased in 72 outer metropolitan, provincial and rural seats and increased in only 35. Conversely, Bill Shorten’s slew of high-taxing policies and populist pitches found support in inner-metropolitan seats where Labor’s vote increased in 26, including Liberal-held seats, and decreased in just 18.

A geographical and philosophical divide lies at the heart of Labor’s electoral woes, a theme picked up in Mr Iemma’s comments. Mr Iemma directed his social media tirade at the supporters of Labor candidate for Banks, Chris Gambian, who dubbed sitting Liberal MP David Coleman the “Minister for Roundabouts”. Mr Iemma accused them of being inner-city elites who did not understand the concerns of the outer suburbs. “So while the Gambian Army of keyboard warriors from (inner-city) Newtown and Marrickville sat around quaffing their Columbian (sic) bean piccolos, Coleman was out building from the grassroots,” Mr Iemma said. “While our transients guffawed at Coleman for attending to local traffic problems and getting them fixed with roundabouts, the locals were expressing their appreciation with a massive increase in vote.” Mr Coleman secured a 5.3 per cent swing in Banks...........

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