Politics & Government 2019 Election: Australia's Shame

Who are you voting for?


  • Total voters
    78
  • Poll closed .
This person still buys DVDs.

Streaming media is bullocks. I s
You’re older than I imagined then, unless you meant 9 years!


As a Hawks fan I’m sure he has multiple premiership DVDs
My 2018 Eagles Victory Pack was the first DVD set purchased in years

I've never lied about my age, despite people's protests that I must be having them on.

And yes I still buy dvds both footy and general. I think Netflix is overrated (that said I do convert my dvds and watch them digitally). I used to buy 5-10 per week for years..... now I'll buy 5-10 per year (as my collection is 99.9% complete the .1 is anything new that takes my fancy).
 

craigos

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Well they haven't blown up the country over the last 6 years so we are good as gold as far as I'm concerned. I've voted the LNP for 19 years, and they've not let me down :) :) :).
You’re older than I imagined then, unless you meant 9 years!

This would make you at least 37? Honestly thought you were 23 max.
 

Bomberboyokay

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I'm going to buy a DVD and watch it after tonight's episode of Hot Property.
 
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Bomberboy is back!
shortenout oftouch.jpg
 

biggiemediums

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Can someone who knows more - explain to me the major differences between Labor and Liberal? I see so much animosity but when I look at it; they're both trash and arguing for one evil over the other evil seems strange.
 

TJASTA

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Can someone who knows more - explain to me the major differences between Labor and Liberal? I see so much animosity but when I look at it; they're both trash and arguing for one evil over the other evil seems strange.
One is controlled by big unions, the other is controlled by big business. Pick your poison.
 
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Can someone who knows more - explain to me the major differences between Labor and Liberal? I see so much animosity but when I look at it; they're both trash and arguing for one evil over the other evil seems strange.


One is full-strength poison while the other is poison-lite…..As you can see, most Aussies prefer the full-strength brand.
 

Bomberboyokay

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As the doors of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) opened on the Monday after the election, it was clear the lives of refugees and people seeking asylum had been profoundly altered.

Once again, their fate had been determined by other people, those in positions of privilege and safety.

The feeling of loss was heavy, almost suffocating.

I spent the week after the election holding weeping mothers who knew their dream of seeing their children again had just been shattered. “It’s all finished now,” one told me, over and over.

Other refugees, still waiting for an initial decision on their refugee claims eight years after arriving in Australia, asked me when they would have an answer. All I could say was “I don’t know”.

What left me in awe, though, was the continued resilience. The bravery and the will to keep fighting for their freedom.

I would have broken years ago.

Staff and volunteers at the centre were hurting too, contemplating the ongoing pain and injustice for the 5000-plus people we care for, from Melbourne to Manus.

Sister Rita, a nun who has been volunteering at the ASRC for 15 years, best captured the mood. “I didn’t want to come to the ASRC after the election,” she told me, “but I am here and that’s what matters.”

The work is vital – it always has been – but as 8000 people are cut off all income support by the government, we face the prospect this winter of children as young as six being forced into homelessness. The ASRC has had to stockpile more sleeping bags than ever before.

While we grapple with the on-ground reality of the election result, nothing is weighing more heavily than what this means for the men and women stranded on Manus and Nauru.

Policy change after nearly six years of being imprisoned, being denied freedom and justice, was the last hope many held out for. That hope has now vanished.

I visited Manus Island 18 months ago and described what I saw as a living graveyard. Today, hundreds of people are still suffering and languishing in conditions that have further deteriorated, and their fate for another three years is even more uncertain.

One of the final acts of parliament before the election was the passing of the Home Affairs Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2018, better known as the medivac bill.

It provides for the urgent transfer of refugees and people seeking asylum from Papua New Guinea and Nauru to Australia for medical treatment. And its passing was momentous for a number of reasons – the cross-party support the bill received, the huge shift in public attitude it signalled, the fact it marked the first defeat by a government on the floor of the house in 70 years.

But at the end of the day, what was most significant was finally providing a lifeline for sick refugees.

In the weeks and months after the bill passed, including after the election was called, there has been much speculation as to whether the medivac bill was worth it.

The government warned everyone of the dangers of the bill. Scott Morrison announced the country would be flooded with hundreds of refugees. Peter Dutton said Australians would have to wait longer for hospital beds. Others engaged in the usual fearmongering.

It was clear any movement of people would be too many and would simply be used as political fodder during an election.

At the same time, though, individuals and organisations working with people on Manus and Nauru have long been terrified of imminent deaths unless we begin evacuations. These are the psychologists, counsellors and front-line caseworkers who have been on the phones for years, desperately trying to support those held in offshore detention.

Amid all of this chaos, a group of refugee organisations around Australia came together to try to facilitate an orderly process of transfer for critically sick people. It was this Medical Evacuation Response Group (MERG) – of which the ASRC is proud to be a part – that established a transfer referral system.

The challenge was how to manage the volume of requests and what might have unfolded as a toxic political issue during an election. Any public announcement of applications or transfers could be seized by politicians and by journalists. If this happened, it would be refugees who would suffer and, for political mileage, be sent to Christmas Island instead of Australia.

For weeks, the only information made public was that one person had been transferred. Even supporters of the bill began to question its worth.

To assess the real impact of the medivac bill though, it’s worth casting our mind back to August 2018, when there were 119 children in detention on Nauru. There was no desire from the government then to move sick refugees, despite mounting evidence from specialist doctors that these people were facing a medical emergency. The fear a child would die was real. And the only way people were being brought to Australia from Nauru – and even less so from Manus – was because of pro bono legal action against the government on a case-by-case basis.

Then came Kids Off Nauru and Back the Bill. Being involved in these campaigns from the beginning has helped me understand the importance of the medivac bill passing. Both were originally intended to galvanise public support, which would then lead to pressure on the government to act humanely. But it quickly became obvious that the increasing volume of public pressure wouldn’t be enough. Despite court orders and mounting medical evidence, the government wouldn’t budge from its hardline stance.

We had to stop relying on lengthy court action when timely medical care was needed. Legislation was the only way to force government action. Lobbying and public pressure couldn’t make politicians act humanely but a law could.

The leadership and compassion shown across the parliament was extraordinary. Individuals and parties came together with a common goal – to provide a humane solution for sick refugees on Manus and Nauru.

No, the medivac bill wasn’t all the ASRC dreamt of, and it wasn’t a permanent solution, but it could avoid further unnecessary deaths. So, we threw all our support behind it and were proud to do so. We stand by that decision.

The medivac legislation was passed just over three months ago. It has been life-changing. More than 40 critically ill refugees have been brought to Australia from Nauru and Manus for medical care. MERG receives 11 to 12 applications for medical transfers every day. We are completing an average of 8.2 medical triages each day, which shows the scale of medical need.

There is an army of hundreds of caseworkers, lawyers and doctors working around the clock – many of them volunteers. Ninety per cent of the work is unfunded. Lives have been saved, people at risk of loss of organ or limb have been saved, families have been reunited.

There have been no new people seeking asylum by sea as a result of the bill’s passing, so why would the government seek its repeal?

These numbers are evidence of the effectiveness of the legislation and the success of the medivac law. Can we and should we do more? Absolutely. But faced with the reality of the current political climate, the medivac law is more important than ever. It provides the only hope, the only solution, for sick refugees.

The announcement by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg that repealing the medivac legislation would be one of the first priorities of the government has shocked the refugee sector. The spikes in suicide attempts on Manus and Nauru in the aftermath of the election should have been a wake-up call to all of us – those in detention knew the re-election of the Morrison government would spell dark changes for refugee policy.

Yet it still came as a shock that the government would – as a priority – use its power to deny sick refugees medical care. Let that sink in.Denying people medical care is a priority for our government.

We all know that the men and women on Manus and Nauru need a solution, not a medical Band-Aid. That is, to be resettled safely now. A great place to start would be for the Coalition government to finally accept New Zealand’s offer.

This is the only thing that will restore hope, safety and dignity, and put a stop to the medical and humanitarian catastrophe that has been “offshore processing”. It’s time to end this shameful chapter in our nation’s history, before more refugees die.

In the face of adversity, it is easy to become complacent. To focus on how this happened, why it happened, who we can blame. To turn on each other, highlight failures and seek somewhere to channel the rage and disbelief.

Instead, we need to draw on our collective strength. To use the tools that we have available to us – the law, goodwill, humanity – to persevere, until people seeking asylum are treated fairly. Until they are no longer political pawns.

Passing the medivac bill took Australia one step closer to achieving this. It should be recognised and celebrated as the most significant piece of positive legislative change for refugees and people seeking asylum in decades. We have a long way to go, but let’s not forget the small successes along the way. They will sustain us, until our vision becomes reality.

https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au...01/saving-asylum-seekers-lives/15593112008236
 

Bomberboyokay

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Burning up Morrison

At this rate the prime minister’s new authority may not last long

Prime Minister Scott Morrison begins the first week of the 46th parliament coming off a success at the G20 summit in Osaka, and with every prospect of getting his signature tax-cut package through the Senate this week. Yet this morning’s headlines are dominated by what he calls “ancient history” – how he took the job from former PM Malcolm Turnbull less than a year ago – courtesy of the revelations in Niki Savva’s new book, Plots and Prayers. Morrison prevailed in a relatively bloodless coup last August, and although he appears vindicated by May’s upset election result, he may never escape the manner of his rise to the prime ministership. Paul Keating never did, and Morrison vs Bill Shorten in 2019 feels increasingly like Keating vs Hewson in 1993.

After his remorseless challenge against Bob Hawke, Keating was never accepted as PM by a large chunk of Australian voters, even though he won an unwinnable election in 1993. Keating’s win came on the back of a cynical scare campaign against a GST – which as treasurer he’d supported, and which he promised Labor would waive through if defeated – proposed by unpopular Liberal leader John Hewson with his combative, big target “Fightback!” reform agenda. Very few seats changed hands in 1993, just like in 2019. There’s a difference between winning against the odds and winning a thumping mandate, however. Keating’s authority as prime minister, finally elected in his own right, faded surprisingly quickly when the passage of the 1993 budget was held up in the Senate by the WA Greens – a debacle that then Opposition leader John Howard felt was critical. By early 1995, with a shock defeat in the Canberra byelection, the Labor government was done for.

It is not that Savva’s revelations have done particular damage to Morrison personally. It was apparent from the numbers that a handful of Morrison lieutenants took advantage of Turnbull’s surprise spill of the leadership last August – backing Dutton over Turnbull, and then switching camps to vote for Morrison over Dutton – as was canvassed here within days of the coup.

It’s that Morrison’s whole government is lowered with each story: when former justice minister Michael Keenan describes Morrison as an “absolute a-hole”; when former foreign minister Julie Bishop calls now Senate leader and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann as “the ultimate seducer and betrayer”; and when it is reported that both former defence minister Christopher Pyne and current home affairs minister Peter Dutton “went nuts” over Turnbull’s plan to strike a bipartisan deal with Labor over the National Energy Guarantee, isolating the climate-change deniers inside the Coalition.

It is the cumulative impact of these revelations – with more to come from David Crowe, Turnbull himself, and others – that the current prime minister should be worried about, and there is nothing he can do to stop them. Liberal disunity may even resurface to drag him back down. As Katharine Murphy wrote in Guardian Australia on Saturday, Morrison does not have a magical ability to contain the corrosive ambitions of his Liberal colleagues.

What is sure to end the life of the Morrison government, unless it shows some hitherto-unseen spark of policy genius, are the economic jaws of death that are opening up: wages for hundreds of thousands of workers are dropping today, as a third tranche of penalty rate cuts come into effect even as the economy falters and the Reserve Bank calls for stimulus; on a similar note, Laura Tingle observed on Insiders that “finally” doing something about Newstart “might actually be a perfect way of providing some stimulus and actually getting people out of having to eat dog food”, following suggestions from Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe that the payment be raised; and the third stage of the government’s centrepiece tax-cuts package, assuming that it passes, will not come into effect this side of the next election, so it’s hard to see how they’ll pay much in the way of a political dividend. The prime minister might be burning for quiet Australians, but unless he actually does something concrete for them, he’ll just get burned.

 

raskolnikov

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Trying to introduce a law to give his brothers in Christ freedom to villify LGBTQI people. Get ducked ScumO.
 
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Watching Scummo talk about reconciliation this morning nearly made me physically ill and I had to turn off the news. We are worth so much more than having to put up with this nonce leading our country.
True, but also show just how bad the opposition is as well though. It was Labor's ripe for the taking but they and Bill dropped the ball when given an easy match winning pass on the goal line. Guys like Bowen are far smarter than either of the knucklehead leaders were but being arrogant and out of touch blew up in his face.
 
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Watching Scummo talk about reconciliation this morning nearly made me physically ill and I had to turn off the news. We are worth so much more than having to put up with this nonce leading our country.


Ruprect disagrees....So you're out of step with 85% of our media.
 
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