Bridget McKenzie pork-barrelling - Sports Rorts 2.0... and now 3.0!

DAlembert

Club Legend
Mar 12, 2019
1,093
700
AFL Club
Geelong
It's time to dispense with the they're all as bad as each other narrative too. Firstly it's not true and secondly all it does is give this government a leave pass for their actions.
Governments (both persuasions) get leave passes for nada..in this over saturated social/MS media world. The fact is the country has bigger issues to take care of at the moment. A populace that lets it's politicians continue to receive pay rises and benefits the rest of us can only dream of deserves the politicians it gets. And yes they all are as bad as each other..in a country that rewards mediocrity what do you expect. They do not get leave passes but the consequences are zero or muted at best.
 

Caesar

Ex-Huckleberry
Mar 3, 2005
29,398
15,658
Tombstone, AZ
AFL Club
Western Bulldogs
iT's oNlY 40 miLliOn
I don’t think the whole ‘pocket change’ argument bears weight, but I do think that there is often a meaningless to big numbers that causes more egregious pork barrelling to be overlooked.

An investigation by Fairfax in 2018 found that from 2010 to 2017, ~70% of a total $1.19 billion infrastructure spending went to marginal seats. A full 20% went to a mere 5 marginal seats comprising 2% of the population. The percentages were roughly the same between both Coalition and Labor.

The report got virtually no attention. This is absolutely bananas when $30m and $40m were enough to bring down Ros Kelly and Bridget McKenzie respectively during Sports Rorts 1 and 2.

I don’t mean to imply that $40m isn’t a lot of money - but for comparison, 40 million seconds ago was last February. 1.19 billion seconds ago was 1982.

I firmly believe these sort of scandals are not about the money - because nobody understands the money. It's about putting a context to it. You can understand what it means for a fancy rowing club to get new facilities when your local footy club missed out on replacing that shitty changing room. The dollars themselves don't come into the inequity of the thing.

Maybe if we were able to put politicised infrastructure decisions into a similar context for your average voter, we might actually be able to stop some of the really serious pork barrelling that happens. Otherwise millions, billions - nobody really gets it enough to care.
 
Bump to remind everyone that Bridget McKenzie has only spent about a year in the wilderness. Now watch as all is forgiven and this piece of trash is given another cabinet position.
 
Bump to remind everyone that Bridget McKenzie has only spent about a year in the wilderness. Now watch as all is forgiven and this piece of trash is given another cabinet position.

Likely at the expense at one of the few competent Ministers in Darren Chester.
 
Jul 12, 2004
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Junktion Oval
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Collingwood
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England
Bump to remind everyone that Bridget McKenzie has only spent about a year in the wilderness. Now watch as all is forgiven and this piece of trash is given another cabinet position.

Hopefully she can get back in and the poor Victorian sports clubs ruined by the state governments incompetence can get some much needed funding from the federal government.
 
Bump to remind everyone that Bridget McKenzie has only spent about a year in the wilderness. Now watch as all is forgiven and this piece of trash is given another cabinet position.
It's not like she did anything BAD like rooted some escorts on union money ( wasnt it nice to see the bootlickers pretend to love unions for that few weeks though ?? lol ) or told a non-anglo to turn their phone off !!!
 
‘Liberals will romp in the next election’ and ‘Kooyong is becoming marginal’. Those statements don’t really co exist do they?
They can, if Kooyong is full of the economic conservatives who are socially progressive. So may be disgusted by current liberal leadership; while other social conservatives who would normally not prefer one over the other go anti woke therefore anti alp

(Just a theory)
 

ExcitementMachine

Premiership Player
Aug 5, 2019
3,035
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Collingwood
So basically what this was was my and our taxpayer money, being targeted toward liberal/marginal seats.

Makes me furious!
 
So basically what this was was my and our taxpayer money, being targeted toward liberal/marginal seats.

Makes me furious!

And all McKenzie copped was a slap on the wrist and a 12 month holiday on the back bench.
 

ExcitementMachine

Premiership Player
Aug 5, 2019
3,035
2,640
AFL Club
Collingwood
And all McKenzie copped was a slap on the wrist and a 12 month holiday on the back bench.

Mate I got a letter from robodebt from this c^nt of a government when I was on the rock and roll which mind you hadn't been raised for 30 odd years with even John Howard saying it should be raised
 

Mick F

Mighty Snr
Dec 26, 2013
5,933
9,951
AFL Club
Collingwood
So basically what this was was my and our taxpayer money, being targeted toward liberal/marginal seats.

Makes me furious!
We have more than enough smart, experienced public servants capable of determine need and merit when allocating scares resources.

The whole idea of having grants ‘by application’ is to allow arbitrary allocation - the antithesis of justice. An increasing amount of public money is being distributed in such a manner. It was bad enough when it first started, to provide the sitting member with a huge advantage. That’s why they attend the opening of an envelope, to buy votes in districts that decide elections.
 

Romeoh1

Premiership Player
Apr 27, 2021
3,467
4,710
AFL Club
Geelong
How does McKenzie given her history get a sole spot on the ABC let alone to push her anti-renewables and anti-climate action fearmongering? Of course she mentioned the LNP's latest "nuclear" gimmick line even though it's a far more expensive and slower tech to implement in Australia and thus unviable here 🤦‍♂️ .
Agree- not good enough.
 
May 13, 2008
36,303
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Melbourne
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Hawthorn
How does McKenzie given her history get a sole spot on the ABC let alone to push her anti-renewables and anti-climate action fearmongering? Of course she mentioned the LNP's latest "nuclear" gimmick line even though it's a far more expensive and slower tech to implement in Australia and thus unviable here 🤦‍♂️ .
Nuclear is a gimmick.

Its sole purpose is to appease the "moderates" in the Liberal Party that the right is willing to consider a low emissions solution.

Meanwhile the right know that it will take decades to implement their "low emissions solution" and in the meantime they can sell as much coal and gas as possible - hopefully all of it - before nuclear will be available.

If there was another option that would have taken longer than nuclear then the Liberal Party would have been all over it.
 
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