General Australian Politics Thread

That's economically "right wing" (in particular, the support for the Gonski reforms)? Most of that sounds like economic "common sense". Except maybe for the abolishment of the carbon tax.

edited 29th Apr '13 11:52:29 PM by IraTheSquire

A lot of their policy platform seems to be about maximum plundering of Australia's resources and avoiding wealth re-distribution, which pushes it significantly to the right of Labor and the Greens. Palmer himself describes his party as conservative, but it really isn't by any measure I can see, it's just very capitalist.

I think it's best to see the Gonski reforms as social rather than economic policy, but that's just me.

I think that it's a positive thing because it's going to bleed off votes from the Coalition.

I'd like to see another hung parliament. This time hopefully it's better "parties of different platforms negotiating with each other" as opposed to "two major parties fighting to get independents to their side".

I agree. At least the minor parties have a variety of ideas rather than slight variations on the same stale Lib/Lab policy.

Well this is news:

http://delimiter.com.au/2013/05/16/the-filter-is-back-blocked-site-tells-its-story/

I thought we killed this but they snuck it under the radar, the bastards.

*Sign*

I shouldn't come to this thread. It makes me too angry.

You would THINK that the reaction they got LAST TIME they tried to do this would've Killed It With Fire.

edited 19th May '13 8:38:47 PM by PippingFool

Apparently not. Though this time they are doing it in secret.

Man, we need our constitution to cover Rights of Speech.

Hell we need our constitution to actually mention Australian citizens. Like it all.

Let's actually have a fucking Charter of Rights.

So shit like this dun happen.

The constitution covers, what, 4 rights (voting, property, trial by jury and freedom of religon IIRC) explicity? Woo, four rights, wow amazing. (Zimbabwe has more Human Rights than we do. Mugabe just doesn't follow them :V)

edited 19th May '13 9:28:27 PM by PippingFool

Our Constitution was designed in the context of Australia as a British Dominion, and therefore our forefathers probably thought we'd always be subservient to British higher authority on this kind of stuff (for instance all legal appeals would at their highest go to the British legal pros). No one really bothered to instill values in our Constitution, it's more like administrative guidlines than anything else.

I agree that what we need is a Charter of Rights, the Constitution still has Race Powers for chrissakes, it's an awful document for modern values.

Incidentally, Rudd supports gay marriage now. So if he leads the Opposition soon, there you go.

edited 20th May '13 6:37:25 AM by editerguy

You're already signed up to the International Declaration of Human Rights, yes? Enforce them domestically. Tada: instant, rounded constitution! Trim the bits off the old that don't fit!

And, it's even doable, as your name is already attached to that. <shrugs>

Yeah, we have. Thing is that the UDHR isn't... Legally binding.

I mean, we do have the Anti Discrimination Act c 1975, which does protect human rights to an extent. The catch with it is that it can be suspended by Pollies if they see a personal political reason too. Hence, why the NT Intervention was able to take place.

Another thing is, is that our leaders don't seem to represent the will of the public. In regards to the Charter of Rights, an Anglican Archbishop went around the continent surveying over 35,000 people about whether Aus should have a Charter of Rights and around 80% said "yes". But our Pollies have been pussyfooting around the idea. Preferring to have "scaffolds" and saying "Constitutional right are good enough, we don't NEED a charter!"

edited 20th May '13 7:01:43 AM by PippingFool

Our voting system incentivises our parties to ignore a majority view if it'll win them a marginal seat like one of the Western Sydney electorates. Even if the majority of Australians support something like a human rights issue (gay marriage is an example) parties will stay the fuck away if they risk losing a precious might-not-win-it-otherwise electorate.

Because rank-and-file party members have no say whatsoever in who leads a political party or what policies it pursues, if they really want to, the major parties can ignore us and do whatever the fuck they want. They're unusually unpopular right now (leaders are record unpopular) because that's what they're doing.

edit - So in other words, even if the majority of Australians support things like enacting UN human rights provisions or principles into domestic law, our political parties don't have to act, and tend not to.

edited 20th May '13 7:23:02 AM by editerguy

Yes it's a minority*

I guess it was my own dam fault for insistent on voting on third parties last election.

edited 20th May '13 7:25:13 AM by joeyjojo

Both major parties have policies directed at what Western Sydney voters want rather than what the Australian public generally wants. Conroy's obsession with censoring the internet was already there when Labor had a majority under Rudd. I don't think minority government effects these things much, that's just how the major parties roll.

@ editerguy:

That is exactly what is happening in Westminster right now — in fact, there's been an outbreak in Factionalism in our Conservative Party over Europe and Gay Marriage. Not helped by a senior party figure allegedly calling activists "swivel-eyed loons"...

https://www.efa.org.au/2013/05/27/tpp-knockout-blow-for-innovation/

And fuck this noise too. If the Australian government signs this I am officially smarter than these cretins are at running the country.

If that gets signed, then I'm on my one-way trip to Amsterdam.

@NGP If there's no 'fair use', this sounds like it will make high-quality material copied for educational purposes unaccessible, which is unbelievably stupid, particularly from a PM who "prioritises education".

The good thing in this article, though, is it shows the High Court has its gaze set on protecting the reasonable rights of Australians.

@Greenmantle I think it's interesting that Australia and the UK are having similar problems with political decay and fracas over gay marriage (while countries like Canada and New Zealand can just chug ahead pretty smoothly). I guess we have the most similar political cultures out of all the Commonwealth? Which evidently isn't a good thing. I understand UKIP is extremely popular with policies it seems to have stolen from our old PM John Howard lol.

I think a lot of what the gay marriage kerfuffle can be brought up to is a mix of having rather unpopular PM's as party leader and John Howard amending the marriage act to make sure it states that Marriage is between a man and a woman explicitly to keep those pesky liberal judges from re-interpreating the law to allow teh gheys to spread and be equal to normal people grr.

It must be said that Aussieland always has looked to England for guidence, and as earlier stated in the Constitution, the lack of rights stated was probably meant to be filled in by later legislation passed in ye olde motherland. So it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that our systems would be in a similar pickle.

The weird thing though is that New Zealand has looked to Britain even more than us (politicians still have to swear loyalty to the Queen, and the Privy Council in London was their final court of appeal until 2004). And yet their politics has become completely different.

Then again, if New Zealand is our Canada, it kind of makes sense.

Agreed

Kiwis, I am so jelly right now that you have a sane government.

edited 1st Jun '13 3:45:38 AM by PippingFool