The Prospect of Tony Abbot As Prime Minister

[tcpip]

Recent opinion polls show Tony Abbot has a better-than-even chance of becoming Prime Minister. This possible requires some serious thought. If you are gay, you can absolutely forget about same-sex marriage rights. At least with Labor, all that's required is to get the matter tabled at cabinet and the vote will be won. His absolutely archiac and offensive attitudes towards women, climate change and indigenous people is infuriating.

He carries a dangerous attitude towards to industrial relations and his deep indifference and ignorance of economic matters. Abbot loved 'Workchoices', and will bring it back; especially targetting unfair dismissal laws, pay and conditions, and penalty rates. Opposing the economic stimulus package, which is considered among the best designed in the world, with excellent results, Abbott not only expressed opposition to it, but slept through the vote after a night on the sauce.

Absolutely reckless cuts are planned against nation-building IT and environmental infrastructure, in favour of handing back $10.5 billion of resource rents from our commonwealth, to mining companies; because Tony understands that billionaires are having tough times. Abbott's accounting has been slippery or stupid. [T]he Coalition asked the department the cost of giving the Productivity Commission an extra $4 million a year. Yesterday the department replied poker-faced that it would cost $4 million a year.. One can only echo the words of Craig Emerson; Australia has never had in the post-war era a more economically incompetent candidate for the prime ministership than Tony Abbott.

Update: Former Reserve Bank chief, Bernie Fraser, (hardly a radical) blasts the Coalition over their economic policies.

Comments

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

Let's play spot the irrelevant, inaccurate, ad hominem attack.

[enrobso.livejournal.com]

No. Let's play, spot the clichéd reaction from a conservative faced with an approach that isn't on the crib sheet.

Irrelevant, How?

Innaccurate, How?

ad hominem...I'm not even going to bother because I know it's just a catch-all phrase to right-wingers whenenever they think someone has unfairly suggested that their argument is stupid.

For the record 'ad hominem' actually means 'to the man' and if you can point out how my comment was somehow attacking you as a person, rather than deriding your argument as short-sighted, banal and utterly without merit, I will stand corrected.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Well there are a few major differences;

a) No reintroduction of temporary protection visas. Those things were hell for anyone who had to live through them.

b) No mandatory detention for asylum seekers (albeit it does exist for those who arrived 'unauthorised')

The 'minor' difference is if Labor or Liberal have an offshore processing centre, where it's going to be. The Tories basically want it anywhere, but like the idea of Nauru because that 'proves' the "Pacific Island Solution".

Labor wants it in a country that's a signatory to the UN Convention of Refugees. The main reason for that is so that the people making the claim can actually be assessed as refugees!

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

Irrelevant because expeditions 200 years ago into the unknown are irrelevant to known technology today. As is the level of expenditure. Pretty self-evident, really.

Inaccurate because I made nothing as broad as conservative ideals, which encompass way more than just not wanting to waste tens of billions.

"ad hominem" really needs to be explained to you? You appear to know what it means, so I can only assume that, like presenters on Fox News, you just hope your audience is on your side and don't actually think about what you are saying. How is "I'm sure there were people just like you" anything but "to the man"? You've certainly provided no comment about the subject matter itself. Likewise, "short-sighted", "banal" and "without merit" appear to just be examples of you flailing about with pejoratives. Ironically, they apply much more accurately to your response than they do to my comments.

[enrobso.livejournal.com]

I win.

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

At what? Time-wasting? If that's what you call winning, good luck to you.

Re: NBN (nature of), cost & benefit

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

That was a great comment.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I would disagree with you that it is irrelevant as the knowledge on the future of ICT infrastructure is about is known (and unknown) as the Blue Mountains expedition. I would disagree on you on the inaccuracy as well; although I think the money could be better spent on different infrastructure (housing, education and health - for example) the effect of 'opening up' Australian ICT infrastructure will be money well spent (and will affect the three I mentioned).

enrobso's claim that your remarks were conservative were probably meant in the pejorative sense, although they don't have necessarily have to be interpreted as such. They could very well be a wonderful statement of [fiscally] conservative ideas, and to be understand I do understand your concerns there.

So just a quick note to all and sundry; play nice here. I don't want a shit-fight on my journal.

Unless I start it :p

Re: NBN (nature of), cost & benefit

[arjen-lentz.livejournal.com]

Telstra does everything from wiring to end-user/retail.
NBN is a layer 2 network, it's literally merely a road (for bits).
If, long ago, Telstra had been split in to infra and retail, there would have been less of a problem - but serious chunks of NBN infra would still be required as they're just not taken care of right now, not by Telstra either.

This thread, indeed, could've been conducted over a modem connection. I did stuff like that 25 years ago (no not exaggerating). However, *finding* this thread would have been another matter, as would be exchanging anything other than a few lines of text. Modems will not do now.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The worst ALP cock-ups in the past three years are really quite insignificant to their successes. Because it's been more or less smooth sailing economically in Skippy-land many people have no concept on how bad it could have been. An export-orientated economy like ours could have very much gone belly-up.

You're very much right on how various measures were blocked by the opposition; like the voter registration issue...

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

One tactic in stopping a moving Overton window is to circumvent it by introducing a compromise policy just as a position is moving from acceptable to popular, which I suspect is happening a fair amount in the quest for 'small target' on some hairy issues (immigration is always a popular one among the knuckle-draggers).

It is, as you imply, very important that the left start with building radical alternatives which are sufficiently viable that they can move from the fringe, through acceptability, popularity then policy.

I must confess I have never given this much thought but in hindsight most of my political activism operates on this basis.

Re: NBN (nature of), cost & benefit

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Arjen... I'd appreciate your thoughts on the Coalition's alternative just announced today

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/08/10/2978634.htm

Coalition plans

[arjen-lentz.livejournal.com]

Doesn't cut it, for reasons described previously.
- it needs to be reasonable high speed now, and able to grow further
- decent upstream bandwidth.
- standard wireless trickery does not satisfy these needs
- satellite is useless as it's a) high latency b) no upstream.
- available to everybody. And I do mean everybody not some funky % that excludes people outside major population centres. in AU.

This is vital for our future as a country: business, education, health.
It also affects what kind of business are possible (how green they can be) and where they can be located, as well as whom they can employ. It's critical.