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Aussies LXV - what choices have we?!


sh_wulff

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I don't see how this even limps along for 12-24 months. We can't have a Senate half election for 2.5 years now, the coalition is looking very unlikely to even have a majority lower house and I don't see the new Senate as being as workable as the last even if there is fewer factions.  The combination of the coalition's seeming inability to respectfully negotiate and work with a cross bench, combined with a bunch of people who may be ideologically inclined to work with them but have personal/historical antagonisms at play are going to make it come down to each issue being negotiated on its own.

Eden-Monaro may not have gone with the 'winner' in the sense of who looks to get the most seats, but it may have gone with the party that is in the better situation. I'd not be surprised to see us back at the polls this year.

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Good result for Labor. Still have an inkling that the coalition may squeak across the line with 76-77 seats, but that's almost as much as a recipe for disaster as a hung parliment. If they can't afford to lose anyone, individuals (especially the hard right) may start throwing their weight around. Especially as Malcom clearly hasn't delivered on his promise.

Interested to see what the final senate numbers are, but I really can't see it being much easier to get legislation through. Just saw a breakdown that had (in addition to Xenophon) Lambie, Hinch, Leyonhjelm, Fred Nile, and One Nation winning seats, a reduction to 30 (-3) senate seats for Liberal, an increase to 27 (+2) for Labor, and a reduction to 9 (-1) for the Greens. So it's looking like the Libs will still need to get at least 5 diverse groups / individuals of varying levels of insanity on side to pass anything, while Labor and the Greens will only need an additional 2 (38 being the magic number) to block legislation.

On a side note I really shouldn't be surprised but what the fuck we've got Pauline Hanson in parliment again? Can't she go and be an embarrassment back in the 90s where she belongs?

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It would be nice wouldn't it?

I just don't see how you can expect to have Xenophon, One Nation and CDP all on side for every issue. Wouldn't blame the governor general for not even trusting a guarantee of supply!

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On 16/05/2016 at 8:06 PM, Jeor said:

And regarding abolition of the Senate, I don't think it was ever seriously on the table, but various commentators every now and then have mentioned it. Single-chamber governments can be fairly dangerous, though, like Stubby mentioned with QLD. 

We've had a single chamber Parliament since 1950, and haven't been worse the wear for it. My issue with upper houses is either that they are just glorified excuses for political patronage (UK, Canada) or they have the capacity to wreck the government's ability to do anything (US).

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24 minutes ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

Now if only Andrew Little can take a lesson or two...

While I'm not too unhappy with the result, the last couple weeks of the Labor campaign was marked by what can only be called a complete bullshit scare campaign. I'm not sure if it's the kind of politics you really want.

There was no way that Turnbull was going to outright privatise medicare, it'd be political suicide, and they'd catagorically ruled it out (admittedly after costing privatising the payments system earlier in the year). But Labor campaigned on it anyway, and it probably had a effect on the less informed voter.

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8 hours ago, Impmk2 said:

On a side note I really shouldn't be surprised but what the fuck we've got Pauline Hanson in parliment again? Can't she go and be an embarrassment back in the 90s where she belongs?

I am shocked, shocked to find that racism is going on in this country!

Really I think the Senate is the more representative body in our government, and I think the changed voting laws and the double dissolution only make it more so. That there is a small but not insignificant portion of our population for whom even the right wing of the Liberal party isn't right wing enough shouldn't be much of a surprise. If it wasn't Hanson it would be one of the other ultra-right parties. It really annoys me to see, usually the Liberals but often Labor as well, bitching that that they have to work with duly elected representatives of people from parties not there own, and sneering at anyone who votes for anyone other than a major party. Penny Wong was lecturing Scott Morrison, last night, about the voting law reform and DD letting One Nation in, and she was probably right, but as much as I like Wong and detest Morrison she was basically arguing that the system ought to be rigged to keep the crazies out. Which is certainly a point of view, but if that's what she meant I wish she'd just said it. It's not like Hanson sneaked in by some loophole or devious trick. That many people just voted for her, and they sure as hell knew what they were voting for.

So, that's my pet peeve.

Also, politicians sitting on panels giving opinions on election night. We all know what their real opinion is, and we all know what the canned party answer that they're going to provide is, so nothing they say all night is either surprising or interesting.

If anything the results seem even worse for Libs today than they did when I gave up and went to bed last night, so there's that at least.

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And Labor need to go into the next election arguing that the Liberals are willing to negotiate with One Nation in order to get anything passed (assuming they do, which they almost certainly will), that ought to put Labor's need to negotiate with the Greens into perspective.

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21 hours ago, Arkhangel said:

As abhorrent as Pauline Hanson is and as bad as a hung parliament will be for the country, given the UK has Brexit and the US has Presidential nominee Trump, then by comparison we've probably gotten off lightly.

Well, yes and no. I'd argue that with compulsory voting, we should be much better off than the Brexited UK or Trumped USA.

In the US/UK the partisans are much bigger proportion of the voting bloc, whereas you'd think in Australia they'd be muffled by the regular, normal people who have to vote. The fact we still get Pauline Hanson shows that I think we're as bad off.

My Asian parents emigrated here in the 80s when I was born, and my disdain for Pauline Hanson is fairly high, since she legitimised most of the racism that I saw in my teenage years. I remember my parents and relatives talking about it a lot, because my uncle's corner shop got vandalised with One Nation propaganda (that being said, it was probably just thugs having a laugh and not actual One Nation people) and he ended up selling his business. I don't think it was purely because of the vandalism but I'm sure it came into the equation.

But I'm clear-eyed enough to know that it's not all Hanson's fault. The truth is, there is a fairly significant proportion of the electorate that are racist to begin with. Hanson is the symptom, not the cause.

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Yeah agreed on that last Jeor.  I don't think Hanson is a condemnation of our system, which imo is up for there as democratic as it gets (and I'm very happy that we do have the Senate as a house of review), she is a condemnation of our country itself/the Australian public, along with the other parties and the media who have played along for the last 15 years since Tampa with asylum seekers being a huge threat to the country, and brown people being scary and different, and all the other rubbish they cynically think they can take advantage of without cost.  Harm to a whole lot of people is the biggest cost, Hanson is a political cost that they and the whole country will now pay.

And it's not just the racism, it's that the racism is the scape goat for all the other problems that fail to get addressed. Which doesn't excuse anyone that votes for her, but its the context in which it happens.

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2 hours ago, Jeor said:

Well, yes and no. I'd argue that with compulsory voting, we should be much better off than the Brexited UK or Trumped USA.

In the US/UK the partisans are much bigger proportion of the voting bloc, whereas you'd think in Australia they'd be muffled by the regular, normal people who have to vote. The fact we still get Pauline Hanson shows that I think we're as bad off.

My Asian parents emigrated here in the 80s when I was born, and my disdain for Pauline Hanson is fairly high, since she legitimised most of the racism that I saw in my teenage years. I remember my parents and relatives talking about it a lot, because my uncle's corner shop got vandalised with One Nation propaganda (that being said, it was probably just thugs having a laugh and not actual One Nation people) and he ended up selling his business. I don't think it was purely because of the vandalism but I'm sure it came into the equation.

But I'm clear-eyed enough to know that it's not all Hanson's fault. The truth is, there is a fairly significant proportion of the electorate that are racist to begin with. Hanson is the symptom, not the cause.

Yes? I think it's been fairly widely recognised that she didn't levitate into the Senate, she climbed there off the backs of the votes of segments of Australia who are experiencing the same waves of anger and and fear and political alienation was we're seeing in the US and UK. Prepare for months of journalistic pontifications and thinkpieces along those lines. I'm not suggesting that wave is any less in Australia - just that Pauline and her ilk are likely to be comparatively less catastrophic than Brexit and Trump because their power is far more limited by the system in which they're operating.

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On 04/07/2016 at 8:06 PM, Arkhangel said:

Yes? I think it's been fairly widely recognised that she didn't levitate into the Senate, she climbed there off the backs of the votes of segments of Australia who are experiencing the same waves of anger and and fear and political alienation was we're seeing in the US and UK. Prepare for months of journalistic pontifications and thinkpieces along those lines. I'm not suggesting that wave is any less in Australia - just that Pauline and her ilk are likely to be comparatively less catastrophic than Brexit and Trump because their power is far more limited by the system in which they're operating.

Yes, you're certainly right on the magnitude of Hanson vs Brexit and Trump, which are certainly bigger movements with potentially much bigger consequences.

Hanson will wield some power disproportionately because of the Senate composition, but in some weird way, the increase in the number of Senate crossbenchers probably dilutes the influence of any single one of those crossbenchers holding the balance of power.

Latest results show that Turnbull may have a shot at forming majority government with 76 seats. Even so, getting anything through a hostile Senate is going to be a nightmare. It really could go one of two ways. Either the Coalition unites and doesn't have a hint of daylight between any of their members (politically a very tough ask), or we see dysfunction, potentially another leadership spill, and then another election in 12 months' time.

The latter is probably more likely, although Turnbull will be very hesitant about making us vote again it might come to that if he can't maintain party discipline. Shorten and the ALP might try and force an election too - the Coalition is weak and will be blamed for any dysfunction in the coming months, and Labor would surely be in a position to build on the gains they've made so far. Turnbull will have to walk a tightrope. There's talk Abbott might have to come back onto the frontbench to quell the hardline conservatives...now that would be potentially explosive.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...

South Australia plunged into darkness as entire state experiences power outage

South Australia experienced a state wide power outage as a 1 in a 50 year storm hit yesterday afternoon.  This is a state unable to meet its own energy demands in spite of it holding almost 30% of the worlds Uranium reserves and much of the countries natural gas reserves in the Cooper basin.

The states focus on renewable wind energy has left its electricity demands serviced by a small number of gas plants and interstate interconnectors when the wind is not blowing or the turbines are unable to be run, as was the case during yesterdays storm.  Even when the wind is blowing the state needs to draw on its neighbours supply to meet peak demand. As a result, energy security has been left to a relatively small number of suppliers causing price spikes and poor reliability.

As Lang Hancock once said when asked about conservationists and terrorism:

Quote

What they do is use well-meaning conservationists as a front and they haven’t got enough sense to see it. If they carry their argument to the logical conclusion there is only one thing they can do, and that’s freeze in the dark

I hope everyone in SA is ok. The word is shit got real when sewerage and fresh water pumps all went out at the same time.

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9 hours ago, Squab said:

South Australia plunged into darkness as entire state experiences power outage

South Australia experienced a state wide power outage as a 1 in a 50 year storm hit yesterday afternoon.  This is a state unable to meet its own energy demands in spite of it holding almost 30% of the worlds Uranium reserves and much of the countries natural gas reserves in the Cooper basin.

The states focus on renewable wind energy has left its electricity demands serviced by a small number of gas plants and interstate interconnectors when the wind is not blowing or the turbines are unable to be run, as was the case during yesterdays storm.  Even when the wind is blowing the state needs to draw on its neighbours supply to meet peak demand. As a result, energy security has been left to a relatively small number of suppliers causing price spikes and poor reliability.

Nope, nope, nope and you're talking extra spicy bullshit about the turbines.

The blackout wasn't a generator failure, it was a transmission failure caused by that storm you mentioned. You know, the one that ripped down 22 main tranmission lines. It didn't matter whether SA's power supply was wholesome nuclear or dastardly renewables ( which were producing half of the state's power at the time, but whatever) because when a power grid drastically loses supply the operator shuts down demand to prevent a frequency collapse.

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