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Aussie Thread: Democracy Sausage


Paxter

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Labor promising bigger surpluses than the Coalition. $154bn extra revenue over 10 years coming from closing off tax loopholes - franking credits, negative gearing, capital gains tax, trusts and superannuation.

I don't know what the details is on the CGT but that could have some interesting effects. Franking credits I agree with and I think I'm close to agreeing that negative gearing should go.

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I think Labor's on track to win. But I'd be surprised if between them and the Greens they get enough senate seats to actually implement much of their agenda. Really doubt the franking credits and negative gearing changes will actually happen unfortunately.

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On 5/9/2019 at 12:55 PM, Squab said:

Anthony Mundine has commented on the obviously racist attacks on Israel Folau. Given Israel’s posting on twitter was an expression of his ethnic origin as a Pacific Islander and Rugby Australia (no longer the ARU btw) has acted in a way that, is not only likely to but has intimidated Israel and others in the islander community, maybe there’s a case based on section 18c of the racial discrimination act. It is obviously offending the islander community and its threatening dismissal of employment, that sould constitute a criminal offence. I look forward to the ALP extending 18c to other areas like religious beliefs…

 

From, I think the only Queenslander here, my guess would be ALP will get around 80 seats and form majority. ALP lose a couple up north but gain elsewhere. PHON will be lucky to get a senate seat here as I think Clive will get one if advertising and preferences influence people at all.

 

Surely the only question to ask in response to that is whether RA would have taken the same action if a white player had twice made homophobic posts on social media. I would like to think RA would have acted the same way, but maybe not?

Also Christian doctrine and homophobia are not, AFAIK, part of Pacific Island culture. They are part of the colonial imposition of European Christianity on Pacific Island culture. Christian moral conservatism among Pasifika peoples is one of the biggest "successes" of European colonialism, but it doesn't make it essential Pasifika identity.

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You can't bloody have her.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12229546

Quote

Jacinda Ardern for Aussie PM? Kiwi leader ranked Australia's most trusted politician

Australians were asked who they trusted when it came to relevance, integrity and commitment, with Ardern polling as Australia's most preferred prime minister.

Research company Millward Brown polled 1400 Australians asking them to score 12 politicians, including the leaders of the Coalition, Labor, the Greens, Pauline Hanson's One Nation and the United Australia Party.

 

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2 hours ago, Jeor said:

I think Labor will get a comfortable victory but not by as many seats as they would wish. A majority of maybe 5-10 seats.

I think the only particularly noteworthy lower house outcomes are 1) Whether Labor can take Dutton's seat away from him, I view getting that fascist fuck out of government one of the more important things we need 2) How bad the wipe out for the Coalition is in Victoria, if they can't even save the furniture that can do longer term damage than just losing an election 3) Whether conservative independents increase their success at knocking off prominent climate deniers/feet draggers, most of the independents aren't that much more progressive but the message it hopefully sends to the Coalition is very important

On the senate front I agree with @Impmk2 as well - if you look at the actual seats up for grabs its very hard to see how ALP + GRN can pick up enough to take a collective majority. Tasmania is likely to see them lose one seat. I'm less sure about what this means for the next term though, I think Labor governments have demonstrated themselves as significantly better at negotiating with a cross bench so it depends on whether they can get to a majority with Xenophon types and Hinch or if they need Coalition or less savoury votes.

58 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Given the popularity of our two leaders its not actually saying much that we'd prefer her haha.

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The Senate crossbench will be crucial.

Unfortunately for Labor, most of the minor parties that stand a chance of stealing a seat in the Senate are right wing nutters (apart from the Greens). The Centre Alliance (previously Xenophon Team) in South Australia might hold their two seats and that could help. I don't really know enough about the individual states breakdown to be able to predict the Senate.

However, occasionally the right wing nutters can surprise you with their open-mindedness on economic policies. They spend so much time on extreme social views that they could be negotiable on economic positions, which is mostly what Labor seems to be running on this election.

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9 hours ago, Jeor said:

I hope most of the minor parties get wiped out in the Senate. Too many got in during the last double dissolution election (where the state vote quotas were lower because every Senator was up for re-election) so the Senate balance will hopefully return to normal.

I wouldn’t get my hopes up. Only a subset of the Senators voted in last time will be up for election now - so the likes of Hanson and Bernardi will all be in again. And I think the demise of Xenophon’s party is easily replaced by Palmer. I understand his party is polling well in SA.

Plus I’d expect the records to keep tumbling in terms of historically low Senate votes for the majors.

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10 hours ago, Paxter said:

 And I think the demise of Xenophon’s party is easily replaced by Palmer. I understand his party is polling well in SA.

... I would be surprised at any substantial palmer vote in SA? All the ads he's been running here have been very Queensland centric. The only time he's made the news here it's been for basically shitting on the state. And he's polling about 4% nationally, unless there's some state polling I'm not aware of? Can't see anything on a quick google.

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I would have thought Palmer would be strong in WA too - since that's where he's running his "Chinese are taking over" scare campaign. Plus, Palmer has strong preference deals with both Labor and Libs so I wouldn't be surprised if he sneaks in a few seats somewhere.

@Paxter is probably right. I knew we would be stuck with half of the senators of the dodgy Class of 2016, but I'm hoping that at least this upcoming half of the Senate will be of reasonable composition. It's probably too much to hope for, though. The major parties are suffering some severe electoral drift.

For the first time in a while I think I might vote Labor. I at least know more about their policies (mostly tax reform) than the Coalition who haven't really looked like doing anything constructive on policy and have run a campaign on personality and not much else. When you're an incumbent government it's a bit of an indictment on your party that your "policies" are "all that Labor stuff is bad we'll do a better job".

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After scanning a lot of the ALP's proposed spending policies I wouldn't mind if a lot of that was blocked tbh, while I hope all the savings measures are passed. I can imagine a kooky RW Senate might end up doing the reverse of literally everything I want though.

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5 hours ago, The Drunkard said:

After scanning a lot of the ALP's proposed spending policies I wouldn't mind if a lot of that was blocked tbh, while I hope all the savings measures are passed. I can imagine a kooky RW Senate might end up doing the reverse of literally everything I want though.

Yes, I more agree with the tax reform package and revenue raisers rather than the spending side of things.

The truth is, a large number of the spending promises by either party won't affect me since no party ever targets single people. I understand the need to support families/children for demographic reasons, and I know big picture stuff like infrastructure and the environment we all benefit from. But the reality is that most things on the spending side don't mean much to my vote.

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34 minutes ago, Stubby said:

Did anyone watch Scott's Campaign Failure to Launch yesterday?

Just got the cliff notes. Big policy announcement immediately matched by Labor. I'm torn on how good an idea is it anyway. Will just put upward price pressure on entry level housing.

Anything else of note?

I might be getting overconfident, but the late momentum seems to be with Labor. Coalition seem out of ideas.

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Israel Folau's main defense appears to be "God spoke to me". Whether you are a believer or not, that kind of claim is uncorroboratable and is more likely to be the ravings of a madman than a truthful accounting of a divine command. Even if God worked that way, it's impossible to accept the claim as valid in any evidential testimony. It's basically a get out of gaol free defence for anything that's not an actual crime, and probably for some crimes, if it's given any kind of weight here.

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4 hours ago, Impmk2 said:

Anything else of note?

I might be getting overconfident, but the late momentum seems to be with Labor. Coalition seem out of ideas.

Nope.

Today he claimed he saved the Great Barrier Reef.

Next thing he'll be saying he saved Christmas.

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5 hours ago, Impmk2 said:

I'm torn on how good an idea is it anyway. Will just put upward price pressure on entry level housing.

I hate it. Their answer to too much private debt and inflated house prices is to make it easier to get into debt and to increase demand. 

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Terrible policy on the run from the Coalition re: first home buyers. Not only is it mainly great news for current owners/sellers, it’s also imprudent to encourage lower-income earners to enter a still-inflated market with small savings.

And equally poor stuff from Labor to match it without thinking.

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The homeowners policy is silly. All it does is encourage people to borrow more money (when there are probably good reasons why they normally wouldn't be allowed to buy a house on a 5% deposit) and I think such targeted interventions like this are very clumsy.

I understand it's indirect and therefore not a vote-winner, but I think one of the things to make housing more affordable is to build better infrastructure. Whether it's upgrading federal highways, state public transport or otherwise unfocusing the capital cities from their CBDs, any measure that allows people to live further away from work but still have a reasonable commute is going to allow them to buy in more affordable suburbs.

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There's another point we can agree on to some extent Jeor. I think environmental impact greatly favours increasing density in the inner city over sprawling further away but either way increasing the amount of housing within a small to moderate commute will help.

The big obstacle for a significant increase in density remains that every suburb is full of nimbys. The proposal that I've liked the most that didn't ever progress for Sydney was building up above Redfern station and all the tracks that are just beyond it. There's a ton of land there that's not being put to good use and is owned by the railways and it would give an opportunity to 1) redo Redfern station as a modern station that is accessible, 2) build a huge number of apartments, along with associated shops and restaurants to serve them and 3) allow people to walk directly from the Australian Technology Park and Alexandria through to Sydney Uni/school kids to walk from Darlington to their associated school in Alexandria without having to walk twice the distance to loop around past Redfern station.

Oh and 4) it's no one's back yard.

 

ETA: Forgot what I came here to say which is fuck Kerry-Anne and her bigoted entitled screed. I don't know if it's just that I'm stressed about other things and 4 days into a migraine but that's upset me more than it should

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