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NZers and Aussies: Switching it up


The Anti-Targ
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Wish I could say I’m surprised by the Perrottet thing. Looks like all that Catholic education didn’t get him very far as a young adult. 

Anyway, he will probably survive this quite comfortably. Justin is still going strong here, years after Aladdingate.

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8 hours ago, Paxter said:

Wish I could say I’m surprised by the Perrottet thing. Looks like all that Catholic education didn’t get him very far as a young adult. 

Anyway, he will probably survive this quite comfortably. Justin is still going strong here, years after Aladdingate.

As usual, it seems the NSW Libs powerbrokers are lining up their feet for a surprise shot again. 

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8 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Has the Perrottet thing been mentioned in the thread before and I missed it, or are these posts about him based on assumed knowledge of which I am completely lacking?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-13/jewish-community-reacts-to-dominic-perottet-nazi-uniform/101849560

Short version: NSW premier Dom Perrottet wore a Nazi costume to his 21st birthday 20 years ago. He revealed this after a call from the NSW transport minister who he's been having a disagreement with about gambling reform. Apparently rumours of a photograph have been circulating in the Liberal party for some weeks, but it's unclear who amongst his colleagues started it though he's pissed off a few of them recently (also unclear if any photographic evidence exists).

NSW is a couple months out from a state election in March. So this is terrible timing for them.

Edited by Impmk2
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I'm not sure the Perrottet thing is going to move the needle much from where things are headed anyway. Before the news, he was probably likely to lose a tight election, and after the news it'll be the same. 

It reminds me of a Year 12 trivia night we had at school, back in 2003. One group dressed up as "The Terrorists" and wore teatowels on their heads. Only a couple of years after 9/11, that was a pretty insensitive thing to do. But if I kept a photo of it and released it 20 years later with the intention of scuppering someone's reputation, I think it would look quite petty.

I mean, with Dom, there's surely better dirt out there if his rivals want to go looking. Try those trade positions again, when he was actually in power and the allegations are more relevant...

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From Pell's last article in The Spectator (published this week):

Quote

The cardinal complained of a "deepening confusion, the attack on traditional morals," the adoption of "neo-Marxist jargon about exclusion, alienation, identity, marginalisation, the voiceless, LGBTQ" and an ignorance of "Christian notions of forgiveness, sin, sacrifice, healing, redemption."

Well, we wouldn't want to help out the voiceless would we George!

And we all know what needs to make a comeback in 2023: "SIN!"

What a charming fellow. 

I wonder how sinful he perceived his own involvement in covering up child sexual abuse. I guess God can always forgive him. 

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God needs to forgive, because people guilty of egregious sins will take an eternity to forgive themselves. I still feel bad for being mean to my little brother several decades ago, I can only imagine the self-torture of a soul that commits child abuse or covers up the child abuse by another.

Edited by The Anti-Targ
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8 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

God needs to forgive, because people guilty of egregious sins will take an eternity to forgive themselves. I still feel bad for being mean to my little brother several decades ago, I can only imagine the self-torture of a soul that commits child abuse or covers up the child abuse by another.

You’re assuming that the perp understands that what they did was wrong. People who cover up abuse often think they are doing the right thing, on balance. It’s sick.

Edited by Paxter
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Yeah, "defending the bastion of the only true faithful" is a hell of a tool for rationalisation to build on top of. Any evil can be justified if you're (in your own delusion) carrying it out to protect God.

On Perrottet the part that worries me is how clearly it's a warning from the gambling industry to other politicians not to go up against them or they'll play gloves off dirty. Perrottet was already likely to only have a couple of months left as premier, this isn't about him and it also concerns me how many on the left are on board just because it hurts a guy they were about to beat anyway. Remember what happened when it was a Labor government ending up in a fight with a different powerful industry lobby group? It brought down Rudd, poisoned Gillards term as PM and took over a decade for Labor to come back from.

This shit isn't good for democracy regardless of which party it's aimed at.

On that note, Brook was in Qld a couple of weeks ago and the mining industry is already doing tv ads on SBS to preempt any new mining taxes.

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It's good for democracy if what is revealed is and extreme character flaw that should disqualify someone from holding high office. As disgusting as wearing a Nazi uniform to a 21st is its kind of at the lower end of offending that one might consider as disqualifying from holding high office. 

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That's also not the part I'm talking. You can be mindful of the source of information even while acting on it if needed but I haven't been seeing much consideration of that at all.

Digging up offensive shit someone did as a young adult 20 years later is also an issue with the way we're doing things on the internet, and I don't think it should be treated as relevant if it's not consistent with the way the person acts now and they respond in an appropriate manner. If it's not clear it isn't consistent with who they are now then that's of course an issue but already should be raising red flags.

In his case I honestly don't know if it is or isn't consistent with how he behaves now, it doesn't have overlap with the parts of him I do take issue with so I'm not really across it. If I was ever to consider voting for him I'd be interested in his statements in response to school kids wearing nazi uniforms in the last few years and would probably draw conclusions from those but I'm never voting for him anyway. I'd expect conservative Jewish voters to be the demographic most likely to reassess support for him based on this and that's probably true for the people responsible for digging it up as well.

Lobby groups hoarding kompromat and using it to attempt to bring down premiers that challenge their power base is bad for democracy though, even when the content of that is in the public interest. And you might not grasp how fucked this country (and especially NSW) has become with respect to gambling, it got worse when I was living in the US and it's so jarring on the rare occasion I'm watching sport.

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What's the real issue though? I'd say that it's powerful special interest lobbies that seek and often achieve influence over politicians to work against the public good. What levers they use to gain that influence is secondary. Public shaming of politicians for past social sins is probably less damaging to democracy than the influence peddling that goes on behind closed doors we never hear about.

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Sheesh, looks like Jacinda Ardern has resigned.

Haven't followed NZ politics too closely, but I know Labour have been on the nose a bit over there. Resignation seems pretty sudden (or maybe not for those who follow NZ politics a bit more).

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Labour have been way down from their high and are actually now trailing at the polls. With the economy expected to get worse (it doesn't feel like a recession yet) it will be hard for them to hold on. But it isn't (wasn't?) completely bleak for Labour, NZ first is on the rise again and their leader Winston Peters has effectively picked the government 3 times out of the last 7 elections getting between 3% and 10% of vote (twice labour, once national). I think it will be quite a messy and somewhat dirty election later in the year, my guess is Ardern didn't really want to be involved with that.

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I wasn't picking her to resign @Paxter so that came as a bit of a surprise. @Makk I very much doubt NZ First would go with Labour again if their seats are needed to form a govt. National will hope it can go with Act alone though because they won't want to be forced to deal with NZ First. John Key vowed never to work with NZ First while Winston was in charge, and I think that was still National policy going in to the 2017 election. I feel like the new National leadership might be more inclined to work with them. Feels like the Maori Party has moved away from being effectively the Maori wing of the National Party, so I'm not sure National can rely on their support without giving them a lot more concessions.

I was saying to colleagues just now that I thought Labour had a bit of a chance at the election this year, but only with Ardern as leader. There's really no one in the parliamentary party who can carry them to enough seats to prevent a National/Act majority, and Ardern would have had a tough job. It became pretty clear Labour was on a hiding to nothing as soon as the RBNZ decided that forcing New Zealand into a recession in 2023 was a good idea. The only thing that could help Labour is if inflation gets sorted before the RBNZ's evil plan becomes an unavoidable inevitability.

I think Ardern looked at the horizon and thought about what being PM would be like even if Labour got back in, and decided I don't need 4 more years of this shit. She has a very sweet life ahead of her getting work in international organisations focusing on single causes she's passionate about, if that's what she wants to do. So why delay?

The pandemic has been a double-edged sword for Labour. On the one hand they were looking at a defeat in 2020, and then the pandemic happened, and National kind of shot itself in the foot by changing leader to someone who was not really a good leader in the public eye. But having to deal with the pandemic, which was always going to be tricky on the exit strategy side esp once public fatigue started setting in took up so much time and attention that it's damaged this govt with all the negative both social and economic fallout from the pandemic. And I can imagine the pandemic took a lot out of Ardern.

Edited by The Anti-Targ
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If Winston Peters holds the balance, he will go with whoever offers him the most regardless of anything he says before the election... or whatever the people who vote for him actually want. Luxon has already effectively opened the door, when asked about Winston. He said he hadn't given it any thought and paid him a minor compliment (forget exactly what). This translates to "we are giving it a lot of thought and trying to work out if it is better to cut him out or whether we might need him." Winston Peters is hated by many of the national party members though and in the past NZ first has worked much better with Labour than they have with National.

The Maori party has never, ever been national. The times when they were in government with them was when the numbers didn't matter and there were other political reasons to get them in. If they actually held the balance of power they will go with Labour as more than 80% of their voters prefer that. In fact a large proportion of their voters split their vote giving Labour the party vote and the Maori party the electorate vote. This is a nightmare for National as in theory it can give Labour an advantage of up to 7% if it was split perfectly because of the extra seats although the highest it ever got to was 2 seats.

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It's always been the case that Maori Party voters preferred a labour led govt. But every time the Maori Party has had the opportunity to be a support party in govt it has chosen National. The Maori Party still hates Labour over the cause for its creation in the Clark govt, and Labour still hates the Maori Party for splitting off, and then having the temerity to support National govts, even after National used race-baiting tactics in the election that they won. Too much animosity between what should be natural political allies, though perhaps enough time has passed for the Maori Party to not lend confidence and supply support to National, but not enough time for it to lend the same to Labour.

If the left and right blocs can't form a majority without Maori party confidence and supply support it will be a very interesting situation. My odds are on National/Act just getting over that 60-seat threshold. It will be an interesting first term in that case, as Act tries to pull the govt away from meaningful climate change action preferring to leave everything to the free market, while there will be teals in the National Party (probably mostly those in urban blue seats) who mostly agree with the climate change measures of the current govt and may rebel over the wag the dog efforts of Act. But there are also those on the right in National who are opposed to mist climate change measures. So that might be a battle for the ages on how history will remember New Zealand's role in climate change action. Radio interview with the Green Party Co-leader seemed clear that he is worried about what will happen in the next parliament.

The other big environmental fight will be over water management. National is vowing to repeal and replace the water reforms that have only just passed into law. But there is no repealing without a fully fleshed out replacement. Everyone knows the status quo isn't working, so they can't just go back to the pre-2023 laws. There will be little public mood for the standard right-wing play of privatisation.

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