I fear so called “humanitarians” that would let in millions of people with a totally alien culture to destroy what little is left of “true blue Ocker” culture. Your ilk have destroyed the “real Aussie bloke” and the car culture- isn’t that enough?
As for the NBN, you want to spend billions on a system that could be obsolete within 10 years! Just because a politician says it is the way to go, you actually believe them, LOL. I doubt many of them have a clue about computers, or advances in technology.
Unfortunately, NZ Labour hasn’t had a decent leader since Longey.
And as for the witch, how the hell can she almost destroy NZ and then go off to get a cushy job at the UN? Something stinks in NZ politics.
The NBN is based on fibre, which is a long term technology. I don’t believe it because a politician said it, I believe it because the tech world says it. I read things that aren’t published by Murdoch, you see.
Now excuse me while I go cry over the death of the Aussie car culture. Oh why did we destroy such a thing of beauty and value?!
Just sent to me by an Australian friend, and posted here by permission:
*Gillard’s fall has a certain symmetry - she knifed Rudd 3 years ago in almost identical circumstances. That’s how she became PM.
Rudd has clearly and egotistically being undermining his own party’s chances of success just to advance his agenda of revenge and redemption. And all the things said about him previously by his own party - dysfunctional leader, media obsessed, chaotic, etc - haven’t gone away.
I don’t think Abbott has the right stuff. He’s just … odd. Too angry, too intense, a leader who might be good working from a position of weakness (as he does in opposition) but not when working from a position of strength. No gravitas. He’s the sort of person who leaps too readily to the partisan and the defensive to give me great hopes of his capacity in governance. I also think he will ruthlessly find excuses to cut expenditure, which means mass public service sackings. These things tend to chill the economy rather than revive it.
Since Abbott’s election is all but inevitable (subject as always to the discovery of the proverbial live boy/dead hooker) my guess about the most likely outcome is that during his first term he too becomes too erratic and the conservatives bounce him. The conservatives are just as factionalised as Labor, and the same sorts of planes of cleavage as crippled Labor will emerge for them too.*
Unless there’s a double dissolution, senators (except from the territories, IIRC) have fixed terms, and the government can call a Senate election as early as a year before their terms end. Half of each states’ senators were elected in 2007 for a term beginning on July 1st, 2008 and ending on July 1st, 2014. The government could have held off on holding the Senate election, but it’s been the practice for a while to schedule House and Senate elections simultaneously if possible (maybe that’s why the Senate election can be so early).
Just a thought, Rudd was faced with the GFC in his time in the big chair, he gathered a close group of people and got the job done. Sometimes one must be a jerk to get things done in crisis times and lets be honest Australia was facing a major crisis. We can argue if the things done were right or wrong but action had to be taken.
Who in the tech world says that? People with an investment in fibre perhaps!
10 years ago, who thought that a flash drive could hold so much as they do now. Only a few know what is to come in a couple of years.
The car culture was destroyed by PC eco worriers. If you don’t appreciate a great car, you probably drive a stupid plastic clone of every other new car, or a Prius, LOL.
Believe it or not, when people in your own country want you dead, you’re allowed to leave it. Legal and all! Amazing.
Of course, God forbid that the desire for brown skinned people who eat funny food to not be dead should get in the way of the almighty car culture. Or that we should ever be thinking about ways to maybe ensure that fifty degrees plus doesn’t ultimately become standard summertime temperatures. Can’t have that.
Nick Bryant (BBC’s departing Australia Correspondent) raises the interesting observation that he doesn’t think the average punter is really all that worried about “Boat People” and cost of living pressures etc are more likely to be their major issues.
I agree with his observations and they match my own, too.
Personally, I think being an “economic refugee” should be considered a valid reason in limited cases to petition a country for residency- I mean, if you live in some appalling third-world place where the average weekly wage wouldn’t buy a packet of crisps in the Western world, then why wouldn’t you try and move somewhere else?
Obviously it’s not the same thing as fleeing a war or similar terrible oppression, but I’d say it’s still a shitty situation to be in all the same.
Yeah, well, I bet you own the same sort of stupid plastic clone of every other new vacuum cleaner, or a bagless one, LOL.
Sorry to use such harsh, painful words back at you, but I wanted to demonstrate just how deeply your scorn for my car hurt me. If we’ve learned anything here, I guess it’s that it’s never nice to mock a machine that other people own to facilitate the completion of chores such as cleaning or transportation. Truce?
Meanwhile, back to the fibre thing… experts in their field are generally financially compensated. It’s called “employment”. Someone who has strong opinions about fibre but doesn’t work in the sector is not automatically likely to be a better source of information than someone with strong opinions about fibre who actually works in information technology, communications, or similar fields. Do you disbelieve your doctor’s diagnosis because he has a financial interest in your treatment and recovery?
I doubt it. Where would the Greens have gone if she hadn’t pushed through the carbon tax? To Abbott? What happened to Wilkie: did he get his gambling legislation pushed through despite threatening to withdraw support? No he did not.
Hmmm, it doesn’t bring the whole quote with it, but the original isn’t too far back, so…
You got in ahead of me there.
Yes, many if not most of the boat people are economic migrants. A genuine refugee in fear for their life is going to be happy just to stay somewhere that they won’t be killed, and they don’t always have time to gather up the entire family before escaping. ie if I was really escaping death, I wouldn’t be so insistant on leaving Malaysia or wherever ( and would I actually have any money to pay the people traffickers? ). However, an economic migrant that has mortgaged the family land to be able to get on a boat does have a vested interest in being able to work when they get to Oz.
Watching current affairs programs on ABC, i sometimes wonder if people actually want all 17 million + refugees to be allowed unrestricted entry.
Writing an article that basically said Rudd will never be PM again. Things like
“he should never again be entrusted with the leadership of the Labor Party”.
As for the Greens, they had a lot more than one vote, and without them would Labour have had enough seats to win government? Had they remained independent, how many seats would Abbott have had to support him as opposed to the ALP?
No. I won’t be happy till every one of you real Aussie blokes is forced to sip chardonnay while wearing a pink tutu and riding a bamboo-framed bicycle to your boyfriend’s house. That is actually what I want. Truly.
You are precisely right. I ignored the page after page of technical gibberish written by a variety of communications industry mafiosos, laughed out loud at the bumbling ineptitude of various heavily biased IT academic propellorheads and went straight to my local Federal member for their advice (that’s Big Kev, by the way). There’s no one else I would trust. That is actually what I did. I can understand you laughing at me. LOL. ROFL.