It's OK to be White and other dogwhistles - the Australian politics thread

Its incredible how terrified they are of offending the Murdoch scum who won’t give them an inch anyway.

4 Likes

Yeah, we didn’t get a weak ETS under Rudd, Labor actually has to put a decent bill under Gillard which the Greens then passed. Our emissions are meaurably lower today than they would have been if Rudd’s ETS had passed.

If you want to claim the Greens make the perfect the enemy of the good, this isn’t a good example.

Hey, I’m happy to be proven wrong re: ETS. The fact I asked in this instance about it was that I couldn’t remember fully if it was revisited later.

1 Like

There’s no U. It’s the Labor Party.

The numbers in the Senate meant they couldn’t pass it without the Opposition - to do so they needed Greens + Xenophon + Fielding. Fielding had gone all Heritage Foundation so his vote was beyond reach.

The Government also wanted any deal to last past the next change of government, and felt that locking both majors in was the best chance - there was a pretty reasonable assessment that any deal that excluded the Coalition would be on the chopping block next time the Coalition got in.

So they negotiated with Turnbull’s opposition and got a deal. The Greens were upset at having been excluded and thought the deal wasn’t good enough.

Abbott rolled Turnbull, and pulled the Coalition out of the deal, upsetting the entire apple cart. Two Lib rebels still wanted to vote for the deal, and with the two extra votes, had the Greens voted yes it would have passed the Senate. They didn’t, and it didn’t.

People can make their own judgement on the rights and wrongs (and those of us who’ve formed a view already are unlikely to change it), but those are the historical facts.

1 Like

Given that the ALP adopted the USian spelling in order to appear modern and progressive it may be apt for them to change to the older spelling as they’re now a conservative and reactive party.

The media in this country really don’t help with political discourse.

Just reading now about Albanese agreeing to include a question on sexuality in the next census and its being referred to as a ‘backflip’. Why not just say the decision to include the question was re-evaluated or similar?

‘Backflip’ just feels negative.

I’ve always wondered about that

Their national platform in 2023 stated that they believed questions including LGBTQI+ had to be included in the Census. It was then decided to remove the questions despite the ABS promising that they would be included in the 2026 last time when the community claimed discrimination that it wasn’t asked in 2021. I think backflip is fairly valid. Slightly different if they hadn’t said anything about it.

Also worth pointing that I don’t believe a single person involved in the decision didn’t suggest that maybe removing that would be a silly idea… Especially based on the 2021 anger

2 Likes

My comment was more in general rather than this specific situation. Too much sensationalist language.

That’s on society in general and the shift from print media to the internet. You’re no longer flicking through a newspaper that you’ve paid for, ensuring all the content is covered. You’re now trying to attract people into clicking articles. “Albanese backflips on policy” is more likely to get a click than “Albanese made a bit of a mistake that he rectified”

Looks like they will test a question about sexuality, after all.

And on purpose.

Yeah. At the time the ALP was founded there was still hopes and dreams that Australia could support a population as large as the US and the the US was seen as the modern model of a modern major general. So they used the US spelling to appear modern and shit.

They did cool things like make things better for people, 8hr days, sufferage, social welfare …

Pity that post WW2, Whitlam era aside, they’ve been outshone by Robert fucking Menzies on the social welfare side. Bob Hawke did salvage Medicare mind.

1 Like

On the census question about sexuality, being a cisgender heterosexual I don’t put much thought into it but it seemed counterintuitive that a group that has faced a lot of discrimination would want to disclose details of their sexuality to government?

I guess on one side they would want to have policymakers aware of their specific needs?

Personally I don’t love the census and asking too many personal questions feels wrong to me?

Nothing about the census reporting is mandatory though. ‘Prefer not to say’ or similar as an option, or leave blank

I get what you’re saying but the whole idea of the census is to get as much information about the population. In theory, the Government of the day then uses this information to make sound policy and to provide the infrastructure and services that the population requires.
The result for every person who identifies as cis-gender heterosexual not answering that question is that their already small population appears to be even smaller and thus they run the risk of having even less Government services assigned to them.

It really should be anonymous though. If they know you haven’t submitted your form then it is very easy for them to know exactly who you are.

Pretty much this. Youre not going to invest money or policy if, for instance, you have 1 person in an entire population that identifies as LGBTQI. If the population is under represented in a then funding can be too low to make a difference

By the time it gets to analysis the data isn’t connected to you is it?

Each census form is individually numbered.
Your address is associated with that number.
They know if you haven’t submitted it.

I can see why people would be hesitant to share a lot of their details when it appears to be pretty easy to work out who they are.

It’s not the ABS or the Government knowing that information and knowing where it came from that I have much of an issue with. At the end of the day the Government has an agency that can find out whatever they want about you anyway.
I’m more concerned about how securely the information held. Given the prevalence in hacking, that’s some pretty juicy data for someone with ill intent.

1 Like