I started this blog because i realized how hard it is for normal people who don't have a subscription to "The Monthly", didn't study political history in university or have the ability to attend the sort of in-party speeches where parties talk about what they *actually* stand for to make informed decisions about or actually manage to research australian politics. The ease of finding information on what american parties and policies stand for, why the parties believe what they believe and their core differences (not to mention british, french, even *japanese* and they just plain don't write their stuff in english all that much) is incredible compared to how hard it is to find anything on australian politics beyond "stop the boats" and "i'm not tony abbott". this is (hopefully) gonna be all the information that the special political types get to know from sources we've never heard of laid out without bullshit, for people who give a shit or want to learn why the liberal party's called the liberal party and what the deal is with australian conservatism instead of just getting "here's an american website on american issues" every time you go to google. it's not secrets - we just never hear about it in the stuff we actually pay attention to. feel free to submit posts, correct me, and i can't think of a third thing. "Political debate is only considered optional by those so obliviously content with the privileges afforded them by the status quo as to not understand how any further social change could constitute an improvement, on the basis that it either fails to benefit them directly or appears to diminish their power." -- foz meadows
I’ll reblog this in the morning, when Australia is actually awake, but…
I collaborated with some fellow political tragics on this info-thing about the Abbott government’s proposed changes to Medicare and the pharmaceutical benefits scheme, based on this study from the University of Sydney (PDF).
There’s also a single-image version, on my website.
Accompanying links:
‘Co-payment will hit harder than expected, Sydney University study finds’ (Michelle Grattan, The Conversation)
A sister infographic by Beyond the Hedge (JPG, big-sized); a result of the same collaboration. For those who like their graphicalised infos slicker, sexier, and sanser of googly eyes.
Please reblog and share however you can! Even if you’re not Australian but you like the cute animals and maybe some of your followers are Australian, for example?
Joe Hockey being brutally interrogated by a British interviewer about the Age of Entitlement rhetoric. An excerpt:
Interviewer: You said the age of entitlement is over. What entitlements will you stop or diminish?
Joe Hockey:(…) Well I give you an example the school kid bonus (answer continues)
Interviewer: (…) you are going to continue with a very generous parental leave scheme and a $1.5 billion slush fund for big business to cut Co2 emissions. I will argue that the age of entitlement is alive and well in Australia.
please don’t spread this like any kind of fire because it’s it’s either accidental misinformation or an outright lie by op
it’s a photoshop of a swiss election poster as seen in this article
sure the libs are pretty gross but lying about stuff like this just makes it harder to trust people who might have legitimate criticism rather than photoshopping shit for notes
Hello.
There is an upsetting issue that I seek your help with.
Lillian’s, a youth refuge that supports me, may be forced to shut down after its funding was cut. It’s the case with all independent refuges in inner west Sydney, under the “Going Home Staying Home” policy. This literally means teenagers as young as 14 would now be forced to choose between enduring daily violence in their homes or sleeping rough on the streets.
We’re fighting to reinstate funding, and I hope you will sign and share the petition in the following link: http://chn.ge/1pKRVy3
Thanks for your support!
Angie
The neoliberal argument in favour of austerity policies claims that debt is due to unreasonable public spending levels; that societies in general, and popular classes in particular, live above their means.
This is plain false. In the past 30 years, from 1978 to 2012 more precisely, French public spending has in fact decreased by two GDP points. What, then, explains the rise in public debt? First, a fall in the tax revenues of the state. Massive tax reductions for the wealthy and big corporations have been carried out since 1980. In line with the neoliberal mantra, the purpose of these reductions was to favour investment and employment. Well, unemployment is at its highest today, whereas tax revenues have decreased by five points of GDP.
Tax reductions for the wealthy and interest rates increases are political decisions. What the audit shows is that public deficits do not just grow naturally out of the normal course of social life. They are deliberately inflicted on society by the dominant classes, to legitimise austerity policies that will allow the transfer of value from the working classes to the wealthy ones.
This article examines the French economic situation but its analysis is just as applicable to Australia. Australia’s debt is a result of unnecessary tax cuts to high income earners, and tax concessions to corporate interests by Howard that have led to structural budgetary issues, and just like the French, austerity is being inflicted on the poor by the rich, seeing the transfer of wealth from the working class to the wealthy. (X)
In this video, Iggy Azalea is interviewed by The Citizens of Sway in the Morning. She talks about how Aboriginal peoples are treated and I have got to say that I am blown away by her ignorance.
When asked by the interviewer how Aboriginal peoples are treated - she goes to explain that Aboriginal peoples believe that they shouldn’t live in a “confined space”, so they destroy the houses the government has built for them to then sleep under the stars because “that’s how they live” (mind you, housing projects are a rare occurrence and are hardly ever delivered). If she did her research instead of relying completely on what she thinks she knows, she would’ve discovered the real reasons behind poor housing in Indigenous communities. Her comments erase any kind of urban identity that Indigenous peoples have. I’m a little grossed out by the interviewer’s use of outdated and offensive terminology, too
In Walter Kerinauia’s words, from this article which talks about the failure of Indigenous housing in the Northern Territory: "All I want to see is a new house," Kerinauia says. "I would be happy and proud. People here want proper houses to live in. They don’t want overcrowding. If the young people get a new house, they won’t do anything like suicide any more. When they know they are getting a house, they’re going to be really proud, and they’ll look after it. I don’t want to live in this old house any more." This is a clear indication that proper housing is wanted and desperately needed, but the government is not aiding in this issue.
There are many reasons as to why there is poor housing in remote Indigenous communities…
Severe overcrowding where diseases then spread fast as a result. The average number of people living in houses on Palm Island (one of Australia’s biggest Aboriginal communities) is 17 people
Aboriginal peoples are semi-nomadic, so it just doesn’t for those who are connected strongly to their culture to live in a house for the rest of their life.
Domestic violence, drugs and alcohol plays a big part
Empty promises and by the government (the housing is never built, even after months of discussions and planning)
Fractured families and lack of vital life skills as a result of the Stolen Generations
The aftermath of the Northern Territory Intervention
Many Aboriginal peoples have a cultural obligation to take care of and take in anyone who isn’t sleeping in a house. This is then used against them in conjunction with overcrowding to justify the eviction of tenants. The whole cycle then repeats itself WITHOUT the implication of proper housing
Materials from the houses are sometimes burnt in an attempt to be warm in the cooler months as the structures are so old that the facilities simply don’t work
The houses are falling apart due to neglect and their old age
Builders failing Aboriginal housing. They don’t do their job correctly either because they are under-qualified, use solutions that don’t work according to the climate in different areas or because they’re just lazy and they don’t care
I will not accept statements saying we’re feral/uncivilized/stuck in the old ways and that we need to try harder or integrate with white society. Our problems are the white man and the government’s doing, not our doing. Because of this, we have been deprived of equality and a fair go in many areas in the past. We still are today, so let’s start talking about real solutions.
i'm seeing this on my facebook and don't know the source or where the information comes from. it would be profoundly unsurprising if it was true but any extra confirmation would be appreciated since i just have a bit of a deep-set reaction against white on black text done in an ms paint scary text style even if it's very likely true
One in four people on the dole for more than a year have been forced to beg on the streets and six in 10 have approached a charity for help, a grim new academic study into life on unemployment benefits has found.
The scale of deprivation for those on the Newstart allowance was so serious the researchers concluded the employment prospects of recipients had been seriously ”scarred”’. Instead of spending their energy looking for a job these people are worried all the time by the very basics of survival.
Australia’s unemployment benefit is meagre compared with many similar OECD nations, especially for singles in the initial stages of unemployment. The Newstart payment for a single person is equivalent to just 28 per cent of the average wage compared with an OECD median of 57 per cent in the initial stage of unemployment, the study says.
(X) Going one step further and cutting them off altogether is going to be devestating. (via progressiveauspol)
Imagine you’re 16 and you’ve just realized you might be gay. You’re being bullied, so reach out to your school for help – they send you to a chaplain. He says that being gay is a disease and you need to be cured.
Sound outrageous? The Australian government has just decided that’s what should happen in schools all over the country. The Federal Budget was just released with $245 million to send chaplains from anti-gay religious groups into schools instead of qualified social workers.
There’s still a chance to stop it. The Opposition is about to decide if they should pass the budget in full, seek to amend it or block it entirely. If this secret religious agenda doesn’t make headlines, it could be forgotten and passed without debate.
Help raise the alarm and stop tax money from being spent to bully vulnerable students. We only have days.
Join me and sign the petition here
Much of the ideology behind cutting welfare and age pension is inspired by Joe Hockey’s admiration of Asian style familial piety, where the family and not the state cover individual in hard times.In a speech he made two years ago he stated:
filial piety constitutes the very best and most enduring guide for community and social infrastructure. By Western standards this highly constrained public safety net may, at times, seem brutal. But it works and it is financially sustainable. (X)
He also fails to note that many of these nations suffer from huge income inequality and leads to lowered participation of women in the workforce (in South Korea workforce participation for university educated women is 57% lower than the oecd average of 78%). It is women not men who often bear the slack of looking after both the elderly and children. He also neatly ignores that these states that he admires so fervently are expanding the welfare state, recognising the defeciencies of a Confucian style welfare state and the social problem it brings.
i have no idea which states this post is talking about and i'm much more than a little suspicious that south korean employment disparity based on gender can be simplified so easily to "well that's just asian culture confucius did it".
randomly picking and choosing confucian philosophy, eliminating it from any context it existed in to try to force it into a country where it has never really had any place and likely wouldn't really be receptive to it is of course a dumb idea and joe hockey's a fucking idiot for thinking australians want to randomly accept some sort of filial piety but this posts criticism of countries that have been influenced by confucian philosophy is suspect
interesting note here: the australia network has been abolished, just like was suggested in the audit. can anyone who lives in a country australia netwrok broadcast to comment on whether this is confirmed as being super cool or not?
if you have been paying attention to or thinking about the posts i've put on this blog at all i don't need to explain to you why joe hockey's budget is trash and why his dodgy explanations are even bigger trash and anyone who doesn't understand why can look in my economics, budget, capitalism, joe hockey, or liberal party tags and i mean actually reed and not just skim through the first page and pay little attention to anything
i'm only going to spend time posting budget related things if it actually looks like it brings in a perspective that most people hadn't thought of to it or some expert knowledge people can't just provide based on their "this is what my internet articles i googled think" research
There have been no systematic attacks on Russian-speakers; the attempt to scrap Russian as an official language has so far failed; and neither is it true that all Russian-speakers want unification with Moscow. Past barbaric invasions of Russia do not justify sacrificing the right of neighbouring countries to self-determination.
But the rhetoric of Russian intervention mirrors that of our own leaders when they send “Our boys” into action: defending democracy, taking on modern-day fascists, protecting the rights of minorities, supporting self-determination. It is easy to question the motives of foreign powers and disregard their justifications: it is taken as read. Do so with your own rulers, and you are dismissed as a peddler of conspiracy theories, or for playing into the hands of the enemy.
Supporters of Western foreign policy attack those who draw attention to our own record at times like this for “whataboutery”, or the “look over there!” approach to debate. A foreign power does something wrong, and anti-war types are said to go, “ah, but what about the West?”, supposedly to suggest that our faults make theirs all OK. That is not the point of this argument at all. Russia is ruled by an authoritarian government that attacks civil liberties and discriminates against LGBT people. It has no noble aims in Ukraine. “What is happening in Crimea these days is a classic act of imperialist intervention,” as the radical Russian group Open Left puts it. Great Powers have always exploited or promoted genuine grievances to justify their self-interest: even Mussolini rationalised his invasion of Abyssinia as liberating the country from the tyranny of chattel slavery.
But this should force us to consider how the rest of the world looks at us. Our nation joins the United States in invading Iraq on a false pretext, effectively destroying the country and killing hundreds of thousands in the process. Israel is allowed systematically to violate UN resolutions, building illegal settlements and annexing Palestinian land. Our great ally, the “witch”-beheading, hand-chopping dictatorship of Saudi Arabia, invaded Bahrain (at the request of Bahrain’s dictatorial regime, of course) to help suppress a struggle for democracy and human rights. The United States launches drone attacks in sovereign nations like Pakistan, in direct defiance of the country’s Parliament, killing countless civilians.
If Russia, or other countries deemed unfriendly, acted in this way, the calls for action would be deafening. When foreign nations commit acts of aggression, it provokes a sense of “we have to do something” in the West; so it does in other countries when we commit similar acts, too. But “rogue state” is not a term that applies to countries that violate international law, but rather to those that have failed to bend to the will of the West.
That is not to suggest that these attacks on the international order provoked Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It would undoubtedly have happened anyway. But they are all symptoms of the same phenomenon. International law is treated by Great Powers as a convenient stick to beat opponents with, to be discarded when it is inconvenient.
The issue of truth featured largely in the recent election. We the voters were often left to decide who was and who wasn’t telling the truth. Or who was telling more or less of it. So what is a lie…
By johnlord2013 on November 30, 2013 (www.theaimn.com)
This election was different in so much as we saw the emergence of various “Truth Finder” sites and both sides of the political spectrum were found out telling full-on porkies, or at least using different shades of hue.
This week lying has again been highlighted with the Government’s decision to axe the Gonski Education reforms. The troubling aspect of this decision is that during the campaign Tony Abbot gave a number of commitments. For example:
“This will be a no surprises, no excuses government, because you are sick of nasty surprises and lame excuses from people that you have trusted with your future”.
He also promised a ”unity ticket” with Labor on Gonski funding:
“You can vote Liberal or Labor and you’ll get exactly the same amount of funding for your school”.
“There will be no change to school funding under the government I lead”.
These commitments were totally unambiguous. Unequivocally intentional. So much so that the average voter on hearing them could logically assume that they were being told the absolute truth.
We now know that the Prime Minister and his Education Minister Christopher Pyne were telling blatant lies about this and many other policies. Policy decisions since the election (as listed in other posts on this blog) demonstrably attest to this. Their actions have been universally condemned by all media outlets except those of Murdoch who has a vested interest in protecting Abbott from criticism.
This all gives rise to the question of the value of the words politicians use. I for one wouldn’t believe a word Abbott says. There is ample evidence that he is a liar and he has declared so himself.
But let’s take a look at the broader picture and ask ourselves what is a lie in general and what constitutes political lying.
We know that a lie has three essential ingredients; it communicates some information, the liar intends to deceive or mislead and the liar believes that what they are ‘saying’ is not true. And we call people who use these three principles blatant liars.
When the leader of the then opposition said in July 2012: “The tragedy of this toxic tax is that it will not actually reduce emissions” and six months later they fall by 8.6%. Did he actually tell a lie? One could well argue that he had no facts on which to base his assumptive statement, so it could not be construed as a lie. It might be just an opinion. The same could be said about his statements about towns being wiped of the map and many others. However, if in politics we believe that lies or statements are made either to deceive or manipulate (and has the three principles mentioned previously), then you would conclude that he was telling porkies.
“When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts”.
- Michael Ende, The Never-ending Story
“If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed”.
- Adolf Hitler.
Conversely, when the former Prime Minister said “I don’t rule out the possibility of legislating a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, a market-based mechanism”, “I rule out a carbon tax”, did she actually tell a lie? Clearly she showed an intent to keep her options open. As it turns out we have a market based scheme. She was not trying to deceive. She was being honest within the uncertainty of the circumstances. And the MSM never gave her the benefit of the doubt.
I have always felt that when politicians have in their possession certain knowledge and facts and fail to disclose it then they are guilty of lying by omission. When you withhold information you are denying the other person’s right to the truth. An example of this was when John Howard found out that the children overboard incident was false and withheld the information for two days prior to the 2001 election. It was in fact lying by omission. And of course there is the weapons of mass destruction lie. Did John Howard ever check the facts? If not he perpetuated one of the greatest lies in history.
“When you tell a lie you deny the other person’s right to the truth”.
- John Lord.
On a more personal level there are what we call white lies where we deliberately colour what we say in shades of hue to protect the feelings of others or ourselves, or to avoid argument.
“Clinton lied. A man might forget where he parks or where he lives, but he never forgets oral sex, no matter how bad it is”.
- Barbara Bush.
Consider the case where telling a lie would mean that 10 other lies would not be told. If 10 lies are worse than one lie then it would seem to be a good thing to tell the first lie, but if lying is always wrong then it’s wrong to tell the first lie.
When politicians lie over a long period of time, it only serves to denigrate the liar and show contempt for the voter’s intelligence. Especially if the lies are chronic and systemic. The current use of the term “no direct knowledge” is a lie within a lie pretending to absolve a person who is fully conversant with the facts.
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave . . . when first we practice to deceive”.
- Walter Scott, Marmion.
Lying is probably one of the most common wrong acts that we carry out (one researcher has said ‘lying is an unavoidable part of human nature’), so it’s worth spending time thinking about it.
Why is lying wrong?
There are many reasons why people think lying is wrong; which ones resonate best with you will depend on the way you think about ethics.
Lying is bad because a generally truthful world is a good thing: lying diminishes trust between human beings; if people generally didn’t tell the truth, life would become very difficult, as nobody could be trusted and nothing you heard or read could be trusted – you would have to find everything out for yourself and an untrusting world is also bad for liars – lying isn’t much use if everyone is doing it.
Who are the biggest liars? The left or the Right of Politics
Last year on Facebook I shared a post of an interview with Laurie Oakes and Tony Abbott (you can see it on YouTube). It is from 2005 and Tony Abbott is obviously telling lies about the Medicare safety net. At the time I made the following comment to accompany it:
“People who constantly portray the prime minister as someone who constantly tells lies should take the time to read this”.
It was then picked up by former National Times journalist Alan Austin and we had a chat about broken promises, telling lies and the current standard of journalism. He had this to say:
Remember, it was a Senator from his own side who called John Howard ‘the lying rodent’.
And have we forgotten the articles about Malcolm Fraser’s ‘Top 40 broken promises’?
Lies, about-faces and broken promises are as follows:
Gough Whitlam: 7
Malcolm Fraser: 52
Bob Hawke: 4
Paul Keating: 3
John Howard: 41
Tony Abbott (as minister): 17
Kevin Rudd: 4
Julia Gillard: 6
Tony Abbott (as Opposition Leader): 15 and counting. As PM ?
I found this to be particularly revealing so I inquired as to the authenticity of the figures and he replied with the following.
Before your time, John, I wrote a piece for The National Times in 1977 about what were then Malcolm Fraser’s top 25 blatant lies and broken promises. The then editor Trevor Kennedy – later to become one of Rupert’s henchmen – headed it “Malcolm’s battle with the time machine” which I thought at the time was unduly generous towards Mr Fraser.
Later, in 1980, I wrote a piece for Nation Review on Fraser’s top 40 lies and broken promises which then editor, Geoffrey Gold, headed ‘Promises, promises.’ Neither are online, unfortunately, but I have them in my clip file. Since then, I have kept tabs on all Prime Ministers and would love to write about it.
If I get a publisher, I will let you know. (I am tentatively titling the piece ‘Lies, damned lies and I support the elected leader of the party’). Point being that there is simply no comparison whatsoever between the falsehoods and about-faces of the Conservatives and Progressives. The ratio is about 8 to 1. Which is why the current perception that Ms Gillard is ‘Juliar’ is so bizarre from this vantage point. (I am in France. Which means I read other media than just Rupert Murdoch’s).
I replied:
Well I do hope you get to do it, Alan. I have been following politics for around 50 years and it is time we had more honesty and the standard of reporting is deplorable. However, do you think there is at times a fine line between a broken promise and a change of mind? And of course changed circumstances can necessitate a change of mind. I would also be interested in what you think of the standard of political journalism in Australia today.
Regarding categories of deception, there are at least seven.
Staring down the camera bare-faced lies are Class A falsehoods, like this one satirised here:
This is Tony Abbott lying about a meeting with George Pell.
Promises broken for political expediency with no external factors forcing their abandonment are Class B Examples are Ms Gillard duding Mr Wilkie recently. And Mr Howard’s no-GST-never-ever which he abandoned before the 1998 election.
A Class B broken promise may, of course, be ratified by an election. If this succeeds, as indeed happened with Mr Howard’s GST, then it becomes less offensive. Say Class C.
Commitments made in good faith but prevented from being implemented despite the government’s genuine best efforts – by a hostile Senate or the High Court or a hung Parliament – are Class D.
Promises prevented from being implemented by changed economic conditions – such as Paul Keating’s L-A-W-law tax cuts – are Class E.
Promises deferred by changed economic or political conditions – such as Labor’s no carbon tax – are Class F. (Keating’s L-A-W tax cuts also turned out to be F eventually.)
Assurances of loyalty to the leader by putative challengers deserve a special category. Say Class I. (I for inevitable? Unavoidable?)
‘Telling the truth should not be delayed simply because we are not sure how people might react to it’.
In the US election Republicans Romney and Ryan took lying to an unprecedented level. Fact finders alerted the public to 2019 lies by Romney alone. It is my contention that President Obama lost the first debate not because he was off his game, or that he was under prepared, but rather he was taken by surprise by the willful lies that Romney was telling. The same fascination for untruth by conservatives has been exported to Australia.
In my view Australians faced the most important election in living memory. Liberalism no longer existed so what we were faced with was a political decision between a very sharp turn to the scary right. Or a party (in spite of its faults) that had the common good at the centre of its ideology. In our ignorance, or perhaps our naivety we elected a cohort – an all-male club who insisted they were adults but instead turned out to be juvenile liars.
“Do you shape the truth for the sake of good impression? On the other hand, do you tell the truth even if it may tear down the view people may have of you? Alternatively, do you simply use the contrivance of omission and create another lie. I can only conclude that there might often be pain in truth but there is no harm in it”.
Hello again. I submitted a while ago about celebrities or people in media we look up to being just casually racist and that being the end of our respect for them, perhaps much to our dismay. This time I’ve got something more personal and relevant to people at university in Australia.
There was a lecture recently on prejudice and discrimination. I didn’t attend in person but I just now watched the iLecture (just a recording online). At one point several students decided to speak up about their opinions on racism. They were as follows:
"It’s okay to be racist, if it’s funny. If it’s not funny, then stop, because then it’s being racist."
"An Aboriginal person was being racist to me the other day. They called me a white c**t. This isn’t fair and it’s racism and it doesn’t help Aboriginal people."
"I bumped into an Aboriginal person and they got mad at me and swore at me. I wish they weren’t so racist to white people, especially when they talk about hating racism. It’s so hypocritical."
"We have an Asian friend and we always make Asian jokes about him and he laughs with us. It’s alright since no one’s getting their feelings hurt."
"Racism is contextual. Sometimes it’s fine to be racist because it’s not really racist."
"I don’t care if you’re black or white or Asian. You’re all the same to me." (this one was my personal favourite)
"Racism depends on how well people can take it. Don’t be racist to sensitive people but if people take it as a joke then that’s fine."
I enormously regret not being there but at the same time I don’t. But the point I want to make is that these are people at university. These are the people who are going into the work force (as health professionals in my case). People in their 20s and older are still holding these backwards opinions and they’re going to carry that even further into life and to everyone else in life that they interact with. I honestly don’t know what else to say. Like reading up on articles and experiences of other people, even blogs like this is one thing, but having the people that you go to university with everyday express these problematic opinions blew me away. Will white people ever understand?
Today one of the other interns said “Jess, can I ask you a question? … Did somebody hack the immigration website?”
No.
She’s from the UK. I guess she’s not used to it yet.
Later a three year old girl overheard her mother telling me how scared she was that she would be deported without her daughter.
We didn’t realise the girl was listening until she ran to hug her mother’s arm and cried “No don’t!”
It wasn’t the first time I’d tried to help a family that was being torn apart by Australia’s immigration policies but it was the first time I’d had the terrified mother and child in front of me.
Those two are not refugees, and the mother is from a Western country. They’ll be fine.
They are also the first people we’ve helped, in the nine months I’ve been doing this, that we really believe will be fine. They are the only ones who are told, confidently, that the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection is sure to intervene on their behalf. The Minister will potentially create an entirely new visa to accommodate their situation, because any other outcome would be illegal, one way or another. You can’t tear a mother from her child, you can’t deport a child who was born in Australia.
