So, I started talking Politics on Facebook. What Was Going to be a BRIEF Comment Turned into This:
It took years of shouting at Tony Abbott to convince him that climate change is a real thing, I'm still not sure if the fact that it's caused by human activity has actually gotten through. In the mean time he's gotten himself into a position of real power (by winning a caucus vote by a single vote and an election against an unelectable government by the barest margin imaginable on the second try)
He's used that power to enact a climate change policy unsupported by any legitimate economist or scientist, tried and continues to try to abolish the one piece of climate policy Australia has taken that has even a tiny positive effect. Not to mention we no longer have a Science Minister at all. After all what's science ever done for us?
He’s abolished aboriginal legal aid, a program that cost a pittance ($34m), for reasons that still haven't been adequately explained. We now have an asylum seeker policy that makes us an international pariah (and it was shithouse before the barbarians got a hold of it). These aren't hippies, communists and the usual GetUp protest-anything wastes of oxygen telling us these policies are wrong. It's Amnesty International, The UNHCR and other legitimate human rights organizations, who have to take time out of their busy days complaining to governments about Somali warlords, Middle East civil wars and South American dictators to talk about what we're doing. That's the international company we keep now, Thanks Tony. At the same time we have a cabinet with one woman (that one woman is, herself, a prime contender for "worst human being in cabinet") and a man with a proven track record of sexism appointing himself Minister For Women.
Then we've got a Finance Minister who's basically trying to give a green light to super fund corruption. Since apparently a super fund doesn't need to be run in the best interest of the person whose name the super fund is in, go figure. That’s before you get into the broken nature of the super annuation industry to begin with, where everyone making decisions has no idea what the fuck they’re doing and could be replaced with a coin flip machine. Granted, this ludicrous pile of horse shit has been put on the back burner (for now). We've got the just mind boggling proposed changes to 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act. While I agree that people "have a right to be bigots" (and we collectively have the right to tell said bigots they're full of shit) the attorney fucking general shouldn't stand up and announce, and thereby tacitly endorse, that right in the freaking senate. As for Tim Wilson, I understand the philosophical argument he's making, even agree with it to a certain extent, but he's fighting a losing battle in semantics and his philosophy can't realistically translate to effective political policy. Finally as far as cutting "offend, insult, humiliate" from 18c goes, I can see a point (philosophically) in cutting “offend” since offence requires the reaction of another person whereas an intent to “insult” or “humiliate” doesn’t. Offence is such a subjective idea and some people are so easily offended their standards are objectively ridiculous (see #cancelcolbert) that cutting “offend” from 18c makes sense, to me at least. But I can't see any good coming from cutting "insult” and “humiliate" at all since if you're setting out to insult or humiliate someone on the basis of race, you're a cock and deserve to be punished for your actions. As for including "intimidate" & "vilify" I'm kind of surprised they weren't already there. But all of that is secondary to the fact that, in the form it's already in, the RDA is a good thing that doesn't need to be changed (not weakened at least). Being white, I can't say whether it's working but anything that tells Andrew Bolt to shut the fuck up has to be doing something right.
Then there's Joe Hockey, a man so incapable of budgeting his own caloric intake he had to make use of the medical science his party only believes in when it's convenient, who spent the 2007-13 spinning a narrative (bafflingly bought by wide sectors of the public) of economic mismanagement and incompetence built on right wing hysteria over budget deficits (don't get me started on that subject. Considering how closely I follow US politics talking about right wing budget deficit hysteria could make this comment twice as long as it already is). The main mismanagement by the ALP was giving optimistic forecasts that had to later be downgraded which gave the LNP adequate but bullshit evidence to go "AHA, Lies!" considering the global fascination with austerity from 2010-12 (didn't that turn out great) and the state that Goldman and co. put the world's economy into, Australia is doing fucking grand. This isn’t to say things are good, economically, in Australia, because they’re not. But things could be worse. One of the reasons things aren’t worse is the ALP’s economic policy from 2007-13, the very policies Joe Hockey has made his name denigrating.
All of that from Hockey would be just fine. He was in opposition, it was his job to criticise the government and attempt to provide a realistic alternative (he was really good at the former, not so much the latter). But once he got Wayne Swan's job we had a "Budget Emergency" whenever we talk about the ALP's legacy, when the LNP want to sell off Medibank Private or when Hockey wants to make cuts to Medicare, an institution that provides essential medical services ("Like lap-bands?" "No, Joe. Not like lap-bands."), because the cost of Medicare was going to blow out to a ridiculous number (that aligned perfectly with what we sustainably spend now, adjusted for inflation) by 2020. But the "Budget Emergency" strangely disappears whenever we want to throw $8.8b to the RBA, which the RBA never asked for and would only put in a "rainy day fund" that could have been filled any time between now and "whenever it starts to rain". Another time our "Budget Emergency" seems to disappear is when we take a look at the MRRT which if it hadn't been gutted back when it was on the floor (by, guess who?) would have raised real amounts of money. But apparently the billion(s) we could still add to the budget by having a real MRRT rather than a bureaucratic box for Gina and Twiggy to tick isn't going to do anything to save us from our "Budget Emergency" but thank god we cut that wasteful $34m that was going into aboriginal legal aid, that fixed the "Budget Emergency" right up.
While we're going it’s worth mentioning cuts to foreign aid for additions to infrastructure. That doesn't need a whole paragraph, just keep rereading that sentence until you're ready to renounce your citizenship and move to New Zealand. Bear in mind none of that increase in infrastructure budget is going to go toward the NBN, which is pretty much the most important infrastructure project for the country over the coming century. A project that will pay for itself (in money saved on copper wire maintenance) after I have no idea how long, but I'd be willing to bet the math comes out to "some time before 2030". Either way by 2030, or probably sooner, an NBN will be "fucking essential" not just a big ticket social policy and it's a better option to have it sooner rather than later. But luckily we'll be saving money on FTTN. That is, until we all inevitably have to pay for FTTP and are left with useless nodes and a sum of money wasted on the maintenance of copper wires from nodes to premises in the intervening time that we're not getting back. Now, gay marriage might be inevitable but that's not going to stop this Prime Minister and this government, a government that I'm fairly sure I've established by now is thoroughly divorced from reality, from fighting it every step of the way. All the while Tony’s using Christine Foster as an "I’m not homophobic" prop and remaining blithely ignorant of the fact that having a gay sister and not supporting gay rights literally makes him a worse person than Dick Cheney. Got that passport handy? I hear Christchurch is a lovely place to raise children. Speaking of children, if you're making $150000+/yr you don't need $75000 of taxpayer money for the first six months of your child's life. That's fucking ridiculous. But it's nice to know that four and a half years later when White Collar jr. goes to school it will be on a gutted Gonski funded curriculum approved by LNP cronies (whose names I can't remember and can't immediately find on Google) masquerading as independent reviewers. For children lucky enough to go to university they can look forward to the sweeping tertiary education cuts done by Labor (one of the only truly awful policy decisions they made) and happily embraced by the LNP, despite dropping commitments to what Labor's tertiary education cuts were going to pay for.
Then there's the fact it took three months for Tony Abbott to say "An Australian citizen imprisoned in a foreign country on politically motivated charges is something I don't like". He gets some small credit for finally stating it and formally requesting Peter Greste's release. But how does it take 93 days to make that decision, it shouldn't even take 93 seconds. For crying out loud, representing your country's citizens overseas is the reason government exists. Oh, and we’ve restarted live export to Egypt as a bargaining chip. So brace yourself for another undercover animal abuse video in the near future.
Knights and Dames is just the bizarre cherry on top of a shit-sundae. The only reason I can fathom for the decision is "Because Tony could" which makes the whole farce a pointless expression of power, which has all sorts of disturbing implications. For fuck's sake we've only had this government for six months. There's two and a half years until we get a chance to fix this mess, unless Peter Cosgrove channels John Kerr, Turnbull pulls a coup or Abbott wasn't bluffing about a double dissolution temper tantrum if he doesn't get his way on the Carbon Tax. None of those seem likely but I'd welcome any one of them. I'm praying that sometime today the AEC is going to come out and yell "Surprise! We got you guys so good. You should see your faces." </rant>
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