Negative Gearing Spat: Politics Finally Gets Interesting

[pietillidie]

Sadly, Shorten is dead right, but it's too late for him to start pretending to lead and give a toss, despite Turnbull being mired in a number of destructive Glib policies.

I still think it's best to skip the ALP for a season until they put a non-institutionalist with independent, modern ideas at the helm. But that doesn't take the heat off Turnbull for promulgating classist Glib rubbish.

[David]

No guarantee that this'll be on the agenda again in 2019 if Labor gets the thrashing we expect. I have no love for Shorten, but I'd rather prioritise good policy above punishing cynical, substance-free career politicians like him (plenty of those on both sides, at any rate).

Meanwhile, this Coalition government is still the same government that won in 2013, only with a handful of new faces on the front bench. If we want to send a message, who better to kick out than that mob after just one term? Vote 2 ALP.

[stui magpie]

Turnbull has been handcuffed by his own choosing, promising to stick by the party policies that won the election, hence Shorten going after him on same sex marriage, Bill knows that mal agrees with it but he's stuck with party policy until the next election.

What will be interesting to see is if Mal wins the election, will that give him enough clout to start setting the agenda rather than following it and if yes, will he have the guts?

Governing according to the polls creates bad policy, ignoring them completely creates a change of leadership. Pretty neat tightrope to walk.

[pietillidie]

^David, I guess the idea is much like building a side and drafting younger than topping up with discards and trying to make the finals in vain.

Surely we have to distinguish between a party filling in policy voids with the nearest plausible talk in the electorate, and a party with an actual, serious policy platform. It is not an intelligent tactic to reward a poor leader just because he grabs the odd good policy *we provided* this late in the game. That's because said policy will be piecemeal, not framed in a sustainable set of strategies for the country, and just as likely to be cast aside at the nearest sign of poll pressure.

Note, *we* picked up housing affordability, the technical nonsense of negative gearing economic claims, the damage being done to younger generations, and Howardian middle-upper-class welfare long before Shorten had the kahunas to even consider them as the pressing set of problems they are. I want someone on the ball, not someone we have to drag kicking and screaming to serious solutions.

In contrast, if Shorten had've spent the last while putting a serious platform together which looks beyond the election cycle, and educating the public into it, yet it perhaps can't win yet because it needs time to take root, he would warrant a vote.

As a classic example of gutless following, where was the ALP leading the issue of *international* people movements ten years ago? Even if they had lost votes on it then, they now would be rewarded because everyone can see this is not a peculiar Australian problem, and it is one which requires new regional and international agreements.

Take another area, the commodity/currency cycle. The country should've been geared to optimise tourism and education revenues *right now*, but you have to ready for them with sound policy logic even when every second fool can't see beyond high iron ore prices and the swagger of mining companies and their big-mouthed CEOs.

This holds for almost every single area of policy you care to imagine.

If so, perhaps a protest vote is in order to rid the party of Short on Vision and like-minded institutional ALP types, yet *not reward* the Glib nonsense Turnbull has inherited under sufferance, as Stui argues.

We need to somehow whack the Party of Abbott while still giving the Party of Turnbull a crack at one term *on his own terms*, meanwhile showing no tolerance for the ALP being mere poll-reacting, vacancy fillers.

[David]

I know you're less keen on them than I am, but I think a Green vote is still the best protest against Labor cowardice. It achieves the ideal balance (in my view) of sending a message to the ALP without rewarding the Libs. And after all, if we're going to kick the ALP for only now getting their shit together on negative gearing, what do we say about the party that not only still hasn't accepted the necessity of going there, but has decided to run a scare campaign on it?

Turnbull may be a closet small-l liberal, environmentally friendly, economically moderate prime minister waiting for an election to bloom (and I'm far from confident on any of those things now), but when he calls a mild attempt to wind back negative gearing 'economic sabotage', I have no reason to believe he doesn't mean every word he says. How is that a sustainable economic vision for the future?

[pietillidie]

^Yes, very disappointed with Turnbull using a completely fraudulent term like "economic sabotage" in reference to abolishing negative gearing; he could've opposed it "for now" or in some more muted way without upsetting the competition haters in his party, given the cushion over Shorten at the polls.

I would vote Green in protest, but how many anti-competitionists of a different stripe am I giving succour to? I'm not interested in voting against one set of people who hate competition and are holding the nation back (classist middle-aged Glibs, especially), just to vote for another set (dumb Leftists who don't value the productive and creative force of business in vigorous competition, regardless of all those other forms of anti-competition on the right).

I am open to being persuaded, though.

[think positive]

Well I was watching channel two the other day (by accident of course!) and he explained his reasoning, made a lot of sense, panic was mentioned, making it worse, I'll think clearer when I'm soberer

[stui magpie]

Well I'll be preferencing Greens last in the senate. If they want power, get it in the house of Reps.

[ronrat]

Surely their is a compromise. You can negatively gear one house. FFS there are people living in public houses that have 2 and 3 properties. Force them out of Housing commission homes and live in one and negative gear another, so they sell one. Suddenly one lower income family are off the street and another couple enter the housing market. Anyone who has 5 and 6 houses is not going to vote ALP and if they do the chances it will be in a blue ribbon liberal seat anyhow.

[Morrigu]

I'm not voting for any of them - just going to draw a big sad face!

[pietillidie]

[David]

[think positive]

[stui magpie]

[think positive]