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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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| Doubtless, to lack the ability to develop emotional connection. No. Wait until later. |
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David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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And here's a double serve, for good measure:
http://www.crikey.com.au/2015/06/25/rundle-liberals-hate-qa-because-it-is-well-liberal/
| Quote: | Liberals hate Q&A because it is, well, liberal
Guy Rundle
Largely by accident, the Q&A Zaky Mallah appearance beat-up has become the front line in defending a basic conception not only of free speech in Australia, but also of the notion of basic rights to fair process, the rule of law, and a public sphere separate to the state.
What we are seeing is a supercharged version of what we have seen in our history several times the willingness of the self-styled Liberal Party to trash policies and principles they purport to hold dear, from habeas corpus to free speech to the separation of powers.
The attacks on all of these institutions are inter-related. The citizenship removal dance, with the draft laws broad powers to strip a whole range of people of their citizenship for offences that range from foreign terror operations to damaging Commonwealth property, are a deliberate travesty of well, everything.
They trash the principle that citizenship is a universal right, not extinguished even by odious criminality, that executive power should not supplant judicial process in dealing with the lives of individuals, the basic principle of natural justice, and the principle that laws should be tightly written, not grab-alls that allow for their capricious application.
Thats the intent, of course. It always has been. The Liberals will always trash the basis of liberal society for quick political gain. They did it during the 2001 Tampa crisis, when Parliament was presented with a take-it-or-leave-it bill indemnifying immigration officers from all criminal proceedings in certain zones.
They followed this up with obsessive attacks on David Hicks and any suggestion that he might have rights, and with Philip Ruddocks sedition laws. All this was an echo of what might be called the founding act of the Liberal Party, the Communist Party Dissolution Bill and referendum of 1949-1950. And therein hangs a tale.
The Liberal Party had been founded by Menzies and a number of other people many of them genuinely liberal, socially progressive people in 1944. Menzies used the energies of such people to create a party with a broader base than the old business-oriented United Australia Party and nationalist parties, at a time when Labor was a more strictly working-class/union affair.
Once the party was established, Menzies and his old UAP cohorts promptly purged the party of such people and reclaimed for the old UAP elite. The Communist Party Dissolution Bill was designed as the kiss of the whip. The Chifley government had found itself in conflict with the powerful Communist Party of Australia during the 1949 Hunter Valley CPA-led coal miners strike (when Chifley had sent troops to drive the miners back to the pits).
Defenders of Menzies attempt to ban the CPA have pointed out that this was a party committed to violent revolution. But the bill covered not merely card-carrying members, but anyone who could be deemed as such by the relevant minister. It was a plan for open season on the left, with plans drawn up for large-scale detention camps to hold miscreants.
How does a Liberal Party commit itself to such things? Because it isnt a liberal party, of course. Nor is it even a conservative party in the British sense. The party has long had an illiberal reactionary streak, more in common with Latin American latifundia-backed reactionary parties people who simply dont see what all the fuss is about all this freedom and rights shit.
In Tony Abbott, such a party or Coalition, since the National Party is wholly of that order has found its natural leader. Abbott is from the reactionary clerico-fascist side of things, a man who wants a social order in which the acceptable of opinions are strictly limited. He is playing up to it well, but its because the role is a natural for him.
To talk of banishment for people chimes well with a biblical Judeo-Christian narrative, but it is also of course another bid to up the ante a relentless attempt to produce a situation that Labor cannot support, precisely because, from the late 1960s on, with the ascent of Whitlam and the death of Harold Holt (and the defeat of Gorton by McMahon), Labor became the home for people of a genuinely liberal disposition. Though some of that has gone to the Greens, it retains a strong base in Labor.
The gangsterish part of Labors right faction would like nothing more than to endorse Abbotts push, or even gazump it. They are far closer to Abbotts politics and personality than they are to what remains of the left in Labor. But they know it would split the party down the middle again and prompt another exodus to the Greens who are getting ever closer to a Sydney seat and a second Melbourne seat.
The true nature of this illiberalism, spread across both parties, is a particular conception of the state and the public sphere. Talk of the Coalition wanting a small state is nonsense they simply want to regulate in a different way, advantaging capital and controlling the everyday lives of people all the more tightly (one reason why Institute of Public Affairs/libertarian bluster about the nanny state is so ineffectual they refuse to attack right-wing parties even when the latter adopt such measures, like nudge social design theory holus-bolus).
Thus the Illiberal Party has no problem with making the state and the public sphere largely coextensive. Free speech becomes an ever more narrowly circumscribed range of opinion with minor acceptable difference. The idea of extremism or fanaticism is then used to exclude any opinion that may challenge the legitimacy of the system itself, or hold it up to question either from a materialist leftist viewpoint, or, as is the case currently, from a religious anti-democratic viewpoint.
This notion of a state-occupied public sphere is an essential feature of so-called guided democracies, such as Lee Kuan Yews Singapore, the mullahs Iran, and Putins Russia. Abbotts Australia proudly takes its place among these countries and with the same sort of rhetoric: that concerns about free speech and liberties are the preserve of elites, who hold the safety of the people in disdain such safety embodied in a paternal and authoritative figure, whose authority usually has a religious grounding, to give it a transcendental patina.
Against this conception of the social, is a genuinely liberal notion of the public sphere one in which the state and its processes can itself be questioned, and in which ideas that critique the legitimacy of the state and the public sphere can themselves be aired. This is the idea of a genuine pluralism, where the right to speak is not dependent on subscribing to a set of pre-ordained state-designed values, of the Australian values-type kitsch. This is the genuine Jeffersonian liberalism encoded in the Bill of Rights, which Australian rightists like to bill and coo over, and thunder about political correctness.
The idea of a pluralist and free public sphere can be defended on any number of grounds, but it is ultimately based on an idea of confidence in your own robustness as a society and the capacity for reasoned argument between adult citizens.
In that respect, a show like Q&A represents pluralism at its best, a place where the conversation goes where it goes, and is to some degree shaped by the dialogue itself. The pseudo-liberalism of both the Liberal Party and of News Corp, represents the opposite an authoritarian impulse, to guide and limit speech according to pre-ordained aims.
Which is precisely why News Corp and the Coalition are determined to kill it, with spurious nonsense about political bias and disloyalty. The bias is simply the effect of removing the bias inherent in the protected environment of News Corp. As soon as right-wingers are exposed to real debate they flail, ham-fists flying all over the place. Steven Ciobo should have welcomed the opportunity to enunciate his principles in the face of real challenge to them because a challenge is an opportunity to make your ideas clearer, better, win people over. But he would have had to be competent to do that. In reality hes just another faceless mook whos come up through the entrenched machine of the party, which, like Labor, is a quasi-state apparatus, embedded by compulsory preferential voting and public funding.
Now the heat is really on. Q&A is already subject to a disgraceful internal inquiry. Now there are calls for a pause and review of the show, and the suggestion that ministers and others will boycott the show Kevin Andrews in the first instance. Andrews is a poor debater, a mealy-mouthed old Catholic conservative, so its perhaps inevitable he would get out of a situation where he would be out of his depth. Well see if such an attitude gathers pace.
Should it do so, Q&A should do what the BBC and ABC have done in the past simply empty chair the right side of politics if they try and make a pluralist composition of the panel impossible through boycott. More than any other show, Q&A represents the enactment of a pluralist sphere in politics. As the Illiberal Party fails to gain traction with their terrorising terror campaign, its inevitable that they would attack an outpost of society that declares us to be free and unafraid. If Mark Scott cant defend this show up to the point of resignation, then it may be time for him to go altogether. |
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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I did watch the clip and LOLd at his cap. Talk about confusing the hell out of the uptight; you can just imagine the strain of such folk trying to reconcile Bob Marley with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi...
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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thebaldfacts
Joined: 02 Aug 2007
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Despite the fact that both Richard Finlayson (Director ABC Television) and Mark Scott (ABC managing director and editor-in-chief) have acknowledged that it was an error of judgment to invite Zaky Mallah on the program last Monday, it seems that many commentators want to push their own soap boxes notwithstanding these admissions.
Graham Richardson in this mornings Australian has really got it right. Common sense from a former power broker in the ALP.
"Terrorism reared its ugly head in Australia this week in the form of Islamic State sympathiser Zaky Mallah. The ABCs Q&A gave him a platform to ask a question of a government minister and has been beaten up by all and sundry for facilitating that appearance. Tony Jones and the shows producer, Peter McEvoy, are friends of mine. I look forward to our regular lunches, but I too cannot condone giving Mallah this kind of walk-up start. However, that does not mean the ABC or any other media outlet should be banned from allowing Mallah to appear.
I would like nothing better than to have the opportunity to interview Mallah on Richo and I extend to him an open invitation to appear whenever it is convenient to him. Therein lies the problem with what happened on Q&A. Mallah should be questioned, not ask questions himself."
The Q&A panel should have challenged him about how the Islamic State treats women. There was even a transgender person on the panel. Why didn't this person challenge him on their treatment of gays as if throwing them to their deaths from tall buildings is not newsworthy or worthy of challenge.
Richo was on the money, this guy should not be asking questions, but rather the blow torch should be put on him given his values and beliefs. |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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swoop42 
Whatcha gonna do when he comes for you?
Joined: 02 Aug 2008
Location: The 18
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I'm still trying to figure out why this has caused such "outrage" and more importantly if the "outrage" is even genuine and not just a product of the Liberal spin machine and there puppets News Corp.
Are any of you outraged?
I'm not and if you believe in free speech why the hell would you be?
The Liberals idea of free speech is seemingly only speech that they agree with or serves them a political purpose.
What exactly are the Liberals so outraged by anyway?
That Mallah is a Muslim and terrorist sympathiser?
Why can't he ask a question? What's the harm? Was he inciting violence with what he said?
That Mallah put a Liberal party member on the spot with the question?
Would the "outrage" be so if it was to a Labor politician?
That Mallah was a security risk and might have gone Man Monis on the audience?
He's not a convicted terrorist, has served his sentence and all for a crime committed over 10 years ago.
Pretty sure it wouldn't have been the first time a convicted criminal was in the audience or on the panel.
Honestly this is nothing more than a beat up in order to beat down the only broadcaster willing to ask the hard questions of the government in power, a broadcaster that despite it's perceived left leanings still does a far better job of balance than the commercial networks attempt to on most occasions.
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He's mad. He's bad. He's MaynHARD! |
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swoop42
Whatcha gonna do when he comes for you?
Joined: 02 Aug 2008
Location: The 18
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| watt price tully wrote: | | Jezza wrote: | | ^ Well-said WPT and spot on in every respect! |
I happened to watch Q & A last Monday - I usually can't stand it but it caught my eye. I'm usually too frustrated with sound bites & pre prepared questions.
Funny how where you sit is what you see, the Rashomon effect
https://www.google.com.au/#q=rashomon+effect
I think the show is too conservative by half & usually the best ones are when there are no pollies whatsoever. What gets up my nose is not just my finger or cocaine but asking an actor or a pop star what their political opinion is. FFS. |
Crikey you must be an old hippie if you believe that.
I would have said it leans to the left if anything like most of the ABC (which I'm glad of) but is generally well balanced with people of different beliefs and opinions.
I don't watch it much but my Mum and one of my sisters love it and they're not conservatives with my sister probably a Greens voter if anything.
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He's mad. He's bad. He's MaynHARD! |
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watt price tully 
Joined: 15 May 2007
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| thebaldfacts wrote: | Despite the fact that both Richard Finlayson (Director ABC Television) and Mark Scott (ABC managing director and editor-in-chief) have acknowledged that it was an error of judgment to invite Zaky Mallah on the program last Monday, it seems that many commentators want to push their own soap boxes notwithstanding these admissions.
Graham Richardson in this mornings Australian has really got it right. Common sense from a former power broker in the ALP.
"Terrorism reared its ugly head in Australia this week in the form of Islamic State sympathiser Zaky Mallah. The ABCs Q&A gave him a platform to ask a question of a government minister and has been beaten up by all and sundry for facilitating that appearance. Tony Jones and the shows producer, Peter McEvoy, are friends of mine. I look forward to our regular lunches, but I too cannot condone giving Mallah this kind of walk-up start. However, that does not mean the ABC or any other media outlet should be banned from allowing Mallah to appear.
I would like nothing better than to have the opportunity to interview Mallah on Richo and I extend to him an open invitation to appear whenever it is convenient to him. Therein lies the problem with what happened on Q&A. Mallah should be questioned, not ask questions himself."
The Q&A panel should have challenged him about how the Islamic State treats women. There was even a transgender person on the panel. Why didn't this person challenge him on their treatment of gays as if throwing them to their deaths from tall buildings is not newsworthy or worthy of challenge.
Richo was on the money, this guy should not be asking questions, but rather the blow torch should be put on him given his values and beliefs. |
Of course Richo is on the money - this is entirely consistent with the NSW right of the ALP who also have issues with money & blood on their hands.
For a definition of NSW ALP right look under A for Abbott.
Then go to Catholic Liberal conservatives.
See the section under Corruption, Machiavelli, Money, Abuse of power & Deceit.
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“I even went as far as becoming a Southern Baptist until I realised they didn’t keep ‘em under long enough” Kinky Friedman |
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watt price tully
Joined: 15 May 2007
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| swoop42 wrote: | I'm still trying to figure out why this has caused such "outrage" and more importantly if the "outrage" is even genuine and not just a product of the Liberal spin machine and there puppets News Corp.
Are any of you outraged?
I'm not and if you believe in free speech why the hell would you be?
The Liberals idea of free speech is seemingly only speech that they agree with or serves them a political purpose.
What exactly are the Liberals so outraged by anyway?
That Mallah is a Muslim and terrorist sympathiser?
Why can't he ask a question? What's the harm? Was he inciting violence with what he said?
That Mallah put a Liberal party member on the spot with the question?
Would the "outrage" be so if it was to a Labor politician?
That Mallah was a security risk and might have gone Man Monis on the audience?
He's not a convicted terrorist, has served his sentence and all for a crime committed over 10 years ago.
Pretty sure it wouldn't have been the first time a convicted criminal was in the audience or on the panel.
Honestly this is nothing more than a beat up in order to beat down the only broadcaster willing to ask the hard questions of the government in power, a broadcaster that despite it's perceived left leanings still does a far better job of balance than the commercial networks attempt to on most occasions. |
That's very unAustralian.
Your attitude has been noticed.
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“I even went as far as becoming a Southern Baptist until I realised they didn’t keep ‘em under long enough” Kinky Friedman |
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stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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I think I may have taken a wrong turn, Is this the DILLIGAF thread?
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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| thebaldfacts wrote: | Despite the fact that both Richard Finlayson (Director ABC Television) and Mark Scott (ABC managing director and editor-in-chief) have acknowledged that it was an error of judgment to invite Zaky Mallah on the program last Monday, it seems that many commentators want to push their own soap boxes notwithstanding these admissions.
Graham Richardson in this mornings Australian has really got it right. Common sense from a former power broker in the ALP.
"Terrorism reared its ugly head in Australia this week in the form of Islamic State sympathiser Zaky Mallah. The ABCs Q&A gave him a platform to ask a question of a government minister and has been beaten up by all and sundry for facilitating that appearance. Tony Jones and the shows producer, Peter McEvoy, are friends of mine. I look forward to our regular lunches, but I too cannot condone giving Mallah this kind of walk-up start. However, that does not mean the ABC or any other media outlet should be banned from allowing Mallah to appear.
I would like nothing better than to have the opportunity to interview Mallah on Richo and I extend to him an open invitation to appear whenever it is convenient to him. Therein lies the problem with what happened on Q&A. Mallah should be questioned, not ask questions himself."
The Q&A panel should have challenged him about how the Islamic State treats women. There was even a transgender person on the panel. Why didn't this person challenge him on their treatment of gays as if throwing them to their deaths from tall buildings is not newsworthy or worthy of challenge.
Richo was on the money, this guy should not be asking questions, but rather the blow torch should be put on him given his values and beliefs. |
TBF, we often have disagreements that could perhaps be boiled down to differences of opinion, but in this case you're simply wrong. Mallah is a critic of ISIS, not a supporter (and no, he's not just saying that; he went as far as attempting to join the relatively liberal FSA group in Syria, which is directly opposed to both ISIS and Assad). It seems you and Richo are getting your misinformation from the same places.
That's not the only thing wrong with this quote, though I think Richardson's argument that Mallah only has the right to be asked questions, not ask them, is very illuminating. Why should he not have that right? Is it possibly because, in Richo's mind, Mallah is already a second-class citizen?
Perhaps it's something to do with having broken the law? Well, I vehemently oppose any argument that ex-cons who have served their time should be barred from participating in society in any way, but perhaps Graham disagrees? Treading on dangerous ground there, Richo...
http://www.theage.com.au/comment/whos-leaking-graham-richardson-wants-to-know-20150123-12x06g.html
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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| stui magpie wrote: | | I think I may have taken a wrong turn, Is this the DILLIGAF thread? |
Indeed. Slow news week, methinks.
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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thebaldfacts
Joined: 02 Aug 2007
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| David wrote: | | thebaldfacts wrote: | Despite the fact that both Richard Finlayson (Director ABC Television) and Mark Scott (ABC managing director and editor-in-chief) have acknowledged that it was an error of judgment to invite Zaky Mallah on the program last Monday, it seems that many commentators want to push their own soap boxes notwithstanding these admissions.
Graham Richardson in this mornings Australian has really got it right. Common sense from a former power broker in the ALP.
"Terrorism reared its ugly head in Australia this week in the form of Islamic State sympathiser Zaky Mallah. The ABCs Q&A gave him a platform to ask a question of a government minister and has been beaten up by all and sundry for facilitating that appearance. Tony Jones and the shows producer, Peter McEvoy, are friends of mine. I look forward to our regular lunches, but I too cannot condone giving Mallah this kind of walk-up start. However, that does not mean the ABC or any other media outlet should be banned from allowing Mallah to appear.
I would like nothing better than to have the opportunity to interview Mallah on Richo and I extend to him an open invitation to appear whenever it is convenient to him. Therein lies the problem with what happened on Q&A. Mallah should be questioned, not ask questions himself."
The Q&A panel should have challenged him about how the Islamic State treats women. There was even a transgender person on the panel. Why didn't this person challenge him on their treatment of gays as if throwing them to their deaths from tall buildings is not newsworthy or worthy of challenge.
Richo was on the money, this guy should not be asking questions, but rather the blow torch should be put on him given his values and beliefs. |
TBF, we often have disagreements that could perhaps be boiled down to differences of opinion, but in this case you're simply wrong. Mallah is a critic of ISIS, not a supporter (and no, he's not just saying that; he went as far as attempting to join the relatively liberal FSA group in Syria, which is directly opposed to both ISIS and Assad). It seems you and Richo are getting your misinformation from the same places.
That's not the only thing wrong with this quote, though I think Richardson's argument that Mallah only has the right to be asked questions, not ask them, is very illuminating. Why should he not have that right? Is it possibly because, in Richo's mind, Mallah is already a second-class citizen?
Perhaps it's something to do with having broken the law? Well, I vehemently oppose any argument that ex-cons who have served their time should be barred from participating in society in any way, but perhaps Graham disagrees? Treading on dangerous ground there, Richo...
http://www.theage.com.au/comment/whos-leaking-graham-richardson-wants-to-know-20150123-12x06g.html |
And yet both the Director of ABC TV and MD have acknowledged that it was an error in judgement to have this convicted criminal and terrorist sympathiser on the show. But that is ok, he is a moderate who has threatened to kill ASIO officers, who has advocated the gang banging on national TV of female journalists, (where was the sisterhood to call him out on this attack on 2 female Journo's, even though these journo's were not of the left).
He is not being banned from participating in society, so I do not see how you make that emotional inflammatory leap TBH.
Chris Kenny's article from the Australian makes more sense than the crikey articles you posted:
"For the green Left, any enemy of Tony Abbott will have their redeeming features. This weeks Q&A furore, at heart, was a classic demonstration of this mindset.
Even a jihadist sympathiser and convicted criminal who disseminates public threats of sexual violence against women was given an ABC platform anything for a gotcha moment against the evil Abbott government.
Given this is the programs schtick, the studio audience applauded. The mentality at play was brilliantly mocked by the iconoclastic John Safran (whose talent, to give due credit, was unearthed by the ABC). Im a man who keeps a woman hostage down a hole, Safran tweeted, and dances around in a human skin suit who hates Tony Abbott! *Q&A audience applauds.
This time it backfired. Not only did this ugly episode fail to embarrass the government, it actually helped to underline the Coalitions argument for tougher anti-terrorism laws, while also inflicting enormous self-harm on the national broadcaster.
This is the problem with hatred as a motivating force for political strategy; it leads to misguided decisions. Hatred is blind, as Alexandre Dumas warned, rage carries you away; and he who pours out vengeance runs the risk of tasting a bitter draught.
As attacks on Abbott become more unhinged, the Left appears more desperate and out of touch.
To be fair, we were reminded of transgressions on the Right this week on The Killing Season when a teary-eyed Craig Emerson recounted his distress at signs labelling Julia Gillard a witch or bitch.
These were placards from a fringe group and Abbott paid a high price for being at that event, even though the signs were moved into place after he took the stage.
There is no comparison to the way the Left invokes hatred in the core of its arguments.
The same ABC program that gave a platform to Zaky Mallah, the misogynist justifier of jihadists, has hosted lengthy denunciations of Abbott over denied allegations of a punched wall more than 30 years ago.
Abbott repeatedly has been abused as a dog, lout, nut job, misogynist, thug, homophobe, sexist, racist, bullyboy and Neanderthal by other MPs. (Lets not even venture into the terminology used on social media about anyone.)
This demonisation of conservatives has become commonplace. Take these comments from Greens leader Richard Di Natale keeping in mind that he is supposed to be the new kinder, gentler and more reasonable face of the party.
Its not easy to sit in a room with somebody like Scott Morrison and look him in the eye and know this is somebody who locked up young kids, but you have to get past that, Di Natale told this newspaper.
Even if we overlook the pivotal and, presumably, deliberate factual error that has Morrison putting kids into detention when his record has been to release them, it is impossible to miss the hate dripping from that comment; the nasty, personal disdain based on a political difference. If a government minister spoke in such terms about a Greens senator there would be hell to pay. No doubt Di Natale expects canonisation at the altar of Gaia for holding his nose and dealing with a lesser moral being such as Morrison just for the good of the movement.
Politicians have to have thick skins. Unlike Emerson, I am not here to weep at their misfortune.
My point is about what this does to the political debate, and for the Left it has often led them astray. If you convince yourself of the absolute moral turpitude of your political opponents then, by extension, you will develop a low opinion of their supporters.
Given the Coalition governs with a substantial majority, Labors hate can manifest itself in disdain for mainstream Australians, the people it needs to win over. Frontbencher David Feeney gave us a classic example this week, circulating a map on Twitter showing the parts of Sydney held by the Liberal Party as being populated by toffs or bigots.
When I tweeted how extraordinary this denunciation was, he deleted it. The people populating these areas are voters Labor should want to woo and, it hopes, govern not denigrate.
Feeneys attack reminds me of Mark Lathams pitch to the mainstream when he said half the population was the disengaged, self-interested middle class. Or Lathams bid for the military vote when he wrote, I detest war and the meatheads who volunteer to kill other human beings. Haters are gonna hate but voters arent likely to warm to it. The anti-Abbott obsession and hatred paraded by the Greens and Labor fires up Twitter supporters but will irk the mainstream.
The overreach can make a pretty disorderly Coalition seem relatively calm and measured when compared with those spitting the abuse. Just as they did with John Howard, many Labor operatives have convinced themselves the Prime Minister is an unredeemable pariah. This misreading has consequences. Its an excuse to avoid the hard policy work needed in opposition to support plausible attacks on the government. So Labor under Bill Shorten has made no significant policy changes since the election. Just four months ago the few of us warning against this indolence were looking precarious as Labor appeared bullish.
After facing his leadership revolt, Abbott would have circled this week in his diary if he could unite his party behind a budget, advocate it strongly and get through to the parliamentary recess, he could consolidate his position. Despite some missteps, he and Joe Hockey have done as well as they could have hoped. Voters may have been disappointed by the government, even antagonised, but they havent been given a plausible critique or an alternative. Labors hateful attacks against a lying, uncompassionate, racist, unfair, incompetent and manipulative government is too hyperventilated to work.
So, surprisingly, it is Shorten who would have felt most relief at escaping Canberra on Thursday night with his leadership intact. After revelations about his trade union days, a political lie unearthed from leadership dealings in government and the repercussions of policy inertia hitting home, the Opposition Leader suddenly finds himself on the brink of unelectability.
In coming weeks he faces two difficult tests: a royal commission appearance and the ALP national conference. Labors overindulgence on leadership trauma means it will be loathe to act again; otherwise he may be a dead man walking. This reluctance combined with new caucus rules means Shorten could stay on even it starts to look like a Weekend at Bernies." |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^ it's a ninteresting article, TBF. I live far away from the details of Australian life nowadays, so I don't know if it can be accepted at face value, but it makes some powerful points if true.
I am not a fan of Abbott, but the hatred of him evinced by the Left reminds me uncomfortably of the hatreds expressed by the US Republicans whenever a Democrat gets into office. As indeed, was the Australian Right's hatred of Gillard. And the Left's hatred of Howard before that.
We seem to have lost the art of civilised discourse and democratic inquiry and debate on both sides of politics, and we are much poorer for it.
I think Abbott has contributed greatly to this (though it started with Keating and Latham degraded it further), so perhaps it is only just that he should reap what he sowed. He is a populist who does not have the qualities to be Prime Minister of a serious nation (which Australia surely is). But I also accept that he got elected last time, and I am sure he will submit himself to an election in the consitutionally-ordained timeframe. The point is to disagree with his policies, rather than foam with hatred and prejudice against his government, especially where that leads an audience of educated Australians to applaud the likes of Mallah.
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Two more flags before I die!
Last edited by Mugwump on Sat Jun 27, 2015 10:40 am; edited 1 time in total |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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| thebaldfacts wrote: | | where was the sisterhood to call him out on this attack on 2 female Journo's, even though these journo's were not of the left |
Obviously you haven't read any articles from the 'left-wing press' on this topic; nearly all have referenced this Twitter post and condemned him for it. But it's essentially a distraction, because the argument here has never been over whether Mallah is a good bloke or whether we should like him as an individual.
The questions are much more fundamental than that: Did he have a right to ask his question on TV? Did the ABC have the right to allow him on their program? And, the question at the very crux of his appearance on Q&A, does he have the right to remain an Australian citizen, or to at least have that decision made by a court of law?
If your answer to any of those questions isn't "yes", then that's a far bigger problem than Mallah's disgusting Twitter post.
You keep referring to the ABC's grovelling apology as some kind of justification for the government's stance. But the ABC has already copped a lot of criticism for that apology, both internally and externally, and some might say that the fact they felt the need to do it shows the extent to which this government has put them under siege.
As for Kenny's piece, I agree that politics has become far too much about personality, and I've criticised this attitude on the left towards Abbott in the past (for my part, I have little to no negative feelings towards him as a person; I just think he makes for a woefully inept and unqualified prime minister). But Kenny misses the point what's driving this backlash to all things Abbott isn't personal hatred; it's Abbott and his government's own extremism. When confronted with such a sustained attack on civil liberties, human rights and the rule of law (this week's attack on the ABC being a perfect example), we have a tendency to clap anyone who can point out that the emperor has no clothes.
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