PM's Border Force

[HAL]

Commander Data is a real inspiration.

[Tannin]

David: do you agree with me that Shorten has absolutely no capacity to lead the debate on issues of civil liberties

Oh, of course. That has been plain since long before he even became leader. Modern Labor has been very poor on these issues for many, many years. You can go right back to Beazley (in other respects a very fine man and the best Prime Minister we never had since Bill Haydon) who has always been an all the way with LBJ man. Go a bit further back and I think it's not unreasonable to ascribe a lot of that to fear on their part, fear of a repeat of the (as some of them believe) disgraceful US involvement in the Whitlam dismissal. I don't really buy the line that "the CIA sabotaged Whitlam the same way they did Allende" - I'm no expert there but I have always assumed that there was more paranoia than truth to it - but that doesn't mean I don't recognise that primal fear of the secret intelligence services' power isn't deep in Labor's DNA. Labor has worked very, very hard to appease the Yanks and the spymasters ever since that time.

More recently, we saw terrible anti-democratic policies supported and enacted by the Rudd/Gillard government - draconian Internet censorship under Conroy is an example, spineless Yankee-crawling over the Wikileaks disclosures another.

Only a few Labor MPs - maybe one-third, perhaps as many as half on a good day - have half-decent credentials on these matters.

who knows whether Shorten intends to roll back, stop or increase the 'fascist policies'? Data retention certainly isn't going anywhere, I wouldn't imagine, and he's already backed the citizenship bill. If they think it's necessary to keep up with the blackshirts while in opposition, who's to say they won't follow the same principle in government?

Nothing, of course. Why would anybody think they'll be any better than they were under Beazley, Rudd or Gillard? But they nevertheless be vastly, repeat vastly less worse than the fair-dinkim fascists currently in power. Some of the worst Abbott-Brandis policies will have the rough edges taken off them; the ministerial direction of these policies will be milder and more open; and any number of new, as-yet unthought of horrors will die stillborn.

Abbott did not win the last election on 'national security', by the way.

Yes he did. His "stop the boats" campaign was a huge part of his success, one of the three or four major planks in his victory. Howard went to every election on a "national security" platform. His most famous and spectacular success with it was the infamous "children overboard" scam which blindsided Beazley, but it was a big, big part of Howard's continued success over the years. (You were a bit young to remember, so I'll cut you some slack there.)

Both are cynically exploiting fear and ignorance, and both are willing to throw Australian citizens' civil liberties under the bus in order to win an election. How are Shorten's tactics any more defensible?

He has no choice. None. He must stick to his current play-dead policy. The only alternative is the horror of a second Abbott term. You really, really need to get a sense of perspective here. Sure, you'd like a sensible, progressive government. So would I. But we are not going to get it. That's a fact. Deal with it. Learn to face reality. Labor's policies in this area are bad, that's a given, but the Liberal policies are far, far worse.

There is one bright spot here: both Liberal and Labor are on the nose and on the slide. The days of a two-party state are numbered. The Greens in particular are picking up more and more support and are very close now to being a major party in their own right - look at the polls! Liberal and Labor planners are recognising this now and starting to adjust to it (a few years late, but everything takes time) by redirecting resources away from inner-city seats with lots of educated people to the outer suburban and regional seats. They are starting to admit that they can't keep on pouring vast proportions of their limited campaign resources into vain attempts to hold places like Brunswick and Hawthorn, and shifting back to battling with each other in the outer seats where the Greens can't win. (Yet.) There was a very interesting article in (I think) the Guardian on this the other day.

[3.14159]

[David]

[Tannin]

Without the years-long treachery of Rudd, she would have stood a very good chance indeed.

[Jezza]

There's no way Gillard would have won the 2013 election had she remained as Prime Minister. The opinion polls were all saying this so it's naive to think that she would have miraculously beaten Abbott in the election. The only chance she had of a victory was Abbott slipping up and self-destructing otherwise she never really stood a chance.

Of course to be fair to Gillard she never really stood a chance from the very beginning of her tenure as Prime Minister in 2010 because Rudd was destabilising the government and doing everything in his power to undermine and accumulate numbers within the Labor Party to challenge her for the leadership so we never really got to see whether Gillard was a truly capable leader or not.

The opinion polls the week before Gillard was defeated in a leadership spill to Rudd suggest the following on a two party preferred basis:

Essential - Labor 45%, Liberal/Nationals 55%
Morgan (multi) - Labor 43.5%, Liberal/Nationals 56.5%
Newspoll - Labor 43%, Liberal/Nationals 57%

After Rudd became Prime Minister the polls improved for Labor inevitably. Rudd was more popular amongst people but I thought Gillard was the more capable leader and Rudd was just an egomaniac who craved the power but had no substance to being a good and competent leader of the country.

[Tannin]

Mark Latham got it in one when, very early on, he said "the only people who like or respect Rudd are the ones who haven't met him".

[3.14159]

[David]

^ Maybe. But what did it all come to, in the end? A couple of days of Shorten in the witness box answering questions about some mildly dodgy union activities. It was a bit of a flogging with a lettuce leaf. If Abbott was hoping to do an Aung Suu Kyi on the opposition leader, he certainly didn't do a great job at it.

These laws, on the other hand, aren't going anywhere. Shall we recap what statutes the government (with Labor's help) will have passed by this time in 2016?

1. Mandatory data retention for all Australians.
2. Criminalisation for people reporting on mistreatment of refugees.
3. Arbitrary removal of citizenship for dual nationals.
4. Removal of accountability mechanisms for ASIO and the ABF blackshirts.
5. Criminalisation of journalists and whistleblowers reporting on any 'national security' topics.
6. Criminalisation of autonomously participating in the fight against ISIS overseas.

[burton]

What I didn't like about this was that everyone even the local government supported the police operation part of it. Those opposed only seemed to care when it became people being targeted for their race.



It was said they would question anyone if they thought there was a warrant outstanding for them. Which means you didn't even have to be doing anything anti-social. This is wrong and I know myself as a person who is quite disfigured (I am osteoporotic all over). I have had police approach me before asking for my ID because 'I looked like a drug runner they know of'.

[Tannin]

Without wanting to belittle 3's point about the witch hunt circus this RC has been (for that is a serious matter), David speaks truly when he writes:

[3.14159]

[Culprit]

Bring on SS Uniforms. Just like the old days.

[David]

Discussion on the royal commission has been moved back into the relevant thread:

http://magpies.net/nick/bb/viewtopic.php?t=73189

[Tannin]

Excellent!

Well, what do you say, gentlemen? In the finest traditions of Nick's Collingwood Bulletin board, shall we all adjourn over to the Union Royal Commission thread and chat about ... oh ... let's say the Border Farce?