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@barbarian said in Aussie Politics:
I don't understand.
This twitter feed is exactly for you.
Johannes Leak is the legendary and sorely missed former News cartnoonist Bill who passed away in 2017. Now taking the old man's spot from this month onward.
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@barbarian said in Aussie Politics:
Ah thanks for that, I'm a complete moron and had no idea who he was. I thought it was funny he had the same surname as that other cartoonist, but never made the connection! What a funny world in which we live hey.
Not a problem. I assumed if you were unable to decipher the cartoon you weren't overly familiar with the Murdoch press. My mistake.
The rainbow stuff is a pretty obvious reference (among other things) to when Westpac sent an email to all staff urging them to vote Yes in the plebiscite to avoid thousands of suicides per year despite it being a bogus statistic.
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@barbarian said in Aussie Politics:
@antipodean said in Aussie Politics:
I don't know why you're focused on gays - there's just a rainbow. The entire rest of the cartoon is pointing out the focus on woke social concerns as embodied in being good corporate citizens rather than competently obeying their core requirements under specific laws.
'Gays' is shorthand for LGBT/Aboriginals/classic culture war rubbish.
That's awfully dismissive of you.
As I said above, is there any evidence to suggest that PC corporate citizen stuff had anything to do with this breach?
With limited resources in an organisation, clearly following one path comes as a detriment to others.
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@antipodean said in Aussie Politics:
With limited resources in an organisation, clearly following one path comes as a detriment to others.
I just think that's a cop out. So the same bloke who sent that email was also responsible for managing Westpac's legal requirements?
If there was demonstrated evidence that Westpac had under-resourced their compliance/legal arm while beefing up their diversity team I'd be more sympathetic, but until then it's just a pretty lazy attempt to tie a serious issue to the usual PC-culture war bullshit.
Anyway, think we've done enough on this for one day.
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@barbarian said in Aussie Politics:
@antipodean said in Aussie Politics:
With limited resources in an organisation, clearly following one path comes as a detriment to others.
I just think that's a cop out. So the same bloke who sent that email was also responsible for managing Westpac's legal requirements?
If there was demonstrated evidence that Westpac had under-resourced their compliance/legal arm while beefing up their diversity team I'd be more sympathetic, but until then it's just a pretty lazy attempt to tie a serious issue to the usual PC-culture war bullshit.
Well there was enough people in the diversity team to run a campaign, whereas there clearly wasn't enough for them to abide by their legal requirements.
"They stemmed from Westpac's failure to properly resource the AML-CTF function, to invest in appropriate IT systems and automated solutions and to remediate known compliance issues in a timely manner.
"They have occurred because Westpac adopted an ad hoc approach to ML/TF [money laundering/terrorism financing] risk management and compliance."
I think that speaks volumes.
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Can someone with a lot more knowledge than me please explain military spending and why it is necessary? Australia spent 26.6 Billion this year and judging by this article the budgets always seem to go way over and I often wonder what sort of return you get for that investment.
"Cost of 26 projects rises by $24bn compared with what was originally announced, auditor general finds" link
Why do we need to spend billions on submarines and fighter jets? Does China immediately invade if we don't have submarines or is there a complicated relationship with the US that dictates we have to have x spending to get their protection?
I see Australia is the 12th in the world in regards to military spending. We have the 55th biggest world population.
I can't help but think those billions would do so much more good for the population if used for health, education, firefighters etc.
I understand there has to be some spending but fuck me does it have to be so much.
I see NZ is not immune to this either with 20 billion being invested in defence including a satellite surveillance system.
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@chimoaus said in Aussie Politics:
Can someone with a lot more knowledge than me please explain military spending and why it is necessary? Australia spent 26.6 Billion this year and judging by this article the budgets always seem to go way over and I often wonder what sort of return you get for that investment.
"Cost of 26 projects rises by $24bn compared with what was originally announced, auditor general finds" link
Why do we need to spend billions on submarines and fighter jets? Does China immediately invade if we don't have submarines or is there a complicated relationship with the US that dictates we have to have x spending to get their protection?
I see Australia is the 12th in the world in regards to military spending. We have the 55th biggest world population.
I can't help but think those billions would do so much more good for the population if used for health, education, firefighters etc.
I understand there has to be some spending but fuck me does it have to be so much.
I see NZ is not immune to this either with 20 billion being invested in defence including a satellite surveillance system.
I've been working on a billion dollar defence programme for the last two years. It was a year behind schedule when I started.
Part of the problem is public service mentality - it's not their money they're wasting. There's no profit motive attached unless it's provided by industry working on a fixed price contract.Then you have to deal with the monolithic nature of the organisations involved. The turnover of military staff in decision making positions because they are posted through their career and most large projects last longer than your typical posting cycle.
That's after it gets delayed by Defence deciding that they're precious snow flakes and their equipment needs special modifications to every other capability available off the shelf which drastically increases cost, complexity and time.
For example: A billion dollars spent on 11 1950s Seasprite helicopter frames and modernising them, only to never use them because someone finally asked wtf are we doing this for?
Or the landing craft that cracked during trials. Their mother ships, HMAS Manoora and Kanimbla were by then in dry dock over concerns about their seaworthiness.
Etc.
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@antipodean I can only imagine the inefficiencies involved. I remember I had a mate that was on a golden ticket at a Navy Base which has a large airport. I have no idea how often planes land at this location but because it is active it needs a 24 hour fire fighting capability. He worked his day job then drove to the navy base, started at 6pm, he said they cooked up a massive feed, played xbox, watched movies then went to bed until their shift finished at 6am. Basically got 12 hours good pay every night for doing literally nothing. He had been there for years and I don't think he had many sleepless nights.
I do not begrudge military people getting the risk pay they get but boy do they get some benefits with medical, housing, loans etc. They also get massive bonuses for signing on for x more years. Someone I worked with husband got a massive bonus as part of their retention scheme, I'm sure it was like a years salary or similar.
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@barbarian said in British Politics:
I don't know anything about the NZ context, but in Australia the 'centre' is shifting slowly to the left, especially on social issues.
The gay marriage vote was a pretty decent example of this, and how traditionally conservative areas (like regional NSW) are actually moving to more progressive positions.
Now I agree with everything that's been said about courting the radical left voters, especially when it comes to inequality and environmental policy. But I also think 'traditional' views are slowly changing here.
Outside of Warringah which was a very special case I'm yet to see electoral evidence for this. The Coalition have lost one election in the last 26 years and were just returned with an increased majority. The Greens or ALP made no inroads in the senate despite the preference forms assisting them.
Seems like a classic metropolitan bubble where the pretty obvious hardening to the right of large swathes of Queensland/WA/Hunter Valley don't count as much as increased twitter volume out of Melbourne's inner suburbs.
Gay marriage FWIW was always a purely pragmatic/political capital issue (which is why you had the likes of Penny Wong against it while in government) and public opinion had been there for at least 20 years.
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@rotated said in British Politics:
Outside of Warringah which was a very special case I'm yet to see electoral evidence for this. The Coalition have lost one election in the last 26 years and were just returned with an increased majority. The Greens or ALP made no inroads in the senate despite the preference forms assisting them.
Seems like a classic metropolitan bubble where the pretty obvious hardening to the right of large swathes of Queensland/WA/Hunter Valley don't count as much as increased twitter volume out of Melbourne's inner suburbs.
Though I agree there's a metro bubble, at least in NSW I find it tends to assume Regional NSW is more right wing than it really is.
While there hasn't been explicit electoral evidence (though the Christian Democrats vote in regional areas has dropped significantly), there has been policy evidence. The recent case being the abortion law decriminalisation debate in NSW, where the vast majority of regional MPs (of all parties) voted in favour and have received broad support within their electorates for taking that position.
So I don't necessarily think it's a Libs/Nats vs Labor thing, rather a slow shift which is reflected by candidates on both sides and the electorate more broadly.
And I realise this is now a long way from British Politics so maybe worth shifting this debate elsewhere.
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@barbarian @rotated I'm in Warringah. Would have been very interesting to see what would have happened if the Libs ran a more "in-touch" candidate. This electorate is very Liberal, it was an extraordinary protest vote against a man rather than the party.
Zali is actually really unimpressive as a politician, she is really cold in person, not much charisma at all. -
@voodoo said in Aussie Politics:
@barbarian @rotated I'm in Warringah. Would have been very interesting to see what would have happened if the Libs ran a more "in-touch" candidate. This electorate is very Liberal, it was an extraordinary protest vote against a man rather than the party.
Zali is actually really unimpressive as a politician, she is really cold in person, not much charisma at all.I am not at all surprised to see this speculation/questioning taking place - I saw it coming. When Steggall was put forward it was a repeat of Labor running Maxine McWho? in Bennelong to unseat John Howard in 2007, nothing more. Labor needed to put the experienced and capable Howard out of the picture, to destabilise Coalition rebuilding after the election.
They needed to do the same with Tony Abbott in 2019. Labor's man in the Liberal Party, Malcolm Turnbull, couldn't have agreed more.
I say Labor was doubtful that Bennelong and later Warringah would revert to them mid term so they went for the much more important short term objective.
McKew thought she knew plenty about politics and discovered she didn't, even more so in an electorate fast changing to an Asian base. Being married to Labor organisation heavy Bob Hogg didn't help either - I venture that is because he had become yesterday's man (and had no idea how to deal with Asians). She sat on her clacker for the next three years and did nothing. John Alexander won the seat back for the Liberals at the next election, after walking the streets for a year or more.
Steggall hasn't done a hard day's work in her life - she flew about the world "following her dream" as a taxpayer subsidised skier then Daddy (a suburban solicitor) put her through a third rate university for her BA and gave her a job. She had a lot of help from Labor and Getup running a dirty campaign against the Liberals, and against Abbott personally, and plenty of locals were put off by that, especially when they discovered "she is really cold in person, not much charisma at all".
Steggall is a straight off the shelf climate/warming/cooling/we're going to die of thirst/drown disciple who has rehearsed all the green clichés but doesn't understand what they mean.
I have a son and daughter and their wife / husband living on the "insular peninsula" and I listen to what they and their mates have to say - as their profession/trade began to cut in some years ago, and they started making real money, their scepticism at the fables Miss told them at school, about cuddly whales falling off the polar ice caps, increased markedly. They typify the demographics of Warringah and they will give Missy Zali the shove at the next election.
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@Mick-Gold-Coast-QLD said in Aussie Politics:
@voodoo said in Aussie Politics:
@barbarian @rotated I'm in Warringah. Would have been very interesting to see what would have happened if the Libs ran a more "in-touch" candidate. This electorate is very Liberal, it was an extraordinary protest vote against a man rather than the party.
Zali is actually really unimpressive as a politician, she is really cold in person, not much charisma at all.I thoroughly enjoyed your post except for the mention of a third-rate university which made me check to see if I went to the same one (I didn't, different state and it is proudly second rate by any metric).
The scoop/theory I've always heard on the McKew run was that it was never intended result in them winning Bennelong and her sitting as an MP. The idea was to give Howard a run and immobilize him by forcing him back to Bennelong once or twice a week. Leading into that campaign people had every reason to expect Howard to come from behind for a third time, and Rudd to implode like Latham.
GetUp pretty much played themselves this election. Poured all their resources into Warringah (Abbot), Dickson (Dutton), Kooyong (Frydenburg) and Cowper (pro-Oakshott) because they wanted big scalps but flamed out winning 1/4 and absolutely losing the war.
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Please share your rant.... I mean thoughts on this .
Btw you’re welcome to her.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12298839
Aussie Politics