Australia General Discussion 4.0: It ain’t easy under Albanese

[GoTfan]

And YOU stop shifting the goal posts!

I pointled out quite correctly that Lee Rhiannon (Socialist Party of Australia) and Bandt (when in university was part of pro-comm circles) both have extreme left wing backgrounds.

The Greens's support for re-nationalisation and the return to substantial public ownership and their wanting to undo Labor's 1980s and 1990s reforms and their continual rants about "big corporations" and "wealth inequality" is hardly part of the broad political centre where most Australian voters are.

How am I shifting them?

I am not talking about their pasts. I want you to label where in their platform they support the abolition of private property and for workers to seize the means of production.

[Lord Halifax]

Nick McKim and Adam Bandt have both advocted for a return to pre-1980s economic policies such as public ownership of things privatised under the Hawke and Keating era, and they want to make legal again things like the closed shop and secondary boycotts that the Hawke reforms abolished in the eighties. Even if not Soviet-style socialists, these policies show them to be political dinosaurs compared to a modern 2022 party like the ALP.

so advocates of traditional Social Democracy = dinosaurs

neoliberal Third Way'ers = modern

that distinction sounds rather old fashioned, like early 00s or so.

[CumbrianLefty]

Yes, the striking thing about continuity Blairism is how anachronistic it is now. And that goes against the man himself in his prime, who always drove home the need to adapt to the world as it was and is.

[GoTfan]

And YOU stop shifting the goal posts!

I pointled out quite correctly that Lee Rhiannon (Socialist Party of Australia) and Bandt (when in university was part of pro-comm circles) both have extreme left wing backgrounds.

The Greens's support for re-nationalisation and the return to substantial public ownership and their wanting to undo Labor's 1980s and 1990s reforms and their continual rants about "big corporations" and "wealth inequality" is hardly part of the broad political centre where most Australian voters are.

[Pulaski]

Turnbull is an intelligent man which makes him describing that student protest as "fascism" all the more ridiculous.

I know what fascism looks like, and 4-5 Trots with a megaphone shouting down Turnbull at a uni event isn't it.

[Pulaski]

The Greens's support for re-nationalisation and the return to substantial public ownership and their wanting to undo Labor's 1980s and 1990s reforms and their continual rants about "big corporations" and "wealth inequality" is hardly part of the broad political centre where most Australian voters are.

Most voters actually back renationalisation, even conservative ones.

[Deep Dixieland Senator, Muad'dib (OSR MSR)]

Oh, by the way:

I miss the Mark Latham era labor.

[Pulaski]

Turnbull is an intelligent man which makes him describing that student protest as "fascism" all the more ridiculous.

I know what fascism looks like, and 4-5 Trots with a megaphone shouting down Turnbull at a uni event isn't it.

It's still verbal intimidation which is a form of violence.

By that definition nearly every protest would constitute a form of violence.

Can you honestly point to an example of any of these sorts of student protests in Australia actually turning violent?

[Хahar 🤔]

Please just ignore and move on. He has nothing interesting to say and responding is just polluting the thread.

[Pulaski]

Please just ignore and move on. He has nothing interesting to say and responding is just polluting the thread.

I think it's particularly telling that any time someone comes back at him with hard facts to rebut (the articles I linked to showing that it's hardly just us far-left Marxist nutjobs who support renationalisation, for instance), he disappears into the ether.

[Pulaski]

Please just ignore and move on. He has nothing interesting to say and responding is just polluting the thread.

I think it's particularly telling that any time someone comes back at him with hard facts to rebut (the articles I linked to showing that it's hardly just us far-left Marxist nutjobs who support renationalisation, for instance), he disappears into the ether.

Most Australians also support the death penalty for some crimes. That is also something that governments are wise to ignore.

Your argument wasn't that at all; it was that the Greens were outside the mainstream for supporting renationalisation, when it's very much a mainstream position according to polls.

If your position is now that a good government should have principles rather than simply kowtowing to whatever the majority want, then I've got a list of issues as long as your arm where Labor governments fail that standard.

For what it's worth, the latest poll I could find suggests two-thirds of Australians oppose the death penalty.

[Pulaski]

In the abstract, perhaps. But, I hope you might see that the numbers are "soft" as in the aftermath of a particularly impactful "My name is Cleo" type event, Laura Norder gets really popular again.

So public opinion is changeable then?

In which case what is "mainstream" is maybe not necessarily the priority as it can also change?

[CumbrianLefty]

Yes, the striking thing about continuity Blairism is how anachronistic it is now. And that goes against the man himself in his prime, who always drove home the need to adapt to the world as it was and is.

Blairism can win a general election. Corbynism cannot, no matter how many times Corbynites twist yourself in knots to claim 2019 is an abberation WRT Corbyn-style policies. People may be positive about those policies to pollsters but behave quite differently in the privacy of the booth.

We've had this one before I think

No, the reason why those popular policies don't do better in elections isn't "social desirability bias" but that people often don't think those offering them have "credibility" (nebulous concept though that is)

And as most of its adherents understand it now, "Blairism" is by almost any measure you care to cite actually less popular than "Corbynism". Even recently in the UK, the fate of Change UK and then the "Skills Wallets" version of the LibDems under Jo Swinson are evidence enough of that.

[GoTfan]

I’ve heard Lidia Thorpe called a patronising dumb arse and she’s providing ample evidence to the argument.

You two should get on pretty well, then.

[Pulaski]

I honestly don't know where you're getting this from as I've just done a quick scan of the 1947, 1954 and 1961 censuses and can see no mention of "Aboriginal natives" (in fact, at least two of them explicitly say they exclude "full-blood Aboriginals").

They do seem to count "half-castes" in some of them as often "half-castes" (apologies for using this term) were considered "Europeans."

At any rate, this "myth" seems to be so powerful that it's permeated through to the University of Sydney, the Western Australian Museum, the State Library of Victoria and the National Library.

I agree that the "flora and fauna" thing is basically a myth, although it's worth noting that some states did manage "Aboriginal affairs" through things like their Departments of Fisheries at various points.

[Pulaski]

"I honestly don't know where you're getting this from as I've just done a quick scan of the 1947, 1954 and 1961 censuses"

So, *after* the myth has grown up that that the expression "aboriginal natives shall not be counted" is a reference to the census?

Do you mind clarifying what you mean by this post? Not trying to be rude here but I just don't quite get what you mean.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Looking at the population data for Northern Territory, I'm inclined to believe Jolly Slugg on this one. If they weren't counted, it would for sure appear in the Northern Territory total, yet it still had almost 45k in 1961. There was a huge increase by 1974, but that's in a context where it clearly was growing quite massively before and after 1967.

[Pulaski]

Looking at the population data for Northern Territory, I'm inclined to believe Jolly Slugg on this one. If they weren't counted, it would for sure appear in the Northern Territory total, yet it still had almost 45k in 1961. There was a huge increase by 1974, but that's in a context where it clearly was growing quite massively before and after 1967.

Yeah, I do have to admit I was slightly incorrect - the 1961 census does count "full-blooded Aboriginals" separately at the end (seems to be the only one of the three I mentioned that does this). The statistics are still likely wildly incorrect though, considering the estimate of the total population in Australia is 40K and by 1971 that had ballooned to over 100K.

The State Library of Victoria link is probably the most accurate - prior to '67, they weren't always counted, often deliberately excluded, and the statistics were flawed and inaccurate.

[GoTfan]

I’ve heard Lidia Thorpe called a patronising dumb arse and she’s providing ample evidence to the argument.

You two should get on pretty well, then.

Ah, the usual Greens/Australian socialist wit. Or, at least half of it.

The only reason I call myself that is because it triggers people like you.

First Nations Australians are not some monolithic block, like you and Thorpe both think they are. A good chunk of them oppose the Voice because they think it doesn't go far enough.

However, the idea that it will be able to override Parliament is pure conspiracy theory.

[Pulaski]

Like I said, you are using censuses that were taken well after the notion that "aboriginal natives shall not be counted" refers to the census. As i explained, that was not the actual reason for that clause.

So the myth about them not being included in the census became so powerful that even the census themselves decided not to include them. Not even Dominic Cummings could've achieved that PR coup.

[Pulaski]

You (deliberately?) only quoted from latter-day censuses and IGNORED this part of my post:

"Indigenous people were always counted in the census where this was possible. (*In the case of some remote communities it was not possible in the circumstances of the time*)

Why do latter day censuses not count in your mind?

And why does 1961 have counts but not the census before or after it if it's all down to circumstances? What temporary access did census workers have in 61?

[Pulaski]

"Why do latter day censuses not count in your mind?"

Because you are not looking at much earlier censuses. Obvious as late as the 40s, 50s and 60s, very close to the referendum and with much easier modes of travel, things will be different

But 1947 and 1954 censuses exclude Indigenous Australians too.

Maybe you’re right about them being excluded from earlier censuses due to logistics. But if this were true of the entire period pre-1967, you wouldn’t see them included in 1961 and excluded both before and after. Something more than logistics is going on here.

[GoTfan]

The Greens are a boutique party for inner-city elite leftists. The ALP tries (not very successfully) to be a party for the majority - working class, middle class, suburban and regional. Their mutual loathing will be hard to overcome.

Not all Greens voters are members of the inner-city elite, and not all members of the inner-city elite are Greens voters, But there is a large overlap, and they are certainly the Greens' base vote. I describe the inner-city elite as living (obviously) in the inner-city, having a tertiary education (or acquiring one), and working in public employment of some kind or other (ie, not part of the business elite). I don't use the expression as a pejorative - it's a description of a new class formation arising out of the post-industrial economy and the expansion of the state in recent decades. All parties represent classes, and this class has developed its own party, just as the old industrial and pastoral working class developed the Labor Party. And like all classes, it tends to see its own values as normative and applicable to everyone.

Liberals and Nationals slagging off 'inner-city lefites' is arguably part of the reason they lost.

Everyone here sees you for what you are mate. Just be honest: you don't like the fact that the genocide we attempted against First Nations Australians is being acknowledged.

[Pulaski]

Prejudice, laziiness, incomptence, indeed a lot of factors could have combined to produce one big mess.

Doesn't change that the original reason for that clause isn't what post-facto myths pretend that it is.

And it doesn't change the fact that you were wrong when you said that Indigenous Australians were always counted in the census when possible.

[Pulaski]

"genocide"

If you know how 18th and 19th century medicine could have dealt with human bodies succumbing to diseases that they had no immunity to, *do* tell!

Once again, the left shows how much they like to base their ideology on untruths and fabrications.

Again, there's quite a significant section of historians that would define the Black War as genocide.

The debate about defining it as such is mostly confined to whether it was the intent of colonialists to totally wipe out Indigenous Australians, but either way the many deaths can hardly be contributed to disease alone.

At this point maligning the left as being obsessed with untruths and fabrications seems to be a serious case of the pot calling the kettle black.