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

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Again, don't kid yourselves about Morrison's intent. This is another sop to Murdoch and Costello, designed to increase the domination of the right over Australian media. Morrison doesn't exactly like the fact that people on social media can criticise his government freely, so is looking to use any means necessary to shut them down.

I don't know what Murdoch and Costello have to do with it, but you can be sure that the intent of this type of regulation is to prevent people from having anonymity on social media so that ordinary citizens can be more easily sued by politicians for "defamation."  Peter Dutton is engaging in a lawsuit against a random guy on Twitter right now.  A preview of what is to come.  No doubt a certain state premier would absolutely love it if Victoria Police had access to the real names of every person who supports protests, too.  We're heading down a dark path.

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Lol. Don't know what Murdoch and Costello have to do with it? Mate, they control virtually all of the media in this country between them. You have to be wilfully ignorant not to acknowledge that this is a blatant sop to them.

Yes, I'm well aware of the Twitter rot that attributes every last problem in this country to Rupert Murdoch, which is a bit trite and intellectually lazy at this point.  Obviously the media market in Australia is heavily concentrated and there is plenty of sloppy journalism.  But Scott Morrison wants to take away your anonymity on social media for much more nefarious reasons than anything to do with a media empire that, by all accounts, is far more successful and arguably more pernicious in several other more significant markets.  Australia is just a small serve side of fries for Rupert Murdoch even if he started out here.

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Interest rates are rising much faster than expected.  Although the rise itself should not come as a surprise, the size of the increase, the largest in 22 years, suggests that much more pain is coming.  It's particularly bizarre in light of the fact that the allegedly independent Reserve Bank acknowledges that the inflation is due to international factors, yet their only lever for cooling the economy is to force mortgage holders to pass on more money to banks, which goes straight to their profit margins.  Apparently paying several hundred dollars a month more to have a roof over your head is going to somehow bring down the price of petrol and lettuce?  It's a bit like sacrificing a goat in the hopes of a good harvest.

Philip Lowe was adamant only recently that interest rates would remain at emergency level lows, i.e. no rises, until 2024 - but he won't be facing any accountability for misleading the public.

Along with the spectre of looming blackouts and the rising price of everything, and the hospital systems collapsing across the country, it looks to be quite the winter of discontent.

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It's particularly bizarre in light of the fact that the allegedly independent Reserve Bank acknowledges that the inflation is due to international factors, yet their only lever for cooling the economy is to force mortgage holders to pass on more money to banks, which goes straight to their profit margins.  Apparently paying several hundred dollars a month more to have a roof over your head is going to somehow bring down the price of petrol and lettuce?  It's a bit like sacrificing a goat in the hopes of a good harvest.

Inflation is about both factors, and it's frankly textbook macroeconoimics(which has gone ignored for the last 3 years) that raising interests rates reduces inflation by reducing consumption. Look at Turkey if you wanna see what happens when you ignore that.

I don't disagree at all, but there's no point ignoring the unique attributes to the inflation that we're currently experiencing, which is that it's largely externally driven.  Wages are flat and business investment is at a post-war record low.  So all that is happening here is that the RBA is cutting workers' spending power.  The only heat in the economy is coming from rising prices, not from rising wages.  Consumption metrics are also obfuscated by supply chain disruptions.

The RBA likes to point out that households have amassed considerable savings throughout the pandemic, which they believe could be used to pay these higher interest rates, but that seems a bit rich considering that the distribution of that money has been disproportionately to wealthy households.

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I don't understand how somebody could think that people fleeing from Sri Lanka are not genuine refugees.  Like, you do realise that people starve to death in these kinds of economic situations...?

And the extent to which the inflation is externaly driven is becoming more limited as oil prices begin to fall back to normal.

The petrol price is still climbing here and will increase by another 22 cents/litre in September when the halving of the fuel excise expires.

Australia high housing prices are not sustaniable and something has to be done to control them, a rate-hike might be one of the only politicaly acceptable ways of reducing demand for housing.

The effect on house prices is (unfortunately) probably going to be minimal because there is a severe lack of supply.  If they decline by 15-20% then they will be back at their still unaffordable levels of 2019 and 2020.  It's a big problem with no real solutions.  The rate rises will hurt recent buyers and particularly those with small deposits the most, and often these are also the first to lose their jobs when the recession induced by rising rates hits.  Not to mention landlords will use interest rate rises to increase rents.

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Disclosure: I am myself a university-educated professional living in an inner city. How then have I been inoculated against the biases I criticise my fellow commentators for? I believe the answer, paradoxically, is my membership of the ALP, and more particularly the ALP Right. Since my political affiliation is formal and widely known, I have to guard especially carefully against partisanship. And since I support a faction dominated by hard-boiled pragmatists and generally hostile to the views of the inner urban cosmopolitan elite, I am better equipped to avoid the trap of elite group-think into which many others have fallen.

You sound way too wrapped up in weird identity politics, dude.

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With the climbing ban on Uluru (formerly Ayers Rock) having set the example three years ago, other aboriginal groups in Australia are looking to replicate it in their areas:

The next Uluru? Hikers and Aboriginal elders await decision on closure of Wollumbin summit

I have to confess that I don't quite understand how one can reconcile banning people from accessing an area that somebody considers a 'sacred site' when they would likely have a hostile reaction to Christian or Muslim principles being enshrined into law.

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I love how in the Australia thread, one of the most far-right posters is a fully paid up member of the labour party.

The major parties are very paternalistic and that can manifest in different ways.  There are a lot of rank-and-file Labor members who are total racists (I've known several), just as there are in the LNP.  Likewise, many lifetime Labor and Coalition voters strongly oppose Australia's treatment of refugees, particularly among religious communities.  I was talking to a guy who works in the defence industry (and Liberal supporter) the other day who says Australia needs to double its population through immigration intake.  I think you'd find some very strong hostility towards that sentiment among the Labor faithful...

That being said, personally, I'm not sure that the debate over indigenous recognition is going to be successful on its current trajectory.  The original conversation was around simply recognising them in the constitution; after the Uluru statement five years ago, that shifted to the 'Voice to Parliament'.  There are persuasive reasons for and against it.  Similar bodies operated fairly noncontroversially until being dismantled by the Howard government, but it is important to prevent the overt appearance of laws being applied differently on the basis of race.  The irony, is of course, that they already are (against indigenous people, obviously).  Nonetheless it's fair to have concerns over the codification of that premise.

What Slugg is getting at is that the conversation among the most vocal activists (largely affiliated with the Greens) increasingly sounds like the Voice to Parliament is only the starting point towards returning sovereignty to the traditional custodians, and if Albanese doesn't manage the discourse carefully (and it will also depend on what the Opposition does), there is a risk that what he is proposing will be conflated with something more extreme.

Potentially some of the opponents of a Voice will actually be recent immigrants, of which Australia has many.  The growing attacks on Australia Day, which is largely associated with citizenship ceremonies among immigrant communities, have fallen flat with many of Australia's non-indigenous racial minorities.  (Also, while we're speaking in racial generalities about racism, many first- and second-generation immigrants from Europe seem to be reflexively anti-woke.)

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Finally, some cause for celebration from the Albanese government: about 20,000 people who have been languishing on temporary protection visas for 10 years, unable to obtain a pathway to citizenship since Kevin Rudd was last PM, have been given the green light to begin applying for permanent residency.  I happen to know that quite a number of the people caught up in this situation aren't eligible from today's announcement, so hopefully more will follow.

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Finally, some cause for celebration from the Albanese government: about 20,000 people who have been languishing on temporary protection visas for 10 years, unable to obtain a pathway to citizenship since Kevin Rudd was last PM, have been given the green light to begin applying for permanent residency.  I happen to know that quite a number of the people caught up in this situation aren't eligible from today's announcement, so hopefully more will follow.

I think it's pre-"sovereign borders" refugees.

Yes, those are the people I'm referring to.  They've been living in Australia since 2013 or earlier.  Not all of them have been helped by the announcement today, but it's a good start.

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Member for Aston Alan Tudge is set to resign. Unknown what excuse he'll use to deflect from abusing his mistress.

Speculation is already mounting that Josh Frydenberg will take the opportunity to run in the by-election and return to politics.

Aston noticeably went 53-47 Liberal so it will be interesting to see the results of the by-election. ASV, could you see Labor winning Aston?

That result was as close as it was because Alan Tudge was widely disliked for his ongoing scandals and moral failure.  It's likely that the Liberal vote in Aston will have a small rebound despite the favorable national and state environment for Labor.

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The LNP has retained the seat of Fadden on a 4% swing. An expected solid (but not outstanding result) from heartland Coalition country.

Looking like only a 2-3% swing now. Still a swing is better than no swing (or one in the opposite direction), but it’s generally been a nondescript performance by most parties, with the exception of Legalise Cannabis (very good) and the Greens (very bad).

The apparent swing from Greens to Legalise Cannabis is probably the most interesting aspect of this by-election.  Legalise Cannabis did not field a candidate in this seat last time.  Makes you wonder how many Greens voters actually support the party's agenda as opposed to just picking up votes from contrarians.  (I don't think I'm alone in finding the Greens' support for legalising cannabis to be the most attractive part of their platform!)

All the chatter the past few months has been about Greens taking votes from Labor as young people grow increasingly fed up with the rental market.  This isn't exactly the sort of seat where you would have expected that to materialise due to its demographics, so it's not enough to draw any conclusions, but this is not a good result for the Greens.

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What are you most interested in re: Australia?

Not to clog up the politics thread, but my aim is just to get a good feel for the country. Will unironically take pub recommendations.

Meh, you've seen one overpriced pub full of poker machines, you've seen them all.

Melbourne is overrated for tourists; it has terrible public transport beyond the inner-city and the whole place is kind of dirty and ugly.  Sydney is much more beautiful, with a substantially better train network (with connectivity to other major centres across NSW), but you'll also burn a hole in your wallet if you want to do anything whatsoever (including eating and drinking).  I actually would recommend Canberra; it is certainly a bit quiet but if you don't mind that, it's very nice, there's plenty to do, and people are generally friendlier than in Sydney or Melbourne.

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This is the second by-election where Legalise Cannabis weirdly outperforms the Greens, after federal Fadden by-election.  Intriguing!