ALP surges ahead of LNP as interest rates dominate campaign

As long as there isn’t a hung parliament requiring constant shoring up of numbers, and distracting negotiation with a rabble/ gaggle of opportunists, I’ll be pleased

Morrison knows that reality is a construct .

He’s living proof of that but in politics it’s essential that your construct is (still) shared by the majority of others.

Re Aspen Medical. Don’t think Hunt will follow Robb, Pyne, et al into a lucrative consultancy any time soon. It’s all in the timing. No wonder they hate the ABC

gold 🙂

Where’s Barnaby and his criticisms of the NSW ICAC? You know – it’s elected politicians who should decide where the dollars should be spent (read pork) and not bureaucrats

And yet we have an UNELECTED Board raising interest rates and not elected MPs. Will the journalists interview Joyce? Is he now happy to have – “government out of our lives?” What changed?

Clarity required?

Qantas, the great Australian law breaker

The Federal Court is often just a lottery. The High Court is more likely to make decisions based on the law rather than political views

Re:

powerful Icac could turn Australia into ‘public autocracy’

Isn’t that what a democracy is supposed to be? You know – with the public (read Citizens) having the power? Or perhaps he has an alternative definition?

Or maybe he pejoratively equates autocracy with Dictators or Monarchs?

One wonders as to his response when questioned by the MSM?

Boasting about low levels of revenue raising (read tax, including company tax – both local and foreign) is akin to boasting about levels of service(s).

Understand why it’s a vote winner but it’s a nonsense. Labor should be better than that.

Baggage handlers at Qantas had a saying- “you’d be a mug if you worked a single time shift”
That’s why they insist on minimum staffing- so that they can get people to work nil 10 and overtime shifts.
It’s a cycle/rort and had to come to an end

Definitely not the sharpest tool in the shed.
What, because he doesn’t have a photographic memory?

They were at an event for power, so the churnos threw a range of detailed questions about other topics altogether, several of them. When he failed to remember the finer details of one, he did what any normal person does, he reached for the manual, and supplied them with the answer

So, Albo answers all questions, and they have a panic attack, meanwhile, the alleged rape coverup king runs away, and not a word

Sorry teamcheerer, the only thing that underwhelmy albonese will advance is a huge ‘lavander’ independent onslaught next 2025? election. The teabag lite’s spent too much of the the last three years going me-too, meetoo, meetoo.`

There’s any number of gotchas that might be asked. So many, if not most, Sections in the Australian Constitution (under which the Parliament operates) which are completely unknown to the vast majority of Senators and Members.

Under which Section of the Constitution does Minister X, get his/her ‘head of power’ to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to ‘weights and measures’?

What do you understand by the ‘Separation of Powers’?

Are you aware that the Chinese (Russian etc) ambassador is an Australian taxpayer?

Did you know that the Australian Ambassador to Russia contributes to their revenue?

Etc, etc

Just watched Morrison say a few rehearsed words before The Drum.

Noted that the camera lingered/focused (for some extended time) on his ‘wedding ring’.

Expect that happily ‘married’ man theme to be further developed. It’s a point of (unstated) differentiation.

Morrison is a good politician.

where the speaker attacks the character

I guess calling people a troll (correctly or incorrectly) isn’t attacking their character, is it?

I also note that you haven’t refuted that I am correct, which can only mean, I WON THE ONLINE ARGUMENT!

You’re welcome 🙂

Poor wachel just keeps getting slammed

As she should

That’s priceless

Well, there is a price, and I’m sure murdor pays her well to be so stupid 😉

Typically this term refers to a rhetorical strategy

You read bad

Albanese gotcha?
As I’ve mentioned, some years ago, i woked with a large prominent public company.
Each quarter the CEO would conduct staff presentations across the country.
Some of the intelligent, and feisty, shop floor guys would try to trip him up with detailed questions about operational, scheduling and procurement issues
He was never flummoxed, he was always able to answer all the questions thrown at him
Across the detail- that’s a characteristic of leadership

Re:

Across the detail …

Leaders should (read must) be about strategy – sometimes known as the the big picture. Managers and lesser employees (in the organisational sense) are there for the detail – to fill in the ‘blanks’ as it were.

So there’s strategy and then there’s tactics . Somewhat related but conceptually discrete concepts for most important matters.

Leaders have to be capable of getting people on board , being able to talk about their plans and strategy in a manner that connects and is relevant to them.

getting people on board ya say 😉

and he got an extinction

🙂

I see TB has dusted off his 30 year old notes from his 3 day course – “The Essentials of Supervision”

And there you go! Demonstrating that you don’t quite grasp that leadership isn’t management

Yes an interesting article and some excellent points made (read I agree with him) but Das has a reputation as a ‘gloomy’ commentator (historically speaking.).

But then again ‘economics’ is such a dismal undertaking.

https://www.crikey.com.au/2017/10/04/satyajit-das-angry-australias-economic-growth/

Who would’ve thought?

government review … fallen short of saying pork-barrelling should be an offence.

In other words, nothing will change .

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-07/nsw-grant-review-does-not-support-pork-barrelling-as-offence/101047194

Let’s see whether the NSW ICAC has the courage when reporting on the hearings involving former premier Gladys Berejiklian.

From your link re Doherty’s comment:

the skewing of government funding to private schools

Yes it’s morally indefensible but it’s crucial politics for both sides of the aisle and it’s not likely to change. A few points as to why.

First – under Section 96, the Feds can grant financial assistance to any state on the terms and conditions that it sees fit. So while Section 51 sees control of Education remaining with the States, no State will refuse any Federal money on offer and no private school will reject the dollars either. So the Feds have the power of the purse.

Second – while the Feds could provide dollars to all school sectors, it chooses (generally) to concentrate on the private for essentially vote winning reasons.

Third – the demographics of who attends different sectors if located on a (class) continuum, would see (generally) state school students on the left and private school students on the right (or vice versa). Catholic school students are much more evenly spread. Much more likely to be located in the middle .

Given that elections are won or lost by a very narrow margin (and at the middle), it’s crucial that this massive ‘pork barrel’ of spending on education is so focused. The Catholics MUST be won over, And because the government must be seen to be fair the funding formula translates across to all in the private sector.

(Of course it’s more nuanced than that but that’s the guts of it.

Note well:

… found students in independent schools got the best scores, followed by Catholic, then public schools; however, after adjusting for students’ socioeconomic background there were no significant differences between their average scores.

In other words, the socioeconomic background of the school is what matters, not school type.

Yes and while the socioeconomic background of the school that matters and one can go even further and demonstrate that it’s the socioeconomic background of the student(s) that’s crucial.

Most don’t appreciate that the curriculum (what is taught) is common to all schools which prepare students for a common credential . That is, the same external exams evaluated by common criteria. Further, the teachers in all sectors themselves undergo the same professional preparation and socialisation process.

Today’s media involving Brother Stuie Robert (Acting Education Minister) demonstrated abject ignorance when it came to understanding anything about how the education system works.

But he’s a cheaper option than Minister Tudge who just cost the citizenry $500 000.00 because of his violent sexual behavior.

https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/want-to-bet-your-child-can-achieve-top-marks-in-a-public-school-me-too-20220506-p5aj8d.html?utm_source=newsshowcase&utm_medium=gnews&utm_campaign=CDAqEAgAKgcICjCr2aULMIPkvQMwsJxN&utm_content=rundown&gaa_at=g&gaa_n=AYc4ystsj31qtrxWigyJwPkwIA32lVMSQvUdll1Yo6XRZCsBUjs-j_vsUyHV9YYcyub4ZkSO55pgu-67tzqeltxsIuY%3D&gaa_ts=62788d03&gaa_sig=LWGb_kEgHwxKRLSl-jy60ArbHieGNQT2-2O9qpbuEF4tW-84MUlsvHs6YvD4-Kcgimxjz79-B-SKsZc2XWASmg%3D%3D

Splatterbottom – much of what you write was true decades ago but certainly not true today.

The cost of teachers in both private and public schools comes (effectively) from government funds and that’s the most significant cost by far. The idea that private schools relieves the cost to government is so ‘yesterday’.

Indeed there are many examples where the dollars paid to a private school are greater than the dollars paid to a public school, virtually next door. But it’s not publicised.

Lots of the research grunt (of recent times) comes from Chris Bonner. So if you seriously want to establish a few ‘truths’, include his his name in any Google.

Did you know that the Kings School at Parramatta charges fees of $40 000.00 (for day students) and yet still gets state and federal subsidies on top of that that? All under the heading of ‘NEED’. (About 3 times what a state school gets.)

More the case, it’s parents’ political need rather than students’ educational need.

As for (state) selective schools in NSW, they have topped ALL the rankings for more than two decades. These days such schools are populated (overwhelmingly) by students from either Asian or Indian backgrounds. Read this:

https://johnmenadue.com/christina-ho-and-chris-bonnor-hubs-of-concentrated-advantage-selective-schools-need-a-rethink/

Might be useful if more people understood what schooling actually does before theorizing as to what it might do.

First, it’s fairly successful in keeping kids “off the (metaphorical) streets”. Keeping them out of harm’s way allowing parents to go to work etc. The custodial care function.

Second, it’s important in the general socialising function. Children (should) learn that they are not the only ones in the world and they have to wait their turn; give way to others; that there are power differentials; ‘manners’ etc

Third, schooling is effective in the social selection process. That is, it creates a ‘hierarchy’ that legitimates a selection process which sees some selected for higher ‘rewards’ (including financial, status, prestige, social and the like). And (importantly) it’s successful in convincing large numbers that where they sit in this hierarchy is ‘deserved’. We all had the same chance and some did better than others. etc.

This is reinforced by elaborate ‘credentialing’ arrangements.

Fourth, some actual ‘education’ occurs along with with heaps of ‘indoctrination’ both at the conscious and unconscious level(s).

A society without schools would be very different.

From the link reb

Morrison has cultivated a vacuous public image that might have been dreamed up by the world’s most dimwitted focus group, and probably was. He is the avatar of an intellectual nonentity. He appears to have no clearly articulated policy agenda or ideological viewpoint beyond that standard neoliberal banalities. The incoherence, it seems, goes all the way down. As Bernard Keane wrote in response to another speech in which Morrison sought to outline his core principles: ‘it offers no guide for anything — and thus, inevitably, a justification for everything’. The political historian Judith Brett described the same speech, only slightly more charitably, as ‘contentless’ and ‘rather nebulous’.

Not only that, he’s a blatant, perpetual liar. He told the cuntry on chanel nein that the Federal Government had no control over the Port of Darwin (as Albo pointed out, “you mean, in the Territory?”)

So Barnaby goes to the National Press Club to do his “snorting”? Has no shame.

That Barnaby is a Legislator can be ‘justified’ on the grounds we have a ‘representative’ democracy and therefore even the mentally challenged must have a seat at the table. They must be ‘represented’.

But in the ‘Executive’ arm of government, it is not mandated that such ‘low intelligence’ makes a continuing appearance.

Australia has the highest minimum wage in the world

I see TB, you think it isn’t of assistance to have a legal minimum wage of over $20 an hour when many other developed countries have about half that.
Yes, TB is an outstanding ranker of a small point

So Australia shouldn’t lead the world when it comes to minimum wage level? (Assuming the claim is true).

Think of it this way. Thus inflation should be at a higher rate than wage rises with living standards in subsequent decline, led (downwards) by the lowest paid workers.

Seems fair?

From another perspective:

Over the last eight years, profits overall have risen 72.8%, an average annual lift of 7.07%. Several sectors have more than doubled their profit …

Wages have risen over the last eight years under the Coalition by a total of 24.2%, or a miserly 2.7% per year on average. Inflation has averaged 1.8%.

The outcome(s) result from deliberate policy. As a result the surplus value has been appropriated by those who need it least.

In a real democracy, with power in different hands, the outcome would be radically different.

Re;

It’s better than not having the highest minimum wage in the world

Indeed it is. (If true). But surely we shouldn’t be putting the cue in the rack?

Records are there to be broken. Nations should aim ever higher. That so many companies transfer enormous wealth to foreign shores each and every year demonstrate there’s still enormous amounts of low-hanging fruit to be harvested.

(Sadly, an incoming Albo government won’t change much. Rather the aim will be to win the next election in the same manner. That is – don’t scare the horses.)

Imploring us to do even better and not rest on our laurels is quite different from constant whining about how miserable the place is