
What a disaster, this election, a total disaster. It is clear that it doesn't matter how bad a government is, you cannot displace them if you plan to take ANY benefits away from the people , no matter how fair that might be. It is absolutely clear to me that Labor brought AU through the GFC in an astoundingly effective manner. Labor suffered very high AUD (parity with USD) and low resources revenue; hence the difficulty in bringing the budget back to surplus, even though they weathered the GFC better than the rest of the world. LNP lucked in to a very low AUD and very high, much higher than expected, return on resources from mining; such resources that are limited and will run out. Hawke / Keating set up AU for prosperity, Howard almost destroyed it. Rudd/Swan got us through the GFC amazingly well, we were the envy of the world. Labor clearly is the better economic manager by a very large margin. Arrogance, lies and greed told the story of this election. You can probably add stupidity and lack of heart to that as well (how the hell did TheDud get back in????). Money bags Palmer and please explain didn't help either as their support for LNP is very clear. I, for sure, didn't agree with some of the things that Labor was going to do or to the full extent of their intentions; but overall, it would have been a significantly better government with a real positive outlook for the future; now we are stuck with this rotten mob that has been very destructive of our future and that of our children and grand children. If climate change really is as bad as some say, the future of this planet is really, really heading towards midnight under this rotten mob. Labor's franking credit changes is just one disaster that played out; they should have put a reasonable limit on this, not totally wipe it out. Capital gains was another serious problem, as it has been in the past; I believe that Paul Keating wanted to move on CGT and that helped him lose his last election. Negative gearing.... seriously, people must not understand just how much it distorts the market and plays in to the hands of the already super rich; again fair limits would have been better than the huge changes that were planned. Lies.... well, it didn't take much convincing of the public to believe the lies that Labor was all about tax and more tax. That was way, way overstated and the public just didn't understand this fact. To think that so much could be changed so dramatically was a huge error in arrogance by Labor. At least that is the proof of the results. Obviously not enough people really care about the environment either, when it /might/ just cost them a little money; instead it might cost us the planet. All those rotten laws pushed through the parliament in record time without proper scrutiny, they will cost us dearly for many years to come. 14 laws in about 45 minutes, I think it was, not anywhere near enough time to even read through them? And some very, very bad laws indeed. Of course Labor was expecting to be in power and be able to rectify the problems, so that was and will remain the biggest screw up of Labor as an ineffective opposition. The only positive about this election result is that Abbott, politically is no more, but he'll probably hang around like Howard has and continue to poison Labor. Although he did have a reasonably good exit speech, it was probably the best thing he has ever done as well in public life aside from activities well outside of politics, which are admirable (not his politics, that's for sure). None of the Labor positives seem to matter at all to the people, nor all the chaos, waste and mis-mangement of the federal government of the past 6 years, hence why we are going to have another 3 years of rubbish government at the very least. Howard won his first election by being a very, very small target and it turned out that his government was the most wasteful that we've seen in many years, if not forever -- squandering the benefits of the mining boom.

On Sun, May 19, 2019 7:28 am, Andrew McGlashan via luv-talk wrote:
Lies.... well, it didn't take much convincing of the public to believe the lies that Labor was all about tax and more tax. That was way, way overstated and the public just didn't understand this fact.
One of the biggest problems with Australian politics (with the exception of South Australia) is that there is no requirement to be factual in elections. You would think that something equivalent to advertising standards would apply, if not more so, given the seriousness of the service that a person is making a decision on. But no... I've written my little rant the subject here: http://isocracy.org/content/taxing-truth -- Lev Lafayette, BA (Hons), GradCertTerAdEd (Murdoch), GradCertPM, MBA (Tech Mngmnt) (Chifley) mobile: 0432 255 208 RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt

Lev Lafayette via luv-talk <luv-talk@luv.asn.au> writes:
I also wish that there were less political compaigns based on attacking the other party. Especially personal attacks. It is easy to attack the other party. Anybody can do it. Doesn't mean you don't suffer the same flaws though. In fact you may not even have any policies at all. "If party XYZ gets the majority, you could end up with a prime minister with two legs, two arms and one head. This is absolutely disgraceful. We can't let this happen. Vote for ZYX instead! Only ZYX will protect you." Far better, and much more helpful, to say what you are going to do to fix the problems. In the case of the winning party however I have heard that they don't have any real polices except for tax reductions. -- Brian May <brian@linuxpenguins.xyz> https://linuxpenguins.xyz/brian/

As the Amreican cartoonist Johnny Hart once described it in the BC comic strip's "Wiley's Dictionary": "Politics A many handed game in which mud balls are trumps." I can't say I've seen any political campaign that has given me cause to disagree. (Sorry, I know I read it back in the late 60's / early 70's, but even uncle Google can't seem to find it.) Regards, Morrie. -----Original Message----- From: luv-talk [mailto:luv-talk-bounces@luv.asn.au] On Behalf Of Brian May via luv-talk Sent: Tuesday, 21 May 2019 6:33 PM To: luv-talk Subject: Re: [luv-talk] Federal AU election 2019 Lev Lafayette via luv-talk <luv-talk@luv.asn.au> writes:
I also wish that there were less political compaigns based on attacking the other party. Especially personal attacks. It is easy to attack the other party. Anybody can do it. Doesn't mean you don't suffer the same flaws though. In fact you may not even have any policies at all. "If party XYZ gets the majority, you could end up with a prime minister with two legs, two arms and one head. This is absolutely disgraceful. We can't let this happen. Vote for ZYX instead! Only ZYX will protect you." Far better, and much more helpful, to say what you are going to do to fix the problems. In the case of the winning party however I have heard that they don't have any real polices except for tax reductions. -- Brian May <brian@linuxpenguins.xyz> https://linuxpenguins.xyz/brian/ _______________________________________________ luv-talk mailing list luv-talk@luv.asn.au https://lists.luv.asn.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luv-talk

Quoting Morrie Wyatt (morrie@morrie.id.au):
As the Amreican cartoonist Johnny Hart once described it in the BC comic strip's "Wiley's Dictionary":
"Politics
A many handed game in which mud balls are trumps."
I can't say I've seen any political campaign that has given me cause to disagree.
(Sorry, I know I read it back in the late 60's / early 70's, but even uncle Google can't seem to find it.)
Hart was very prolific and had an incredibly long career, in which he literally started his most famous strip in the year of my birth. I've found examples of Wiley's Dictionary such as https://fishducky.blogspot.com/2017/10/wileys-dictionary.html that make clear that it wasn't _exactly_ one of his strips, but rather a recurring gag scenario in his much-beloved strip 'B.C.' (Which is doubtless what you meant, but I'm jetlagged, so bear with me.) It wasn't difficult to see between the lines that Johnny Hart was both politically conservative and deeply religious, but he was never a jerk about it, or preachy[1], let alone what you in Oz would call a wowzer, so we effete Ivy League liberal secular Americans enjoyed the hell out of his work, too -- especially 'Wizard of Id' and 'B.C.' He was a national treasure, and I miss him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Hart [1] According to the L.A. Times obituary, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-apr-09-me-hart9-story.html, he made up for lost time in occasional wack-a-doodle religious stemwinder 'message' strips starting in the 1980s when he had a sudden personal religious experience. For whatever reason, I seem to have never run across those, so I'm glad to remember Hart as an amiable and funny codger, rather than as your embarrassing uncle who mortifies everyone at family dinners. (Or maybe I just ignored those. Apparently they were limited to special 'message' strips at Easter and Christmas.)

Hello Andrew, and others, A win for lies and deception, but a few bright spots. Helen Haines is elected in Indi as the successor to Cathy McGowan, and Tony Abbot is no longer the member for Warringah. We need real tax reform. I would suggest a universal basic income of $10K or $20K, the actual amount needs debate and consideration, then the same amount at a zero tax, then each bracket the same again. each bracket increases by 1%, or 0.1% again open to a measure of discussion, but with no ceiling on the tax rate, and no deductions. If someone is earning $30 million and paying 300% marginal rate and is screaming, I want to hear it, that is how I know it will be fair. It is the bottom end of society who carry the economy, they have to spend what they have merely to survive. When there is inflation, it is the devaluation of our currency, and it slices the "pie" finer. When the bottom end income, wages, newstart, pension and the like are not indexed, it amounts to a pay cut, while salaried senior executives have had their renumeration increase well above the inflation rate. The next election campaign should start now, with a discussion of what is honest and needed, and tearing apart the liars and such. The other serious issue is climate change. There has been a lot said about the costs of cutting emissions. Understanding the implications, it will cost a lot more to not do anything, business as usual. I would also point out that it is illegal for a business or individual to run a "Ponzi" scheme, a pyramid scheme, but that is exactly the Government agenda, moreso on the Coalition side, but also on the Labor side. Ongoing compound growth in a finite world will hit the limits, and it is necessary to ease off well before seeing the limits. Unfortunately it is legislated that they cannot be sued for "failure of duty of care", at least at this time. Saying it is endemic and we cannot fix it will lead to worse. As individuals, we cannot have much effect, but by getting together, change can be effected, the journey of 10,000 miles begins with the first step. Regards, Mark Trickett
participants (6)
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Andrew McGlashan
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Brian May
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Lev Lafayette
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Mark Trickett
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Morrie Wyatt
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Rick Moen