Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.
Since it’s notionally the Queen’s Birthday today, I’d be interest in thoughts about the prospects for, and politics of, an Australian republic.
John Quiggin 
I can’t recall all the sources, I was looking for the correct law to use to get the Crown to do its proper duty and tell the two Houses of Parliament they have to act on climate change for the sake of future generations. This took me some time but I found it was the public trust doctrine , there was an article published last year on public trust doctrine in English law which we inherit and climate change.
The public trust doctrine has been an element of Western jurisprudence since Roman times and is in English common law – in the conscience part of common law – and in the Magna Carta. There was a washer woman in the Middle Ages who petitioned the King about the state of the river and this recalled the King to his duty of ensuring public goods (res publica) like air and water and the shore are kept in good condition.
But here is a reference I just found:
“Simpson notes that, if one were to ask a late-15th century lawyer for the title of a book about ‘what went on before the Court of Chancery, he would without doubt have said “Conscience” not “Equity”. Thus one petition from the period asks the Chancellor to ‘summon the defendants to come before you in the King’s Chancery which is the Court of Conscience, there to answer thereto as reason and conscience demand…’ And the petitioners’ replication to the defendants answer in a case from 1456 claims to be ‘sufficiente unto the law of consciens which is law executory in this courte for defaute of remedy by cours of the common law'”.
Source: Conscience, Equity and the Court of Chancery in Early Modern England
By Mr Dennis R Klinck, chapter 2
@Tim Macknay
10 out of 10 🙂
Politically, they should be taking a stand on these bills, and getting some mileage out of smacking the government, the same way that Tony Abbott did as an opposition leader. The ALP need to be firmly against it, and to sound firm in their answers to interviewers’ questions. If they could master that, they’d have better control of the politics as it plays out in the media. Instead, it falls to the odd journalist or third party to say plainly what the ALP members should have been saying.
Shortly after Joe Hockey’s condescending and patronising remarks on how to get your first home, Penny Wong was talking about how Hockey’s comments show he is out of touch, blah-de-blah-blah. It lacks passion, it lacks the ire, and it doesn’t mean anything to say “out of touch”, because we’ve heard this lazy cliche so many times it has lost any punch it had (if it ever had it). How about something a bit more visceral and blunt, but still polite, as Richard de Natale managed in another interview? He nailed Hockey and Hockey’s comments for what they are.
@Donald Oats
The ALP/LNP duopoly are part of an international policy cartel.
The ACCC website has a tab “What is a cartel?”:
With the necessary changes (i.e. “products” = “policies”, “customers” = “citizens” etc..), this pretty accurately describes what they are both up to.
@J-D
I wonder whether you even read the article by McCoy which you declared should be ignored.
You say:
Most, if not all, of the wars outside the ‘Pivot Area’ seem to be directly linked to back to it.
For example, McCoy specifically places the US Vietnam war (3 million slaughtered by the US) in that context.
Everyone knows the Vietnam war was an illegal war of aggression, bogus and based on lies. The excuses based on ‘good intentions’, ‘blunders’, and most laughably ‘domino effect’ never made any sense (unless one accepts that the US is some kind of giant baby). But it overlays very neatly with the concepts Mackinder laid out in 1904 – in fact it looks like the US empire has used them as its template.
Megan,
“and most laughably ‘domino effect’ never made any sense”
Not only that but the CIA assisted massacre of up to a million communists in Indonesia in 1965-1966 was recognized at a Senate Hearing and in the New York Times as nullifying the domino threat
“Errol Morris: Would you call this a forgotten history?
Joshua Oppenheimer: In the United States, yes. To the extent that it was reported at all—it was reported as good news. A victory over communism. It was a pivotal moment for the “domino theory” containment of communism in Southeast Asia.
Morris: Communism had been contained. The dominos have been swept off the map. At least in Indonesia.
…
I won an Oscar for my film The Fog of War, a profile of McNamara, who was secretary of defense during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, from Jan. 21, 1961 through Feb. 29, 1968.* The Johnson presidency included the period of the Indonesian killings and the escalation of the Vietnam War. Simpson referred in a footnote to McNamara’s memoir, In Retrospect, a book I thought I knew well. McNamara writes:
“George F. Kennan, whose containment strategy was a significant factor in our commitment to South Vietnam’s defense, argued at a Senate hearing on February 10, 1966, that the Chinese had ‘suffered an enormous reverse in Indonesia … one of great significance, and one that does rather confine any realistic hopes they may have for the expansion of their authority.’ This event had greatly reduced America’s stakes in Vietnam. He asserted that fewer dominoes now existed, and they seemed much less likely to fall.”
He concludes, “Kennan’s point failed to catch our attention and thus influence our actions.”
I was shocked. It was a passage that undoubtedly I had read but passed over. But the message was clear. Kennan was saying that the Vietnam War was unnecessary—the invasion of the South and the bombing of the North; the deaths of 58,000 American servicemen and more than 1 million Vietnamese were unnecessary. Not to mention the “collateral damage” to Cambodia and Laos.
Unnecessary.
Had Kennan’s testimony been reported? Yes, on Page 1 of the New York Times, Feb. 11, 1966, top of the fold, right-hand column—the lead story. And although the Times was equivocal, it was clear that Kennan had serious doubts. “Kennan Bid U.S. Dig In.” “Kennan Asserts Reds Will Have to Negotiate if They Learn They Can’t Win.” Followed by “Opposes Widening War.””
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/history/2013/07/the_act_of_killing_essay_how_indonesia_s_mass_killings_could_have_slowed.2.html
@ZM
Ah. So you’re referring to various usages which incorporated the word “conscience” dating from the early days of the Court of Chancery (as opposed to the specific expression “conscience law”). These days it’s called equity, so my original point still stands. 😉
But seriously though, why not avoid torturous expressions like “the conscience part of the common law”, and just use the more straightforward expression, which in this case would be equity? It’s much clearer that way.
@Donald Oats
‘The LNP have this in their DNA, but what’s the ALP’s excuse?’
What’s the LNP’s excuse? do you consider that ‘they have it in their DNA’ constitutes an excuse? how?
@Megan
Wikipedia offers conveniently presented tabulations of wars by date. Many of those wars (including many in the last hundred years) took place in Mackinder’s ‘Pivot Area’ (naturally enough); but (equally naturally) many of them took place outside it. You can go through the list for yourself and confirm this; if you would like me to offer you my own selection of examples of wars in the last hundred years outside the ‘Pivot Area’, please let me know.
@J-D
I don’t think the Mackinder Pivot Area theory holds up in any way. Presumably, the Soviet Union would have been an unstoppable juggernaut if it were true. It fails to explain, at various times, the rise of Britain, the rise of Germany, the rise of Japan, the rise of the USA and now the rise of China.
Mere surface physical geography on its own is not geo-strategically determining. For a start, it leaves out the distribution of real resources on and under the land and in the seas too. The rise of the USA is clearly linked to its huge endowment of real resources though that is not the only factor of course.
The rise of China is complex and too involved to go into here. Its sheer population base is one of its resources if it can sustain that population. An alternative theory might suggest that the pivot area is where the biggest populations are. But again this would ignore remaining real resources and sustainability issues.
Ain’t broke??? Well if you call up shit creek in a barbed wire canoe without a paddle – ain’t broke, s’pose you’re right! The jalopy we’re riding in is stuffed, corrupt to the core rendering society irrelevant and allowing the elites chuff away on their big fat cigars as they do as they please. However, I do agree, that by becoming a republic won’t fix the problem. We, collectively, must change. That is say we must seize the day, until there is a revolution and our current outlook changes, I’m afraid it’s a matter of more of the same.
I’m currently reading Sheila Newman’s second book on demography, territory and law: Land-Tenure & the Origins of capitalism in Britain. This astounding series relates an alternative view of bio-systems and (over) population.
The interesting point I wish to make is (it seems to me) that we’re currently in the similar predicament to when the British had felled almost all of the trees in Britain and then felled most of the trees in Ireland to satisfy their hunger for wood. In the process the monarchy and the landed gentry made rules to suit themselves and made tens of thousands of peasants and Irish landless. The price of wood went through the roof making the above peasants and Irish life an absolute misery. The monarchy and landed gentry didn’t give a damn!!
Today the Yanks are running around the world desatabilising all and sundry in the quest for the black stuff. The same as the Poms did with wood 400 years ago, the Americans believe that it is their god given right to have access to oil and coal world wide. The similarities are remarkable, only this time it’s on a global scale and not just confined to a couple of islands.
That the Americans usurped the British Empire is well known. A superior economy paved the way from a colonial state to a world super power. This transition was helped, of course, by 2 world wars which left Britain all but destitute. That transition was relatively smooth, the next transition may not be quite so smooth with future of the world hanging in the balance. Interesting times we live in.
Tim Macknay,
“But seriously though, why not avoid torturous expressions like “the conscience part of the common law”, and just use the more straightforward expression, which in this case would be equity? It’s much clearer that way.”
I just write from how I think of what I want to say. Conscience has a different meaning than equity and as I am not a lawyer but just looked for the appropriate law for getting the Crown to tell the government to act on climate change.
So I looked for law obliging the Crown to act morally no matter the King’s or Queen’s wants, and even if subjects/citizens keep voting for governments with immoral policies. So then like in A Man For All Seasons I found the Crown has to be moral because in the constitutional structure of parliament the next most high office after the Crown is the Lord High Chancellor, Keeper of the King or Queen’s Conscience.
So then I complained to Her Excellency Quentin Bryce when she was was Governor General that after the Australia Act we never got our own Lord High Chancellor, Keeper of the King’s or Queen’s Conscience here in the senate; before the Australia Act Australians had recourse to the English Privy Council and the Lord High Chancellor there. But just as the Australia Act was improper – not only for not giving us our own Lord High Chancellor but also for sneakily changing the constitution without a general referendum – the staff of the Governor General were improper and refused to draw Quentin Bryce’s attention to my complaint about our lack of a Lord High Chancellor to ensure all the laws given royal assent are of good conscience, even though when I complained to the Queen about Julia Gillard improperly replacing Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister not through a vote in parliament but by Bill Shorten doing the numbers on his mobile in a restaurant, the Queen said she was a constitutional monarch and so would forward my 28 odd page letter to the Governor General to read, so Quentin Bryce would already have been acquainted with my concerns that parliament was acting as a loose cannon as the Queen had instructed her to read my 28 page letter.
So you can see this is why I always emphasis the conscience aspect over the equity aspect.
I suppose I could utilise the equity aspect also in an argument about inter-generational equity and the Crown’s fiduciary obligations to ensure that laws provide for future as well as present day Australians, or as the old laws write it, the heirs of our Commonwealth.
@ZM
Ah, I see.
I’d like to give you some friendly advice: Don’t invest too much more of yourself in this project. Quixotic bush-lawyer crusades are not healthy for people. It can take over your life, and not in a good way. I’ve seen many examples of it over the years. It usually starts with a real grievance of some kind, but not necessarily a legal one. But then it starts to go wrong when the person involved, who is not a lawyer, becomes convinced that they have some killer legal principle or argument that everyone else (including all the lawyers) is wrong about. When the arguments are politely rejected, the person can become angry and frustrated, and dig their heels in. People can become obsessed. They can become bitter. Further rejections of their petitions and arguments can cause them to become paranoid. They may end up as vexatious litigants. It can destroy their relationships. People can even go mad. I have seen this.
So my advice is: Let it go. By all means advocate for decent climate change policy, but find an effective way to do it. Talk to some real lawyers about building legal arguments that are likely to work. Do some political campaigning. But believe me, the bush-lawyer crusade is a road to hell.
@Ikonoclast
I put a reply on Mackinder over in the sandpit.
“Quixotic bush-lawyer crusades are not healthy for people.”
It is more of an urban planning student endeavor actually, as one of the objectives of planning in Victoria since 1987 is that development be sustainable, it seems to me this objective has not been met 🙂
@ZM
Nobody ever calls their bush-lawyer crusade a bush-lawyer crusade.
Appropriate tribunals have determined that it is in fact “sustainable”. Whether something is or is not sustainable is what’s called a “question of fact” — relates to what actually happens in the real world, not the legal consequences of some specific reality — and the answers to questions-of-fact are not appealable.
[mistakes that judges &c make are appealed based not on the fact/”fact” of the mistake but on errors in the process that lead to the mistaken conclusion: bias, improperly excluded or included evidence, &c. Sometimes a conclusion is so absurd that it in-and-of-itself provides evidence that there was a procedural error and you don’t need to say exactly what that procedural error was, but that’s subtly different and doesn’t apply here.]
Your problem is essentially not one you can solve through legal processes. Fortunately! there are processes other than court processes we can use to affect administrative decisions: I urge you to investigate them.
Here’s a useful review article on how Hayek doesn’t think that liberalism needs democracy and generally how, if a choice is to be made, then authoritarian liberalism is preferable to democracy. Pretty much where we are at the moment.
and here is a wonderful article on that latest twin study and the concept of heritability.
https://scientiasalon.wordpress.com/2015/06/01/heritability-a-handy-guide-to-what-it-means-what-it-doesnt-mean-and-that-giant-meta-analysis-of-twin-studies/
I just outlined to you my search through the materials. I have read about planning law for a required subject but I hadn’t learned about other law so I just had to try to find what I was looking for as I outlined to you.
But last year I found the proper law.
Here is a Cambridge University Press book by an Oregone legal scholar about it
http://www.cambridge.org/au/academic/subjects/law/environmental-law/natures-trust-environmental-law-new-ecological-age?format=HB
Here is the American group trying to get standing for atmospheric trust legislation
http://www.ourchildrenstrust.org
They are trying to expand and have international chapters
Collin Street I have never heard of the Supreme Court ruling that planning in Victoria has been sustainable from 1987 to now. What case are you thinking of?
Tim Macknay I have a comment in moderation due to too many links with a book by a U.S. environmental law scholar about the law and climate change and also a website of an organization trying to use the law for atmospheric trust litigation – they have lawyers working for them
The first paper about the law and climate change in the UK legal system we inherit came out last year as I said
@ZM
I’m guessing the book is By Mary Christina Wood. I strongly sympathise with her frustration at the failures of the existing environmental law apparatus to adequately protect the environment, although I think her diagnosis is flawed – the problem is political, rather than legal, in my view (agency capture is a real problem, but I don’t think it can be remedied, or at least not much, by litigation). Her concept of expanding the public trust doctrine is certainly an interesting one, although it hasn’t met with much success to date.
@J-D
I just mean that it is compatible with the prevailing LNP neo-conservative philosophy of life, which is an authoritarian approach to monitor and control the plebs, but a free market approach when it is in their specific interests.
The ALP, on the other hand, once had a very worker-oriented view of the world, trade unions and all that, which isn’t so aligned with authoritarianism when it comes to citizens, but did expect regulation of business to prevent bad behaviour. The ALP emphasis used to be considerably different to the Liberal party, or the LNP coalitions that typically form government.
You are right to say it isn’t an excuse.
I think the public trust doctrine aspect is useful along with other things, like divestment, John Hewson’s fiduciary obligations ngo, demonstrations, and town hall meetings like former sustainability commissioner Kate Auty organized in her shire. I agree the public trust doctrine should not be seen as able to get governments to act by itself, and even in legal cases would be better used in its interaction with statutory laws and native title.
buckminster fuller’s dymaxion map (q.v. wikipedia) can be presented so as to reveal a world comprised of “an almost contiguous land mass comprising all of Earth’s continents – not groups of continents divided by oceans.”
alternatively, it can be presented so as to reveal a “world dominated by connected oceans surrounded by land”.
so the world is apparently simultaneously one large land mass and one large ocean
the most famous contemporaneous counterfoil to mackinder is of course a. t. mahon. -a.v.
@alfred venison
Wouldn’t they (i.e. land and sea) be two sides of the same coin in a sense?
I’m no expert, but if Mahan was a big fan of control of the seaways surely the point of that is to have some power or control over what happens on land somewhere?
And I took Mackinder’s broad point to be that a “solid” piece of land with lots of resources etc.. could be a self-contained ‘fortress’.
I could see how they could end up in a perpetual standoff theoretically. Sort of unstoppable force meets immoveable object.
Just in case anyone hasn’t heard about it yet:
Wikileaks has a new TPP release
The ALP/LNP duopoly is on the verge of giving away your right to universal health care.
We can stop this from happening if partisans will become non-partisans.
Joe Hockey is Australia’s Marie-Antoinette on Housing and Employment
Joe Hockey reminds me of Marie-Antoinette, a foreign princess who didn’t want to try to understand the problems of the people and her husband. People look back and say, “How could she be so silly? Couldn’t she see that the people were angry and desperate?” But, you know, she had other priorities.
He declared that “If you’ve got a good job and it pays good money and you have security in relation to that job, then you can go to the bank and you can borrow money and that’s readily affordable”. The fact that wages are not keeping up with house prices is being ignored by this buffoon, and shows just how callous and out of touch our arrogant politicians really are!
…
@alfred venison
— as it was in the Late Paleozoic – Early Mesozoic in the days of Pangea.
The thing about being in error is that you will believe things that will make perfect sense to you, that seem inescapable, and they will not be true.
WRT Joe Hockey:
+ he thinks about what he says very carefully
+ he’s not actually very smart at all.
So as opposed to the rest of them that just say the same old stupid things over and over, Joe comes up with new and different stupid things. It makes him look like he’s stupider than the rest of them, but he’s not: they’re all pretty thick, it’s just that Hockey makes better use of the brains he does have.
@ZM
Exploring the website of that American group, I found they’d posted the following court judgement:
Click to access 15.05.11.OregonCircuitCtOpinion.pdf
In that case the court decided that the common law public trust doctrine does not create a general responsibility to look after natural resources, but only a specific requirement that the government not permanently give them away or sell them off; it also decided that the doctrine does not apply to natural resources in general but only to ‘submerged and submersible lands’ under ‘navigable waters’ (in other words, things like lakebeds and riverbeds).
Good article in today’s Age from Waleed Aly about negative gearing and the subtle rumblings of the political techtonic plates that could be happening beneath us.
http://www.theage.com.au/comment/house-prices-is-the-ground-beginning-to-shift-at-last-20150611-ghla0f
Collin Street,
“The thing about being in error is that you will believe things that will make perfect sense to you, that seem inescapable, and they will not be true.”
What am in in error about?
I definitely have not heard of a ruling in the Supreme Court that development in Victoria has been sustainable since 1987.
It is generally accepted that development has not been sustainable. I asked a guess lecturer designer last year and he said he thought development was not sustainable and could not be sustainable. But at uni there are designers who specialise in more sustainable designing, so hopefully he was wrong.
We’re you thinking about a particular case?
Could the ‘sustainable’ referred to be the capacity to keep on growing at the previous rate, rather than referring to being ecologically/environmentally sustainable?
No it does not refer to economic sustainability, and that the term sustainable relates to the environment was recognized by the government previously since they released a discussion paper on sustainable development around 2003 which is at the uni library and I used for an assignment once.
Images, journalism and presentation on our new lowest act (paying crew to take refugees on Australian provided fake fishing boats away – ultimately they were shipwrecked, so much for our political duopoly’s crocodile tears). Our corrupt establishment media have been desperately trying to downplay this news for a week but are slowly being shamed into action.
Look at these people’s faces, women and kids. Look at the way the Indonesians treat them. We are monsters, and the world is paying attention.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150613/world/australia-paid-boats-to-turn-back-indonesia.572306
Peter Dutton had the hide to show up at a “Refugee Welcome” event in Brisbane today.
A man threw shoes at him in protest against our inhumane treatment and demonizing of refugees.
Although the story was reported online, I watched channel 7 news and the temple of lies (ABC TV news) and it wasn’t mentioned.
Corrupt ALP/LNP duopoly and establishment media still trying to bury the refugees.
@Megan
Yes, it is starting to look very bad. Abbott and Co. are insanely inept and dangerous. I am getting genuinely afraid of their rank madness and where it could lead us. They have to be tossed out next election or we are in all sorts of very serious trouble politically, economically and diplomatically. Our freedoms will be gone and our standing (and safety) in the world seriously jeopardised.
@Ikonoclast
And if “we” just elect the equally insanely inept and dangerous ALP simply because they are the non-LNP we are certainly doomed.
The ALP has backed all the worst of this lot’s removals of our few freedoms. They are WORSE than the LNP simply because they are better liars.
In a weird sense we would be better off sticking with Abbott’s insane clown posse because to vote in the ALP by default would be to prolong denial.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m never voting LNP.
But, on the other hand, if I had the last vote in the election and it was down to my vote to give Australia an ALP government – I wouldn’t do it. No way. These scum have put all of these refugees in misery AND allowed Abbott’s mob to get away with the previously unthinkable.
If my “non-ALP” vote meant Australia had another LNP term that would be the ALP’s fault (and all their idiotic supporters), not mine.
PS: When the shoe thrower made his political protest against Peter Dutton, our Queensland acting premier Jackie Trad was standing right next to Dutton and was quick to defend and praise him.
ALP scum.
There are mechanisms for dealing with people with mental-health or cognitive problems that make them present a danger to others.
@Collin Street
Well, I was guilty of some rhetorical exaggeration. Abbot & Co. are not certifiably clinically insane but they are certainly politically crazy and a clear and present danger to Australia’s freedoms, good governance, economy and national security.
The more they follow these terrible policies, the more freedoms, checks and balances we lose domestically, the more the rule of law is put at risk, the more our economy nose-dives and the more they make enemies of Australia abroad.
Megan is right that the ALP are also just as bad now or nearly as bad now: people will differ on the final nuance.
The deeper question we have to ask is why has Western politics become so reactionary in the last couple of decades. Why are we proceeding down the path to fascism? I see this development as strongly linked to late stage corporate-oligarchic capitalism.
“But, on the other hand, if I had the last vote in the election and it was down to my vote to give Australia an ALP government – I wouldn’t do it. No way. These scum have put all of these refugees in misery AND allowed Abbott’s mob to get away with the previously unthinkable.”
The local branch of Rural Australians for Refugees group met with our Federal MP, and she let us know if you are a member of a group that is not a political party you are able to make submissions to the ALP about its national platform if you identify as a stakeholder in the ALP. So we made a submission with regards to policy on refugees and asylum seekers.
This process is a good opportunity to suggest policy about the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers, or other policy issues. If you are not in a group and want to make a submission you would need to be an ALP member. I am not sure if the LNP have a similar process for stakeholders to make submissions about policy.
> Abbot & Co. are not certifiably clinically insane
I think it’s fairly clear that Chris Pyne at least has genuine medical problems, which casts a clock-striking-thirteen shadow on the rest of them in that they think Chris Pyne is fit for the big time.
@Collin Street
I meant to the best of my admittedly non-medical perspective and knowledge. I could be wrong you know.
@Collin Street
@Ikonoclast
Questioning their sanity assumes that they are human beings in the normal sense of the word. We could be wrong about that – have you ever heard of the theories of David Icke? 😉
I have no medical perspective, but Chris Pyne acts exactly like a number of people I’ve known with mild — mild by medical standards — cognitive problems.
@Megan
I am intrigued by the statement ‘The ALP … are WORSE than the LNP simply because they are better liars.’
What lies behind that proposition? Is there any way of testing its validity?
My starting point would be to consider what it would mean to be a ‘better’ liar. Generally speaking, the purpose of telling lies is to deceive people, and so the most effective liars are those who are best at deceiving people. Is that what’s meant by saying that Labor is better at lying than the Coalition, that they deceive people more than the Coalition? But is that true? Is there any way we could measure that.
Perhaps we could look at how many people vote for Laborand how many for the Coalition. One problem with that would be deciding whether we were going to look only at the most recent election, or at the last ten years, or at the last fifty, or what? And then, would we look only at primary votes, or at preferences as well? Still, I feel reasonably confident that any reasonable measure of that kind would show either that roughly as many people vote for one as for the other or else that somewhat larger numbers vote for the Coalition. So if we used that measure it wouldn’t support Megan’s proposition.
However, there’s another problem with measuring that way. Even if more people vote for the Coalition than vote for Labor, that doesn’t prove they’ve been deceived. Maybe people who vote for the Coalition know exactly what they’re getting. Maybe by voting for the Coalition they’re getting what they want, or at least what they expect, and are not being deceived.
But then exactly the same things might be true of of people who vote Labor. Maybe they know what they’re doing and haven’t been deceived. Maybe what Labor delivers is what Labor voters want, or at least what they expect.
My hunch is that on both sides there are some people who vote the way they do on the basis of realistic expectations and some who have been taken in. But are the proportions the same on each side, or different? How could we tell?
Now, suppose you were a person who thought you knew what to expect from the Coalition, didn’t like it, and so never voted for them. But suppose at one time you had voted Labor, but now found that Labor had not lived up to your expectations (or at least so it seemed to you). You might feel that you had been deceived by Labor when you had never been deceived by the Coalition. On that basis you might decide that Labor is in general more effective at deceiving people than the Coalition is. But that would be faulty reasoning.
@J-D
To broadly generalise:
The LNP is openly fascist and gets votes.
The ALP is fascist, but pretends it isn’t, and gets votes.
The ALP gets more of its votes through misrepresentation and deception than the LNP does.