A new sandpit for long side discussions, idees fixes and so on. Unless directly responding to the OP, all discussions of nuclear power, MMT and conspiracy theories should be directed to sandpits (or, if none is open, message boards).
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John Quiggin 
For conservatives free markets are wonderful things until they are not.
In 2010 Wilmar, a Singapore based multinational agribusiness purchased about half the Queensland sugar milling capacity when it purchased Sucrogen, the sugar milling spin off from CSR.
At the time sugar marketing was managed by a single desk marketing authority named Queensland Sugar Limited (QSL). QSL started as the Sugar Board in 1923, became a statutory authority in 1991, and finally lost its exclusive single desk mandate in 2006. This text-book corporatisation and deregulatory transition was of itself seen as non-controversial and even beneficial to industry players. Come 2010 all the Queensland sugar millers were still marketing through QSL, or at least using QSL pricing as benchmarks for sugar payments to growers.
In 2014 Wilmar announced that it was no longer going to use the QSL benchmarking pricing regime from 2016, instead moving to independently market its sugar through its Singapore head office. As soon as the announcement was made (and there were some contractual issues with the move) the growers realised that the game had changed.
Just as a multinationals can transfer price for taxation reasons, Wilmar has exercised its right (and requirement, considering what they paid for Sucrogen) to establish a transfer pricing scheme for sugar. In simple terms, the price paid to the Australian millers is reduced, making them barely profitable (income tax 101) and as a bonus cuts grower income, as grower income is a share of the final price achieved by the miller, while the head office is free to pursue premium marketing and revenue opportunities.
Cue December 2014, and we see Barnaby Joyce establish a Sugar Marketing Code of Conduct Taskforce chaired by extreme right wing warrior George Christensen with the sole purpose of winding back deregulation. And by June 2015 we have Julie Bishop complaining to the Queensland government about private member bills sponsored by the LNP and Katter party aimed at winding back the free market operation of the industry.
Now, one has a certain sense of schadenfreude over these shenanigans, but what is most surprising is that no-one in the MSM is calling them on this blatant repudiation of their core ideology. Don’t they believe their own blather? Don’t they know that everyone will be better off with free markets, even when their core constituency is being sold down the transfer pricing river? What are they, economic pussies?
As for the farmers, well, they’ve gone along with the storybook for the last thirty odd years, so good luck to them. Just try telling them not to vote LNP.
Because it involves farmers. Neither the media nor the neoliberal bits of the Liberal Party can scrutinise or criticise them without being charged with unAustralianism.
Quoting from JD on “score one for the planet”:
(discussing best comparisons or equivalents between Canadian and Australian political parties based on current policy positions)
I’d be interested in seeing (links?) something to support the idea that they are the closest match between the two countries.
@James
Spot on.
Howard sold out the cane farmers with the US FTA and they couldn’t do a thing about it politically because the “alternative” (ALP) was as bad or – quite probably – worse.
George Christensen is a pig. But the ALP offers absolutely zero to those constituents by way of an alternative, so why on earth should they vote any other way? I was in Nambour on the day the mill closed and was back there a year or so later and saw the devastation the closure had caused to that town. The biggest new ‘commercial’ retail businesses in town were the Salvos, Endeavour and Lifeline Op-Shops.
All over our country we can see small examples on the ground of having a neo-liberal fascist duopoly political system.
@James
The Nationals have never believed in Free Trade domestically, that is, making farmers compete against each other or as individuals vs the world market. They are usually dragged into it by the liberals in exchange for tradeoffs in other areas and/or payoffs in foreign trade. The Nationals’ insistence that the TPP open US markets to Australian sugar (or, the unstated threat is, they will rile up the conservative economic nationalist vote against it) is a good example of this.
@Nevil Kingston-Brown
Bottom line is that there are cases where sub-national (regional) processing and marketing co-operatives work better than a free market. I mean better for farm producers and for consumers. Equally, there are cases where single desk selling works better than free markets.
So-called free markets under neoliberalism are not free markets in any real sense in any case. They are markets rigged in specific ways to suit transnational monopolies and to disadvantage and rigidly control everyone else from suppliers to consumers.
Footnote to my above post.
There are all sorts of legal and illegal rigging which go on with respect to the stock market and the finance system under capitalism. The notion that a free and fair market exists could only be based on the most extraordinary naivety or willful blindness.
I am sure we haven’t forgotten the US Savings and Loans scandal, the derivatives scandal, the LIBOR rigging scandal, world gold market rigging and so on.
Then there is the rigging which is legal (and necessary in some ways while capitalism remains the system of choice) like Q.E., saving the too-big-to-fail banking institutions and so on.
All of this is technically “rigging the market” because pure capitalism actually does not work.
https://www.popularresistance.org/stock-market-rigging-is-no-longer-a-conspiracy-theory/
Thanks, James- that was a gem. That sort of comment is why this site remains a very valuable stop over for lay people in terms of econonomics comprehension.
This is a reply to Julie Thomas re the Leonard Cohen song “Jazz Police”
I think people try to read too much into some songs which are really not that serious. They are more playful or throwaway songs. I would put “Jazz Police” in that category.
The story that I read was that Cohen was using a backing, rehearsal or session band at one time and this band had a fusion background (I think). They would start sneaking in jazz riffs and chords into some songs and Cohen himself would “police” this. If he caught them out the offending notes were removed next rehearsal, if not they got through so to speak. It was a bit of a game. This led Cohen to think a bit more about artistic or aesthetic standards and who “policed” them and whether such policing was ever a kind of suppression. However, the lyrics he wrote are really not that deep; more doggerel and playful than deep. It’s just light-hearted playing around within a song of very minor importance at best. That’s my take anyway.
@Megan
More junk from the ignorant looney left.
And she call’s others “pig”.
None of this is normal civilised discussion or criticism.
Desperate folks with weak ideas often increase the stridency of their language to compensate for their impotence.
@Ikonoclast
Minor Importance??? Nah I don’t think so. I think the fact that it was funk is part of a funny and clever joke.
And so what that it is doggerel? Are you making value judgements and suggesting that doggerel is not a category of things that can be appreciated?
From your explanation of the development of the song, seems to me now that it is a very fine song and the absurdity is indeed a significant statement that is worthy of the time we are devoting to this critique. What does the turtle meat bit mean then and guys like him are mad for turtle meat? You reckon he just made it up and there is no meaning? Surely not? Leonard would not do that.
And I was just wondering about the phrase that alfred venison used, “close enough for jazz” and how inappropriate it seemed to me since all the jazz musos I have met have been quite anal about what is jazz and what is not.
and David Irving, I have a couple of Wynton Marsalis cd’s that you can have if you want them.
@Julie Thomas
Turtle meat may have various connotations. It’s not a sign of great learning or profundity to be aware of a few of these connotations. Although, it might be a sign of learning to be aware of a lot of connotations (which I was not without looking it up).
Turtle soup was (and maybe still is) considered a delicacy.
Age of Innocence (1993),
Dir., Martin Scorsese Turtle Soup at ALL the fine dinner parties, usually the second of 12 to 14 courses. Early in the movie, a crate of small turtles (NOT sea turtles) is shown making its way to a kitchen).
Barry Lyndon – Dir. Stanley Kubrick
“Give the gentleman a bowl of turtle soup” – spoken mockingly of Barry Lyndon enlisted as a regular soldier when he was considered to be giving himself airs.
In Eastern cuisine turtle soup and meat are considered to have certain medicinal properties.
But there may be other connotations for Leonard Cohen as a person of Jewish background. Is turtle meat kosher for example? I don’t know without checking. There could be an ironic intention here.
But all I am saying is that to sort of “free associate” while one is writing lyrics (using rhymes and rhythms to help one free associate) can generate important personal or idiosyncratic meanings. It does not necessarily generate meanings that have any profound relevance for anyone else… though it could… sometimes… I suppose…
@Ikonoclast
Good response to Neville hyphen whatis face.. I can’t beleive the naivety of some people.
@Julie Thomas
I quite like Marsalis (particularly the Clapton project), but I think he wants to preserve jazz in aspic. If you’ve watched that 10 part (or whatever) series that he was involved in, jazz appears to have stopped at about early Miles Davis. From memory, I don’t think Ornette Coleman etc got much of a look in.
“It does not necessarily generate meanings that have any profound relevance for anyone else… though it could… sometimes… I suppose…”
That is the difference between science and Art. Art is significant when it provides us with ‘symbols’ of our culture that are relevant when it taps into the network of values and experiences that order our individuality and because our world is increasingly diverse culturally there is no one way to make art now.
Consider the mock turtle in Alice in Wonderland; poor fellow, he no longer a resonant symbol of the absurd because children do not know all these things about turtle soup?
I didn’t know
@David Irving (no relation)
That “I didn’t know” was supposed to be in this comment, about Marsalis making music with Clapton. I’ll check that out; it has to be better than the Marsalis CD’s I have and I missed the series.
I like all the old standard stuff Dave Brubeck in particular but there is so much really good new stuff available on utube from the Java Jazz festivals – and this Jeff Beck performance at Ronnie Scotts is very good; Clapton is in the audience and gets up to play a couple of tunes toward the end of the show.
Hey two links and it didn’t go into moderation. wtf
@Nevil Kingston-Brown
I am not so sure the Nationals don’t support free trade. ‘Free Trade’, to use an Abottism, is a powerful abbreviated three word slogan and, like many of its longer form examples, it resonates in a way that has the desired political outcome even when the evidence is overwhelmingly contradictory.
As I see it, there are several reasons for its farm gate popularity. Firstly, it makes sense in a simple supply and demand construct, where the promise of ‘freedom of choice’ and to ‘control your destiny’ ring true at a local level. It has also been promulgated assiduously (and I believe disingenuously) by economists who have drunk too deeply from the micro-economics Kool-Aid, both at an academic and an industry level, particularly in public sector and peak industry bodies.
Most farmers are not economists: their interest is in being better farmers. They are not the only segment of society to be sold a pup by the ‘so-called’ experts.
On the issue of single desks, I am no fan. They were often inefficient, bureaucratic and susceptible to political interference. The answer was not deregulation and ‘free trade’, but a clever restructuring of the market to deal with known shortcomings while capturing known advantages. I think it says something of our society that our (presumably) best thinkers in the relevant field were unable to do that. Maybe they weren’t our best thinkers. Maybe we have a real problem here.
didn’t mean to ruffle any feathers. i’ve never thought of it as pejorative. there’s “close enough for jazz” (1969) an album by vibraphonist johnny lytle. there’s “close enough for jazz” (1983) the autobiography of trombonist michael zwerin (played with miles). there’s “close enough for jazz” a track on jan garbarek’s album “sart” (1971). leo kottke said it in a concert i saw when he screwed up & had to restart a song. there’s “close enough for ska” (2000) an album by the band i voted for kodos. but i digress.
i have always been a very big fan of ornette coleman and the art ensemble of chicago, cecil taylor, sun ra & his solar arkestra, billy bang, anthony braxton (he autographed my copy of buckminster fuller’s “synergetics”, and was quite chuffed that i asked: “have a happy planet” he wrote), carla & paul bley, michael mantler, don cherry, roswell rudd, the jazz composer’s orchestra, marion brown, the vienna art orchestra, manfred schoof, the instant composers pool, derek bailey, evan parker, alexander von schlippenbach. just a few of my favorite things, that could be said to be post-miles. hand in hand with my long standing & abiding love of people like stockhausen, xenakis, penderecki, lutoslawski (and whole “polish noise school” as they once were called), berio, nono, maderna, henze (four comms in a row), elliott carter, pauline oliveros. even the endlessly trendy john cage. in terms of jazz in or around a key signature, i prefer trumpeters, for example, like freddie hubbard over wynton marsalis. and i saw that documentary too, quite telling where it stopped, we thought, ms kiewa & i, but ok as far as it went. -a.v.
@Julie Thomas
Yep, it gets more and more arcane.
“Mock turtle soup is an English soup that was created in the mid-18th century as a cheaper imitation of green turtle soup. It often uses brains and organ meats such as calf’s head or a calf’s foot to duplicate the texture and flavour of the original’s turtle meat.”
And this;
“Turtle meat is not considered kosher as reptiles, amphibians, and insects are all forbidden foods when it comes to Jewish dietary laws. This is according to Leviticus 11:29-30, 42-43.” – animalquestions dot org.
James,
“For conservatives free markets are wonderful things until they are not.”
I was reading an article on the history of the public trust doctrine for an assignment on climate change, and I found an interesting quote from the time of the South Sea Bubble.
It reminded me quite a bit of the reaction to the GFC as the authors were saying that the State’s policies had facilitated the South Sea Bubble, which was against their fiduciary trust obligations to the people:
“In the early 1720s, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon published “Cato’s Letters,” a series of essays provoked by government policies leading to the speculative South Sea Bubble.
Relying explicitly on Aristotle’s Nicomedian Ethics, “Cato” wrote that:
‘Power in a free state, is a trust committed by all to one or a few, to watch for the security, and pursue the interest, of all,” and that “Men who have a trust frankly bestowed upon them by the people, too frequently betray that trust, become conspirators against their benefactors, and turn the sword upon those who gave it; insomuch that in the greatest part of the earth, people are happy if they can defend themselves against their defenders.’
…
Like Locke, Trenchard and Gordon argued that breaches of public trust were greater than merely private breaches. From this it followed that the standards imposed on public trustees ought to be high:
“[Government] is therefore a trust, which ought to be bounded with many and strong restraints, because power renders men wanton, insolent to others, and fond of themselves. Every violation therefore of this trust, where such violation is considerable, ought to meet with proportionable punishment; and the smallest violation of it ought to meet with some, because indulgence to the least faults of magistrates may be cruelty to a whole people.””
Source: The Constitution and the Public Trust by Robert G. Natelson
@ZM
I love the language and turn of phrase that they used to employ, especially the last paragraph you quote. Imagine if this current government were held to such standards. Imagine.
Donald Oats,
“Imagine if this current government were held to such standards. Imagine.”
They should be held to these standards as they are the proper standards for the government, the loyal opposition, and the Crown.
Megan excerpted Ricky Muir’s maiden speech and he quite correctly said as a Senator he was bound to act as the Conscience of the parliament, but that doesn’t mean the lower house is allowed to act unconscionably, it is just that as the lower house MPs are meant to represent their electorates they might lose sight of the bigger picture. But to be a Minister of Council you have to make a second oath, so Ministers are held to even higher standards of government.
I wrote to Greg Hunt about how it’s not conscionable to develop coal mines in the Galilee Basin , either for the government to allow it or for the corporations as the Corporations Act forbids unconscionable conduct by corporations.
But Greg Hunt did not give me an adequate reply at all, even though I sent a copy to the Governir General His Excellency Peter Cosgrove, so as to make the representative of the Crown aware of the matter.
But the Governor General’s staff wrote me an inadequate reply too, saying it was a matter to address with the Minister. But I can’t address it with the Minister as the Minister only gave me an inadequate reply. So now I have to write to them again about it, and this time I will send a copy to the Prime Minister too complaining that the Minister for the Environment is not discharging the duties of his high Office at this time when there are mounting environmental problems threatening planetary boundaries, including but not limited to climate change.
@Julie Thomas
The collaboration with Clapton is fairly recent – one of my sons got me the CD and associated DVD for Christmas a few years ago, and I enjoyed it enormously. Marsalis’ band was really hot, and complemented Clapton very well. It, and the Jazz tv series, are well worth watching. (I think NITV is playing the Jazz show currently.)
Thanks for the Jeff Beck – I’ll watch that at home tonight. He’s been a favourite for 45 years or so, ever since he was with the Blueswailing Yardbirds.
Australia is torturing refugees on Nauru (including waterboarding) according to latest reports.
Of course we already know about the child abuse.
I think it is important to remember that these refugees were put there by the ALP and the policies that put them there remain.
@Megan
I find it disappointing that Peter Dutton has dismissed these claims out of hand, rather than seeking an independent investigation to establish what the F is going on. I’m still waiting to hear him apologise to Sarah Hanson-Young for the bellicose put-down of her. Is anyone on Team Abbott capable of being civil when disagreeing with their opposition?
Anyway, given the track record of leaked/whistle-blown reports into what’s going on at these offshore gulags, I’d bet on the leakers rather than the minister for abusing Greens, aka Peter Dutton.
@Donald Oats
Agreed, although I cannot over-emphasise that this barbarity is bipartisan.
Even now, all the Greens care about (judging from their online silence otherwise) is that Cabbage-Head should apologise to Hanson-Young and/or “resign” (as if that will somehow change anything for the tortured and abused refugees and the children being treated in the most unspeakable ways by our government – supported 100% by their fascist duopoly counterparts, the ALP.
We are at the point where supporting the ALP is exactly equivalent to supporting child abuse, torture, rendition and other cruelty to refugees. That is simply a fact.
@alfred venison
good grief! how do you find time to keep up with politics with all that music to distract you?
Mondrian said one day all life will be art.
@Ikonoclast
I think that mock turtle soup could stand for all the hypocrisy and hilarity that is bourgeois aspiration.
and mock cream is disgusting. 😦
@Megan
On top of everything else that is wrong about it, the final thing that annoys me about inhumane treatment of people is that it costs so much more. It is much cheaper to treat people well.
An article by Refugee Action Coalition Sydney (sorry don’t know the date) says;
“Detaining a single asylum seeker on Manus or Nauru costs $400,000 per year. Detention in Australia costs $239,000 per year. By contrast, allowing asylum seekers to live in the community while their claims are processed costs just $12,000 per year, one twentieth of the cost of the offshore camps, and even less if they are allowed the right to work.”
Now, the $12,000 seems a little low to me. Let’s assume it is $20,000 or even $40,000 per person if you treat people well and expedite processing according to UN treaty obligations or better. There is still a massive saving to be had there.
It’s exactly the same set of questions as:
Is it best to buy shoes for $100 to protect your child’s feet? or
Buy torture implements for $1,000 to wreck you child’s feet?
We could spend $40,000 p.a. trying to put a refugee child’s life back together or we can pay $400,000 p.a. to torture and destroy this child. How does the latter make sense at any level?
And then people like Scott Morrison (former immigration Minister) claim they are Christians. What a hideous joke that is. I think they mixed up “suffer the little children to come to me” with “Make the Children Suffer.”
It is much cheaper to treat people well.
Some people are sadists: they gain direct personal value out of generating immiseration.
[“crazy” is a real thing. “This happens because certain people have real medically-manageable problems” is a perfectly reasonable explanation, that can be evaluated and tested on the same basis as anything else.]
@Collin Street
Yes, there are a bunch of motivations that make “leaders” do these things and “followers” acquiesce.
Sadism is one factor certainly not to be discounted. Another is love of power which admittedly is often tied up with sadism but also with selfishness, arrogance, thoughtlessness and so on. Further factors are fear and insecurity and these are often stoked up in followers by leaders.
Then there is rent-seeking. Certain businesses benefit from war, conflict, cruelty, unnecessary criminalisation and so on.
So far as “crazy” goes I have to agree. Much of the LNP cabinet seems to me to be comprised of pathologically disturbed people. This raises a number of questions. Were these people disturbed to begin with or has rising to power disturbed them? Or is it a bit a both? How and why do we (the people) permit and place disturbed people to be in charge of us? If a system promotes disturbed and cruel people, is not the system itself dysfunctional?
Were these people disturbed to begin with
Yes. Many of the people we’re talking about were student politicians, and their attitudes and beliefs in young adulthood are thus fairly well documented.
And then people like Scott Morrison (former immigration Minister) claim they are Christians. What a hideous joke that is. I think they mixed up “suffer the little children to come to me” with “Make the Children Suffer.”
Christianity can be anything really can’t it? I have no idea what it is.
It’s clearly not what Jesus said although one would think that is the only thing it can be since the old testament is so similar to the koran and probably, but I have nfi about this, very similar to whatever text the Jewish religion uses to justify the preferences of their ‘leaders’.
Surely Christians need to repudiate the old testament and do what their Jesus told them to do rather than hypocritically pretend that they are good people, because what? because they believe – believe? – Jesus died for them? I’m with Patti Smyth here – Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine.
But that is the Christian story; that Jesus died to show them what love is and yet they still turn to the cruelty and barbarism of the ‘goat-herders’ of the old testament whenever it suits them. They do choose to be cruel.
But they are not crazy or sadists – well no more than any of ‘us’ are crazy – we all deviate from the mean or the mythical ‘normal’ person, in some way or ways.
I’d say that there are a lot of diagnosable behavioural disorders in parliament but diagnosis is a very dodgy thing to do – more of an Art than a science – and is only useful if the disordered person wants to change.
They might develop some motivation for this – to get some therapy I mean – and to get over or rise above all their disordered thinking about economic growth being better than the rapture even. And what about that? When is the rapture coming? When is Jesus coming back? Two thousand years it has been and no sign of him.
I’m still thinking that there seems to be some sort of new found willingness to investigate reality even among the barbarian neo-liberals. I listened to Amanda Vanstone’s last Counterpoint ep on RN and was surprised by the change in her ‘attitude’ toward scientific facts, although not surprised by her ignorance.
She actually said that she had never listened to any of the debates about climate change because of all the ‘shouting’ so she is having someone on next week to tell her nicely and without all the shouting what is going on. That should be fun.
Julie,
Now you’ve reminded me of this Kat Mandu song and video.
@Megan
Awesome. Shared on facebook 🙂
Love the sheep.
Glad you enjoyed!
Back on the question of “why” our fascist ALP/LNP duopoly and establishment media treat refugees so cruely and inhumanely, Andre Vltchek has a piece (on “CounterPunch” or “informationclearinghouse”) titled “The Refugees Are Coming!!!”.
He gets it:
Our rulers may be sadists, they might possibly have mental issues, but the reason they are treating refugees so badly all over the Empire’s outposts is because they are simply unspeakably evil. This is fascism.
I see there was a large pro-ALP rally in Melbourne dressed up as a “Marriage Equality” rally.
Apparently this is a really big issue.
I have a solution.
1. The LNP says it will vote against it, but according to the “media” several backbenchers would cross the floor to vote for it;
2. The ALP (and all their supporters) seem to think this is a really important thing, but they will allow ALP MPs to have a conscience vote;
3. Bring on some amendment to Section 5 of the “Marriage Act” (i.e. “‘marriage” means the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.’) so that it achieves the desired purpose;
4. Let the parliament vote on it – 76 votes would be required in the house of representatives. The ALP has 55. The LNP has 90. Some cross-benchers will vote for it and some won’t, let the numbers fall where they will. If the move gets the 76 votes then Yippee!! we can all move on, and if not the duopoly can stop pretending that they care about it and can go back to their current positions – both ALP and LNP have effectively pushed it off to the next election or the one after.
Problem solved and we can back to worrying about the torture of children by our duopoly system.
The whole gay marriage thing is a cynical distraction if the obvious solution is “kicked down the road”.
not hard at all, Julie Thomas, politics is everywhere, just scratch a surface & there it is. for ms kiewa & myself music is not a distraction, it is central to life itself. we are on the same page on this, a life worth living, without music, is as unthinkable as it would be unbearable. like ray charles said, “when you get up in the morning, you must have a song”. so we’re well matched there. we don’t listen to radio & we gave up cable 15+ years ago so with little on free to air we have a lot of “free time”. we keep up with current affairs via the net on our own terms at times of our own choosing; sites like this in my case, and the conversation, for example. we don’t watch news bulletins any more, even the abc & sbs. except al jazeera which we record during the day. she reads fiction, i read poetry & history & music. at uni. i studied the history of music & nationalism; careful you don’t start me on the politics of the great composers. cheers, alf.
@Megan
More scat from the rat …
.
All under the protection of one – John Quiggin who pretends to “civilised discussion” ???!!
@Megan
Megan hears a word she hasn’t used – sadism.
So what does it do but immediately add it to its catalogue of abuse, defamation and slander:
Anyway here is its list:
All this trash is supposedly “telling the truth about the ALP”(!????).
fascist clown outfit
ALP … ultra-pro-Zionist
proto-fascist, just turns my stomach
too nauseating to handle
closely resembles something the N@z!s actually did,
ALP/LNP fascist duopoly
their LNP fascist duopoly partners
They are the best asset the LNP has.
the entire ALP/LNP/Greens ‘machines’
The CFMEU are fascists – most likely infiltrated at the top and run by CIA stooges
Fascists.
You people are vile.
I hate the ALP/LNP duopoly entirely.
Greens … just ALP stooges now.
the ALP/LNP fascist duopoly
The ALP is also thuggish and vile
To be clear: The ALP are fascists.
even more fascist than the LNP
neo-liberal/fascist duopoly
Qld Greens are a sad sub-branch of the ALP.
corporatised, crypto-fascist, bully-boy parties
The Democrats …got into bed with the fascist duopoly,
vote LNP at the next election just to give these fascists in the ALP a kick up the bum.
die-hard ALP zombie
ALP could machine-gun refugees
sending refugees to their deaths as official ALP policy
“Labor 4 Refugees” is actually nothing of the sort.
stooges
willing doormats
ruled by a fascist ALP/LNP duopoly.
torturing children allowing their rape
The ALP has 100% abandoned you
the fascist ALP/LNP duopoly … Filthy scum.
our racist/fascist ALP/LNP political duopoly
ALP luvvies
heartless fascists.
terminally corrupt and fascist ALP.
ALP/LNP fascist duopoly are in lockstep
“Labor For Refugees” … It’s like “KKK for racial equality”
Turds.
a bunch of fascists the ALP is….
ALP’s determined plunge into the … cess-pit
all out total mean fascist
Die-Hard ALP Zombies
a stooge outfit
faceless and inhumane fascists
Kevin Rudd…a zombie married to a greedy grasping neo-liberal.
internal fascist neo-con
the fascist neo-con ALP
a gullible bunch of fools.
faceless operators of the ALP.
Heinous
pig
fascist neo-liberal stooges and their puppets
invertebrate pests and parasites
LNP/ALP … no practical difference.
Shorten and the rest of the ALP as crooks
unions are complete sellouts
enrich themselves – as ALP operatives
ALP/union cabal is corrupt and crooked
The Puppeteers (of our ALP/LNP duopoly)
Greens in Qld are rightly seen as ALP stooges.
I for one object to this litany of stinking swill.
@Ivor
now you’re criticising your host – you really are a boor.
OMG He is back. Alfred you were right and right about music being just about everything.
Ivor is Mel and Mel is not just a cranky old man. He has some sort of obsession with Megan, poor fellow needs treatment but he won’t get it.
and hey ‘Ivor’ dude it was me what said that about Rudd being a zombie married to a greedy grasping neo-liberal. Don’t you attribute my words of wisdom to any one else.
@Julie Thomas
You are simply tarring yourself with the same brush.
I’ve never said of or relating to Rudd: “…zombie married to a greedy grasping neo-liberal”.
@Megan
Everyone should review, and check, and see exactly what “civilised discussion” emanates from you.
PM Tony Abbott says that if the allegations of (insert favourite allegation here) are true, they will get the police onto it immediately. Which police force? The detention centre in question is on Nauru. What jurisdiction does our AFP have on Nauru?
Given the track record of denying claims about various happenings at the off-shore detention centres, only to find them substantiated in part or in full, the government shouldn’t be coming out on the latest thing and denying it took place, especially as we have a witness willing to speak out. The witness could be unreliable, but that is yet to be determined.
@Donald Oats
That’s an interesting slip by the PM. Everyone knows that the Nauruan dictatorship is fully enabled by Australia.
Their police can probably be guaranteed not to find any evidence of wrongdoing:
The true dictator of Nauru, Adeang, had the misfortune of his wife catching fire and burning to death on the front lawn. Police didn’t see anything too unusual about that. This is why the ALP chose Nauru for our concentration camp and child abuse factory.
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More slander.