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.
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John Quiggin 
Scott Morrison today said he wants to deregister the CFMMEU. In an amazing coincidence, yesterday in her newspaper column Peta Credlin said he should deregister the CFMMEU.
The current PM (no point using names, it could change by the time this comment is posted) is disgusted that the CFMEU Victorian secretary used his children to send a colorful message to the ABCC; however, the current PM has no such concern about using the children of asylum seekers languishing under indefinite offshore detention to send a message to people smugglers.
Right. Got it.
One of the more disgusting habits, and there are many, of the LNP is to use the like Jones, Hadley and Mitchell as mouthpieces for the release of policy and general discussion of government business. The primary audience is probably quite small but then it is taken up by the MSM, hints, prompts and opinions of these ideologues included. Hopefully this will largely stop if there is a change of government.
Poselequestion, it’s a vain hope of any change to the complicit msm whatever party forms government. The msm echo chamber preceded the current LNP government through earlier LNP and ALP governments. The ALP resistance to adequate reform of the shonky political donations regime is set to continue. In that the ALP colludes with the LNP. They largely have the same wealthy corporate donors, and those donors see to it that the msm also back their vested interests.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/sep/03/australias-political-parties-got-62m-in-dark-money-donations-last-year
https://theconversation.com/the-truth-about-political-donations-there-is-so-much-we-dont-know-91003
https://www.crikey.com.au/2016/02/02/why-were-groping-in-the-dark-on-political-donations/
“…So, for example, it’s only by searching the federal Liberal Party’s return that you’ll find the ASX and Coles both paid over $100,000 to the party, but in neither case is it identified as a donation, so neither had to make a return to the AEC. And checking a party’s return document is more laborious for, say, time-pressured journalists than searching the AEC’s user-friendly system under “Donors” — assuming they know that you should check the return as well. And as the parties shift more and more away from outright donations to good/service-based contributions systems such as fundraising dinners and membership fees for fundraising fora, the number of donors who are reporting their contributions will fall. Consider the 2014-15 federal Labor return, for example: page after page of “Other receipt”, with only a handful of actual donations that are reportable by the donors. ”
https://interactive.guim.co.uk/australia/2014/march/entities/coalition-network.html
https://interactive.guim.co.uk/australia/2014/march/entities/labor.html
https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/interactive/2014/mar/31/australian-political-donations-interactive?commentpage=1
https://periodicdisclosures.aec.gov.au/AnalysisAssociatedEntity.aspx
I have observed the local LNP employs a similar tactic citing that great Murdoch institution the Courier Mail as a base for a question in Parliament which answer thereto then gets (mis)reported again in that abhorrent rag apparently by preconcert.
Goodness me when you consider the unholy alliance between that rag and the Coalition forces over the last 50 or so years [Vietnam, Joh Corruption. Police Corruption, Iraq atrocity, Cam Newman, Bleijie, Carmody for starters] I amazed even the LNP entered into such an alliance.
The great free lunch: a committee of worthies advised by Lord Stern has estimated that the energy transition could yield net global economic benefits of $25 trillion to 2030. I came up with $25 trn to 2040 three years ago, using much cruder methods. Advert for blog post with links: *****samefacts.com/2018/09/energy-the-environment/the-free-lunch-revisited/
Oops, they said $26 trillion not $25 trillion. But what’s a trillion between friends?
Life of Brian, er, ScoMo?:
“Pentecostal leaders have warned their congregation that “darkness” will spread across Australia and Christians will be persecuted if Scott Morrison does not win the next election.
Others have been told that Morrison’s rise to power was a “miracle of God” that answered three days of prayer and fasting. They have been told that Morrison has made a public stand for Christian freedoms, and has promised to keep doing so, so God intervened to ensure he beat the home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, in the Liberal leadership spill.”
***www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/sep/07/darkness-coming-if-scott-morrison-not-re-elected-pentecostal-leader-claims
“God intervened to ensure he beat the home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, in the Liberal leadership spill”
In fairness to the happy clappers, you could persuasively argue that Dutton is the spawn of Satan.
Bannon’s invitation to speak was cancelled, which has provoked an uproar.
I watched 4 corners and he does like to make his views and opinions prevail, not by the strength of his argument but by force. He was nonplussed that the consequence of his ideas would bring recession, which should ring alarm bells everywhere. He had nothing informative or innovative to add to the discussion and relied on repeating slogans, as do Farage and Abbott.
I don’t think he would be an asset to any forum.
Dutton is what happens when Lord Voldemort gets intimate with a sack of potatoes.
Thinking further about Bannon & Co, it’s not the economy or jobs or tariffs that is behind their popularity; it’s the fear that the whites are going to be swamped by blacks, brown, yellow or any other colour of skin people and whites will become a minority.
MAGA, Brexit and PHON have the same racial roots.
rog, watched a very different 4Corners.