Bill Shorten

[miketrees]

User avatarBlack Orchid
Posts: 9537
Joined: Sun Sep 25, 2011 2:10 am
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Re: Bill Shorten
Postby Black Orchid » Mon Apr 09, 2018 9:40 pm

I want Dick Smith to run too and I am pretty sure he would have a very large following.


Lefty would vote for a running Dick

[LEFTWINGER supreme]

Dick is just another poor man's libtard

[Black Orchid]

Geez LW surely you can do better than that?

[mellie]

Booby Bill is in WA at the moment,,, pretending he will fix the GST shortfall.

He is a liar, and no one believes him.

No mention which state or territory he was going to take the money from.

Slime talking thats all, pure slime.

Hey Mike, good to see you

Our politicians are all a disappointment in my book. I want Dick Smith to run.

Nic, I'm going to have to pay the fine I think.

Agreed.

Think we need a realistic alternative or a complete reshuffle of the Liberals.

[Rorschach]

Labor’s identity politics - the left’s blight on the hill
The Australian
12:00AM April 30, 2018
Adam Creighton

The Labor Party’s new policy platform provides an opportunity to test the idea that parties of the left are increasingly mouthpieces for the concerns and pieties of the ­educated elite.

A striking analysis by economist Thomas Piketty has shown how the main left-of-centre parties in Britain, the US and France have steadily transformed from being parties of workers to being parties of high education since the 1950s. He didn’t include Australia but Labor’s new 211-page document slated for discussion at Labor’s ­national conference — “a clear statement of Labor’s beliefs, values and program for government” — helps provide the answer here.

Mentions of “intersex” — that’s the “I” in LGBTIQ, in case you didn’t know — occur 63 times, ahead of those more esoteric concerns such as “wealth” (61 times) and “inequality” (47). Whatever intersex means — or is — it’s also far more important than “ownership” (12 mentions), “production” (18) and “distribution” (10).

That “bisexual” out-mentions “poverty”, 31 to 23, says it all. Ben Chifley and Bill McKell, Labor leaders who once championed the dignity and incomes of ordinary men and women, whatever their bedroom proclivities, must be turning in their graves. The light on the hill is now more like a strobe disco ball in a gay nightclub.

The 15 mentions of “LGBTIQ” and a further 21 of “LGBTI” — ­together roughly on par with “homelessness” (41) — perhaps ­reflects the ascendant intersex faction’s Bolshevik-style crushing of the formerly dominant queers, whose more mainstream views are going out of style.

But I digress. Why is the oldest political party in Australia so ­obsessed with this marginal, elitist rubbish? Why does it care about bisexuality anyway, when, as Woody Allen said, it immediately doubles your chance of a date on Saturday night.

At least upper-class women are still front of mind, given Labor’s promise to “promote diversity in corporate Australia, including a quota of 50 per cent on government boards”. Thank God for champions of change like AMP’s Catherine Brenner.

Perusing the document, there are quite a few thunderbolt moments. In the economics chapter, the first priority, ahead of “responsible fiscal policy”, is “recognition that cultural enterprise economy, indigenous culture and knowledge does not conflict with modern economic principles but complements and enhances business ­development opportunities”.

The top priority in the health chapter is “promoting wellness, preventing disease”. Great news for naturopaths, I guess, but what about ending some of the outrageous lurks doctors and hospitals enjoy that push up health costs?

In the section on banking you may have expected something with economic teeth. Labor clamoured for this royal commission after all. Breaking the banks apart perhaps, or changing the law to make limited liability contingent on higher taxes on top bankers? Nothing. What about how the ­financial sector siphons billions in fees each year from ordinary people — not all of them alive — arguably the biggest public policy issue in Australia today? Not a peep.

Don’t worry though.

Labor will “establish a Commissioner for Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Intersex ­Status issues, to work across government and the private sector”. Just what we need, someone else on $339,460 a year to tweet and ­foment grievance.

“Gender” is mentioned even more than “tax”, 126 to 105 times. In an era of growing wealth concentration, when the share of ­income accruing to the top 10 per cent of workers in Europe, the US and Japan is at the highest point since the 1940s, surely that’s odd. Women have never been more economically successful.

Whatever their rhetoric, Piketty suggests so-called left and right-wing parties have ditched their respective advocacy for redistribution on the one hand or genuine free markets. “The ‘left’ has become the party of the intellectual elite or the Brahmin left, while the ‘right’ can be viewed as the party of the business elite, or the ‘Merchant right’,” he says.

More formally, “globalisation and educational expansion have created new dimensions of inequality and conflict, leading to the weakening of previous class-based redistributive coalitions and the gradual development of new cleavages”, he argues.

How else to explain Labor’s apparent focus on identity politics — so far removed from the concerns of ordinary people as to be comical — if not its capture by well-paid, highly educated interests?

It should not be for the big political parties which rich people — white or brown, male or female, straight or gay — get which sinecures.

“Cost of living”, admittedly not a big problem for high-income earners, rates only two mentions in the platform. There are plenty of other things Labor might look at. What about the revolving door between consulting firms, political offices and banks that enriches a powerful sliver of society at everyone else’s expense? Silence.

Sure, Bill Shorten’s Labor has proposed some tax increases on the wealthy: on trusts, some shareholders, people earning $180,000 a year and property investors. And good on Labor if all that extra money goes into cutting taxes for lower-income people.

But I’m willing to bet that, as the election approaches, it will ­become clear that the bulk of this money, if Labor were elected, will be earmarked for two feel-good, more abstract concepts: “health” and “education”, which in practice means more money for high-­income doctors, academics, researchers and bureaucrats etc.

Far from just neglecting the poor, Labor’s determination to ratchet up the rate of compulsory superannuation to 12 per cent positively hurts them. “Raising the super guarantee doesn’t just ­reduce workers’ take-home pay, it also hits the federal budget. It is a myth that superannuation reduces government spending on ­retirement,” concludes the Grattan Institute in a paper out today.

And what about Labor’s other obsession with increasing taxes, even further, on millions of (mainly low-income) smokers, despite being gobsmackingly clear that the deterrence value of further hikes has well and truly been exhausted. Excise is in reality a way to force addicted smokers in their 50s who’ll die early to help fund $1m salaries for vice chancellors. It shouldn’t be a surprise though. For all the talk of “wellbeing” in the platform, smokers didn’t get a single mention.