Election 2010

[The_Brown_Hornet]

100% agree RH. Those are several of the reasons I'm against it.

 

[Scarfman]

Take Fairfax's vote-a-matic.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-election/vote-a-matic/index.html

I got Greens 56% / Labor 37% / Liberal 6%.

I think I might have voted for the Libs tax policy. Some good questions in there, actually.

 

[Bowside]

Maybe I'm just naive, but if the government is going to offer me faster internet, then why is that a bad thing. All they are doing is increasing the standard of living.

My highschool economics teacher use to always say, "debt is how you get ahead in life, it can be your best friend, just as long as you can service it". It might be all well and good cutting services like the liberals are proposing in order to apear more "fiscally responsible", but to be honest, to me it comes off as one big publicity stunt. I mean, does it really affect you that much if it takes labor a year longer to get the budget back in the black. At least you'll be able to spend that year coming home everynight to superfast broadband. And please dont take this as me justifying poor management or waste in government, just purly from an ideological point of view I disagree with the far rights economic management.

Another issue for me is the paid parental leave plan. As i understand it, familys receive the mothers full wages for 6 months. Thats just the coalition saying that because the mother is richer, her child is somehow more deservent of the governments money. Thats just straight up bullshit, how can you put a price on a child that has'nt yet been born?

 

[The_Brown_Hornet]

Take Fairfax's vote-a-matic.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-election/vote-a-matic/index.html

I got Greens 56% / Labor 37% / Liberal 6%.

I think I might have voted for the Libs tax policy. Some good questions in there, actually.

Definitely some good questions. I get the impression that they took the actual policy positions and presented them in a way that you can actually decide on. For a couple of them I wished for a "none of the above" though.

 

[Scotty]

Maybe I'm just naive, but if the government is going to offer me faster internet, then why is that a bad thing. All they are doing is increasing the standard of living.

My highschool economics teacher use to always say, "debt is how you get ahead in life, it can be your best friend, just as long as you can service it". It might be all well and good cutting services like the liberals are proposing in order to apear more "fiscally responsible", but to be honest, to me it comes off as one big publicity stunt. I mean, does it really affect you that much if it takes labor a year longer to get the budget back in the black. At least you'll be able to spend that year coming home everynight to superfast broadband. And please dont take this as me justifying poor management or waste in government, just purly from an ideological point of view I disagree with the far rights economic management.

Another issue for me is the paid parental leave plan. As i understand it, familys receive the mothers full wages for 6 months. Thats just the coalition saying that because the mother is richer, her child is somehow more deservent of the governments money. Thats just straight up bullshit, how can you put a price on a child that has'nt yet been born?

1. The government isn't giving it to you. And it is likely you won't notice the difference, because what you currently have is likely good enough. The cost per taxpayer will exceed $4,000 each. Would you spend $4,000 to get something you don't particularly need? What you would be doing is spending $4,000 for something that about 5% of Australians will utilise to its full extent and the remainder won't give a shit. But they will all have to pay through their taxes.

2. I have two points on your comments on the paid parental scheme:

a) In some ways mothers who earn more do deserve more - because they pay more taxes. The Labor scheme is to give the minimum wage to any mother that has worked at least one day per week for the preceeding 6 months. That means that some mothers will get paid more to have a baby than to actually work!

b) I'm sure this isn't going to be popular, but it is in our best interest for our future nation and social growth perspective that mid to high earners have more kids than they currently do and lower earners have less. The Labor policy (and John Howards baby bonus) is a bigger encouragement for lower earners than higher earners, while the current Coalition policy is more even for all.

 

[Scotty]

Here is a question:

Do people think that public sector unions (which are indirectly paid from our taxpayers money) should be able to have an influence on elections? They aren't as out there as some other unions but there is no doubt that they support Labor.

 

[Scotty]

I was pretty even with Labor and Libs, but Greens only about 12%.

However I do suspect the poll is leaning left a little, considering how they have put some of the 'Lib' questions. eg The one on not running deficits I don't think is actually a Lib policy.

 

[The_Brown_Hornet]

Here is a question:

Do people think that public sector unions (which are indirectly paid from our taxpayers money) should be able to have an influence on elections? They aren't as out there as some other unions but there is no doubt that they support Labor.

Having once been part of said organisation, I would say no, they shouldn't. There are situations developing in the US and Europe with public sector entitlements/benefits that have been as a result of the substantial lobbying power of the public sector unions. California being a classic example. In fact, a good question would be whether or not the public sector should be able to unionise at all? The civil libertarian in me says yes, right of assembly is fundamental. The economic rationalist in me says hell no, they'll vote themselves greater and greater entitlements until the tax and/or debt burden is too high. It's a vexing question.

 

[Moses]

I'll put my hand up as a massive Turnbull fan. I just love listening to him speak, his grasp of complex issues and reluctance to suffer fools is simply awesome.

Here's the full transcript of Malcolm tearing Maxine McKew a new one on lateline last night.

A few highlights:

MAXINE MCKEW: Malcolm, you failed to take your party with you. If you were leading the Liberal Party today, we'd be on track to bring in an emissions trading system. You couldn't ...

MALCOLM TURNBULL: If John Howard had won the 2007 election we'd probably have an emissions trading scheme. It's full of ironies, all this.




LEIGH SALES: Malcolm Turnbull, the national broadband plan. You are a bit of a tech head. Multiple OECD reports tied GDP growth directly to a nation's connectivity. Surely then, Labor's comprehensive high-speed rollout is better for Australia than the Coalition's slower option?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, it's not. The Labor Party's plan is a colossal white elephant. It is going to spend at least $43 billion, possibly a great deal more to create an asset that will be worth a fraction of that.

So it is literally burning billions, tens of billions of dollars of taxpayers' money. Now I am passionately committed to technology and broadband, and as you know, I was a co-founder of one of the first big internet companies here in Australia.

I'm passionately committed to it. But you don't need to spend money on this white elephant to get there.

We're dealing with scarce resources, in this case taxpayers' money, and we've got to ask ourselves how do we best deliver the broadband services that we require? How do we make sure broadband is made available to those areas which the market is unlikely to serve on commercial grounds - rural and regional and remote areas - and that's what the Coalition's plan is focused on? How do we provide the backhaul infrastructure that ensures that all of these networks can provide the speeds they need?

We're providing support for that.

I mean, you know, the important thing to remember about the internet is that it is not like a big set of plumbing pipes. It's not a - it doesn't have to be one network. It is a connection of various networks of different kinds.

You know, some of it's old technology - coaxial - some of it's fibre optic cable, some of it's satellite, some of it's wireless, some of it's twisted copper pair. It's the whole range, and the question is how do you deliver the services that people are prepared to pay for in the most cost-effective way? And I think that is what our policy proposes.

 

[barbarian]

Maxine is such a lightweight. Amazing how she has gone from a fairly hard-edged journo to a ditzy political nobody in a very short space of time. Although I dont know how much I would like to see John Alexander in parliament.

 

[Bowside]

I'm also a turnbull fan. Even as a mostly labor supporter, I still see him as more competent and credible a leader than both Abbot and Gilard.

I, like alot of voters, am appaled by both major partys. It seems the constant media focus of this campaign has made it a game of who can stuff up the least rather than who can persuade and captivate the electorate.

I see the liberals as a party that takes the easy option, they're not willing to go hard out on anything and when they do, the electorate usually doesnt vote for them (Fightback, Work Choices). They seem at times more likeable, and adept at winning elections, but in government I think the "progressive stance" of labor is more beneficial to the nation.

However, as much as labor likes to talk about moving forward, the current administration seem to be only interested in baby steps and compromises. If Rudd had one fault, it was that he did'nt call a double dissolution election. In a leader I don't really care what the media think, I look for someone who would rather be right than popular. Rudd had his chance, the economy was looking good, labor occupied the high ground on policy and he was popular. It was the perfect oportunity to put a knife to the throat of the liberal party.

I also think that along with Turnbull they could have delivered an Australian Republic, and hopefully taken away some of the states power. State Governments in Australian are just an embarrisment to all involved.

 

[Baldric]

I also see Turnbull as about the only leader on the whole landscape with the necessary gravitas to be the leader of the country. The rest (on both sides) just seem interested in scoring points by throwing enough excrement untill some sticks. Very uninspiring. Maybe id we vote for the Abbot we will get a Turnbull later.

 

[Bowside]

Maybe if they lose the election, they might throw tony out, in which case Turnbull and Hocky are the only other viable options.

 

[Baldric]

Surely then they will give Hockey the gig. He would then stuff up and Malcolm would be back in the middle in time for 2014 or whenever I have to go through all this crap again.

 

[barbarian]

Well Malcolm's polling better numbers than both Abbott and Hockey in the preffered Liberal leader race. However Abbott will still be Liberal leader after the election. He won't resign and I don't think anyone would be too keen to challenge straight after a pretty good campaign (so far, anyway).

Turnbull is smart, he will bide his time. Provided the government doesn't completely fuck the country up their poll numbers will be much higher in a year and the Oppositions much lower. Then Turnbull steps in when the party has lost its way.

 

[Scotty]

I have no doubt that if Turnbull had managed to hold onto the leadership (it was only one vote in it, wasn't it?), that he would be priminister in a few weeks time. And he would be the priminister we need. Maybe Labor supporters I have spoken to would vote for the Libs if he was the leader - a true centre standing politician, as opposed the left and right ones we currently have that pretend to be central.

The problem is that it is the stupidity and shortsightedness of the Australian public that has forced us into this state. They don't want to vote for the person who is right for the job, they want to vote for the person they are either least scared of, or who has promised to give the something.

 

[Scotty]

http://delimiter.com.au/2010/08/10/do-we-even-need-a-fibre-national-broadband-network/

Good article on reasons not to spend $43 billion on the NBN at this point in time.

 

[The_Brown_Hornet]

It was rather convenient for the head of the NBN to release a statement about the proposed speeds right in the middle of a debate about it in an election campaign. No politics in that at all. Hmmm. The claim that people will be able to get gigabit speeds sounds fishy to me. The only way I've seen that done in OZ has been with "dark fibre" and not through a normal telco's switched network. Most organisations don't even run gigabit out to their desktops!

 

[Moses]

I can't wait till we have 1 Gigabit of bandwidth to every house, then we'll be able to stream video to our laptops. Just like I do with Skype every week to my brother in law in Durban with our 12mbit connection and their 4mbit connection. But, with 1 Gigabit we could do it on full screen. $43 seems cheap.

Great tweet on #qanda last night - "can we download food on the NBN?"

It was rather convenient for the head of the NBN to release a statement about the proposed speeds right in the middle of a debate about it in an election campaign. No politics in that at all. Hmmm. The claim that people will be able to get gigabit speeds sounds fishy to me. The only way I've seen that done in OZ has been with "dark fibre" and not through a normal telco's switched network. Most organisations don't even run gigabit out to their desktops!

I can't see any motive whatsoever for the head of an organisation that is about to be dismantled to make unsubstantiated claims in the middle of an election.

 

[Moses]

Putting aside the not insignificant questions of will they build it and is it worth the cash, does anyone have any clue what they'd actually do with a 1Gigabit connection?

Personally, I'd download torrents really quickly and have kickarse ratios on private trackers. I'd also host G&GR from home, no need to pay for a host in the US when the Australian Government is subsidising.