JCC [Australian politics] And here we go again...

Tony Abbott should not smile or grin, it's creepy. Good victory speech though.

 

Also, the election was handed to him on a silver platter. My cats could have won.

 

Congratulations on the demise of your country.

 

lmao vivec its honestly not that big a difference

 

Well, it could be worse...

Actually, no, it couldn't.

 

it can be and it will be in the near future. if there's one thing i can assure you of, it is that one thing

 

Yes, the idea that any strain of contemporary western politics is "as bad as it could be" is almost absurdly optimistic.

 

While Labor party is not ideal, it's sufficiently better than the Liberal-National Sociopath Coalition.

 

Ideal would be Coaliton under Turnbull.

 

Well let's just see how Abbott goes. He's lurched significantly to the centre right over the last few years. His victory speech could have been written by the Labor party.

 

The most interesting part in the washup of the election is how determined both the politicians of the major parties and the media are to make sure they never face a multifacted Senate ever again.

This constitutes an assault on Australian democracy and the media in particular ought be ashamed for mocking the new Senators coming to the table.

I mean, it's only been about 48 hours and we have seen every derisory epithet imaginable thrown at anyone who went to this election without a green, red, or blue-backgrounded flyer. Barnaby Joyce sneered at Cliver Palmer; big deal, so does everyone else. But Vanstone has been sneering at all of the independents' "lack" of "professionalism"; Natasha Spott-Despoja, great martyr of the latte left, has been wagging her finger and saying this was All Rather Undesirable that six people from small parties got elected. The media has also been at least complicit on this. Take a look at the shellacking any minor Senator takes from even "Leftie" shows like The Project, and indeed the fact major media are already calling this a "Barnyard Senate".

I think it's telling that the artillery is being brought out by the politicians and the media right now. I don't believe the real source of irk to Labor, the Liberals, and the Greens is the donkey votes getting the Liberal Democrats into Parliament, or the wild network of preference deals made which resulted in very odd distributions. It's the fact that anybody from a minor party got into Parliament at all, or that enough minor parties got in to hold the balance of power in the Senate. Up to this point the major parties have prospered from lots of "micro" parties being around -- it splits the vote away from whoever's in Opposition and makes it easier for an incumbent to hold the seat, since generally "micro" parties form out of discontent with the government and the Opposition both. In this election there's been roughly a 15-20 per cent vote for independents or minor parties in the Senate when you tote up all the votes, including Xenophon and the other "new six" and all the other independents. That's at least twice or more the vote the Greens got. That demonstrates very strong disenchantment with both major political parties, and it manifests in lots of independents now standing on each other's shoulders to get into the Senate.

Say what you will about the ideologies of some of the individual Senators. But recognise that doing so you are not doing the same thing as the media. If the media and politicians were targeting only one or two for egregiously bad policies, that'd be fine -- but this spray of mud seems directed at all of the independents, and that's deeply concerning to me because the election of all those independents has resulted, in my respectful view, in the most democratic Senate makeup in roughly a century or so. A large party like the Greens is functionally invulnerable on small and local issues in particular: if they lose a seat here or there, they can still gain another one elsewhere. The only groups who can meaningfully influence large parties are those with large sums of money to affect many seats at once. A single Senator from a single issue party is much more amenable to pressure from Australia at large -- which is exactly how democracy is meant to work if it truly is government by people who claim to represent "us".

This was a very good election, for those reasons alone.

 

http://www.news.com.au/technology/s...r-in-new-cabinet/story-fn5fsgyc-1226720375674

In which Tony Abbott shows a fundamental misunderstanding of pure science by placing it with industry.

 

And in which you show a complete lack of knowledge of Australian politics given that this is the title of the most recent person to hold responsibility for science as a portfolio: "Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research". Very, very rarely have we ever had anyone whose portfolio was purely science. It's been lumped with Industry, Environment, Health, and I think even once with Education (although I could be wrong on that and am not in the mood to go looking).

 

Given the stated intent to simply the portfolios held by ministers, Vivec, you should probably disregard breathless hyperbole coming from the media in Australia at the moment. Journalists sit to the to the left and aren't coping too well with the election result.

 

I apologize for not having paid attention to Australian politics the last time around, but I'd be pretty mad at that posting as well. Industry and Science should remain separate.

 

I actually agree, Vivec. I'd put Science in with innovation and digital economy. We could and should be a world leader in alternative energy and non-food-stock based biofuels.

 

Yeah, going back and looking at the portfolio's of the Howard Government there was a bit of the '3 lines on a business card' responsbilities going on, but it was rediculous under Labor where it seemed every possible portfolio had to be named (and they created 6 new departments as part of it).

And because I was looking at these, here are the titles for those that held the science portfolio since Howard came in:

Minister for Industry, Science and Tourism
Minister for Industry, Science and Resources
Minister for Education, Science and Training
Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (wow, Kim Carr did very well holding this post the entire 6 years across 3 leaderships)

 

Why tourism?

 

Double posting as a completely different point being made, but in my time actively participating in the political process, the government hasn't given a rats to anything more than lip service about science of many disciplines. They lump science with fields that are producing tax dollars (mining and resources) and in the Health portfolio completely ignore the 'medical science' aspect of it as it has no glamour or known face that causes media uproar (unlike nurses and doctors do). It's a way of life because to a government, it's pouring money down a hole in the hopes that eventually a giant money making tree will shoot up, without knowing if it will happen, when it will happen, what it will be, and can they tax it to make the money back.