JCC HEY AUSTRALIA

I wasn't disputing your statement.

 

Barnsey
Bee Gees
Olivia Newton John
The Young brothers
John Farnham
Mel Gibson
Colin Hay

Do you guys actually have any fair dinkum Australian celebrities? Other than Rolf Harris, obviously.

 

Pretty much just Hugh Jackman and Chris Hemsworth?

 

And Kylie.

 

Yeah Kylie is like a national treasure, botoxed and surgically preserved for future generations.

 

Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman are Aussies.

 

That's the spirit! Probably the best post you've ever made.

 

Nicole Kidman was born in the US and Keith Urban was born in NZ.

 

No problems

Frankly, they're kind of a non-entity now anyway, Neil seems to treat them on a part time basis.

 

Kylie is amazing. If I had ever met her, I am certain we'd have married.

 

If anyone wants to know about Australian politics, I suggest you watch this documentary about Paul Keating. I would argue he was the best leader Australia has ever had - a man who wasn't just a glorified figurehead for the Treasury Department or the Government. A man with exceptional intellect, a wit that shredded opposition leaders and a man who almost single-handed made modern Australia.

 

What's Mel Gibson up to these days besides horrid Direct-to-DVD flicks? I hear he was a merry prankster on movie sets. And by that, I mean a horribly psychotic man.

 

to my untrained ears this is a pretty decent australian accent she's got going there

 

He's a profoundly insecure man who was a terrible leader but great treasurer.

Rogue_Ten - no, she sounds like an American doing an Australian accent. The vowels are all wrong, not nasal enough.

 

Are there any leaders you like Ender?

 

Paul Keating was Australia's pre-cursor to Francis Underwood.

 

Yes.

Hawke. Fraser. Howard.

 

Fair enough.

Hawke, Good leader and person but wasn't the brains behind the government.

Fraser, Only in his later years in my opinion. But yes a good person.

Howard, Good manager of the economy - however was enabled this by the Hawke-Keating reforms. Work Choices, Asylum Seekers, Iraq, Monarchy on the other hand...

 

Work choices was actually a good idea in most respects, albeit a little light on blue collar protections.

Asylum seekers? I worked for DIAC during that period, we had the best migration programme in the world.

 

Well that was the point, and the reason it was the hill he died on. No matter the merits of the rest of the program, it showed callus disregard of the working class.

The Pacific Solution is an affront of human rights, no matter the merits of the immigration system at large.

 

No, it wasn't.

Please give me a run down on how the Department's capacity building programme operated, specifically considering scope and transit countries for illegal migration.

 

As an outsider, I look at Hawke in Australia and Lange in NZ as very curious figures. They both led Labour governments;yet, they also implemented some of the largest and far-reaching market reforms for both countries in the 20th century. Back in my libertarian days my old comparative politics class covered those governments and compared them to the Reagan administration at the time. Those two countries were looked at as prime examples of liberalisation done right.

 

I'm sure Hawke and Keating would take issue with that. You have to remember the system they were reforming was extremely regulated. There policies were more in line with Blair.

Not the policy in it's structure per se, but the conditions in the off-shore detention centres, where considered by some human rights lawyers to be unacceptable. The deterrent nature of the detention centres caused many of them to fall below adequate levels of human rights.

"Commission President Catherine Branson QC said she was concerned that the Government’s announcement about Manus Island may herald a return to the so-called ‘Pacific Solution’, a policy that was extremely expensive to administer, caused significant hardship and mental harm, and greatly damaged Australia’s international reputation as a responsible humanitarian nation."

https://www.humanrights.gov.au/news...s-against-revisiting-aspects-pacific-solution