Turnbull rolls over "again" to the ultra right

It will have to be an alliance of Labor the Greens and the independents to dislodge Abbotts clowns, and we all know how that ends. As much as I love what the Greens stand for there has to be a balance between fairy land and reality or we would spiral into trillions instead of billions in debt.

bong

Yes we live in interesting times.
Been following the rise of Jeremy Corbyn.
http://www.jeremycorbyn.org.uk/

This guy is a self confessed Socialist who may well end up leading the British Labour party, quite bizarre.
People flock to listen to him, almost messiah like.
No spring chicken - 66 yrs.

Yes we live in very interesting times & on the other side of pond we have Donald Trump who sounds like a member of a Latin American hate group, KKK mentality, bizarre.

Regards Johno

Our government is a christian cult....

SD, I think you misspelt cult ;-)

Thanks for trying to lighten my mood, tgf...... But Herr Abetz , General Bernadi, Private Nikolic, and Commander Abbott make it crystal clear.... We are being run by religious fanatics.....

Amen to that!

I think tonybarber means the greens are a little questionable when it comes to such things as managing an economy. and as you point out floyd, in tassy they may have not indulged in economic opportunities, it appears this may have limited tasmania's economic development resulting in a basket case economy. the long view to history will probably show these to be wise decisions.

alternatively they could have followed the economic wizardry of the liberal party, where you sell lots of public assets, take every possible economic opportunity, ethical or not, and still end up with a basket case economy. the abbott government has crushed any economic credentials the liberal party had, pity really because that's all they had.

I'll take warm and fuzzy and a basket case economy over selling your grandmother and a basket case economy anyday.

but that's just speculation, hopefully tonybarber indulges us with an answer....this time

Sorry... Wrong thread... I thought this was about Abbott and the coalitions "compassion and human decency" recession.... My bad... lol

Read a bit of this now & will try to post in relation to the original question posed by Floyd.

Heartbroken at loss of auto industry. I supported it when I could afford to and was proud of the ingenious product, and happy it employed Australians to make it. Facepalming at the stupidity of both sides of politics and their policies since before the Button Plan. No one reviewed the plan when it was successful (one of the aims was to consolidate the number of manufacturers, which it did; while boosting exports - now did it boost exports compared to the late 1960's when Holden had their own ship and shipped to SE Asia? Dunno.) So tariffs kept falling. And other nations decided not to play free trade; manipulating their currencies, putting up tariff walls on Australian auto products, such as Thailand just after the FTA was signed by whacking an enormous tariff on any motor over 3 litres. American management didn't help - in the case of Ford it seems Dearborn has been trying to get rid of its Aussie subsidiary since the mid 1990s.

Aussie policy was directed to boost housing (1984 was the legislation that enabled this incredible binge) and mining (Howard saying we should do 'what do best''). Fair enough when the cycle is in your favour. But when it's not... Cheap energy is our other strong competitve advantage, but this has been under siege since Al Gore gave that presentation. Farming got decimated in the Murray Darling with drought and water allocations, then it all flooded in 2009. And Aussies tend to live beyond their means, cue the private debt stats. Pension funds reinvest and track the index, so end up overweight in Aussie banks that lend long into moar housing and borrow short offshore at ZIRP - smart while AUD appreciated and the Fed kept on QE'ing. Now how does it look?

Remember it was Jack Lang who was removed by the Governor General of NSW in 1932 when he decided to put 'people before paying back the loans' that the (then mainly City of London) UK lenders had called in as Britain went off the Gold Standard.

So where do we end up? Indebted and without that diversification of value adding. Sounds damn similar to the 1930s when my grandfather was selling cane for sixpence a tonne and paying real pounds for machinery imported from England. Even the flour was refined elsewhere!

John Curtin and co realised this and began real nation building post war (thanks to YS for that great post some pages back), manufacturing was developed, ex-soliders opened up farms, Snowy, Murray Darling, GM-H and more than 8 other auto manufacturers. This is the ALP at its absolute best. By the 70's it wasn't (apparently) competitive however, so governments successively rolled back all of this policy. Interestingly, I've read they stopped publishing foreign ownership stats here in the late 90's when it got over 95%.

Lesson is simple: if you own your own enterprises (nationally, individually) you have control. If you don't, you get used as a resource extraction area. If you have a pool of domestic capital, you're set (hello original Commonwealth Bank). If you don't, you're screwed. To make an environment suitable to build a nation, a government (left or right) should be nationalist.

So it looks like Tony is going to get rolled. Can't say I'm happy with the TPP (NAFTA on American jobs, or FTA Thailand on Aussie auto jobs as precedent), or the bank bail-in legislation in the budget. But he did pay back the 8.8Bn taken out of the RBA just before he was elected. If what will replace him will be like Rudd/Gillard/Rudd, with its crazy unpredictable policy swerves and attack on small business (this is the ALP at its worst) then better turn off the lights and take that business to the UK/EU or USA...

Great post Velocityjohnno.

Personally, that bank bail in is scaring the shit out of me right now.

A interesting view of the Australian car industry or what could have been !

http://www.theage.com.au/comment/automotive-transformation-scheme-cancel...

Cheers Johno

sypkan…the people of Tassie have spoken. Maybe worth a visit - some great surf down there, as you know.
Going on from what velocityJ has stated, maybe we should look at how Germany does it. I hear today that the Holden Commodore is the last one manufactured here in Aus - sad day. If you buy one now you can get a nice V8. Later when they come from Germany, they will be four / six cylinders.

Good article Johnno but what the author fails to address is that the domestic car market was in freefall since the mid-nineties i.e people were simply not buying Australian cars.

With 60+ different makers competing (probably the most choice in the world), a highly fragmented market, geographic isolation and high wages in what for the most part was unskilled labour, it didn't stand a chance. Relaxed tariffs work both ways and our tiny export market could not compete with makers in Asia. Combine that with both governments and fleet operators relaxing their 'buy Australian' policies and the shift towards smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles and the big three failing to anticipate that, the blame is non-partison.

IT'S ON!!!!!!! Malcom Turnbull and Julie Bishop have requested a ballot for party leadership. Announcement at 4pm today!

SURELY HE'S GONE.

Didn't mean to have capital letters then but might leave 'em.

Cya Tony....

Turnbull's gone in hard, he won't be seeing much political favour if he doesn't pull it off so you gotta say he must be confident for the win

Good speech by Turnbull at the announcement. For the good of the country we need Turnbull as PM.

Timing couldn't be worse for the canning by election

So the Liberals have ya vote then YS?

I tell you what barley. If Turnbull can turn things around, get the NBN back on track and control the tea party right wingers that have held the 'Liberal'(look that word up in the dictionary) Party hostage in recent history I'd consider it?
Shorten will have his work cut out for him to convince the electorate he has what it takes to be PM if Turnbull gets the top job that's for sure.
It might surprise you to know that in the past I've voted for Labor, Liberals and the Greens when I felt they deserved my vote!

Well ain't it interesting. If Turnbull fails then he is out for good. If Turnbull succeeds then Shorty is gone.

If he gets up (which I'm pretty sure he will) we'd have to be looking at a cabinet re-shuffle and there will be a nice warm spot for Joe Hockey on the backbench you'd have to think.

Breaking News: Julia Gillard Hospitalised after overdosing on Schadenfreude.
Former Prime Minister Julia Gillard is under observation at Royal Prince Philip hospital after overdosing on schadenfreude, the pleasure derived from witnessing someone else’s misfortune.

Gillard was found in her residence clutching an oversized bag of popcorn and watching the ABC’s News24.
An ambulance was called to the Gillard residence and she was taken to hospital where she remains in a stable non-life threatening condition. Hospital staff were quick to caution that it was not all good news however.

“Unfortunately we were unable to wipe the smile off her face,” said a hospital spokesperson. “We tried everything we could but it won’t budge. This is unusual for a simple case of excessive schadenfreude.

http://www.sbs.com.au/comedy/article/2015/02/04/julia-gillard-rushed-hos...

Lordy there's some funny shit happening on Twitter tonight regarding the spill. So much for apathy and politics.

floyd wrote:

Wooooooohooooooo ........... ok Turnbull might get the job but what is he going to do with those 70 ultra right wing/hard arsed Abbott supporters in the federal parliamentary liberal party?

Very interesting times in the conservatives ... long-term there needs to be a massive "flush-out" of the political fringe dwellers/troglodytes currently there. In the meantime we will see a KRudd-like white-anting program against Turnbull/the government from 1900 century men likes Bernardi, Abetz etc etc

For sure, if he wins, Turnbull is not a shoe in at the election, it he will be up against the far right and the stink of taking out the leader like gillard had to put up with, plenty in the public will resent having their elected leader removed before the end of term.

Tweet from Wil Anderson as the Libs walk into the party room:

"I'd like to start by acknowledging our traditional owners: the Murdoch family..."

Going to be very interesting to see how the Murdoch's respond to this. Rupe doesn't much like Malcolm from memory.

benski wrote:

Going to be very interesting to see how the Murdoch's respond to this. Rupe doesn't much like Malcolm from memory.

He already has check The Guardian feed.

Aha, thanks blindboy. A typically...'evenhanded' response from him.

And as Abbott was PM for a total of 1 year, 361 days he will not be entitled to the Prime Ministerial pension.
Bummer Tones ;(

yorkessurfer wrote:

And as Abbott was PM for a total of 1 year, 361 days he will not be entitled to the Prime Ministerial pension.
Bummer Tones ;(

I really feel upbeat this evening

I reckon they'll wrangle a way to get him the cash and chopper flights as he needs them. A pity pension perhaps.

As for being upbeat...I'm not so sure. Abbot was useless and while I think Shorten isn't much chop, guys like Bowen were starting to show their policy stripes with proper policy ideas well ahead of the election. I reckon Turnbull will win the election and he's still a tory so he's not gonna take the cash from the big end of town, Rupert won't let him.

Turnbull is a pretty good advocate so he'll convince everyone we should cut environmental spending, cut penalty rates, hold pensions steady and look out medicare. Abbot couldn't get that kind of thing through the senate because he was a crap negotiator (just as Tony Windsor, he'll tell you), which was serving government up to the alternatives. Now I reckon we'll get two more terms with the libs cutting everything except tax benefits for the wealthy.

Golden handshake for sure benski but the inability to make a term, a prime ministerial pension, any memorable positive policy and an ousting in these circumstances seems like karma well deserved.

I'm not as convinced as you that turnbull has an election wrapped up, he may seem popular now but its gonna be hard for him to generate positive news in a tough economic environment, potential right faction destabilising and liberal voter backlash

That's true. The right won't take this lying down that's for sure.

Rudd makes a fair assessment of Abbott's year and a bit.....http://abbottfail.com/videos/kevin-rudd-comments-on-abbotts-first-year-a...

floyd wrote:

Under performing ministers who should go ....

Hunt
Hockey
Abetz
Corman
Brandis
Pyne
Andrews
Joyce

to only name a few ........ anyone got further suggestions for ministerial sackings?

Dutton

Gotta think that this whole affair was a product of the times; electronic mediums unsettling old patterns; new voices insisting on being heard; and the ramped up news cycle, combined with a historical paucity of quality politicians accorded the rise of Abbott. Seemed politicians on both sides were unprepared or just unwilling to resist the demands of this new environment and so gave it what it wanted - one-dimensional sloganeering and the outward appearance of action.

Rather than thinking this type of politicking is here to stay, the ousting of Abbott by his own party gives hope that this is only a stage we're passing through.

Haha the times arent changing..give it another 6months and it will all be the same.too many people entitled to opinions in this wishy washy day n age. People or his own party will get shitty with turnbull or shorten or whoevers next. It will be hard for whoevers in to last out a full term in the popularity contest that is modern day politics.
Old Malcolm seems abit like krudd in the verbal diarrhoea stakes.you have to be good at something to be worth 200mill.
@YS i read on ninemsn tony gets a $300 000 pension?

why should we even vote?
we are forced to vote, compulsory voting for aussie over 18's-we vote for someone, who then can get chucked out as pm by his party, not the people who voted for him-what a joke-baa baa black sheep-this is not how the greeks originally set up a democracy. this is a dictatorship in disguise.
first labor, then the liberals, taking the australian voter as a non existent means to an end-power, personal and party power is number one priority rather than actually the welfare and improvement of australian people.
i hope sometime, this poor system of politics can change, but not holding my breath.