"Whatever his [abbott's] motivations, [for bringing back knights] it just says one thing to middle Australia - he is out of touch with mainstream thinking.
...
Abbott and Brandis's second mistake was in assuming that Australians generally think like Americans when it comes to libertarianism. This American tradition is the assertion of individual rights, including free speech, above all other rights and obligations.
...
It's a fine line we walk in our democracy between permitting and preventing. This week Brandis stumbled across that line. His attempt to defend ignoble attitudes and beliefs by appealing to what he asserts is a higher libertarian principle - the right of individuals to say almost anything they want about other individuals or groups - enraged many and embarrassed many more. It's just not possible to defend base intentions by appealing to high principle. It sounds offensive and ridiculous because it is offensive and ridiculous.
...
The central element in all these measures - whether it's about racial discrimination or assets sale and everything in between - is a radically reduced role for government. The collective good is subordinated to private, individual and corporate interests. Increasingly, that is the prism through which the Abbott Government's actions can be viewed and understood. In the coming months we will see less of Tony the conservative and much more of Abbott the libertarian. It was a face of his Party that he went to lengths to conceal during his time as opposition leader. Now the cat is out of the bag."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-31/hawker-old-conservatism-battles-radical-libertarianism/5355496

i haven't had anything to say here for a while, because, i think, when you see something like a car crash you're speechless for some time. when the scale is so much greater (we are talking about a whole continent here) the period of speechless shock is, i think, accordingly much longer

but dear sexy reader today i DO have something to say: i've figured out the abbott government's political strategy and i'm willing to let you in on it

basically the strategy is a simple one: whenever a truly evil or fiendish decision is made (think: new coal ports, winding back carbon legislation, selling government assets etc) then a second decision, usually more absurd, but, in the grand scheme of things less evil than the first, is also made.

selling off medibank? well, you can nip any meaningful discussion around that in the bud by bringing back knights! scrapping the science ministry? appoint yourself minister for women LOL!

after all, the australian media simply cannot cover more than one story at a time in any sort of meaningful detail, and if it comes down to a story about knights and dames versus a story about the accumulated revenue loss from needlessly selling profitable assets, which story do you think the propagandist editor of the australian will run with? yes that's right; neither. the australian is simply too extreme to be useful as an example, so my bad.

but anyway: while abbott jams his shitty dick in to us with one hand he's jiggling his car keys with the other and it's working.

it might not be the best strategy for keeping government in the long term, but from the perspective of a rabid neoliberal ideologue primarily concerned with things like accelerating the flow of wealth to the already-wealthy, agreeing to a disastrous "free trade" agreement with the great satan and stripping government protections, regulations and assistance, then it's not really too bad a strategy at all

the future is therefore bleak. with how god awful the piece of shit liberal party is it can be easy to forget that the labor party, essentially the other half of our system, is so very, very shit as well.

when abbott is dumped (and i firmly believe he will be) the incoming labor government simply won't be able to undo all the disastrous decisions. it physically wont be able to, but more importantly, i seriously doubt it will have the political resolve. abbott will have done changed the game

furthermore if the cultural wedge-politics so favored by abbott have continued to work as they do now then the 3rd generation of rusted-on tribal liberal voters will have their very own historical record and set of facts from which to determine that it was progressives and "warriors of the left", and definitely not absurd retard policies from an absurd retard government, that caused all the problems they are now facing (and boy will there be problems)

at least in the future people will be free to racially disparage others (but presumably not the knights and dames of our society), people will be liberated from their union jobs, free to work for internationally-competitive wages, always able to have a kick of the footy thanks to the muscular minister for sport.

people of the future will say "remember when we had murdoch as our leader, operating through his chosen agent abbott? he consciously sought to transform australia in to america and largely succeeded. things sure are better now"

"

A Globe International assessment of the climate mitigation strategies of 66 countries rated Australia as the bottom of the barrel. Headed by former Thatcher government minister Lord Deben, the Abbott government’s climate policies are described as:

…so unintellectual as to be unacceptable; I mean it is just amazing.

Australia is identified as the only country on earth to be winding back national climate legislation.

"

Read:


https://theconversation.com/the-ultimate-conservationist-the-looming-crisis-for-the-abbott-government-24243

just in case you were feeling like there wasn't enough bad news about the future here is an interesting twopiecer about demographics worth a read :

http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/what-happens-when-half-the-world-stops-making-babies/573/

and

http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/the-global-economy-is-a-giant-ponzi-scheme/575/

in other news, how good is the federal government

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/25/could-john-howard-be-citizen-arrested-for-his-role-in-the-iraq-war

i would so love for this to happen but im pretty much certain it never will

http://theaimn.com/2014/02/22/the-inequity-of-inequality/

http://www.customs.gov.au/webdata/resources/files/Storyboard-Afghanistan.pdf

I think in the future this will make for an illuminating primary source during a lecture on the descent in to fascism in Australia in some university