Droppie2d ago
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/voters-are-angry-one-nation-s-support-is-real-rising-and-no-longer-surprising-20260315-p5oal2.html?ref=rss

imo a voter's intention to vote PHON in straya, MAGA in merka, Farage in pommyland, et al, is an acute IQ & morality test. such voters fail. abysmally. 🤬🖕

#AusPol #WhyTheFuckIsLabor #HahahahaLiebs #NatsAreNuts #GreensYEAH #VoteGreens #VoteProgIndies #PHONkedinthehead #ClimateCrisis #NonLinear #TippingPoints #PositiveFeedbackLoops #FossilFools #RenewableEnergy #ChangeTheSystem #StateCapture #RightToProtest #Biodiversity #WeAreTotallyFscked #Misanthropy #Karma #NativeForests #StopLoggingNativeForests #FsckCapitalism #CognitiveDissonance
Voters are angry. One Nation’s support is real, rising and no longer surprising

Crunched by high inflation and spiralling petrol prices, the electorate is in a bad mood and it’s starting to take it out on the government, not just the opposition.

The Sydney Morning Herald
Droppie3d ago
Amy!

https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/news/politics/australian-politics/2026/03/14/amy-remeikis-politics-leadership

#AusPol #WhyTheFuckIsLabor #HahahahaLiebs #NatsAreNuts #GreensYEAH #VoteGreens #VoteProgIndies #PHONkedinthehead
Lost, disconnected or just plain wrong? It's a leadership fail

The disconnect between what is and how this country’s political leaders respond has never seemed wider. Or to matter more.

Droppie3d ago
Quote

The National Party has lunged for the button marked 'break glass in emergency' by drafting the contrarian populist agitator, Matt Canavan, to its leadership.

The 45-year-old, coal-loving senator was an unusual choice suggesting that the party finally understands the clear and present danger on its right flank.

Its urgency is, at least, proportional.

Unlike the Liberals, the Nats recognise that things are dramatically shifting in Australian politics. As such, the continued dominance of the establishment parties can no longer be assumed.

The prime opponent now is Pauline Hanson's One Nation party with its uncomplicated nostalgia for a once perfect Australia - read: predominantly white - since ruined by woke cosmopolitans, and so-called "mass" immigration.

As the electoral bases of the right splinter and realign, Canavan has been tasked with a clear mission of neutralising the Nats' most famous former face, Barnaby Joyce.

It will be a fascinating match-up pitting the economic populist Canavan against the two politicians now so established in the electoral terrain that their surnames are superfluous: Barnaby and Pauline.

Since Joyce jumped ship, complaining of being sidelined under David Littleproud, a succession of opinion polls have put One Nation ahead of the Coalition and drawing closer to Labor's vote share.

Whatever his deficits in urban Australia, Joyce remains popular in the bush and was once lauded by Tony Abbott as the nation's best retail politician.

While Hanson might quibble, there is little doubt that her success in coaxing Joyce across has been a major factor in One Nation's flatulent rise. That will lead to ego-clashes and leadership tensions in the future but in the short-term, the sharpest pain is being felt in the Nats and by extension, the Liberal Party.

It is a sign of the perilousness now gripping the establishment parties of the right that across its combined leadership, none of the four leaders elected after the 2025 rout is in place.

Of the replacements installed in the last month, none holds a city-based lower house seat.

At its core however, the colossal challenge facing the Liberals on the one hand, and the Nationals on the other, is dangerously contradictory.

An illustration of this problem came in Littleproud's odd "I'm buggered" resignation press conference last Tuesday.

Boldly marking himself as the most effective Nationals leader since John "Black Jack" McEwen, Littleproud listed off a series of policies in which the Nats had dictated terms to the Liberals.

These included the junior partner's trenchant opposition to the Voice referendum, the Dutton Coalition's adoption of a nuclear power plant policy, the Liberals' agreement to a controversial "divestiture" power against the major supermarket duopoly, and finally the abandonment of a 2050 net zero emissions target.

You can see the problem right away if you're a city-based Liberal - not that there are many of these left.

The nominal achievements of Littleproud's leadership seem to align uncannily with the list of reasons that Liberals have been wiped out in urban Australia.

Which is to say, the outsize influence of the junior party within the Coalition may have saved Nationals' seats in regional-rural Australia, but they came at the expense of Liberal Party holdings in its leafy heartland.

So what now? If anything, it seems likely that this problem may deepen.

Newly installed shadow treasurer Tim Wilson - another high-risk, high-reward selection - believes Canavan's intention to mark out a more distinctive conservative identity could actually have an upside for the Liberals.

According to his somewhat heroic reasoning, the Nats being Nat's in turn, frees up the Liberals to be more distinctively liberal. What is less clear is why that hasn't worked to date.

This recalls the hilarious logic of HG and Roy who asked many years back that if the Australian fast bowler Merv Hughes could take so many wickets when he was overweight, imagine how much better he'd be if he was twice as fat?

A clear danger for Wilson and his Liberal colleagues is that economically populist and interventionist positions taken by the Nats under Canavan will either have to be adopted by the Liberals or actively disavowed.

What this means for Coalition unity is anyone's guess.

Nothing about Canavan's political style suggests he will give Liberal discomfort much thought. His pitch to colleagues was largely based around his determination to see off the threat from One Nation.

Presumably, this will involve matching or even outdoing Hanson's populism on some matters, while delineating a difference on others - such as her offensive remarks suggesting there are no good Muslims.

Hanson knows she is now in a more direct fight for the hearts and minds of regional Australians. You can tell that by her attempts to position Canavan as "woke". Other extreme policies and rhetoric will likely follow.

For the Liberals, all this angularity spells trouble. Already dragged to the right, Angus Taylor's leadership turns on developing a credible package of policies in the cities.

Yet so far, he has been even less clear in condemning Hanson's discriminatory rhetoric than has Canavan.

Paradoxically, weakness seems to be among the strongest forces in politics.

- Mark Kenny is The Canberra Times' political analyst and a professor at the ANU's Australian Studies Institute. He hosts the Democracy Sausage podcast. He writes a column every Sunday.

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#AusPol #WhyTheFuckIsLabor #HahahahaLiebs #NatsAreNuts #VoteGreens #VoteProgIndies
Show threadDroppie4d ago
@sister_ratched

Quote

The Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Oliver Cromwell, is not one of my favourite figures of history, but once gave one of my favourite pieces of advice to men convinced they had no alternative but to do something of which he did not approve. Writing to the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland, he said "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."

I use this as my text as I prepare to admit that I must walk back on some of the unkind words I have said about people whose conduct in the robodebt disaster was said to be corrupt, disgraceful and blameworthy. The behaviour of six was said by a royal commission to possibly amount to corruption under the national anti-corruption legislation.

Four of these initially unnamed people - including Scott Morrison, one-time social security minister and later prime minister, and Kathryn Campbell, former secretary of human services and later social security - were found after an inquiry by a Deputy NACC Commissioner, Kiley Kilgour, to deserve exoneration from this allegation. Two others were found to have acted corruptly, but they will not be charged because the commissioner does not believe that criminal charges could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. They are thus as free as the other four, apart from the stain on their reputations.

I was gobsmacked by the result because I had expected that there was ample material capable of supporting the allegations. Indeed, I was angry that the anti-corruption commissioners, minus the one who conducted the hearings, had initially shied from holding hearings at all, on the quite false grounds that all matters had been dealt with already by the royal commission. That decision was overturned, and the Chief Commissioner Paul Brereton was found to have committed a NACC corruption offence after he recused himself on the ground of acquaintanceship with Ms Campbell but subsequently sought to involve himself in deliberations about how cases were to be investigated.

At the time the NACC decision not to hold an inquiry was reversed, I urged that the NACC not be allowed to pick up on its mistake and visit again their initial predispositions on the matter. I said a new person should be chosen to do it, away from a commission which had already lost the confidence of the public. Kiley Kilgour, up to a point, fits that bill, and was assisted by former High Court justice Geoff Nettle. Kilgour comes from the Victorian broad-based commission against corruption, which operates secretively on NACC lines, and has a public profile and record like the NACC.
Fact finder extraordinarily naive in understanding of how govt works

We now have a 400-plus page "judgement" - the first from the NACC. Albeit after closed hearings so that no one could establish the zeal, if any, with which inquiries were pursued. Judging by the quotes in the judgment I doubt many witnesses were stretched.

I repent my rush to judgment, the more so because I now tend to agree with some of the commissioner's conclusions. At least based on the evidence that I now know. In general Ms Kilgour is more inclined to think the behaviour of the six (and another few dozen who appear equally blameworthy) was not dishonest and corrupt. Rather it was the product of a giant stuff-up in which the minds of various of the actors were not properly on their jobs. A complete stuff-up, not a provable conspiracy, in short.

So, should we treat the accused folk somewhat in the manner of folk acquitted of felony? Champagne all round after a horrible ordeal? Profuse apologies from people such as myself, and an entitlement by them to walk henceforth with heads held up high?

Not quite, because the source of doubts entertained by Ms Kilgour came mostly from the fact she was less than completely satisfied of corrupt purposes, even though there was evidence pointing to it. Her bar was very high.

But against such evidence were signs of incompetence, lack of attention to detail, a chain of correspondence and decision-making, stretching over years, that made following the evidence a bit confusing. And the stout denial of most of the parties that they ever had in mind the deception of the cabinet, the government, or the broader public. (Some of the denials were, by themselves, quite unconvincing, but that's a matter of impression.)

It was not straightforward. Sometimes (I suspect) deliberate ambiguity in thousands of emails and different motives on the part of some of the players complicated things. There was also a good deal of deliberate shorthand adverting, elliptically, to fears of senior officer retaliation. Some of the more junior public servants involved would go to almost any lengths to avoid conflict with them.

It is a judgment on even more senior public servants, including former secretaries of the prime minister's department and the Public Service Commission that such people were put up for leadership roles, and never brought to account, quite separately from the management of robodebt, for some of their tantrums, abuse and shocking misbehaviour.
Alleged bullying, tantrums, vindictive behaviour

Kathryn Campbell's unfortunate manner may have derived from her military "command and control" training and manner at the expense of the more woke inclusive style of most public service managers. (She was a major-general in the Army Reserve, like Paul Brereton.) I perfectly understand that running an army is about efficiently organising killing other people, not cuddling up to them. But I venture that no modern military leader as imperious, remote and unempathetic as Ms Campbell was alleged to be should ever be put in charge of soldiers. Anywhere.

One of the other management monsters was Malisa Golightly, a deputy secretary in Human Services, who had overall charge of the implementation of the robodebt project and was not much inclined to allow obstacles, including naysayers, to stand in the way of it. Nor to much respect the idea that public servants deserved some time off from time to time. Alas she died before the whole illegal and monstrous scheme fell apart. While she deserved her reputation as a bully, I have a cynical feeling that some of the blame has been foisted upon her.

The big problem standing in the way of the cock-up theory rather than conspiracy account is that there were guilty secrets influencing some players. The first was the consciousness that using taxation data to "average out" welfare income data was explicitly not authorised by the Social Security Act. This was pointed out firmly even before the robodebt scheme was put up before ministers for consideration by Kathryn Campbell. There was no way of getting around this: if the scheme was to work at all, such a system, which often produced unfair and false results, would have to be approved by legislation. Many thought they could deal with the problem by euphemism, lying about what occurred, or ignoring the nagging voices.

Ms Kilgour has accepted the assurances of Scott Morrison that he never indicated that he wanted the scheme to proceed without legislative changes, which, implicitly, might have (would have/should have) struck problems in the Senate. Be that as it may, no one in either of the departments ever put up legislation to their minister. Later, a false claim that legislation was not needed went before the cabinet expenditure review committee. Some of those who saw the documentation and should have noticed claim not to have done so. The royal commissioner said that Morrison, who had been told initially that the scheme contravened the law, was possibly corrupt for failing to notice this. It was certainly politically convenient for him.

1/2

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#AusPol #WhyTheFuckIsLabor #HahahahaLiebs #NatsAreNuts #VoteGreens #VoteProgIndies
#CircumlocutionOffice #CharlesDickens #LittleDorrit #Robodebt
Show threadDroppie5d ago

@kentparkstreet1 i concur, but only up to a point. i continue to grumpily assert that

obviously a failure of judgementis in the first instance still manifested by #thegreatunwashed who in their infinite idiocy selfishness & myopia continue not voting for the greens en masse... arseholes.

#AusPol #WhyTheFuckIsLabor #HahahahaLiebs #NatsAreNuts #GreensYEAH #VoteGreens #VoteProgIndies #ClimateCrisis #NonLinear #TippingPoints #PositiveFeedbackLoops #FossilFools #RenewableEnergy #ChangeTheSystem #StateCapture #RightToProtest #Biodiversity #WeAreTotallyFscked #Misanthropy #Karma #NativeForests #StopLoggingNativeForests #FsckCapitalism #CognitiveDissonance

Droppie5d ago
https://www.betootaadvocate.com/people-whove-railed-the-hardest-against-renewable-energy-the-angriest-about-fuel-crisis/

Quote

In some truly shocking news from the nation's political sphere, a number of noise merchants are making some noise.

With the country gripped by a 'fuel crisis' - some of our nation's hardest working political figures are making sure to combat the issue at hand.

By yelling into whatever microphone they can get their hands on about how the country's farmers are about to be left high and dry and little old grannies will be stranded in their apartments.

Similarly to the toilet paper crisis that saw places run out of toilet paper because everyone panicked and dropped everything they were doing to go and get as much loo roll as possible - large companies have sensed a supply and demand payday and decided to make a motza.

That's seen the political characters who've spent their careers railing against alternative fuel sources start beating the drum about how the country only has 50 days of fuel left - as if we are suddenly going to stop let large petro states price gouge us for fuel and let the country turn into a Mad Max dystopia.

On top of being reluctant to point out how misleading the 'we only have 50 days of fuel stat is' they also seem pretty chill on the fact that the guys who've spent decades trying to stop the country having alternative fuel sources and energy security are the ones banging on about not potentially having fuel shortages and energy security.

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#AusPol #WhyTheFuckIsLabor #HahahahaLiebs #NatsAreNuts #VoteGreens #VoteProgIndies #ClimateCrisis #NonLinear #TippingPoints #PositiveFeedbackLoops #FossilFools #RenewableEnergy #ChangeTheSystem #StateCapture #RightToProtest #Biodiversity #WeAreTotallyFscked #Misanthropy #Karma #NativeForests #StopLoggingNativeForests #FsckCapitalism #CognitiveDissonance
People Who've Railed The Hardest Against Renewable Energy The Angriest About Fuel Crisis

WENDELL HUSSEY | Cadet | CONTACT In some truly shocking news from the nation's political sphere, a number of noise merchants are making some noise. With the country gripped by a 'fuel crisis' - some of our nation's hardest working political figures are making sure to combat the issue at hand. By

The Betoota Advocate
Droppie5d ago
https://theshovel.com.au/2026/03/13/matt-canavan-coal-fired-ivf-program/

Quote

New Nationals leader Matt Canavan has promised to dramatically increase the number of Australian-made babies with a plan to power IVF clinics with “good, reliable, Aussie coal”.

Speaking beside a prototype fertility incubator connected to what appeared to be a small open-cut mine, Canavan said Australia had been trying to make babies using worke natural, renewable energy for too long.

“Frankly, this woke way of trying to conceive kids without involving fossil fuel in the process isn’t delivering for ordinary Australians,” he said. “If we want strong, dependable Australian kids, we need to go back to what built this country: coal”.

Under the proposed Coal-Fired IVF Initiative, embryos would be incubated using 100% baseload energy from Australian coal, which Canavan said would ensure babies are stable, reliable and able to power through tough economic conditions. “What Australians want is round-the-clock baby production you can rely on,” he said.

Canavan said the program would also help regional communities by locating most fertility clinics directly inside coal mines.

The senator confirmed the next phase of the plan would explore whether coal could also be used to power pregnancy itself. “Why stop at IVF? If we’re serious about boosting the birth rate, we should be looking at coal-fired wombs as well”.

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#AusPol #WhyTheFuckIsLabor #HahahahaLiebs #NatsAreNuts #VoteGreens #VoteProgIndies
Matt Canavan To Boost Number of Australian Babies With Coal-Fired IVF Program — The Shovel

Speaking beside a prototype fertility incubator connected to what appeared to be a small open-cut mine, Canavan said Australia had been trying to make babies using worke natural, renewable energy for too long.

The Shovel
Droppie6d ago
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/enter-canavan-hyper-nationalist-coal-enthusiast-and-protector-of-jokes-around-the-barbie-20260310-p5o97p.html?ref=rss

Quote

The story of the federal Coalition since last May’s election has been overwhelmingly dreadful – an episode of dysfunction and self-harm that will fascinate political scientists for years to come.

In the wake of a massive defeat, the Liberal and National parties saddled themselves with leaders who were wrong for their jobs and for each other. Sussan Ley was the first to go. She’s gone from politics altogether. And now David Littleproud has gone too, having fallen on his sword. For the Coalition, there are new sheriffs in town. Both parties have gone for the clean sweep, installing new leaders and new deputies. Angus Taylor and Jane Hume have barely settled in as Liberal leader and deputy and now Matt Canavan and Darren Chester hold the corresponding positions with the Nationals.

A double-barrelled question confronts the Coalition: can it rebuild itself or, with One Nation on the march and seemingly swallowing up enormous chunks of their supporter base, is it already too late? In the technical sense at least, bringing in new leadership teams is a start. It’s an acknowledgement that a problem exists. We’re yet to see just how much of an improvement the new leadership players are on their predecessors. Taylor and Hume didn’t begin well. They were rightly laughed off the stage with their opening gambit of a sub-undergraduate condemnation of their opponents as the “worst government in this nation’s history”. That was their initial calling card, which they followed up with bizarre tactics in Question Time that focused on ISIS brides – a niche issue at a time when inflation and interest rates were on the rise.

Things have improved since the US and Israel launched their latest onslaught on Iran. Taylor and his foreign affairs spokesman Ted O’Brien – for those trying to keep score, O’Brien had been Ley’s deputy – have been measured in their responses to the government’s reaction to the conflict as it has spread quickly across the Middle East. They haven’t been bellicose, nor have they sought to politicise matters – not yet anyway.

It’s a counterfactual, but just to get a sense of how things might have gone under Ley, would she, assisted (if that is the right word) by her ever-excitable foreign affairs shadow Michaelia Cash, have held fire in the same way? Ley’s overheated behaviour in the weeks after the Bondi massacre, which ultimately put paid to her political career and harmed the Coalition parties, suggests not. The Coalition’s problem in recent years is that it’s looked impulsive and not serious enough to be trusted with office. The shift under the new leadership on this issue, at least initially, offers some level of encouragement for Coalition supporters, or what’s left of them.

What the move to Canavan will mean for the Coalition rebuild we’re yet to see. An unmediated public performer, he’s an old-school politician in the sense that he’s unlikely to ever turn down an opportunity to appear in the media. Canavan is what is known these days as an “authentic” politician, who “speaks his mind”. That was evident in his first media conference as leader on Wednesday, in which he despaired at the loss of Australia’s “relaxed and larrikin nature”, declaring that “we are losing our country”. His is a hyper-nationalist position, in which we manufacture and farm the things we need while making jokes around the barbecue.

Like Littleproud, he is a Queenslander, but has a much more heightened profile as an advocate for the coal industry, especially as it relates to energy and the widespread role of renewables. Unlike Littleproud, he does not have a scratchy personality. Fulfilling the role of a politician and especially a political leader looks much easier from the outside. Littleproud’s boastful and defensive musings on Tuesday afternoon about his leadership performance as he announced his resignation made for sad listening.

From the outset, Littleproud had an outsized view of the National Party’s role in policymaking and the national discussion and had no qualms about acting unilaterally to the Coalition’s cost. He characterised himself as the servant of the Nationals’ party room and spoke of his pride in showing “courage” and “character” in standing for what the party room wanted him to stand for. The sadness in all this was that he felt he had to say it; his Nationals colleagues weren’t exactly getting in line to praise him in the way that he was praising himself.

That party room should be placed in its proper context. Of the nation’s 226 federal parliamentarians, only 18 identify as National Party MPs. That’s enough to require nothing bigger than a minibus to take them wherever they might want to go. When it comes to policy, the current Nationals party room has shown that it knows how to punch above its weight. Last year, Littleproud, urged on by his colleagues, with Canavan as the lead advocate inside the party room, ditched net zero. In short order the Liberals, under Ley’s leadership, did the same. Not a bad result for the National Party, which at the election a few months earlier had attracted 3.8 per cent of the national vote under its own banner and a minor share of the 7.3 per cent secured by the merged Liberal and National entities in Queensland and the Northern Territory.

Just how that success on ditching net zero helps the Liberals win back their old electoral base in the big cities, which they need to form government, is hard to see. As for the Nationals, Canavan easily and naturally speaks the fundamental language of One Nation, harking back to an Australia of the past while also decrying Pauline Hanson for her divisive “identity politics on the Right”. He is a better communicator than Littleproud. He needs to be because the National Party is now in the fight of its life against One Nation outside metropolitan Australia. Originally named the Country Party, the Nationals formed federally after World War I as a community-driven populist insurgency in rural and regional Australia that harnessed disaffection with the established parties. Sound familiar?

- Shaun Carney is a regular columnist, author and former associate editor of The Age.

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#AusPol #WhyTheFuckIsLabor #HahahahaLiebs #NatsAreNuts #VoteGreens #VoteProgIndies
Enter Canavan, hyper-nationalist, coal enthusiast and protector of jokes around the barbie

The National Party should be placed in its proper context. Out of the nation’s 226 federal parliamentarians, only 18 identify as National Party MPs. That’s enough to require nothing bigger than a minibus to take them around.

The Sydney Morning Herald
Droppie6d ago
https://www.betootaadvocate.com/matt-canavan-begins-toppling-coopers-gap-wind-turbines-as-first-act-as-nationals-leader/

Quote

The rein of Matt 'The Italian Stallion' Canavan has begun with a bang today.

The Queensland Senator who has risen to the top of the National Party of Australia has kicked off his leadership in style, with a symbolic and significant move in his home state.

The man famous for his hatred of renewable energy (which has absolutely nothing to do with his connection to the mining industry) has ushered in a new era by changing the landscape of the Western Downs.

Making his first call after winning the Nationals Leadership ballot, Canavan reportedly ordered that the Cooper's Gap Wind Farm immediately come down.

With an army of cheap migrant labour on standby, Canavan Facetimed in as the first of the turbines on the wind farm outside of Dalby came crashing down.

"You can take your Net Zero, and you can take your economic mismanagement, and you can shove it where the sun don't shine!" laughed Canavan.

"Which is probably where you lot will try and set up solar panels," he laughed.

"But there's a new sheriff in town, and all those towers will be coming down by the end of the day."

While the pulling down of expensive infrastructure built to shore up our power supply ahead of a looming energy crisis seems illogical, Canavan says he won't be stopping with Coopers Farm.

"The whole state of Queensland will be purged of this shit," said Canavan, smashing a small prop solar panel to make his point.

"The new age is here."

More to come.

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#AusPol #WhyTheFuckIsLabor #HahahahaLiebs #NatsAreNuts #VoteGreens #VoteProgIndies
Droppie [opensoc]Mar 5

i simply do not understand the difficulty here

abc.net.au/news/2026-02-19/cli…

it's not hard, not complicated, it's easy, viz:

  • the science is clear & unambiguous... go with the science
  • bodies that go with the science are allies & are to be listened to, eg, the greens, the prog indies, greenpeace, the climate council et al
  • bodies like advance, & all the fossilfool lobby groups, are blatant liars, have no credibility, & shall not be even entertained by parlie. indeed, they should be proscribed
  • the science is clear & unambiguous... go with the science
  • the science is clear & unambiguous... go with the science
  • the science is clear & unambiguous... go with the science

#AusPol #WhyTheFuckIsLabor #HahahahaLiebs #NatsAreNuts #GreensYEAH #VoteGreens #VoteProgIndies #ClimateCrisis #NonLinear #TippingPoints #PositiveFeedbackLoops #FossilFools #RenewableEnergy #ChangeTheSystem #StateCapture #RightToProtest #Biodiversity #WeAreTotallyFscked #Misanthropy #Karma #NativeForests #StopLoggingNativeForests #FsckCapitalism #CognitiveDissonance

Senate committee features climate disinformation and Dr Karl's clash with One Nation

The scourge of AI-slopaganda, viral disinformation campaigns and online attacks against individuals and institutions is going to get far worse before it gets better, if the latest public hearings on the topic are any indication.