MisterFrog
@MisterFrog@aussie.zone
- Comment on Greens Launch 'Trans Insurgency' Campaign In Response To Pauline Hanson Press Club Speech 4 hours ago:
Timestamped to jump to where Pauline Hanson starts talking about the “transgender insurgency” in Australia.
The campaign linked by OP is The Greens mocking her
- Comment on Stop Victoria's fake party rort !! 3 days ago:
I’d the Labor party don’t fix this, it’d be a travesty.
They were very keen to pass unconstitutional laws to give them an unfair electoral advantage, (along with the LNP).
- Comment on As voter disillusionment grows, why aren't voters flocking to the Greens in Australia? 3 days ago:
I feel like we’ve had this discussion before. But to me all religions are nonsense, and singling out Islam seems odd to me.
The Greens aren’t a “pro-islam” party, they’re anti-discrimination, and pro-palestine. Which any person who’s anti-genocide is at least not pro-israel (disclaimer, I don’t like the Greens, but for other reasons).
The greens are a party that believes you can manage, reform and tax capitalism into something acceptable, and believe parliament is where power is and should be. They, like all the bigger parties, elect leaders from within the parliamentary party, and don’t really let regular members vote on policy (something I believe Labor does, but just ignores? I’m not as familiar with their internal party politics).
I’d argue why they’re unappealing, is that they don’t focus enough on the core issue: class struggle. Too many tree Tories in the party. Too many people who think if only we could get enough “good people” into parliament everything will be fixed.
The last election their headline policy was dental into Medicare. Good, sure, but they don’t talk about ablishing Medicare and replacing it with a truly public system, one where out of pocket costs can’t just come back every couple of years. They don’t talk about scrapping the stupid Union Accords Labor brought in decades ago which absolutely knee-capped union power by severely restricting the right to strike.
I just think your fixation on Islam is troubling.
All religions are dumb, in my opinion, but I’ll speak up against discrimination of all kinds.
- Comment on AFP begins inquiry into allegations Israeli forces assaulted flotilla activists 5 days ago:
I will be shocked if anything beyond telling Israel that Australia has “deep concerns” is actually done.
The Labor party is piss weak on this.
- Comment on Labor MPs have been handed new talking points – revealing a growing concern about One Nation 6 days ago:
One Nation are basically Reform UK, I’d say
- Comment on Seems very topical with the rise of One Nation 1 week ago:
In the case of Melbourne, the enemy likes to arrives to the F1 and the Melbourne Cup by Helicopter.
- Submitted 1 week ago to australianpolitics@aussie.zone | 8 comments
- Comment on Discussion/change my mind: There are almost no examples where privatisation has been a net good* 1 week ago:
Ah yes, I missed the facetiousness 😅
Yeah, the system is
broken and needs to be fixrdworking exactly as intended and needs to be broken. - Comment on Melbourne trains finally arrive in the Myki-less era with tap-and-go payments, almost a decade after Sydney 1 week ago:
A hunch, but I reckon this may have something to do with it:
US-based firm Conduent was awarded a $1.7bn 15-year contract in 2023 to upgrade the Myki system to allow contactless payments via a debit or credit card, smartphone or smartwatch.
God forbid we develop home-grown capability to implement projects.
Privatisation is a scam.
- Comment on Discussion/change my mind: There are almost no examples where privatisation has been a net good* 1 week ago:
Could you expand on this a little? You didn’t really elaborate on examples or the logic of why you think privatisation is good for society.
Or have I misunderstood your comment?
- Comment on Discussion/change my mind: There are almost no examples where privatisation has been a net good* 1 week ago:
Yeah, perhaps I should have added the caveat that I think privatisation is worse than having it be publicly run.
Instead of the rail companies making bank from all that transit oriented development sales, could have been the people.
- Comment on Discussion/change my mind: There are almost no examples where privatisation has been a net good* 1 week ago:
I’ll still award you points for this one. At least someone is providing public transport. So many US governments are so poorly managed, it seems to me.
Though, I still believe if they could have it be publically run, without being knee-capped like they do with Amtrak, it would be better for society, and people’s wallets, overall.
- Comment on Discussion/change my mind: There are almost no examples where privatisation has been a net good* 1 week ago:
What do we actually get from having a private company run the service though (in the case of Metro Trains), instead of just employing everyone directly?
What exactly do we get by having private companies do the retail side of the NBN? Instead of just having the NBN provide the service at cost (which they’re already doing, and it’s just being sold on to us by private companies who repackage the bandwidth and usage in different ways). Same logic for gas and electricity (in Victoria, not all states do this). What are we actually getting by having it repackaged and sold on to us with a markup?
Seems to me were unnecessarily paying an extra margin to account for profit. We could just employ those permanent workers directly.
Water (in Victoria) corporations are actually government-owned corporatised water authorities. Which again makes no sense and we get nothing from having them being administered separately.
Here’s an interesting video on the initial privatisation of the metropolitan trains and trams under Kennett, which was an absolute disaster: youtube.com/watch?v=34fGlurh42A
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to australianpolitics@aussie.zone | 15 comments
- Comment on Former prime minister Tony Abbott elected unopposed as Liberal Party president 2 weeks ago:
This is a false dichotomy in my opinion, and presupposes that parties that be are static, that no new challengers are possible and that Labor is the “sole party of governance” (which is a pretty undemocratic notion). It also pretends that people will continue to vote Labor indefinitely just because the LNP doesn’t exist.
The Greens, to some degree, purposefully position themselves as the party to “work with” the Labor party, and extract concessions from them. Which historically has been pretty meh if you ask me (they royally dicked around with the ETS and called that a victory, for example). They’re also barely a left wing party: they talk about workers rights, yet don’t push to undo the Accords (which means striking is illegal except for protected industrial action, thanks Labor!), they want dental into Medicare, but see no reason to campaign for abolishing our system and replacing it with actual universal healthcare (we have a private subsidy model, with a bit of public healthcare sprinkled in). Their party is one who want to manage capitalism better and tax companies and the wealthy some more - not abolish the power structures that allow the wealthy to retain the monopoly on decision making in society, and put agency in the hands of the workers (i.e. socialism). They think the solution to our problems is to get “good people” to the levers of power. They’re quite fine with capitalism. That’s not very left wing, if you ask me.
Moving politics left isn’t about moving the Labor party left. The Labor party has and continues to move to the right. They are a lost cause and anyone who’s still a member, despite it all, is on board with that.
The only semi-realistic threat right now is a far right cooker party in One Nation and Labor doesn’t need to move left to combat them either.
Exactly my point. Having a “strong opposition” of a right wing party does nothing to move politics further left. And anchors the average opinion further right.
Do we really think the Labor party would have changed capital gains the way they did if right wing politics in Australia weren’t in shambles (yeah, One Nation is rising, but they’re so far much less effective in convincing wealthy people about much of anything).
In conclusion, yeah, can’t wait for the LNP to die. Not that I think that’ll be enough to usher in meaningful change. That will only come from grassroots organising.
- Comment on Former prime minister Tony Abbott elected unopposed as Liberal Party president 3 weeks ago:
I personally don’t think that “extreme left” equals a single party state.
I think extreme left is abolishing private control of capital, not necessarily something like stalinism.
To me, socialism necessarily means democratic control of society by and for the workers and people. Authoritarian states (current and past), in my opinion, cannot be considered socialist because they are/were authoritarian and created a new ruling class - just based on party position rather than wealth.
I think the notion of people ever 100% agreeing is absurd, so there’ll always be different parties/factions/groups - provided you’re actually committed to democracy, which any true socialist is.
The “far left” quality of a party, under my worldview, is concerned with what you think about the control of capital, rather than what you think about how decisions should get made (through democracy or dictatorship).
Though, I will also admit that I am very biased, that I believe a truly democratic far right society is impossible, because of the influence of concentrations of money over politics.
I actually prefer mixed member proportionality with a concentrated left leaning bias.
I encourage people to think beyond tinkering with how we vote for our representatives, to notice that even with our representatives being elected, they’re only beholden to us ever 3/4 years (or 6 in the case of senators), and in the meantime they’re able to scratch backs and get sweet cushy jobs after they’re done, and/or a sweet parliamentary pension.
Community organisations mostly have a right of recall over their elected positions, based on varying thresholds depending on their org’s rules. It’s wild that we don’t have this ability at a federal or state level.
Though, I also agree we should still tinker with the voting system in the meantime. I would love lower house seats to be MMP as you suggest. My pet idea is to increase the number of lower house seats by 50%, and then send 3 members from 75 electorates (combine current electorates in 2s).
Retains the local nature of the candidates (and they should try spread themselves out across the electorate), while providing better representation in the lower house.
Thanks for engaging with me on this!
- Comment on Former prime minister Tony Abbott elected unopposed as Liberal Party president 3 weeks ago:
As a vehemently left winger
I like a stronger centre right to keep the left wing in check too
Wat.
I don’t think those two positions work together.
We want the right to crumble so politics moves further left, no?
- Comment on ‘Extremely Concerning’: Chris Minns Slammed Over Trump-Like ‘Biological Differences’ Comments 3 weeks ago:
Painful?
- Comment on Opposition Leader Angus Taylor proposes migration cap tied to housing construction 4 weeks ago:
Shhhhhhhh don’t let the plebs hear you! Else they might realise that capitalism and piling investor money into housing is actually causing high prices!
Line must go up 📈📈📈
- Comment on Albanese vowed no changes to housing tax breaks. Now he's defending reforms 5 weeks ago:
GST
And this is a regressive tax. Fuck GST. Would much rather have had very slightly higher income taxes…
- Comment on MAGA federation query 5 weeks ago:
Eh, unless they become a direct issue, I don’t see us ever interacting with them. They’re gonna have fun with the overwhelming dislike of their emperor on like 99% of Lemmy instances lol
- Comment on Could One Nation's Farrer victory be the 'beginning of the end' for the Coalition? 5 weeks ago:
It was a Liberal held seat for 25 year (or there abouts).
The article headline and most of the references in the article are to the Coalition though, which is includes the National Party.
- X-Post: Federal government to contribute nearly $4b extra to Victoria's Suburban Rail Loopwww.abc.net.au ↗Submitted 1 month ago to melbourne@aussie.zone | 0 comments
- Comment on Minns doubles down on unconstitutional anti-protest laws. 1 month ago:
If this isn’t proof to Labor stooges that their parliamentary party aren’t anti-democratic thugs that need to be abandoned, I don’t know what will be…
The party is beyond reform
- Comment on Victoria's free public transport continues in May with half-price fares to follow 1 month ago:
Compared to how much we subsidise roads, this is a drop in the bucket
- Comment on Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith arrested, expected to be charged with war crime of murder 2 months ago:
About bloody time. I’m glad that for once there’s a semblance of justice
- Comment on Free train rides: V/Line trains hitting capacity 2 months ago:
The only bad thing is the state government not rapid increasing train frequencies (and also removing the VLine booking system, like, that is really stupid)
- Comment on Thieves steal 12 tons of KitKat chocolate bars in Italy 2 months ago:
The best part is that it was stolen directly from Nestle.
Stealing from Nestle is a moral act.
- Comment on [Discussion] What level of proportional representation is desirable? 2 months ago:
Can agree with you on that point. Seems like a hangover from federation that the smaller states receive more representation.
Doesn’t really make sense in our modern, highly interconnected world to have some states have better representation per capita than others.
I think a unicameral system would not be popular in Australia though, because you’d largely remove local members (unless you switch to something like what NZ has, but with preferential voting for the local candidates). Hence why I advocate for local multi-member electorates in the lower house to improve representation of more parties, and retaining the senate.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts friend!
- Comment on "Free public transport in Victoria through April as fuel prices continue to climb" 2 months ago:
Or we could benefit by having a permanent team who will be cheaper in the long-run, because of familiarity with the systems and projects they build and maintain.
Hiring outside consultants of any kind for a permanent government requirement is pure insanity (or in reality, grift) if you ask me.
I’m sure there are consultancies who do a great job. The actual employees are usually not the problem.
But let’s just give those same employees a permanent job and cut out the middle men who are offering no value whatsoever.
