blind3rdeye
@blind3rdeye@aussie.zone
- Comment on Gina Rinehart funded flights and fashion show for Pauline Hanson 7 hours ago:
I agree that the relative openness makes the choice more transparent to the public. Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party is clearly bent on acting in the interests of Gina Rinehart - and we as voting members of the public get to decide whether we’re ok with that.
I think that a lot of people are not ok with it; including a lot of people in One Nation’s target audience. That’s why Pauline Hanson downplays the relationship.
Also, the main reason Gina Rinehart’s influence over Pauline Hanson is well own is because articles like this one exist. People go out of their way to shine a light on their relationship, because we it well understood that billionaires buying political influence is bad - even when that influence is not kept a secret.
And finally, Gina Rinehart’s obscene wealth allows her to buy vast amounts of influence over the general public. And she is doing this, sometimes in obvious ways (such through ads, and their One Nation cartoon), and sometimes less obvious ways (such as armies of social-media sock-puppets, and close financial ties with media outlets). That’s how One Nation is able to be so popular despite having no members with any policy skills, and selfish goals bent around what is profitable for Gina Rinehart.
- Comment on Record El Niño to bake Australia after extreme heat and fires across Europe and North America 9 hours ago:
I don’t think linking to a reddit thread is a great idea.
- Comment on Food fraud investigation reveals the disturbing truth behind the labels 3 days ago:
I think the ABC buried the lede a with the bit about tomato country of origin. All of these things are serious problems, but I think products not being what they say they are is bigger then not being where they said they were from. And the one about methanol… that surely requires an immediate product recall for safety. Right?
- Submitted 3 days ago to news@aussie.zone | 1 comment
- Comment on Melbourne council votes to scrap Lime ebikes for failing to meet ‘bare minimum standards’ 2 weeks ago:
Fair enough.
It’s a shame that it didn’t work out, but the council is right with this one:
“We will reopen the tender if we have a company that comes back and meets the bare minimum standards, which is not a corporate monolith expecting an underfunded council to bankroll them.”
And I think Lime’s response is a bit disingenuous:
“Those against it do relate a lot to user behaviour, but we don’t ban cars for user behaviour,”
Perhaps we should ban cars for user behaviour… but that of course is beside the point. Ebikes are not being banned or removed; only Lime’s service is being discontinued. So this decision is nothing like ‘banning cars’. A much closer analogy would be telling GoGet to end their car sharing operation due to users dumping those cars the middle of random roads or footpaths. (GoGet users don’t do that, obviously, and so their service can continue.)
- Comment on Reports that Victoria is set to Abolish Group Voting Tickets 2 weeks ago:
I just want to reiterate what you said about party names.
Do not vote for a party you’ve never heard of just because you like the message in their name. Their name does not necessarily reflect their values at all, in fact it is often quite the opposite.
Read candidate statements and decide (at least roughly) who you will vote for before you go to the voting booth.
- Comment on The Victorian Greens are taking a page from Mamdani’s policy playbook. Can they combat rising rightwing populism? 4 weeks ago:
They have a lot of policies and I’d dare say that their polices the kinds of things that a lot of people are asking for. Here is a link to their policies page for you to see for yourself: greens.org.au/vic/policies
It is difficult for The Greens to get any kind of positive media attention in our current media landscape, which is why we mostly just hear about their stunts and complaints rather than policies and actions. The polices and actions do exist though.
- Comment on Polling suggests one nation preferred over labor, negative perceptions and low awareness of budget blamed. 1 month ago:
I agree with that.
Many years ago, I had a paper subscription to both The Age and The Australian; and both were respectable publications at the time… Whereas now neither of them are. There is still good journalism happening, but it is no longer the norm. And so it isn’t as easy to consume it as a routine, or talk about it casually to people in slightly different social circles.
I feel like almost every story is like “here is what some people with obviously vested interests say about such-and-such”. Or the other flavour of story which is basically “shit’s fucked. It sucks, right?” For politics in particular, I see so many stories about whether some policy is popular, and again opinions from vested interests… but very little objective comparison. Like, people aren’t proposing policy changes because they are complete idiots. They have reasons. So I’d like the reporting on them to say what those reasons are, and look into whether or not the policy will meet the goals of those reasons.
Ok. I feel like I’m whinging and being a bit vague. Like I said before, there is still some good journalism going on - and I don’t really put a lot of effort into looking for it. So I shouldn’t complain too much about what I see. I guess I’m just bit a worried about what everyone else sees too. Rage-bait emotional manipulation, mostly.
- Comment on 'What a surprise': Butler hits back at forecast suggesting tax reforms will hurt renters 2 months ago:
I saw ‘Speersy’ on ABC News Breakfast this morning, talking about how the government won’t win the public debate about the tax changes. He said that criticisms were growing stronger and that businesses were demanding carve-outs.
I felt that whole line of reasoning needed a bit dose of “they would say that, wouldn’t they”. The criticism that David Speers was referring to was coming directly from the people who are going to be paying the tax… like, boo hoo, the profits from just owning stuff (capital gains) won’t be as large any more - maybe they’ll need to do some work or something.
But obviously when people are making a lot of money from doing not very much work, then they also have a lot of time and money to spend on lobbying the government to keep tax laws in their own favour. Meanwhile us mere peons don’t necessarily have the resources to have our opinions heard so strongly (and since the effects are indirect, many people might not have much to say about it anyway). So Speersy et al. don’t hear that at all. Journalism is hard, I guess.
- Comment on Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith arrested, expected to be charged with war crime of murder 3 months ago:
I’m a bit surprised it has taken this long.
- Comment on Climate misinformation inquiry stops short on reform 3 months ago:
It’s amazing to me that we can have a serious senate inquiry like this, involving hard evidence of coordinated misinformation campaigns to weaken Australia; and yet apparently no government action is taken.
The government recently acted quickly with their fuel excise and heavy road usage changes. This show they are willing to make direct interventions when they think something is important. The interventions they made in that case may be rushed and of questionable value - but the point is that the government is willing to act when they think it is important…
So then, is direct coordinated mass manipulation of Australian views not important enough to act on? We aren’t talking about mere differences of opinion being argued about online. We’re talking about deliberate sowing of confusion and misunderstanding; coordinated lies from large groups of fake people designed to pass as popular opinion.
And yet basic ideas such as political advertising should be required to be factual is apparently too big of a step to take. wtf?
- Comment on Long queues at servos as petrol prices surge amid Middle East war 4 months ago:
Cars suck. That’s my take on this.
- Comment on Colonial monuments vandalised, graffitied in Melbourne gardens 6 months ago:
I think it’s a mistake to associate the violent actions of unknown individuals with the motives and beliefs of a large and very diverse set of people asking for change.
- Comment on Why are the Populist Right Surging in Australia? 6 months ago:
yeah. fucking millennials always trying to be more caring. Bastards. Totally ridiculous.
- Comment on Adelaide Writers' Week cancelled after week of escalating controversy around [cancellation of] author Randa Abdel-Fattah 6 months ago:
Here is their statement on their website.
Check this out:
We also apologise to Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah for how the decision was represented […]
They’re doing one of those classic bullshit non-apologies. “Sorry you misunderstood” rather than admitting fault. They completely fucked it up, and now even while cancelling the event they cannot bring themselves to take responsibility for it. That’s low.
- Comment on 'Get out of Minneapolis': Mayor's fury after ICE agent shoots and kills woman 6 months ago:
Yeah I think it is definitely time for a general strike. There’s a list of serious grievance as long as my arm, but even just to demand that the murder is charged with murder would be a good move. A line has to be drawn somewhere. And if murdering civilians has not cross the line, then wtf?
- Comment on Greens Preferences Flow to Labor – 2010 and 2025 Compared | Antony Green 7 months ago:
That’s a pretty interesting analysis.
Antony Green is a clear thinker, rigorous data dissector, and a good communicator.
- Comment on [deleted] 9 months ago:
It says ‘anyone who witnessed the incident or who had footage of the assault’. So perhaps they aren’t interested in sightings outside of that. Perhaps its about gathering sources of evidence for charges rather than finding / identifying the offenders.
- Comment on Police investigate machete brawl at Melbourne shopping centre 9 months ago:
Apparently the perpetrators fled the scene before the police arrived. So your suggestion wasn’t an option in this case.
And when the police do manage to find these people, I can think of a few other things the police might like to try before resorting to killing people.
- Comment on A survey found 1 in 6 men admit sexual feelings for children. So is paedophilia increasing? (2023, linked study is worth a read). 11 months ago:
The researchers also found:
- around one in ten (9.4%) Australian men has sexually offended against children
Does that figure accurately reflect the Australian population? Like, 1 in eleven men (roughly) have acted on some sexual impulse with a child. That sounds pretty high. I know a lot of adult males; so with that kind of statistic (and the follow-up about their typical backgrounds), it would be highly likely that I know a few sexual offenders without realising it.