The NEXT coming Oz election thread!

Needing a better buzz

Jason Koutsoukis
October 28, 2007

Derogatory and unconvincing ads are doing the Liberals more harm than good.

ONE thing John Howard might consider doing to win back support is to stop being so negative.

Take the anti-union advertisements, the basis of the Coalition's campaign so far. One word that sums them up is snide. The ads are derogatory in a nasty, insinuating manner. They are also unconvincing.

Labor's treasury spokesman, Wayne Swan, has never been a union official, yet we keep seeing mug shots of Swan stamped with the words "trade unionist".

What that really means is he's an ex-union member. So what?

Howard's Defence Minister, Brendan Nelson, was a union member once. Not just a union member, Nelson was once national president of one of the biggest trade unions in the country, the Australian Medical Association.

And don't forget Nelson's 20-year association with the Labor Party before he changed sides to win Liberal preselection for Bradfield.

Labor strategists should dig up the television footage of Nelson in the 1993 election campaign screaming before a rowdy election rally that he had "never voted Liberal in my life".

Nelson later admitted that statement was a lie, but again, this pattern of behaviour doesn't seem to have affected his performance in government.

Another Labor bogey whose mug shot features in the anti-union ads is Julia Gillard. Her sin? She was once a trade union lawyer. The truth is she was a partner at Melbourne law firm Slater & Gordon. They act for a number of unions.

Does the fact that Gillard may have once acted for a union mean she is susceptible to a union plot to take over the Federal Government? It's such a tenuous connection that it undermines the credibility of the entire advertisement.

Then there was the ad featuring West Australian Joe McDonald, which went to air on Thursday.

It features great footage of McDonald ranting and raving and carrying on like an odious thug at a union meeting.

My first reaction when seeing the ad was to wonder what garbage bin McDonald had crawled out from. But how much influence does McDonald really have? In the nine years I've been covering politics in Canberra, I've never seen the bloke.

Is he an ALP member? Sure. But again, so what? If this was Labor's future Treasurer, then maybe they'd be on to something.

Compare the footage of Joe McDonald to the Liberals' 1996 campaign ad showing then foreign minister Gareth Evans dancing in slow motion at a Labor victory party. That ad worked because viewers could make the link between Gareth the party animal and a government that had lost touch with public opinion.

It's not as if the Liberals don't have influential friends whose character could be called into question. People like Visy boss Richard Pratt, one of the Liberal Party's biggest corporate donors and now a confessed price-fixing cheat.

What looks worse? Some goon over in Perth no one has ever heard of getting carried away at a union meeting with about 10 people watching? Or having as your biggest corporate donor one of the country's most famous businessmen who has just admitted to orchestrating a price-fixing scam that ripped off millions of ordinary consumers?

<SNIP>

Circa 1787 ?
Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh , had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government."

"A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury."

"From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."

"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years"

"During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:

1. From bondage to spiritual faith;

2. From spiritual faith to great courage;

3. From courage to liberty;

4. From liberty to abundance;

5. From abundance to complacency;

6. From complacency to apathy;

7. From apathy to dependence;

8. From dependence back into bondage"

....as I said at the beginning, I would think there are very few places in Australia with the water needed for a Nuclear Power Plant, so it doesnt seem feasible to me to have more than a few in Australia.

By the way Msgola, may I know what your objections are?

The more I think about it the more I think Workchoices is bad for employers.

Effectively its aim is to move employees into the realm of 'inputs' like materials or subcontractors, where the organisation is free to stop paying for them when they don't need them. Which sounds good from a JIT perspective - but the overall effect will be to allow managers to be sloppier in recruiting, to throw staff at a problem without thinking about it's cause, or asking the 7 questions, because they can get rid of them when they realise they don't need them anymore (or that they never did).

In affect labour laws are a QA mechanism on employers - you don't employ someone unless:
-you need them for more than a short period
-they fit your org
-their skills fit your org
-you can train them to fit changing needs

Workchoices gives managers the chance to be slack in their employment practices (and vindictive). In effect workchoices will degrade the quality of management in Australia - and I guarantee that will effect productivity negatively.

Workchoices never addresses productivity - but productivity is the key to all labour reform. At least Kev's Education Revolution acknowledges productivity however glibly.

Looks like kev has been baited again ...

Quote:

Rudd expels firebrand unionist

Jewel Topsfield
October 27, 2007

MILITANT unionist Joe McDonald has been expelled from the Labor Party over his "incendiary" warning that the Prime Minister was "gone" and he would be back.

After being acquitted on Thursday of unlawfully entering a Perth building site, Mr McDonald yesterday said: "John's gone, you know that? I'll be back."

Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd said the comments were "highly inflammatory, completely unacceptable and not part of the 21st century industrial relations system", and he asked the National Executive to expel the firebrand "forthwith".......

http://www.theage.com.au/news/federalelection2007news/rudd-expels-firebrand-unionist/2007/10/26/1192941340870.html

msolga wrote:

Classic. What really sucks about the whole scenario is, the battlers aren't the ones buying plasma tv's and five thousand dollar laptops, mobile dvd's and satnavs for their cars.

Your only objection is the lack of water, vikorr?

Builder wrote:

msolga wrote:

Classic. What really sucks about the whole scenario is, the battlers aren't the ones buying plasma tv's and five thousand dollar laptops, mobile dvd's and satnavs for their cars.

I beg to disagree.

...I'm, as you are, for the implementation of environmentally friendly power plants. If we could get all our power needs from Solar, Wind, Hydro (and in the future, perhaps tidal, and nuclear fusion), I would be more than happy.