The Australian reports the latest Newspoll shows the parties still araldited together on 50-50, with Labor’s primary vote on 35 per cent (38.0 per cent at the election, 34 per cent in the Newspoll of September 10-12), the Coalition on 42 per cent (43.6 per cent and 41 per cent) and the Greens on 14 per cent (11.8 per cent and 14 per cent). This is despite a sharp deterioration in Tony Abbott’s personal ratings, which have seen a 9 per cent drop in approval (to 39 per cent) and rise in disapproval (47 per cent). By contrast, Julia Gillard is up four points on approval to 48 per cent and down three on disapproval to 33 per cent, and her lead as preferred prime minister has widened from 50-34 to 52-31. Full tables courtesy of GhostWhoVotes.
Buffy? Of course these days, with so many women soldiers, the gender thing in the lyrics is anachronistic.
Finnigans, however evil the US may have been, that doesn’t remove the fundamental moral problems involved.
j
They used up around $1 trillion in Iraq alone. They are bust.
[Then you will have no problem of the state resuming your property if there are minerals ]
Correction Frank, what you meant to say was “Then you will have no problem of the state resuming your MUM’S property if there are minerals located.”
Minors (not miners) are not allowed to sign the contracts needed to acquire a property.
It would need a responsible adult to sign the contracts on Whizzer’s behalf.
M77
If confronting ‘evil’ is the war objective in Afghanistan, and going to war addresses the ‘evil’ thing, Australia will never, ever be at peace.
Oh, and if ‘evil’ was the objective in Afghanistan, we could start by getting rid of the very, very corrupt Karzai Government which is doing all sorts of power-sharing deals with very, very evil warlords.
[They used up around $1 trillion in Iraq alone. They are bust.]
Not the govt — private enterprise gets rich on wars, and they are the biggest lobbyists
j
Ah.
The East Timorese massacres were partly down to John Howard, trying to curry favour with Jakarta.
If he hadn’t had Australia argue so vociferously against the need for an international force to keep the peace during the period of the independence vote, there would have been security in place before the violence started. The Indonesian politico-military elite played Johnny and silly Alex like fiddles.
He made such a hairy-chested song-and-dance about the Australian intervention to cover up his part in the appalling debacle…
Taliban I got rid of all the poppy fields and closed down the heroin trade in Afghanistan.
Taliban II makes a motza from that very same trade and many Afghanis are addicted.
and the moral is? …
Boerwar @4505 – short memory – remember 9/11? That was the very valid background for the west (and Nato and UN) to take action against Bin Laden’s protectors who had their chances. Things haven’t gone as planned but that’s one of the points I made. And again, do you or I or anyone else know how many terrorist attacks mights have been perpetrated from that environment, and maybe with a WMD?
cud chewer@4497
Actually, I thought the whole point was for them to stop sending out terrorists. If the west was so against sharia law, how come saudi arabia is an ally?
[He made such a hairy-chested song-and-dance about the Australian intervention to cover up his part in the appalling debacle…]
And he had to beg Bill Clinton for a ship to take us there.
Kersebleptes@4508
Neither the ALP nor the coalition can point any fingers with their actions towards the east timorese. Both had appalling records with regard to their treatment.
[Finnigans, however evil the US may have been, that doesn’t remove the fundamental moral problems involved.]
CC, yes, the Islamic Fundamentalists also have their moral problem.
M77
I remember 9/11 very well indeed. Saw the second plane go in on the telly in real time.
If the solution is trashinig Afghanistan, creating several million refugees, and installing a corrupt and short-term Government and doing a runner, is the solution, what exactly is the problem?
If it is WMDs you are really worried about, then you might be thinking that we should be trying to stablize Pakistan rather than waging a war with Pakistan and its Taliban proxies in Afghanistan.
Punna,
Yes. Whatever company made that weird catamaran ferry-thing did very well out of our Govt (and us, of course). A quick coat of Navy grey and hey presto!: Australian projecting power.
But we did have to give it back straight afterward 🙁
privi izumo @ 4513,
Cannot dispute that judgement in any way, I’m ashamed to say.
The Taliban will sign up to whatever it says on the bit of paper. The West leaves with honour intact. Job done. Evil conquered. The Taliban takes over.
[Treatment of asylum seekers was ranked 2nd lowest – 13 out of 15%]
LOL!
“Treatment of boaties” would be a leftwing concern you would think.
Australians don’t care about the treatment of boaties… thats a leftwing thing. They do care about stopping the boats however, which wasn’t in the answer criteria funny enough.
Polling done by essential a while ago specifically asking about boaties showed a majority of Australians supported a refugee program but were against illegal boat arrivals.
Mick77 @4499
I respect your point of view.
You raise a interesting point when you say “evil needs to be confronted ” Who decides what is evil and the parameters that need to be applied to determine it ?
What was evil about Vietnam and Iraq ? If we need to apply ” evil needs to be confronted ” as a rule of thumb why don’t we overthrow Robert Mugabhe( sorry, can’t spell his name ), stop the slaughter in Somalia, Congo, etc.
If Afghanistan was invaded because it was a base for international terrorism why didn’t America also invade Pakistan ?
American interventions in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan have been nothing more than political and economic policy decisions covered up by them under the rhetoric of protecting the world against the twin “isms” of communism and terrorism.
The sad thing is young people die and will continue to die .
[Australians don’t care about the treatment of boaties… thats a leftwing thing.]
Yes, famous lefties like Malcolm Fraser.
Seriously, if you are angry at the world because you can’t get laid, that’s your problem. Leave the unfortunate out of it.
[Polling done by essential a while ago specifically asking about boaties showed a majority of Australians supported a refugee program but were against illegal boat arrivals.]
I wouldn’t be citing polls if I were you. They don’t bode well for your cult.
Woops… jizz is back. You still haven’t answered my question spunky…
privi izumo@4432
I’m waiting…
In relation to boat people, the Labor Government has around two years and 10 months to have an off-shore regional processing centre in place.
If the offshore regional processing centre is in place the boat issue, as an election issue, will be even more dead, buried and cremated than Work Choices.
[4494
Ozymandias
Briefly
what did we ever do to deserve (Howard)?
We failed to re-elect Keating.]
Oh woe! I can still remember the afternoon spent handing out HTV’s, forlorn but still hoping the news was wrong and that a last-minute turn in the count would save the day. Actually, I still think the result was the result of a miscount. In my heart, Howard was an impossibility.
[will be even more dead, buried and cremated than Work Choices]
Haven’t seen the smoke from that cremation yet. There may be an homunculus partying in the coffin.
[If the offshore regional processing centre is in place the boat issue, as an election issue, will be even more dead, buried and cremated than Work Choices.]
Not happening, we can see they have already given up to the people smugglers with this latest “plan” which comes straight from the books of the Greens.
The East Timor solution will never happen, it’s simply fantasy and lies created by Labor to try and skim their way through the 2010 election.
GW
Is so too happening.
[If Afghanistan was invaded because it was a base for international terrorism why didn’t America also invade Pakistan ?]
hey, dont fotget Bushie’s “axis of evil” – Iraq, Iran and North Korea. One down(?) and two to go.
I can see 1 USD = 2 AUD
Solly, that meant to be 1 AUD = 2 USD
Finns
It ain’t fair. First they get into this massive external debt by having fun. Then they trick everyone by halving the value of the debt by printing squillions of dollars.
Talk about being Yankee Doodled.
Mick @ 4510
[ do you or I or anyone else know how many terrorist attacks mights have been perpetrated from that environment, and maybe with a WMD?
]
-perhaps we should start pre-emptive bombing of London then, and Madrid, Jakarta, Mumbai… After all, those cities -and a thousand others around the world- are likely to be harbouring terrorists.
O
Not forgetting that we have to bomb Melbourne and Sydney.
MV Tampa arrived in Australian waters illlegally in 26th of August 2001.
In September 10th 2001 John Howard and President of Nauru signed an agreement on a new detention centre in Nauru.
It took a Liberal Government 2 weeks to go from nothing to an ironclad agreement on a detention centre.
This useless Labor Government meanwhile has been harping on about a East Timorese detention centre for almost 4 MONTHS now. Are they completely bloody useless, or are they just stalling and wasting time? Labor cannot achieve in 6 months what the Libs can achieve in 2 weeks.
The Vietnam War became so horrible because of the urge to be nice to the French after WWII. And because the British didn’t want any ex-French Indo-Chinese dominoes knocking into their shaky Empire.
The Americans spent lives to defend and later reconquer the Phillippines; they then recognised the country as independent, solidly in line with pre-war intentions.
If only they had shown the same attitude with countries that they had no investment of blood in ➡ but instead in order to jolly along their prostrate allies they blindly ushered in an era of destruction and dislocation. It brought America only humiliation, and handed a triumph to their greatest enemies the Soviets.
It also awakened a burning desire to inflict the same on that enemy: the first Afghan War was the “successful” result of that ➡ in the process they created the conditions that led to the Taliban.
All because in the jubilation of the postwar period they thought they “wouldn’t make unnecessary waves”. Doesn’t history make you think…
Dopyley @4520
We, nor anyone else are or should be world policemen examinng every regime or event for an agreed measure of evilness. However there are events, such as 9/11 and the agenda out of Afghanistan that it represented, and the rise of Nazi Germany, and Indonesia’s treatment of the East Timorese despite the bush-lawyers on this site, where the consequences of doing nothing in the face of such overwhelming evidence, could condemn your own society. a neighbour’s society or civilsation generally to the darkest of fates. So whilst anyone can argue against every military engagement on particular points or conduct of operation, there are sometimes valid and moral reasons for confronting evil militarily. There are always opponents and appeasers and England before 1939 has plenty, from the left and the right. In hindsight they were wrong and Churchill was right. Now I can probably expect a tirade fromn the usual suspects about how WC screwed us in Gallipoli etc which again shows that they miss the point that pacifism or neutrality isn’t always an option.
[1 AUD = 2 USD]
🙂 Bring it
Because funnily enough, despite the US being all kinds of evil, having the highest number of incarcerations on the planet, a barely functioning public education system, many millions in poverty, health care only for those with means and last but not least Rupert, they still invent and make lots of stuff we want to buy …
rUEWAKE
Re the feeling regarding Islam,….it was the USA which launched the attack on Iraq…which even by US statements has cost 77.000 lives….and now the US is knee deep in war in Afghanistan,and seen by all to the main ally of Israel!
It’s massive involvement in war in the Islamic world is the cause of most of it’s financial problems…it has a policy which amounts to one of waging a
war without end !!
[The Americans spent lives to defend and later reconquer the Phillippines;]
and the Poor Filipinos still dont know who they are. 300 years of the Spanish Convent followed by another 100 years of American’s Hollywood.
[ O
Not forgetting that we have to bomb Melbourne and Sydney.
]
-and wasn’t that dangerous killing machine David Hicks from Adelaide?
erm
STOP THE BOMBS?
The Finns,
And Joseph Estrada is an embodiment of both uncomfortable experiences!
Quite apart from the famous Cardinal Sin…
[O
Not forgetting that we have to bomb Melbourne and Sydney.]
Now now, let’s not get WeeJizz excited.
[and wasn’t that dangerous killing machine David Hicks from Adelaide?]
ah that very dangerously annoying person Diog is also from Adelaide. 👿
[Quite apart from the famous Cardinal Sin…]
K, also too many Jesus.
No northern-suburbs-of-Adelaide jokes!
[And he asked the guy well ok, how long would it take for these guys to finally become civilised and the reply was “centuries”.]
THis view of Afghanistan is a common one, but it has always seemed to me to give a very crude picture of Afghanistan, even compared to the very little I know about Afghani history and culture. Afghanistan is way more complicated than that.
Firstly it has gone through several periods of “modernisation” in the course of the last hundred years. As often as not these have ended when one or another of the major powers have sought to intervene. From the late 1700’s to the 1890’s the British, and then the British on one side and the Russian Empire on the other were variously fighting Afghani tribal groupings, or entering into alliances with them to get them to fight the other major power. The Brits only recognised Afghani independence in 1919.
From then until the 1970’s the place actually underwent very substantial changes. Yes, there were always substantial tensions between the church and state, just as there have been in many other places, and its constitution reflected such things during that era, until the 1960’s. Yes, there were a number of coups over this period, but it was really only in the late 70’s, culminating in the Soviet occupation, that significant conflict broke out again. Since then Afghanistan has been in continual state of war. It is this 30 years of incessant warfare, fuelled in a large measure first by the big picture conflict between the Soviets and the West, and more recently by the West versus “terrorism”/ Islam as much as anything else, that we are seeing the consequences of today, rather than a nation that is simply “centuries” behind the times.
Yes, the Taliban controlled a fair amount of the country for a handful of years between 1996 and 2001. The big “plus” they brought, from the perspective of many Afghanis, was comparative stability and order following the chaos after the Soviet departure. The big minus, of course, was repression and the very heavy handed state sanctioned enforcement of morality.
Would Afghanistan return to directly to Taliban control if the West pulled out tomorrow? Some parts of it would – the Pashtuns communities in the aren’t particularly fond of their lack of real representation amongst the power brokers in the current government who, apart from Karzai, are largely from the northern regions. It is unlikely they would control it all, however, and just how long they would stay in power even in these areas is a moot point – quite probably less time than the West will be forced to stay there if we decide to “fight it out”.
The major powers haven’t done Afghanistan any favours by playing a major part n the maintenance of continual wars there for the last thirty years. It has long seemed to me that if any external involvement is going to be of value it is clearly going to have to come from places far more closely attuned to Afghan culture than the USSR or the USA. Pakistan and Iran are the obvious “support” countries, but that, of course throughs up a host of other issues. Our own record of supposedly making it a “safer” or “better” place for Afghani people to live, though, is questionable in the extreme.
It’s ranked as a low issue only because of the success of the government in defusing it … because people believe the Government’s promise to set-up the processing centre in East Timor & they are confident that this & other measures will maintain boat arrivals at a manageable level.
The other big factor is: who are these 5% of voters who think boat arrrivals is an important issue ? Mostly, these voters tend to be from the traditional working-class who would normally vote Labor. If they turn away from Labor because of concerns that immigration is being mishandled, and the 5% becomes 15% or 20% then the ALP will be sent into permanent opposition.
Proof of this can be seen from the Europe-wide trend of Social Democratic parties getting hammered because their traditional voters are turning away from them & voting for the far-right. And, certainly it is not the case that “this can never happen here” … It’s already happened here in 1996 when Pauline Hanson seized the safest Labor seat in Queensland. Eventually One Nation was only defused as a political force because many of its immigration policies were adopted by the Howard government (such as no welfare benefits to new migrants for 2 years) & these legal changes were kept in-force by Labor.
And please don’t say that the ALP should take “leadership” of this issue & try to “convince” the Australian people to support boat arrivals. Voters aren’t sheep, you know … and some of them have very valid concerns about border security. Rather than trying to tell voters what to think, the ALP should be listening to these concerns, and trying to find a middle-path between their concerns and the concerns of other Labor voters who prefer a more humanitarian treatment of boat arrivals.
[ah that very dangerously annoying person Diog is also from Adelaide.]
As well as the tough, fearless and extremely dangerous Chris Pyne!