What will presumably be the last Newspoll of the year records no change on a fortnight ago, with Labor’s two-party lead at 54-46. Labor grabs the lead on the primary vote, moving up two points to 39% with the Coalition up one to 38% and the Greens down one to 12%. For the first time in a while, Tony Abbott’s personal ratings are not appreciably worse than last time, his approval steady at 33% and disapproval up one to 58%. Bill Shorten is respectively down two to 37% and steady at 43%, and the size of his lead as preferred prime minister is unchanged, being 43-36 last time and 44-37 this time.
I think it’s fair enough to question whether some people just feel good about sending a couple of tweets while those at risk still get attacked. It’s a question of symbolism as opposed to practical action. Similarly, some have questioned the preponderance of awareness-raising days for diseases and things like the ice bucket challenge – whereby people take trivial action rather than doing something that will actually address the issues.
Is there a better way we can protect those at risk rather than with a hashtag?
lefty e
Some would call that “political violence” . It’s political and will cause physical harm to the affected people.
Here’s Aus comedian Jim Jeffries giving it to Yank gun-totin’ citzenry – courtesy of BK link on Dec 14.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnF9D-JxM1k&feature=youtu.be
the bail debate is a distraction.
There are hundreds if not thousands of people in Australia on bail while awaiting trial for serious crimes, including murder.
Many of those people committ more crimes while on bail. Many don’t.
So what do we do, turn Austraiia into a prison? Judges make the call and they get it wrong, often with tragic results, but that is our legal system.
Unless of course you are an asylum seeker, who has committed no crime, and you are detained indefinitely with no guarantee you will ever get a fair hearing of your case.
It takes an awful lot for me to congratulate that lying toad John Winston Howard, but on days like this, despite all of the ills he did in his time, he will forever be remembered and indeed celebrated for the gun control laws that have helped make tragedies like this morning such a rare occurence in Australia.
Seeing how quickly some nut jobs (thankfully mostly US nutjobs) have sought to try and peddle their gun nuttery over a death toll that would barely rate a passing mention in the US media it is sobering to think where we might be now had Howard not grasped the nettle in 96. Does anyone seriously think Abbott would have done the same? And the thought of Abbott as LOTO stirring up gun nuttery and ‘attacks on our freedom’ with the full backing of the Murdoch press if say Julia had faced a similar moment of truth in her term? Truly awful to contemplate.
You didn’t play good too often Johnny old son, but on gun control you played a blinder.
Hope they track down the source of the gun
I don’t know what Devine’s and Kenny’s issues are, but I thought the response by Poss was appropriate:
Federal ICAC, with no statute of limitations.
I also want to see Abbott’s role in jailing Hanson properly investigated. And I don’t even like Hanson. But something seriously stinks about all that.
’nuff said
Well said. Ignorance is never an excuse to shut up these days.
The public deserves to be protected from violent criminals.
The advertising hook for the prison industrial complex
… such as if embryogenesis really was such a good idea in your case.
Anybody seen the latest Morgan poll?
Reminds me of a line from Groucho Marx, that he had been around so long he knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.
Posted yesterday in comments.
I said this morning I heard the phrase twice in the space of 30 mins having first turned on the TV.
Grrrr.
I hope he uses it to tip a richly-deserved bucket on Andrew Bolt.
Maybe Devine’s criticism of #illridewithyou was to publicise it AND stay within proprietors editorial policy to keep her job at Newscorpse
A more pointless and cruel, even vindictive, cut is hard to imagine.
Abbott can’t avoid direct moral responsibility for these things, seeing as he chaired the expenditure review meetings.
Arsehole. 🙁
ratsak
😀
Just Me
Isn’t he Minister for Indigenous Affairs?
Or is it just Minister for Women?
It really is 1984. 30 years later.
I’m not following the events in Sydney at all closely as it’s too distressing and my feeling of powerlessness is too difficult to bear. I think I’m right in saying that the word ‘miracle’ hasn’t yet been used in the media coverage. As it’s been 12 hours since the siege ended my question is who will be the first journalist to use that word in the usual cheap throwaway fashion?
lizzie
Someone else is the actual minister, however, Abbott said something like “I hope to be a Prime Minister for Aboriginal Affairs”.
This idea that Australia has lost its innocence is rubbish to say the bloody least.
DN
I had a feeling it was on his bucket list 🙁
Essential 52-48
Hard to believe that the Libs have pegged a point back.
Essential shows a slim majority think that Abbott will not be PM at the next election.
At least someone has got it right
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/comment/blunt-instrument/media-coverage-of-sydney-siege-shameful-20141216-127wa6.html
they dint. Its essential
Australia was basically built on genocide. What innocence did we have to lose?
Not to mention de facto Minister for Science (via chairing the science funding committee).
But mostly just the Minister for Himself.
In the mid 80s I was doing technical support for indigenous health in the NT, just when a lot of these programs were getting cranked up, including working with John Hargreaves, who is a close to a secular saint as I ever met. I have seen firsthand the personal and community devastation preventable eye disease causes and it makes me extremely angry to see such callousness.
Carey Moore@1442
You’d have to include Howard in that list.
Tom Hawkins@1477
How many after the election?
confessions
My guess is that NewsCorpse is in feverish denial over whether racism and xenophobia are widespread in Australia – especially against minorities such as Muslims. Of course they are. But it doesn’t fit their narrative.
NewsCorpse believes that racism does exist in Australia – but only against privileged white males like Bolt. Bolt and his fellow travellers regard themselves as an oppressed minority.
That Daily Tele headline “the instant we changed forever” is so over the top, it is scarcely credible that anyone would take it seriously.
The headline is 911 stuff – and I’m sure Rupert made kazillions out of that terror moment – where a whole country was terrorised.
These poor buggers in a cafe were terrorised. Australia wasn’t.
PISS OFF Rupert Murdoch, PISS OFF News Corp. Get the fuck out of here. Leave us alone to deal with the coward Abbott you foisted on us.
Go on, git, get the buggery out of here ya fake Yank.
Kezza2
Hear bloody hear!!
http://www.crikey.com.au/2014/12/16/terror-in-a-social-media-age/
Some people just have their priorities screwed the wrong way around.
The decision to go ahead with the release of the MYEFO has worked well for Abbott/Hockey.
Very little mention of it and certainly on the blogs I view no comments permitted
Exactly. We never had it from the start, especially when you consider that most of the original invaders were convicts in an already harsh era.
“@abcnewsCanberra: ACT police are investigating a suspicious package located in the canteen area of the DFAT building in #Canberra http://t.co/ohT59zLtx9”
“The wounding will continue over the days and weeks as the worst of us get our hate on and more innocents are targeted; this time by bigots and fools, some of them simply racist trolls toiling away in the sewers of the internet, some of them running newspapers and talkback radio programs.”
John Birmingham nails it.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/comment/blunt-instrument/media-coverage-of-sydney-siege-shameful-20141216-127wa6.html
The real current polling is likely an average of Morgan and Essential. I trust PB.
ACT Police say evacuations are underway and roads have been closed after the discovery of a suspicious package at DFAT.
And here’s the irony of ironies:
AT the recent LAST STAND AT WINTON – attended by Alan Jones, a farming family (driven off the land by a bank foreclosure) had this to say:
And they can’t see that even though they love their land, this is exactly what they did to the original inhabitants.
Karma’s a beach.
And hence the Papworth Scale was born.
Essential might just be riding a rounding yo-yo, with little underlying shift.
“@danielhurstbne: I should add that traffic to Parliament House is NOT blocked. Traffic near #DFAT is blocked. ACT policing says bomb response team attending”
Maybe billie … whatever – it really does take some good qualities for someone to look at a person like Devine and look for the best in them tho. Nice one.
Mw too, and I’m no Hanson fan.
Rupert gives his minions their riding orders: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lecHdtywAAU
ltep @ 1451
I think one reason the #IllRideWithYou tag is worthwhile is to do with letting everyday people who agree with the sentiment know they are not alone.
Would there have been such a quick and vigorous condemnation of the guy on the train from Upfield in its absence? Hard to know.
I read something about how the CIA managed to completely miss the overthrow of the Soviets and it basically boiled down to this: Even the worst military dictator never has the direct loyalty of more than a small segment of the population, for argument’s sake, 10%. But so long as the opposition is never allowed to organise into groups larger than a handful of people, the tyrant stays in power. However, if the opposition ever manages to provoke the entire opposition to act at once, the tyrant is immediately toppled.
Same principle is going on here. The vast majority of people agree with the principle, they just need reminding they are in the majority to prod them into action.