First up, the latest dispatches from the front:
• The preference deal with the Greens being pursued by the Victorian Liberals at the behest of the party’s state president, Michael Kroger, is meeting resistance from other branches of the party. Rick Wallace of The Australian today cites unidentified Liberal sources expressing displeasure at the idea, and gets Tasmanian Senator Eric Abetz to reiterate that the “very strong view” of his own state division was that the Greens should be put last. The party’s federal director, Tony Nutt, issued a statement yesterday stressing that no decision had been made.
• Labor hit a spot of bother today in the Townsville electorate of Herbert, which it has never quite been able to pick off since it fell to the Liberals in the 1996 landslide. Bill Shorten’s Queensland road trip brought him to the electorate today, but a doorstop he conducted together with the Labor candidate, Cathy O’Toole, was dominated by O’Toole’s involving in a protest at Liberal member Ewen Jones’s electorate office in February pleading for “a more humane policy for refugees”.
• Apropos Dennis Jensen’s announcement he will run as an independent in Tangney, the Australian Parliamentary Library reviews “the electoral fortunes of MPs who left major parties and contested the next election as Independents”, going back to 1949. Out of 17 identified examples, 12 failed to win their seats (several of whom left office under a cloud); three won re-election but were then defeated at the next election subsequently; and another won re-election and then retired at the election subsequently. Only Bob Katter went on to lasting electoral success.
Now to polling. BludgerTrack has been updated with the latest Essential Research, along with state data from Ipsos, Essential and ReachTEL. The Coalition is now credited with a lead of 50.5-49.5, which is full point better than the pre-budget reading from last week. That translates into a net gain of three since last week on the seat projection, with two gains in New South Wales and one each in Victoria and the Northern Territory balanced by a loss in Queensland. At some point in the not distant future, I’ll start including state-level primary vote breakdowns and two-party results from respondent-allocated trends as well as previous election preferences, but for the time being the display looks like so:
Two new polls were released yesterday, and I have a bit left to say about one from the day before:
• Essential Research’s fortnightly rolling average has the Labor lead down from 52-48 to 51-49, with the Coalition up a point on the primary vote to 42%, Labor steady on 38% and the Greens steady on 10%. The poll also records 20% approval and 29% disapproval of the budget, with 35% opting for neither and 15% for don’t know. Twenty-one per cent felt the budget had made them more confident in the government, compared with 32% for less confident and 35% for makes no difference. However, most of the specific measures were well supported; 69% for internships for the young unemployed versus 14% opposed; 72% for the higher tax on cigarettes, versus 21% against; 62% for capping super tax concessions, versus 21% against; and 50% in favour of company tax cuts, versus 34% against. Opinion was evenly divided on the tax cut for those on more than $80,000, at 43% for and 44% against, and there was a predictable result for “cuts of $1.2 billion to aged care providers”. A bonus survey question provided exclusively to SBS recorded a view that the budget would make it harder for young people looking to buy their first home and gain a higher education, migrant families seeking education jobs, and people saving for their retirement – but there was a relatively good result for “young people trying to find a job”, presumably reflecting the internships scheme. The poll also recorded 48% opposition to bringing asylum seekers from Manus Island to Australia with 30% in support, and 39% holding the view that conditions in detention centres were poor, versus 32% for good.
• The Guardian Australia yesterday published a poll by Lonergan Research showing 50-50 on two-party preferred, from primary votes of Coalition 42%, Labor 35% and Greens 12%. It also found only 12% felt they would be better off because of the budget compared with 38% for worse off, and that 29% said it made them more likely to vote for the Coalition compared with 47% for less likely. The poll was automated phone survey of 1841 respondents conducted Friday to Sunday.
• I hadn’t mentioned the budget response results from Newspoll, which are worth a closer look. Among other things, there are breakdowns by income cohort, which you don’t often see in published polling. Those on higher incomes ($100,000 and lower) were more disposed to have an overall favourable view than those on lower incomes ($50,000 or less), but not by a great order of magnitude: 39% good and 22% in the former case, 31% good and 22% bad in the latter. However, bigger disparities were recorded on personal impact, with 11% of low-income earners expecting to be better off and 45% expecting to be worse off, compared with 29% and 27% for higher income earners. There are also interesting differences by age, with the most favourable responses coming from the young and the least favourable from the middle-aged, with the older cohort landing in between. Charts below put all this into the context of the regular post-budget Newspoll questions going back to 1988 (although there’s a slight change this year and that there are no longer neutral as distinct from uncommitted response options), and show the historic relationship between the “own financial position” and “economic impact” questions, with this year’s question identified in red. On pretty much every measure, this was an average response to a budget, although the plus 5% net rating for economic impact compares slightly unfavourably with an average of plus 10.9%. Its also a weaker than usual result for a Coalition budget, which have had historically better results (part of which is to do with the Howard government holding the reins in the pre-GFC boom years).
president of the solipsist society @ #1046 Thursday, May 12, 2016 at 12:09 pm
It was pretty much the Greens-Liberal coalition that did that. Neither wanted Labor to succeed and both wanted the boats to keep coming. The Liberals saw it as a path to power; the Greens saw it as cheap moral salvation where they got to feel all warm and cuddly and Labor had to deal with the consequences.
… less actually because tits on the bull hinder nothing worthwhile.
Shorten’s meme of a ‘united team’ has also been white-anted by the refugee wanker candidates and Brown.
Nice work, guys.
There you go, JimmyDoyle et al. Leftist candidates are losing it for Labor by being ‘refugee wankers’. Your fellow party members put the lie to the idea that Labor cares about asylum seekers beyond (ab)using them to show how in thrall they are to the LNP’s populist xenophobic policies.
Crank:
It’s not strange at all – current laws provide very considerable financial advantages for using such devices and fund managers would be derelict if they failed to do what the law permits.
But the diversion of real resources into financial assets detracts from growth in output (lower since 1980, higher before 1980) and by its nature this effect must get worse and worse the longer it continues.
To paraphrase:
TPOF
Thursday, May 12, 2016 at 12:02 pm
You will never find anywhere that I have said that there is no global warming. Nor will you find anywhere that I have ever said the Arrhenius Effect does not exist. That is the case for most AGW skeptics. There are a few crackpots out there who do but they are a very small minority.
I was just pointing out that Boerwar is not following the science being used by the IPCC and most of the AGW Catastrophist Scientists. Flannery admitted that even if Australia stopped the effect would not be until the end of the century and would be hundreths of a degree – so small as to be almost immeasurable and indistinguishable from natural variation.
The current natural El Nino cycle is being exploited by the AGW Catastrophists for all it is worth. In two years time when temperatures have dropped I wonder what they’ll be saying – back to denying the statistical analysis that will show global temperatures have dropped. It does appear that the El Nino peak is passed.
As for the Great Barrier Reef – coral bleaching is a natural event. They have happened in the past and will happen again in the future. The Reef will recover as it always has in the past and will continue to evolve as the climate changes.
boerwar @ #1050 Thursday, May 12, 2016 at 12:12 pm
He has no choice. What has happened has happened. What matters now is how Shorten and Labor can constructively deal with the problem, not endless hand-wringing of how terrible and unfair all this is.
Big political parties are complex, multi-faceted creatures. Shit happens to them. It’s what the people in charge do about that shit that matters. That’s why Shorten has it all over Turnbull. This event will be history in a few days unless Brown decides to do a Pauline Hansen. Panama papers won’t. Nor will the ongoing spectral presence of Tony Abbott.
TPOF – The federal police is hardly going to turn up to a Federal Court judge and ask for permission to use evidence used in a civil case if it already has enough evidence to prosecute. The judge would say bugger off. Why are you here. Part of the application must be to say: we need these documents to complete our case.
Indeed since, I assume, the police know what is in those FC documents (I haven’t been following this closely) it follows that they think they need these documents to COMPLETE their case. Otherwise, the Federal Court application is a total waste of time and they should be investigating something else.
It was pretty much the Greens-Liberal coalition that did that. Neither wanted Labor to succeed and both wanted the boats to keep coming. The Liberals saw it as a path to power; the Greens saw it as cheap moral salvation where they got to feel all warm and cuddly and Labor had to deal with the consequences.
More like Labor, discarding any pretence of moral leadership utterly, could not work out whether tacking to the left or the right on asylum seekers would be more politically harmful to them until the damage was already done.
I agree with Beorwar on the disendorsed candidate for Fremantle. Labor had no choice but to get rid of him. A candidate having had a criminal conviction in their youth isn’t a biggie – a skilled politician could probably spin such a past to work to their advantage – but lying about it is. Sucks for Brown, but politics is a harsh gig.
The MUA need to just accept that it happened and move on.
Instead of candidates sticking to the line on asylum seekers they bleat counterproductively, just like Greens.
Of course that makes them wankers and oxygen thieves, just like the Greens.
You guys need to understand that this election is for keeps. The Greens notion that they can just keep chipping away for the next ten years is a horrible portent of an arid do nothing bunch of Trots who are content to fight the good fight… to the Reef’s death, to the death of Civil Society.
There is no going back from this one. The Reef is not something that the Greens can maybe start to fix in ten or twenty years. It will be gone by then. The Greens’ favourite refugees will still be where they are now… only fifteen years older.
Pardon me if I think that the people who have this as a vision statement, or have a personal lack of discipline that promote this state of affairs, are self-indulgent wankers and destroyers.
Boerwar Thursday, May 12, 2016 at 12:06 pm
ABC noon news… spends the first segment on Shorten’s distraction, aka, Brown.
Shorten’s meme of a ‘united team’ has also been white-anted by the refugee wanker candidates and Brown.
Nice work, guys.
***************************************************
Carolyne Boothman, Chris Brown, Sophie Ismail, Cathy O’Toole ……… all bullets fired from the “Shoot Yourself In The Foot Gun ” ……… the LNP must wonder in amazement why the get so many FREE KICKS ….
I don’t give a s**t what the Greens job is. The job of the Labor Party is to do what is progressive and achievable. A majority of Australians will NOT accept a policy like that advocated by the Greens. It is only the exceeding arrogance of the Greens leadership that prevented the development of workable solution in last Parliament.
Gillard attempted to develop a lasting solution which you’ll remember, the Greens joined Abbott and the Coalition in voting down. So, in actuality, the Greens voting with the Coalition, and declining to preference the Labor Party in crucial marginals, are LNP wins. As TPOF said, the sum contribution of the Greens parliamentarians to this issue has been to make the plights of refugees worse, not better.
TPOF
While we are the topic of AGW – the other thing that skeptics point out is the complete idiocy of the concept of getting global agreements with respect to emissions. The Paris Accord is a Dead Parrot. It requires nothing of no one. The World Bank recently published on this:
“One of their biggest challenges is the projected new investment in coal-fired power plants in Asia.
According to figures from Platts Energy, China is planning 150GW of new coal plants by 2020, down from 270GW in the last five years. India, although it has declared ambitious plans for solar power, is increasing its share of coal by 125GW. Indonesia is planning to build twice as many new coal plants, or about 25GW.
According to John Roome, the Bank’s senior climate change official, if all of those plants are built it will blow the world’s efforts, enshrined at Paris, to hold warming to 2C.”
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/05/climate-change-coal-power-asia-world-bank-disaster
There is a snowball’s chance in hell of getting a global agreement that is environmentally, economically and politically effective and efficient.
The real problem Julia Gillard had related to her judgement and in particular her poor choices of partners while she was in her twenties (as she herself acknowledged). Her enemies were able to portray that poor judgement twenty years before as part of a pattern including poor judgement more recently. Poor judgement (and the suggestion thereof) is a serious problem for any senior politician as the public quite rightly expects good judgement above virtually anything else.
Malcolm Turnbull is notorious for his lack of judgement in the past, and unfortunately he is adding to the evidence that this is indeed part of a continuing pattern.
Bemused if you are here.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/melbournes-new-train-station-revealed–and-theres-something-not-quite-right-about-it-20160511-got1k9.html
It looks like the new Metro underground stations will have platform doors like in Singapore. In fact the drawings have a nearly uncanny resemblance.
president of the solipsist society @ #1058 Thursday, May 12, 2016 at 12:19 pm
It must be lonely up there on the Himalayan high moral ground that you occupy.
In the real world, the huge flow of asylum seekers and others from the third world is a terribly complex, tragic and difficult problem to deal with.
It is so much easier to deal with when you have power but can be as brutal as you like because it plays well among the fearful, and as morally upright as you like because that very position guarantees you will never have to actually deal with the issue.
Frankly, I’m sick of both positions. Both treat asylum seekers with disrespect, because they are not treated as people – only threats and causes. For the Liberals, they are all crooks wanting to take advantage of us. For people like you they are all angels in despair, not one of whom could have the same range of good and bad characteristics that the rest of our society has.
It’s complex and difficult. The lack of regard and treatment of individuals by Dutton and Scummo before him is appallingly and unnecessarily cruel. The sanctification and use of individual grief as a battering ram against immigration policy by people like you does no service to any of the asylum seekers stuck in a particularly vile purgatory.
It is a good thing that Labor is trying to steer a course between the two extremes; not something to be despised. Labor is the only party that actually gives a damn and is not simply using the plight of asylum seekers for political positioning.
It is OK Boerwar, Greens will do it so much better than ALP could do in meantime, when they finally get a chance to form their own Government.
Now, it doesn’t matter that the chance of them ever getting to that position is close to big fat zero, but at least they know that their hearts where “pure” and they stuck to their “principles”. It also doesn’t matter if they assist L/NP staying in power until that time, ensuring that the circumstances of those who are currently suffering stay the same. It doesn’t matter because once they get in they will do everything so much better.
Silly Boerwar, don’t you know that nothing Greens do is their fault. Even if ALP loses this election it will be because ALP couldn’t get their message across and win on their policies, not because Greens assisted L/NP by attacking the ALP from the left side.
Nothing they do assists L/NP, because as you can see for the last three days, all Greens have done is attack Turnbull and L/NP and not once have they done anything to make things harder for ALP.
Just check Peg’s posts here, every day in and out all she does is posts articles on how L/NP and Turnbull are stuffing everything they touch. Not once did she do anything to point out the bad things that ALP do, so how can you be so silly and say Greens are making things harder for ALP.
Silly Boerwar.
Sarcasm over!!!
I’m sure a we’ll get a comment saying we need a “World Government” around now.
Crank
shellbell @ #971 Thursday, May 12, 2016 at 10:47 am
It happens all the time when the cost of defending a minor matter outweighs the value of any possible penalty.
I don’t give a s**t what the Greens job is. The job of the Labor Party is to do what is progressive and achievable. A majority of Australians will NOT accept a policy like that advocated by the Greens.
Plenty of governments have adopted tremendously unpopular policies and then shown the unity, the leadership and the courage to sell them to the electorate and earn re-election. The ALP has lost its spine in its search for short-term success. The axing of Kevin Rudd based on a couple of bad polls is another perfect example. Increasingly it seems like all the Labor party can agree to do is what is ‘achievable’, progressivism be damned. Very inspiring. How’s that for a slogan? Labor: we’ll do what’s achievable.
Gillard attempted to develop a lasting solution which you’ll remember, the Greens joined Abbott and the Coalition in voting down. So, in actuality, the Greens voting with the Coalition, and declining to preference the Labor Party in crucial marginals, are LNP wins.
On the last page you said that my refusal to accept compromise was an obstacle to achieving process, and yet you’ve just quoted an example at me in which Labor, evidently, failed to make any sort of compromise with the left or the right, and tried to blame it on anyone but Labor.
“…the LNP must wonder in amazement why the get so many FREE KICKS ….”
The free kicks are only kicks because they are amplified by the useless media that we have in this country. Meanwhile the fact that we have a PM named in the Panama Papers, is of little consequence.
Really, the sooner they all go broke the better.
Mind you that would just leave the ABC to continue on its LNP propaganda laundering ways with less competition.
POTSS
Your absolutism is just as destructive as the Coalition’s actions. The Coalition says only psychological torture and physical deprivation can prevent boat arrivals. The Greens say only their solution will work, and that Labor are immoral cowards for not agreeing with the Greens position.
The entire Labor Party, left and right, is committed to humane treatment of refugees. At the same time, as a party of government, dealing with a Coalition that has no limit to the depravity it will inflict, Labor has to come up with a solution that is acceptable to a majority. So yes, it is incumbent upon Labor candidates to be highly disciplined on this issue – both the Coalition and the Greens will use any step out of line to bash the hell out of Labor.
It is a good thing that Labor is trying to steer a course between the two extremes; not something to be despised. Labor is the only party that actually gives a damn and is not simply using the plight of asylum seekers for political positioning.
I don’t know what fantasy world you inhabit – Labor’s previous two governments only adopted their current position on refugees because they feared anything else would have seen them them lose votes to the right.
‘the other thing that skeptics point out is the complete idiocy of the concept of getting global agreements with respect to emissions’
Shows you what dicks the skeptics are.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol
By the way, I am of the opinion that the Greens should do what they think is right for them and the country even if that means their actions keep L/NP in government. I won’t vote for them ever again, but they should do exactly what I said above.
But cut the sanctimonious self righteous crap about being pure as the driven snow for crying out loud.
In my opinion, they are slightly better than than the L/NP because of their inability to compromise, i.e. they lost my vote completely when they rejected the Malaysia solution and cried rivers in the parliament together with Jo Hockey.
“Waaah, waaah, over my dead body. Waaah, waaah I won’t try something else because it is not what I want so, waah waah, I am ok with them drowning or suffering in the current gulags until the time I get for them what I want. Waaah, waaah!!!”
Now that I got that crap off my chest, I better go and do some work!! 🙂
One major reason why the Greens will never get the chance to form government is their political and practical lack of sense on the asylum seeker issue. And that’s another reason why Labor will not have anything formal to do with them again, but will negotiate, where necessary on an issue by issue basis.
When doeqqwerstdyujiopk[l;]\'[;ploiuytre
Sorry – had to clean the keyboard after reading the ALP-Greens exchanges on Refugee Policy.
When is the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd stoush scheduled to resume?
adrian Thursday, May 12, 2016 at 12:32 pm
“…the LNP must wonder in amazement why the get so many FREE KICKS ….”
The free kicks are only kicks because they are amplified by the useless media that we have in this country.
************************************************************
I agree Adrian – but my point was that Labor is going out of its way sometimes to give them the “ammunition” they use in all its forms – paper, TV, radio ……to batter the public in its 24 hour a day/ 7 days a week propaganda Anti-Labor mantra …… and it eventually sinks into even the thickest skull when it comes election day and who to give a vote to ….
The entire Labor Party, left and right, is committed to humane treatment of refugees. At the same time, as a party of government, dealing with a Coalition that has no limit to the depravity it will inflict, Labor has to come up with a solution that is acceptable to a majority.
As I have just said, plenty of governments have adopted tremendously unpopular policies and then shown the unity, the leadership and the courage to sell them to the electorate and earn re-election. Labor has forgotten that governments are expected to provide leadership on moral issues (remember Hawke and the Vietnamese refugees? The whole ‘light on the hill’ thing?) and instead bends at the LNP’s will in search of the votes of the xenophobic right instead of those of moderates who just need a little persuading.
Well that makes as much sense as anything else that you’ve written
I don’t accept that characterisation. Gillard was ready to negotiate, but the Greens refused any compromise:
http://www.news.com.au/national/tragedy-another-asylum-seeker-boat-capsizes/story-e6frfkw9-1226410005101
The Expert Panel report was the best kind of compromise, with something that reflected what each party wanted, including doubling the humanitarian intake. It was the Liberals and the Greens who refused to sign – both for their sleazy political ends.
In the event of a hung parliament, the onus is on politicians to work with the parliament the people elected. It’s wrong of Labor to imply that they would rather have a fresh election than rely on Green MPs to form a government. If a party clearly had capacity to form a minority government yet forced voters back to the polls, that party would likely go backwards in seat numbers.
Crank
[When doeqqwerstdyujiopk[l;]\'[;ploiuytre]
Is that a quote from Morrison
president of the solipsist society @ #1074 Thursday, May 12, 2016 at 12:36 pm
A more rational and genuinely kind world than the fantasy world you occupy – which exists only in fairy tales.
Ah sorry, Hawke showed incredible compassion and grace to Chinese refugees, not the Vietnamese ones – got my history confused.
PeeBee – yes, yes – had the Montreal card played before. It is completely different because CFC’s are not as intrinsically important or pervasive to economic activity as is cheap electricity – nor is the science as questionable as the theory of AGW.
Nicholas – are you equally as willing to condemn the Greens for helping the Coalition hold on to marginal Victorian seats by handing out blank HTVs?
Cayman Islands – Panama Papers; never made a profit
Nothing to see here move on!
“TPOF
Shorten talking about Labor union thugs who lie is about as useful politically as tits on a bull.”
‘He has no choice. ‘
Exactly my point. Just as he has no choice but to respond to destructive talk by the Greens about a Coalition. Just like he has no choice but to respond to a swag of self-indulgent Labor candidate wankers on refugee policy. Just like he has no choice but to respond to Greens 101 political wedges.
The self-indulgent bastard ideological Red Greens are playing with fire here. The fire will be a Turnbull Government with a mandate that it does not have at the moment.
And there is the thing. They do not give a flying f*ck that their activities might give government to Turnbull even if it is by the tiniest whisker.
Hell, the most honest of the Red Greens wants Abbott as prime minister.
A more rational and genuinely kind world than the fantasy world you occupy – which exists only in fairy tales.
Sorry, is that an admission that you lied transparently about Labor ‘not simply using the plight of asylum seekers for political positioning’? I’m waiting.
nicholas @ #1086 Thursday, May 12, 2016 at 12:45 pm
Absolute crap. There is nothing that requires a major political party to get the support of a minor party in order to form government. It is usually in the interests of a major party to do that, but not always. It certainly is not in the interests of the ALP to get Greens support if it means signing up to the Greens politically whacko ideas.
Here’s a thought for you. Is there a duty for a minor party like the Greens, which in all likelihood will still only have one Reps member after the election, to actually sign on to Labor policy in order to avoid another election?
I was going to say Hawke didn’t have much to do with Vietnamese and the claims about numbers of boats were nothing compared to today – plus it was a truly regional issue from Hong Kong to Malaysia.
The truth is that Labor only have to show control over the AS problem equal to that of the LNP.
Its all falling apart for the LNP at the moment. As soon as that gets beyond the point that the Press Gallery cannot ignore they have lost control of the AS position the Government secrecy and all the harm of the torture that horrifies Austalian’s will be exposed.
I don’t agree with the Labor policy however I do understand it and wish them the best in pursuing it because its the only way the LNP will stop using it as a wedge issue.
When that secrecy is ended and the Australian people see photos and the rest of the results of that even LNP supporters will react in horror to the reality of images just as they did with Nuremberg or the boat capsizing or the boy washed on the beach.
The images in your face will have a visceral rejection by the Australian people. The day that Australians see what has been done in their name is getting closer. Labor does not own the cruelty and punitive camp regime. Thats the genius of opposing indefinite detention. Not only is it morally right its also politically right.
Indefinite detention says we have lost control by giving away the values of human rights that upholds our society and as soon as images on tv confirm that the LNP are dead on AS. They know this its why they made it secret in the first place.
So I don’t support Labor policy as a policy. However as a temporary political fix that will die as soon as facts emerge its fine and thats why I don’t go on about AS much here except to highlight LNP failure in managing camps.
BW however is promoting LNP lines given him by Kroger and Murdoch Tabloids.
Conflating all kinds of issues to create the bogeyman of fear that any contact with the Greens and thus compassion empathy and humanity is toxic for Labor.
The truth is of course the Greens are not toxic for Labor. What is toxic for Labor is falling for LNP spin.
The carbon tax no longer exists because of the LNP. Not the Greens not the ALP
The detention camps exist because Labor created them and the cruel management of them now are all the LNP. Thats nothing to do with the Greens who have opposed the camps from the start.
I am over some of the myths peddled out to support a political position.
You will note I have not said the Greens position is morally superior to that of Labor.
The only way to stop fear is to stop the LNP demonising AS to make out there is a flood of people coming here to take away jobs from people and the values of our country in the process.
Off shore was only ever a symbol in this regard to show Labor was in charge and could manage the issue. It still is. You only have to listen to Cash raving on the issue to know the LNP will not stop blame Labor until forced to no matter what the Greens say or do.
POTSS – suffice it to say that if the Greens help Labor lose the next election, you’ll be pissing in the wind with your high-minded rhetoric, and the refugees will STILL be languishing in indefinite detention.
I don’t accept that characterisation. Gillard was ready to negotiate, but the Greens refused any compromise
No, Gillard couldn’t compromise: she insisted on offshore processing, and she insisted on punitive laws that would act as a deterrent. It’s right there in what you quoted: “I want us to leave parliament today with laws that enable us to process asylum seekers offshore with laws that will send a message of deterrence.”
A compromise is not a compromise unless it’s actually agreed to and enacted – it’s there in the definition. Julia Gillard was the Prime Minister, she was the one with the ministries, with the hordes of policy advisers, with the numbers to put her party’s policies into law – she’s the one who failed to compromise.
poss
Invalid analogy. The Chinese students were already here, part of our society, when it became clear it would be dangerous for them to return home.
It’s a bit like the response to Syria, or the gun laws – when it is obvious that something needs to done, it tends to happen, regardless of the colour of the government.
Hawke’s actions were good, but they were not an example of moral leadership taken with a risk attached, just as Howard’s response to Port Arthur with gun laws was good, but not an example of moral leadership with a risk attached – both acted exactly in the way the majority of voters wanted them to, they didn’t have to win the populace over.
You’re going to have to find a better example, I’m afraid.