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Post by Deleted on Sept 9, 2020 11:38:15 GMT 10
If Biden wins the US election its goodbye to dinosaur economics.
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Post by Gort on Sept 15, 2020 16:58:49 GMT 10
Oh my ... This comment put it better than I could: Hmm, is Albanese suffering from Media Attention Deficit Disorder? I can't think of anything else that could account for such a stupid idea. Let's consider Anthony's thought bubble for a moment. We have 23,000 Aussies stranded overseas that he wants to bring home 100 at a time from all corners of the world. So that's 230 return flights. Now let's assume these flights are on average 12 hours for each leg, so allowing for rest breaks for the pilots and crew, we are looking at one out bound flight per day with a return flight the next day. If we implemented your proposal we are therefore looking at retrieving 100 people every 2 days meaning that it's going to take at least 460 days flight time to get them back assuming zero maintenance of the aircraft. If my relatives were stranded overseas I wouldn't be encouraging them to catch a flight on a jet that hadn't had any maintenance in more than 12 months; rather i'd be suggesting that it would be much safer to fly with Aeroflot. Sorry Anthony that's a simply ridiculous suggestion from someone that wants us to take him seriously as our next Prime Minister! May I politely suggest that you think twice before you open your mouth next time. "Not Good Enough" - The Age comments '100 Aussies at a time': Albanese calls for RAAF fleet to bring home Australians stranded overseas Labor leader Anthony Albanese has called on the federal government to dispatch its fleet of Royal Australia Air Force VIP jets to bring stranded Australians home "100 at a time".More than 23,000 Australian citizens remain stuck abroad because of a collapse in international flights caused by border closures and have been unable to secure or pay the inflated prices for a flight home. Mr Albanese said Prime Minister Scott Morrison should take control and dispatch the VIP fleet - usually reserved for the Governor-General, the Prime Minister and visiting dignitaries - to help bring Australians home. He said the fleet was largely "sitting idle" and there was "nothing to stop those planes being utilised". "There are two large aircraft, but there are other smaller aircraft available as well," Mr Albanese said. "It is simply unacceptable that the Prime Minister continues to say that there's nothing he can do about it and he hopes to have these families home by Christmas. Well, I think those who are desperate to get home should be brought home in September." The fleet includes three Bombardier Challenger 604s and two Boeing 737 business jets which cost around $4600 an hour to operate. A typical 36-minute flight from the RAAF Canberra base to Sydney costs taxpayers on average about $2760. Mr Albanese said Mr Morrison should not blame state governments when he was in charge of the nation's border. He said many Australians had tried to come home for "many months" and they had been left frustrated by the lack of available flights and hugely inflated prices. The federal opposition has stepped up pressure on the Morrison government and state and territory premiers to lift the cap on international arrivals each week, calling on national cabinet to end the "heartbreaking" stories of citizens stranded overseas. It called on Sunday for a weekly limit of 4000 to be increased to ensure more Australians stranded overseas have the chance to fly home in a timely, affordable manner. Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said on Sunday the number of people that Australia could bring in depended on whether the states would take more people into hotel quarantine. "The number of people that we can bring in through the international ports at the moment is a function of, say for example, the Queensland government or Queensland Health's direction, that people hop off a plane from Los Angeles have to go into a hotel for two weeks," Mr Dutton told ABC television's Insiders program on Sunday. "At the same time, they've got a cap on the number of places that they're making available at those hotels for quarantine." Last week Foreign Minister Marise Payne confirmed hardship loans would be established to support Australians stranded overseas who are struggling financially and cannot get home. Applicants will have to meet strict eligibility criteria to access the loans, and only the most vulnerable Australian citizens still overseas will be provided financial assistance. www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/100-aussies-at-a-time-anthony-albanese-calls-for-raaf-fleet-to-bring-home-australians-stranded-overseas-20200915-p55vu9.html#comments
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Post by Deleted on Sept 15, 2020 18:13:41 GMT 10
Depends if people left the country while the pandemic was happening for hols then tough titties....if working overseas and employment ended then yep send in the RAAF...give Albo credit for at least thinking about these people.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 26, 2020 9:06:50 GMT 10
The Guardian Labor's Joel Fitzgibbon threatens to quit shadow cabinet over emissions target Katharine Murphy Political editor 2 hrs ago
The veteran New South Wales Labor rightwinger Joel Fitzgibbon has threatened to quit the shadow cabinet if the opposition adopts a medium-term emissions reduction target he cannot live with.......https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/labor-s-joel-fitzgibbon-threatens-to-quit-shadow-cabinet-over-emissions-target/ar-BB19qJMo?ocid=msedgdhp ... Albo should not think that mine workers are traditional Labor base as Fitzmonkeys does....that is bullshit....and Fitzgibbon lnot have got into bed with his traditional base support that being the coal mining lobbyist.
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Post by Gort on Oct 3, 2020 12:00:01 GMT 10
I received a phone call yesterday from a Federal Labor Senator for Victoria asking if I would like to join in on a phone hook-up with him and Albo next week ... LOL"Yeah / nah ... thanks anyway."
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Post by Deleted on Oct 3, 2020 12:08:18 GMT 10
Too busy being head of ScoMo's fan club....coz your poor and barely scraping by with your franking credits.
How are you going to cope when the coalition reduces company tax to bugger all...??
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Post by Gort on Oct 3, 2020 12:24:12 GMT 10
Too busy being head of ScoMo's fan club....coz your poor and barely scraping by with your franking credits. How are you going to cope when the coalition reduces company tax to bugger all...?? That'd be : " you're". you're ... contraction of you are your ... pronoun (a form of the possessive case of you used as an attributive adjective) yore ... noun (Chiefly Literary. time past) yaw ... verb (used without object) 1. to deviate temporarily from a straight course, as a ship. 2. (of an aircraft) to have a motion about its vertical axis. Speaking of Franking Credits ... Received my dividend notice from ANZ last week ...
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Post by Deleted on Oct 3, 2020 13:37:42 GMT 10
Dividends are not FC's....FC's are the cream of the top for poor people with a huge share portfolio...
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Post by Gort on Oct 3, 2020 14:41:50 GMT 10
Slow learner eh? As mentioned before: People who invest their hard-earned in the share market receive dividends twice a year from the companies that pay a dividend. (A share of a proportion of the company's profit). Some companies pay a "fully franked" dividend which includes the amount of tax that would be paid based on a 30% tax rate on the income derived from the dividend.The dividend payment is paid directly to the shareholder and the "franked amount" goes to the Australian Tax Office at the time of the dividend payment. At tax return time (30th June) the individuals tax obligation is worked out. In Australia, there is a "tax free threshold" whereby no tax is payable if the individual's income for the financial year comes in below a set amount.($18,200 at 1 July 2019) That is obviously an extremely low annual income.So, if a person receives income below that amount in total, they pay no tax. But wait a minute! Tax has already been paid to the Tax office "in advance" via the "Franking Credit" ... So, if the person comes in under $18,200 annual income, then the tax that has already been paid is due to be returned to them from the Tax Office as a tax refund payment.The controversy that helped kill Bill Shorten's election hopes was that Labor was proposing to keep the amount already paid and not return it as a refund. (Pensioners / part pensioners were exempt from that change after a "tweak" to the policy a week or so after it was announced - due to the outcry from pensioners.) That left non-pensioners being hit by (on average) a $5,000 loss per annum. For some people that was a hit to their income of around 30% In many cases, retirees actually receive a lower income than those on the pension, so losing the annual tax refund payment was an extremely bad thing for their budgets. Some people would budget the payment of their annual Council rates for example, based on receiving the tax return refund each year (around the end of July.) Naturally, this policy was not received well by retirees and their friends and family who rightly observed that people on very low incomes have the benefit of the Tax Free threshold for sources of income from any other type but this change was going to hit those who derive their (very low) annual income from share dividends that pay the tax in advance via a "Franking Credit".Hence, Labor received its lowest First Preference vote in 85 years at the election - due in large part to their stinker of a discriminatory policy that was going to hurt those on the lowest incomes the hardest.You're welcome. Oh, and BTW ... Labor has dropped that awful Franking Credits tax grab from the poorest self-funded retirees idea. Do keep up.
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Post by pim on Oct 4, 2020 0:45:38 GMT 10
Rorts such as franking credits are doomed. The irony is that if the Morrison government is returned at next year's election - and let's not kid ourselves that Morrison won't call an early election - and the recession becomes a full blown depression during its next term, the three Budgets of that term will see middle class welfare and tax rorts abolished - on Morrison's watch.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2020 7:45:14 GMT 10
Reducing company tax will reduce franking credits,...surreptitiously designed to get rid of FC's, and when companies pay no tax....it will destroy social fabric creating poverty and division..
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Post by pim on Oct 4, 2020 23:16:17 GMT 10
What’s Albo got to say? Thursday is make or break day for him. Hopefully whatever Albo has to say will be something that these people want to hear ...
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Post by Deleted on Oct 5, 2020 3:55:02 GMT 10
The simple economics is that jobseeker/keeper payments at a higher level cannot be sustained for a long time...its all on borrowed money.
Suggest those that are able enough can pick fruit or veg while keeping jobseeker, build on infrastructure like public housing and start paying bush fire volunteers coz Australia is going to need them.
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Post by pim on Oct 8, 2020 22:41:14 GMT 10
Child care viewed not as welfare but as part of economic policy? Massive investment in education and training as keys to a revival of manufacturing, with a new deal for Tafe? Massive investment in social housing? An energy policy with an emphasis on renewables? The messages in Albo's budget speech-in-reply were the correct ones. He could work on the delivery but policy wise it's all looking in the right direction. Most of all and best of all Albo's speech opens up a fundamental difference between the usual Coalition blather about trickle down economics meeting and marrying Keynes, and the Labor Party's unapologetic and fearless embrace of the role of government in charting a new course for this country. Were there nits to pick in Albo's speech? Of course there were. Australian politicians don't do the "charismatic Messiah" thing very well and they only sound wooden when they try. So I'm ok with Albo's speaking style. But what Albo has done with tonight's speech is chart new and necessary directions for Labor. Whether or not he becomes PM it's the direction that Albo charted tonight that will take the next Labor PM to the Lodge.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 9, 2020 7:45:06 GMT 10
Policies is good....charisma not so good.
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Post by pim on Oct 9, 2020 7:56:53 GMT 10
I don’t approve of charisma. Too much marketing hype and not enough truth telling. Albo’s a bit homespun but what you see is what you get. Contrast that with the blather and sloganeering hollowness of Scotty from Marketing. And why doesn’t he come clean about his links to the QAnon conspiracy theories?
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Post by Gort on Oct 9, 2020 9:14:25 GMT 10
Poor old Albo has a bit of work to do. The 2 main areas: Childcare funded to 90% for most and some up to couples earning over $500,000 per annum is unfunded. Rewiring the power grid: $20 Billion? Really? I doubt that that figure has any solid basis. Still, it is hard for Albo who is "kicking into a ten goal wind" during the COVID crisis.
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Post by pim on Oct 9, 2020 11:31:13 GMT 10
So ... vote Liberal? You’re going to do that anyway for the sake of your cosy little middle class tax rorts which is delusional of you since they’re unsustainable no matter who’s in power. The times suit Labor. Scotty from Marketing will blather on, fronting up for his “announcables”. That’s Scottyspeak for grandstanding the full Scotty from Marketing mojo where you use snappy words like “JobMaker”. Maybe it’ll get him over the line if he calls an election early enough - and I’m absolutely certain he’s war gaming that one as we speak. He’d be a fool not too and Scotty from Marketing is no fool. Just a clever snake oil salesman. If he allows the parliament to run its full term into 2022 he’s cactus because by then the economic shitstorm will be in full swing. He’s better off going to an election during the pandemic than in the aftermath. Take the example of Winston Churchill. During WW2 he could walk on water. He had Godlike status as the saviour of the nation during its darkest hour. But once the war was over and people looked to a peace dividend they dumped Churchill for a colourless charisma free zone named Clement Attlee who promised a National Health Service under a Labour government. COVID-19 works for Scotty from Marketing. I’ll give it to him, he’s successfully claimed ownership of the handling of the pandemic even though he doesn’t deserve it. The economic wage subsidy responses came from Labor and Scotty from Marketing rejected it until he saw the Centrelink queues and we got JobKeeper. Albo Labor had the creative ideas and Scotty from Marketing gets the credit. It’s called the shit sandwich of Opposition. Albo understands it and got out of the way. He acted in the national interest and supported policies that are in the national interest knowing that there are no political brownie points in it for him. That’s statesmanship. There’s a use by date on Scotty from Marketing’s blather and I suspect that it falls due when the pandemic is yesterday’s news and the nation takes a cold shower and asks “what’s next?”
A trillion dollars of debt from the Morrison Recession and what nation building basis for a post pandemic legacy has a trillion dollars of debt bought us?
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Post by Gort on Oct 9, 2020 11:42:01 GMT 10
It's actually a COVID recession and is unlike anything we have seen before. It is an "artificial" recession brought about by ordered shutdown of businesses, not by "natural" failure of businesses, nor a shortage of financing. As for voting Liberal? I'm a swing voter, so I have not made a decision yet. I'll see how the parties plan to fund their platforms closer to the next election. However, if a party indicates that it is going to clobber the lowest income retirees to help fund other stuff, I'll probably not vote for that party. Let's see what they announce closer to election time. I'm not rusted on anymore. As for Albo's reply to the budget speech? A few unfunded wish lists, a little history of Labor reminiscences and motherhood statements. I'm becoming tired of his whiny voice actually. It's starting to grate like Pauline Hanson's.
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Post by pim on Oct 9, 2020 13:54:38 GMT 10
What’s a Morrison Recession?
It’s an economic collapse brought about by an unexpected external factor which finds the country already in a state of economic decline with wages flatlining and suffering from an pre-existing case of PAPS which stands for Private Affluence Public Squalor. Private Affluence is fostered by a culture of tax rorts and middle class welfare and Public Squalor is brought about by a refusal by a succession of PAPS governments to make the necessary investments in public infrastructure because they were too busy pissing Budget surpluses up against a wall of tax cuts. And this in spite of regulatory bodies like the Reserve Bank pleading with PAPS governments to stimulate the economy through public investment since there’s no scope left for interest rate cuts. So when the pandemic hits the economic response is based on an economy that was already flatlining. A trillion dollars later and we are where we are: in an economic collapse that’s going to get a lot worse as the wage subsidies expire, a trillion dollars pissed up against a wall marked Debt and what’s to show for it? A crash program of social housing? A trillion dollars would have built a lot of houses for people who can no longer expect home ownership. Well? Nope!!! A new deal for education? Nope!! Not unless you call mass unemployment in the tertiary education sector a new deal for education. In the past a massive investment of public money in public infrastructure bought the country public assets like the Snowy Mountains Scheme or the NBN (as originally envisaged by Rudd Labor) or an expansion of secondary and tertiary education like the country got during the 1950s through to the 1970s and 80s.
A trillion bucks ... with fuck all to show for it. That’s a Morrison Recession! Ah but there are these tax cuts. Trickle down economics will save us all, so goes the blather from Scotty from Marketing. Right? Yeah right ... did a pig just spread its wings and fly past the window?
BTW what are you gonna do with your tax cuts? Spend up big in pursuit of Scotty from Marketing’s trickle down economics fantasy of a consumer-led recovery from the Morrison Recession? Or salt it away for a rainy day? My bank balance is looking healthier than ever. I’ve helped my kids out with white goods purchases this year- a new fridge for one family, a new washing machine for another, and it’s been appreciated. Quite a few retirees of my acquaintance have dug deep this year to help their adult kids coping with their changed work situations and with grandchildren staying home instead of going to school. Amazon is doing a roaring trade as people order stuff online: a new computer plus printer as grandchildren have to stay home from school and do schoolwork sent over the internet. My daughter said that has been worth its weight in gold. Even with all that the bank balance keeps growing. Let’s face it, with all this social distancing we haven’t been going out, we haven’t been travelling and we haven’t been spending. Multiply that across the country and it’s no wonder businesses have either collapsed or are on life support. So now the Morrison Recession brings us more tax cuts. To do what with, exactly? Grow our bank balances?
As long as the pandemic keeps on being a pandemic, Scotty from Marketing will be the political beneficiary. He doesn’t deserve it. Albo’s behaviour as Leader of the Opposition has been construction and exemplary and he’ll get no credit for it but them’s the breaks. Since when was politics about “deserve” or “fair” in the trickle down world of Scotty from Marketing? If he calls an election during the pandemic he’ll romp home. But even though the pandemic won’t endure, the Morrison Recession will endure, and it’ll be Scotty from Marketing’s crown of thorns. He must call an election before that happens, before Australian people start asking “well, the pandemic is over, what happens now?” He knows that. And he will.
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Post by pim on Oct 9, 2020 23:26:29 GMT 10
Albo pushes the right button on a blokey government’s blokey budget
One of the few political weaknesses of the budget is its lack of support for women. Anthony Albanese zeroed in on that and scored a direct hit with his childcare announcement.
Bernard Keane 9 October 2020 Crikey
A budget that blows half a trillion dollars on budget deficits, income tax cuts and business handouts, along with a dollop of infrastructure investment is a tough one to criticise for an opposition. But Anthony Albanese has zeroed in on a key weakness: its failure to support women. The shrillness and defensiveness of Scott Morrison in response to criticisms of the budget is a signal that an opposition that has struggled to make its mark during the pandemic has found a real sore spot for a government that has few women in senior domestic portfolios. Not that Albanese’s budget reply wasn’t heavy on the blokeyness. The Liberals might play at interventionist industry policy but Labor is the real deal. A National Rail Manufacturing Plan to build rollingstock in Australia. A $20 billion plan to upgrade the electricity grid via a bespoke power transmission infrastructure company. Apprentice employment requirements for Commonwealth projects.
Let’s do the numbers: the transport equipment manufacturing workforce is 17% women. Heavy and civil engineering employs 18% women. And in 2018, around 25% of apprenticeship commencements were female — a decline from previous years. If the government’s recovery efforts are pitched at blokey industries, Labor is every bit as much and more. But the dramatic expansion of the childcare subsidy proposed by Albanese — removing the annual family cap, lifting the maximum subsidy rate to 90% and lifting tapering thresholds significantly higher so that all but the wealthiest families will benefit — at a cost of $6 billion over four years places Labor in clear contrast to the government. The best the government could manage in response to the childcare announcement was to send the risible Jane Hume out to warn it would have “perverse outcomes” and that Labor hadn’t explained how it would pay for it. Yes, you read that right, a minister in a government that is in the process of borrowing a trillion dollars to fund a decade of deficits is demanding its opponents explain how a program will be paid for.
The indifference to women in the budget emerged on Wednesday and yesterday not from Labor but within the media — prompting a cack-handed intervention by the prime minister’s office that created the unifying hashtag #crediblewomen — and from respected, and certainly credible, independent groups like the Grattan Institute, led by one of Australia’s best economists, Danielle Wood. It was already established well ahead of the budget that the government’s tax cuts strongly favoured men over women. The government was woefully unprepared to respond to this, and Scott Morrison, reverting to the thin-skinned, scrutiny-loathing political persona he constantly showed before the pandemic, lashed out in anger at criticisms of the budget yesterday. Asked about older workers being left behind, Morrison accused budget critics of wanting to “set young people against older people, women against men, jobs in one sector versus jobs in another sector — they are the voices of division that will undermine the future economic prosperity of all Australians”. This is an unusual first in Australian political rhetoric — suggesting that examining and questioning why the government has prioritised some industries and jobs over others, and some demographics ahead of others, in spending a truly staggering sum of borrowed money, is divisive.
Albanese’s announcement echoed a proposal from the Grattan Institute that a significantly greater childcare subsidy form part of the government’s recovery plan, in order to remove the significant disincentive for women to work extra hours when they hit the annual cap. But it also adroitly exploits a feature of Scott Morrison’s political performance. The prime minister has deliberately cultivated a suburban dad persona, complete with twee cubby-building photos, as a core part of his image. But it’s very blokey, an aspect reinforced by the lack of high-profile women in his domestic political team. Marise Payne and Linda Reynolds may occupy senior portfolios, but they are rarely seen by voters. In an attempt to remedy that, Morrison has promoted the staggeringly inept Michaelia Cash to the position of deputy leader in the Senate, as Simon Birmingham replaces Mathias Cormann as Senate leader. Cash is almost as much of a scandal-magnet as Angus Taylor, and prone to remarkable misjudgment, but now joins the government leadership team. But that’s inside the bubble, as Morrison likes to call it. Outside it, the perception Scott Morrison is only interested in male jobs and male-dominated industries have a real foundation.
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Post by caskur on Oct 11, 2020 3:04:02 GMT 10
I thought Albo's speech was THE BEST speech I've ever heard.
His voice doesn't annoy me and I do recognize its very different.
I like him. He is a calming presence. I'm voting labor again next time.
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Post by pim on Oct 11, 2020 8:22:14 GMT 10
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Post by Gort on Oct 11, 2020 10:35:19 GMT 10
A pretty good summation of the problems in Labor: Listless Labor in danger of becoming a zombie partyTROY BRAMSTON The B-grade: Labor’s Senator Katy Gallagher, Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers, Leader of the Opposition Anthony Albanese, Senator Penny Wong and Senator Kristina Keneally ahead of a Labor Caucus address at Parliament House on October 8. Picture: Getty The next election has already been run and won. Anthony Albanese said so in a podcast interview in August. “I know that we will win the next election,” he said. Labor does not need to show it has learned the lessons of its last defeat. It does not need to keep the government to account. It does not need to earn votes with a new agenda. The voters have decided and Albanese has claimed victory. This complacency has many on Labor’s front and backbench, and more in the party ranks and union movement, worried. Albanese, most think, has no cut-through. The voters are not listening to him. Labor MPs are frustrated that they rarely land a glove on the Coalition. The polls are diabolical. The mood within the party is grim.Labor is in danger of becoming a zombie party — aimless with little sign of life. The B-grade frontbench from the Rudd-Gillard years is just going through the motions. Many blame the pandemic when there is a “rally around the flag” effect for most governments. Yet Labor has done little since the last election to revitalise its policies. Its political strategy is defective. And the party organisation remains largely moribund.With a pervasive sense of drift, and the party unsettled, Albanese’s budget reply took on new importance this week. The big-ticket childcare policy, which would see more women return to the workplace and relieve pressure on families, is well crafted and timed. It is similar to Labor’s childcare policy at the last election, like other announcements on skills, manufacturing and energy. Yet Labor MPs were encouraged that Albanese, after 17 months as Opposition Leader, is finally committing to a landmark policy. But the speech underlined the difficulty that remains: it was a flat delivery that did little to inspire. The House looked like it had taken a collective dose of Mogadon.In unguarded moments, many on Labor’s frontbench concede the prospect of winning the next election is very unlikely. Some have almost given up entirely. Sure, they’ll front the media to respond to the issues of the day and prepare election policies but, again, this is just going through the motions.Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese gave his Budget Reply Speech in the House of Representatives. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage Labor has never won an election without a popular leader who can excite the party with the promise of their charisma coupled with bold policy ideas. The central problem for Labor — in addition to its declining electoral base — is Albanese. “He wanted the leadership so badly but he doesn’t know what to do with it,” is a common refrain from shadow ministers.The party’s true believers — those who turn up to mind-numbingly boring local branch meetings and hand out how-to-vote cards — have become impatient. Labor MPs report frustration, even anger, with Albanese’s largely listless performance. They see the Morrison government with huge failings that Albanese is unable to prosecute. When he does go on the attack, it usually misfires. When facing tough questions, he gets cranky with interviewers.Labor is trapped between being totally negative, opposing everything the Coalition does in response to COVID-19, or being co-operative and supportive. Albanese struggles to deliver a consistent message. On the one hand he has criticised the national cabinet and the public health and economic response to the pandemic. But on the other hand, he wants credit for being bipartisan.The Morrison government has won broad support for its pandemic response. Albanese cannot bring himself to say this. But the Andrews government in Victoria has seen a sharp fall in support for obvious reasons: the hotel quarantine blunder, the flawed tracking and tracing program, and excessive lockdowns. But Labor is silent on the disastrous performance of the Andrews government. The latest example of Labor’s awful messaging is its phrase, “the Morrison recession”. This is cringeworthy in the extreme. It shows Labor to be wholly reactive. It is absurd overreach. How could anybody blame the Morrison government for a recession induced by a global pandemic. It is intellectually dishonest and politically stupid. The pandemic has caused a fundamental change in how we live, work, educate, socialise, exercise and entertain. The opportunity for innovative and creative policy ideas is paramount. So where is the leadership that sees this as a great opportunity to reboot the party’s policies in response to a once-in-a-century event? It has not come from Albanese. His “Vision Statements” — he capitalises the “V” and the “S” — have sunk without trace. But some Labor MPs have been busy putting pen to paper outside the shadow cabinet. There are several new collections of essays that seek to chart a way forward for the party. The best of these books is Tanya Plibersek’s edited collection, Upturn: A Better Normal After COVID-19 (NewSouth), which is published next month. It provides an upbeat, forward-looking, positive collection of ideas for a post-pandemic Australia. Labor needed to spend the time since the last election engaging in a bout of soul-searching. The party’s draft platform — revealed by my colleague Greg Brown — is a pale imitation of the once great Labor Party bursting with ideas, with an enlarging vision for Australia, bold, passionate and determined. Why did Labor cancel its national conference? The US Democrats held their convention this year. The British Labour Party held its annual conference. There is no reason why the party could not have held a virtual conference to debate policy. It would have also been an opportunity to address the systemic weaknesses within the party organisation and refresh its principles for the modern era. Albanese had plenty of boosters in the media who promised he would appeal to voters in Queensland and Western Australia — wastelands for federal Labor. Well, the published polling and the party’s private research show no improvement in federal Labor’s standing in those states. Its primary vote, nationally, is flatlining in the dismal mid-to-low 30s. Scott Morrison has a commanding lead as preferred prime minister. Labor has not won back voters lost to the Greens on the left or the Coalition and One Nation on the right. The overarching problem within Labor remains how to reconcile its working-class moderate base with its postmodern middle- and upper-class progressive instincts. Labor is in danger — led by an inner-city left faction leader who has spent his life in politics — surrendering to the green-left wing of the party. The split on energy policy between Mark Butler and Joel Fitzgibbon is emblematic of this divide. The central myth about politics during the pandemic is that governments around the world benefit from being in power during a crisis. There is nothing automatic about winning support; it must be earned. This is what Labor fails to understand about Morrison. Donald Trump and Boris Johnson have lost voter support because their pandemic response has been defective. This testifies to another reality that Labor must confront. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and UK Labour leader Keir Starmer have surged in the polls. Why? Because they have effectively critiqued Trump and Johnson, offered measured and realistic alternative responses to the pandemic and the recession, and have credibility with voters. This exposes the claim that it is too tough for Albanese. The truth is that his leadership is circling the drain.Troy Bramston is the author or editor of nine books, including Robert Menzies: The Art of Politics, Paul Keating: The Big-Picture Leader and Rudd, Gillard and Beyond. He co-authored the award-winning The Dismissal: In The Queen's Name with Paul Kelly. He is currently writing a biography of Bob Hawke.
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Post by Gort on Oct 29, 2020 18:32:13 GMT 10
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