Australian Federal Election 2022

[Old Koreelah]

Tonight we were watching Australia Day spectacular televised live from the Opera House when the Premier started speaking.
Our innocent 6 year old grandkid asked for Fast Forward.

[Marty_d]

33 minutes ago, old man emu said:

Palmer might be all sorts of things you don't like, but we all claim that freedom of speech is a Right of every citizen. If he has the Doe Ray Me to spend on his campaign, then why shouldn't he do that? If you had a roll that would choke Phar Lap, and had similar desires to influence the electorate, wouldn't you?

That is true, OME, as much as I want to argue against it.

 

The problem is that due to the particular character and moral attributes generally required to amass vast amounts of moolah, those who both have money AND want to influence the electorate are not usually what I would consider a force for good.  (Trump, Murdoch, Palmer, the Koch brothers...)

[Jerry_Atrick]

Freedom of speech is one thing. .disproportionate usage of that based on your command of financial resources that drown out others right to be heard is quite another...

 

Over 'ere, there is strict limits on political advertising spend - you can shout out on soap boxes all you like...

 

Here is an interesting short vid...

 

 

 

 

[old man emu]

I wonder into who's pocket Palmer's millions are pouring.

[nomadpete]

There has to be a knock-for-knock agreemant somewhere. One wouldn't expect a rich man to be throwing money away.

[onetrack]

What gets me is that despite Palmer offering nothing more than utter and complete BS, and prime marketing words ("trust"), with no substance, idiots continue to vote for him.

I'm sure he picks on the disaffected who love being contrarian, and who'll vote for Palmer on the basis of, "that'll show the Libs and Labor how much we hate them".

 

But the bottom line is, in todays political world, with deep divisions being sown on all sides, the Right/Left vote is always on a narrow balance, and it takes very few voters to swing it either way.

I reckon Palmer is rat cunning enough to understand that if his $100M he spends on his BS blanket advertising gets him just enough votes to swing the election away from a Labor win, it will have all been worth it.

[facthunter]

Freedom of speech doesn't mean  freedom of speech for the RICH and/or Powerful who drown out the other voices or take them to Court. Palmer is a BULLY but in a physical world probably cry ( or have a heart attack) if you tapped him on the chin. The Lawyers do the fighting for him. Morrison Backed an action of his against WA Gov't and then withdrew, when it looked like costing them votes, denying they ever helped him, when it's ALL on RECORD. Nev

[Jerry_Atrick]

10 hours ago, nomadpete said:

There has to be a knock-for-knock agreemant somewhere. One wouldn't expect a rich man to be throwing money away.

Yes.. and I guess it is tied to this...

9 hours ago, onetrack said:

I reckon Palmer is rat cunning enough to understand that if his $100M he spends on his BS blanket advertising gets him just enough votes to swing the election away from a Labor win, it will have all been worth it.

Using a simple formula, what nomadpete said + what OT said = more favours from the LNP government.. and better returns.. simples!

 

 

[nomadpete]

Whenever we see a politician doing something that we all think is patently crazy, it only looks crazy to us because we don't get shown THEIR cost/benefit analysis.

[Yenn]

Another vote buying expedition. The government is going to throw a billion dollars at the great Barrier Reef.

That is on top of the previous half a billion and other donations. It can only be to buy votes because even they know it will not do any good. Our present politicians and also the media seem to think that an injection of money does some good. History shows otherwise, especially in the case of the reef.

[old man emu]

Whenever governments inject money into something, it is only ever to treat the symptoms, never the disease. How is it that with all the backing they get from the Corporate world, no corporation has ever sat them down for a training session on how to take an idea and create a plan to bring it to fruition without the first step being to scatter money all over the place like confetti at a wedding?

 

Or, as Jerry intimated, do training sessions conducted by facilitators only produce value for the facilitator. A facilitator  is a person who helps a group to have an effective dialog without taking any side of the argument, especially in order to reach a consensus. The IAF (International Association of Facilitators) uses the definition:

“Group facilitation is a process in which a person,

whose selection is acceptable to all the members of the group; 

who is substantively neutral, and

who has no substantive decision-making authority,

diagnoses and intervenes to help a group improve how it identifies and solves problems and make decisions, to increase the group’s effectiveness.” 

 

By that definition, a facilitator plays no part in exposing participants in a training session to basic principles, ideas or techniques applicable to the subject of the training session.

[facthunter]

paid over 9 years... Another great flourish of promises for the never never to CON a few for the coming election. To try to stave off the endangered listing by the world body whose name eludes me at the moment.. Most people are wising up to how much OUR promises are worth these days. Nev

[old man emu]

2 hours ago, facthunter said:

Most people are wising up to how much OUR promises are worth these days.

Have you noticed that nobody trusts anyone anymore? It used to be that a man's word was his bond. Now his word is not worth the paper it is written on. Not even the government will take your word for it. I can stand at a counter, eyes red and tears welling up, but a government functionary won't believe that my wife has dies until I can produce the Death Certificate from the same government's Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages.

 

Now I can't access my emails until I confirm via my phone that it's me logging in to my account.

[onetrack]

We can trust the UAP, believe me!! I've seen the light, after being constantly bombarded with Clive and Craigs wonderful messages of pure truth and honesty!!

 

Vote UAP, "1", and you can be assured, you'll never hear a lie of any type, from the mouths of Clive and Craig, ever again!! 

[Marty_d]

4 hours ago, facthunter said:

paid over 9 years... Another great flourish of promises for the never never to CON a few for the coming election. To try to stave off the endangered listing by the world body whose name eludes me at the moment.. Most people are wising up to how much OUR promises are worth these days. Nev

UNESCO.  Yeah that was just embarrassing, Sussan Ley running around frantically lobbying them not to call an endangered reef endangered.  Now a month before a report is due, they drop the promise of a future billion without spending a dollar on real action against climate change (or nutrient/fertilizer runoff, for that matter).  Typical of this lot, all sizzle and no sausage.

[Jerry_Atrick]

As an old work colleague of mine, said, "Feed the chooks at the right time and they will follow you to the table... "

[nomadpete]

 

Did you work with Joh Bjelkie Peterson?

 

That was his oft spoken motto.

[facthunter]

Another good Dog fearing Man. Qld. Saved by Fitzgerald.  Otherwise Joh for Canberra. Paper BAG over there. Another day in Paradise... What could go wrong?  Nev

[Yenn]

Joh's government was nearly as bad as the present federal government. They at least didn't deny responsibility for anything.

Our present mob are just trying to buy votes. Pour a load of money on the table and make it look as if you are doing something. Have a look at what they expect that money to do and it is apparent that they have no idea.

It is vote buying to say we are spending X million on something when there is no plan for how that money will be used.

Scumbags government has no idea of planning and on their record they couldn't organize a piss up in  a brewery, they would delegate the responsibility to the methodist church and the Salvation Army.

[facthunter]

Yes No free wine in the Methodist church or any BINGO.  Nev

[Marty_d]

Funny, didn't their god boy turn water into wine?

[pmccarthy]

They are not called methos for nothing.

[old man emu]

More grist for the mill.

Here's comment on two things ScoMo will have to climb over to score a win in the next election.

 

[onetrack]

It's absolutely staggering where we have ended up, as regards our major manufacturing capabilities today. In the 1930's we had a huge level of automotive and industrial manufacturing that employed a sizeable proportion of the population.

We built American-design automobiles and machinery such as forklifts and cranes and earthmoving equipment under licence here - and our farming manufacturing extended to nearly all our agricultural needs, and included trucks and commercial vehicles as well.

 

At the commencement of WW2, we manufactured optical devices such as gunsights, binoculars, and a hundred other optical glass devices that we needed urgently for the war effort - without any previous optical glass manufacturing or production ability - and without even any serious level of previous knowledge of any suitable sand supplies for the glass requirements.

But we found the right sand supplies in quick smart time, and manufactured and ground the optical glass to a high quality standard, in a period of less than 18 mths.

 

The Australian optical glass industry was huge by Wars end, and with Govt support we could have become a major global producer of optical glass, and gained a major export industry.

But no - the post-War Govt of the day decided the industry was unworthy of support and the Australian optical glass industry faded as fast as it had appeared.

Another massive opportunity lost by deadbeat, incompetent political leaders who seem to feature large in our political landscape.

 

The automotive industry rose to the occasion demanded by a lack of military vehicles in 1940 and started churning them out in reasonable numbers by 1942 - until the Americans dropped thousands of trucks and vehicles on us via Lend-Lease and our automotive manufacturing ability was again curtailed.

 

During WW2, we designed and built our own coastal patrol ships - even though we'd never built a ship in Australia before. We even built the massive engines needed for those ships in our Railway Workshops, because those Workshop had huge abilities.

The same for tanks and APC's. We built our own tank (the Sentinel) with a one-piece, fully cast hull (a world-first process that astounded the Americans, who welded and bolted everything together).

We built the Bren Gun Carrier in large numbers in our Railway Workshops and other manufacturing facilities, where we previously had no light armoured vehicles at all.

 

But the Americans dropped tanks on us by the shipload from mid-1942 and into 1943, until we had more than enough tanks - so the Sentinel and all the knowledge and experience that went with it, was scrapped on the spot.

We could have had a sizeable armaments manufacturing facility, exporting to many other countries and earning us huge export income. But no, we kicked that money box into the rubbish bin, too.

 

Our national history is full of poor leadership, exceptionally myopic foresight, a lack of Govt support for burgeoning and promising industries, and poor decision-making galore.

So the subs fiasco can just be added to the hundreds of other political (and financial) disasters, that have cost us dearly as a nation since WW2, and led to us being purely the worlds biggest quarry, and the worlds biggest consumers of either rubbishy consumer products, or expensive military products, all of them manufactured far from our shores.

 

https://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/bsparcs/exhib/papers/bolton2.htm

 

Edited February 4, 2022 by onetrack

[old man emu]

 Due to a lack of home grown experience in tank design, a mission was sent to the US to examine the M3 design and Colonel W.D. Watson MC, an artillery officer with many years of tank design experience was provided by the UK. He arrived in December 1940. Like the Canadian Ram, the Australian Cruiser was to be based on the engine, drive train, and lower hull of the American M3 Medium tank, mated to an upper hull and turret built closely along the lines of a British Crusader. By 1942, attempting to keep pace with German tank developments, the design specification had become more like an American medium tank, resulting in a heavier design and a higher silhouette profile. Manufactured by the New South Wales Railway Company, fabrication took place at Sydney's Chullora Tank Assembly Shops with serial production vehicles emerging in August 1942.

 

Sixty-five production vehicles had been completed by June 1943. The completed Sentinel tanks were used for evaluation purposes only and were not issued to operational armoured units. The Australian Cruiser tank programme was terminated in July 1943 as it was thought better for Australia to put the effort spent on the AC tanks towards building her own railway locomotives and supporting the large number of US tanks due to arrive.