"I for one welcome our insect overlords" - The Politics Thread

[midfielder]

D

You’re please explain comment above… let me have a go and bear with me …

Australian has two critical structural issues, first all governments aside from local [and that could be wrong as well in some cases] collect less money than what they spend… meaning we increase taxes, reduce spending, get more efficient or a combination of all three.

Second our economic mix is getting smaller.. the car industry look farked, as does a lot of manufacturing… Service industry jobs at lower levels are being exported overseas…

As I see neither side of politics wants to tackle major structural change… The unions when the ALP where in power have had clauses written into awards that apply penalty rates essentially outside Monday to Friday daylight hours before 17:00…. Even undoing much of what Hawke & Keating did, never mind what the Howard gov did…

Big business especially the mining industry has made itself so important it like no gov is game to take them on… see Coal Seam Gas mining on Sydney water tables …

Our media has become a cheer leader for issues and who they like rather than explain…

A brief history … say 1920 to 1975 as a country we paid a lot of tax and people got very few services, they paid for the doctor, university, most left school by Year 9, no dole, and people died after a short retirement .. The governments of this day with the tax money built capital works…. Say 1975 to 2003 … taxes were slowly reduced less money spend on Capital works and money spent services, medicare, more universities, staying at school longer, huge increase in public service wage & salaries to pay for it all many assets were sold .. Commonwealth Bank, Qantas, Telecom etc… 2003 to now massive reduction in taxation rates, even less spending on capital works, services increased but there are no assets left to sell or very few.

An ageing population with increasing costs… an international corporate world chasing were they can make the most profit ….

Both sides will say [because it economically correct] if we increase GDP this will increase tax revenue … the big question is how ….

My faith in the Libs becoming some amazing government …. HHHHMMMmmmm well they may but not on what I have seen to date … nor do I have much faith ERRRrrrrr sorry almost no faith in the ALP …. The Greens are a basket case … this has resulted in people like Clive Fatso [Fat Tony] getting elected…

At some point I hope [don’t hold out much hope] that the Libs and the ALP can bury the constant attack [BTW it’s both sides] politics and support workable or debate potential workable solutions and kinda stand together …. Otherwise we could become a country selling mining and selling our farm land so people can grow crops and sell overseas…

Just a small issue to close, Universities & TAFE’s have dropped their quality standards essentially for revenue … most inside know this and many professional bodies are treating graduating students differently .. The CPA’s are so concerned they make you re do basic courses now that they run to even register … This approach of front over substance is catching in lots of places …

D the corporate world wants the lowest taxes or they will move to countries that have them… Australia needs to increase tax, or reduce cost which means less services or both … no matter what side is in power the issues will not go away … I want both sides to work together on this … however I see both sides wanting to fight over how hot the coffee should be ….

For anyone interested not impressed with the Phoney so far … still early days … on the Binky Bill V Inner City soft boy …. My vote is for the inner city soft boy [if he gets in I will give him a nick name]

 

[dibo]

It's complete bullshit to say that we've undone what Howard did in IR, let alone Hawke and Keating.

Enterprise bargaining, individual flexibility arrangements, restrictions on right of entry, restrictions on protected action, modernised (and simplified, and restricted) Awards; for the most part these things are Howard-era reforms and they're all locked in under Fair Work. They didn't even undo all of WorkChoices, let alone unwind the Hawke/Keating reforms and anyone who tells you otherwise is simply lying.

The big thing they knocked off from WorkChoices was AWAs that had no requirement to leave workers no worse off. Bosses used to be able to hand out AWAs that took away penalty rates, minimum shifts, leave loading and a bunch of other things for no compensation.

A form of no-disadvantage test has been re-applied so that individual flexibility arrangements related to an instrument like an enterprise bargaining agreement or an award don't undercut the instrument.

And businesses complain that it’s hard to get staff at weekends and nights.

On the flipside, businesses complain that staff cost too much at those times because of penalty rates.

Business with exposure at these times should pick an issue – either wages are too high or staff are too hard to get, because the two issues are counterposed.

Pay more, and you’ll get staff. Can’t afford it? There’s a structural issue with your business.

Cutting wages in a race to the bottom is not the solution.

On businesses campaigning - business views are essentially protected. The laws around election campaigning are designed to restrict Labor from receiving support from affiliated unions (and their 2 million members) but there’s no such restriction on business outspending entire national political party campaigns on single issue ad campaigns (see the mining ads).

It’s an horrific distortion of free speech – the biggest megaphone wins.

Issues like humane treatment of asylum seekers don’t stand a chance, because nobody’s making multi-billion dollar profits off being a decent human being, but strip-mining entire mountain ranges? Knock yourself out.

Media has become a cheerleader or an egger-on; part of this is down to media companies themselves being forced to chase profit.

They don’t sell as many papers as they used to, FTA newsrooms are losing share (and therefore funding) to multi-chanelling and cable channels and so they cut back on staff. At the same time, technological change means the media cycle has changed.

What once was: morning headlines -> breakfast radio -> afternoon headlines -> evening news has now morphed into a 24/7 attack where news is reported breathlessly (and sometimes mindlessly) and there’s not enough time to pick through the detail because the next thing is already happening and what breath you have is spent shouting about that to try to break clear of the din.

There are more outlets than ever, there’s more news than ever, but the pool is very wide and not very deep. You’ve got more journos, each with less time, so instead of picking through the detail of policy and debate, they get the headlines and not much else.

This is *excellent* for small target oppositions with three word slogans that they repeat quasi-religiously; there are no mistakes to make, there are no complicated concepts to explain, you get your whole line out clean every time and you move onto the next hour’s headlines.

It’s *terrible* for governments; you have to devote personnel to feeding the beast (lest they feed on you) so you don’t have as much time to develop complex ideas out of the spotlight. Once you have developed and released something, instead of working through detail (which nobody has time for) it’s all about playing *gotcha* and finding mistakes and scandals and the parliamentary secretary that didn’t quite read the whole briefing and then the policy initiative’s f**ked within one 24 hour news cycle.

If it makes it through the 24 hours, you’ve then got to be able to withstand the barrage of opposition from any business group that has the shits. See for example the complete f**king lunacy that followed the perfectly sensible suggestion that if someone is going to salary-sacrifice a car, they might be asked to spend 13 weeks out of 60 documenting its use for their job. Anyone would think that Rudd was slashing aged-care workers’ salaries. He wasn’t, but Abbott is [this is where I’d normally talk about biased reporting, but you can all see it for yourselves].

To address the shape of the economy in the future, a key thing is increasing retirement savings. Bumping up the superannuation guarantee is a *good idea*. Things of the ilk of the RSPT/MRRT are *good ideas* because we bank windfall profits.

The services economy isn’t disappearing overseas, only parts of it. It’s growing in all sorts of areas you can’t outsource – the nearly 1 million Australians who use personal trainers *can’t* buy that from Bangalore.

Manufacturing has been in decline since Whitlam started pulling the tariff walls down. That was the right move, what has to follow it is that we move into innovative manufacturing, producing complicated goods that sell for more. We need to add value, not just put the screws in.

The next big industry will be… who knows… Probably renewable energy technology, because heaven knows there’s going to be plenty of demand for non-fossil fuel related energy. The market will find a way, though the way that the Government was intervening in the market to provide renewables technology a leg-up – the Clean Energy Finance Corporation – is facing a fight for its life *even though* it’s making money for the Government. It’s hard to express how stupid I think that is – probably the worst decision they’ve made so far.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle have a responsibility to the Parliament to ensure that politics and debate is more than a simple blood sport. We’ll never get good policy, good legislation or good government if the only thing oppositions ever do is smash the hell out of the government of the day.

There’s got to be some sort of critical analysis that goes on *including* sometimes giving up available political points to pursue the national interest.

I don’t think Tony Abbott believed the price on carbon was going to kill the country,* but he saw a political opportunity and he took it.

There are times when opposition to a party’s policies makes sense. Labor opposed WorkChoices because Labor honestly felt it went too far. To not oppose it would be to deny their most basic of beliefs.

The Liberals opposed the stimulus packages during the GFC, because they thought the market should sort it out.

Up until 2007, the Liberal Party opposed any action on climate change because they simply didn’t believe it was the right thing to do.** I think they were completely wrong, but it was an honestly held, faithfully executed position based on a belief of how the world does and should work.

That’s how it’s meant to work.

Labor was punished in 2010 in large part for softening its commitment to what had been for the prior decade a core position.

Having a fight, politically, is fine, if you’re fighting for what you believe in. If you’re not, you’re just having a fight for the hell of it. If you don’t believe in it, people should whack you.

Lastly, Albo has a perfectly serviceable nickname that people have known and used for 30 years, pick it up and use it.

*ADDED BENEFIT*: it’s both a lot easier to type and a lot more accurate than “Inner City soft boy”.



* In his own words he was “a bit of a weathervane” on the topic – I don’t think he really believed anything in particular other than in his own political advantage.


** They then changed their mind and decided they believed in action in 2007, wavered through 2008, firmed up behind an ETS in 2009 and then changed their mind again in time for the 2010 election.

 

[true believer]

Smelly hippies? It was painted in 1952 and bought in 1973. Waste? It is estimated now to be worth anywhere between A20 and A100 million.

actually closer to 200 . but it does sort of represent the half arsed myths perpetuated by the Murdoch press and the liberal party.
great things will only ever be done by the labor party .I will have to keep reminding you ,from time to time

 

[hasbeen]

mmm .. lost me here. YOU called it as a WASTE and then say it is worth at least twice what I quoted.

"but it does sort of represent the half arsed myths perpetuated by the Murdoch press and the liberal party."

What does ? The fact that it was bought by the Labor party in 1973? Totally unrelated comment you idiot.

What are you gibbering about?

 

[true believer]

mmm .. lost me here. YOU called it as a WASTE and then say it is worth at least twice what I quoted.

"but it does sort of represent the half arsed myths perpetuated by the Murdoch press and the liberal party."

What does ? The fact that it was bought by the Labor party in 1973? Totally unrelated comment you idiot

What are you gibbering about?

yes well. I was pissing in your pocket .most liberalphiles jump in to attack the labor government over the most astute art
purchase in our history and probably the world in the 20th century .like the latest labor government they were demonised over every detail
by the Murdoch press.
Im sorry for seeing how you would react to a post like that. i'll dumb it down to see what you might strike next time
as your memory of the derision by your friends is distant your in recollection. cheers

 

[midfielder]

Wonders aloud if the cause of the current US stuff with the Tea party is possible in Australia...

Good article in the Washington Post ... this part is me thinks the crux of the issue..

What’s important about this is that there is now almost no intersection between the coalition that elected the president and the one that elected the majority in the House. Members of Congress have far less incentive to compromise with a president of another party if they know they are not dependent in any significant way on that president’s supporters.

“If you look at the people who elected Obama and the people who elected the Republicans in the House, there’s very little overlap,” Jacobson said. “They owe their victories to very different constituencies, to folks who are pretty divided on every political issue.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...c0afe2-2cfa-11e3-b139-029811dbb57f_story.html

Makes me wonder if the Yanks are crazy or just in front of us... an example the Greens vote fell by about a third and I think is somewhere about 6 to 7 % ... yet they say our people voted for what we want and then you have the Fat Tony party .... at what point does a minor party have the right to stop the governing party from doing what they said ... whether you like it or not the Libs said for three years no carbon tax ... went to the election with this as their key policy [OK shows how poor the ALP was ] ... however there can be no denying that was their major policy ... the Greens who went to the election saying they wanted to keep the CT lost as I said lost about one third of their vote ...

Lets not debate the rights or wrongs of the CT ... it is more the issue that the winning party by some considerable size won an election on this fiscal tax change.... the Greens lost ... Obviously the Greens can do what they want ... My question is for the sake of governments being able to govern in the future should a fiscal measure like the CT be with held from a government that won the election ... Obamacare is little different the extreme right wing and then some of the Tea party says F the election ... do what we want ...

Are we to in Australia saying if 3% voted for me then I represent that 3% and everyone else can get knotted... Just asking and sharing ideas .. essentially what is at a core of an election ... did the Phoney actually start it by opposing almost everything ... OK over the top he did not oppose everything and did back some key reforms ... the difference was i guess he had equal if not more seats but that does not excuse all the Libs actions in the Julia government...

Back to the main query .... could the Tea Party stuff happen here and is the country polarizing more and more certainty our media is...

 

[midfielder]

One day to go for the US to pass the money bills....

Wonders aloud if CP is our version of the Tea Party and given the huge shift to the right by the small senate parties the Greens should hang their heads in shame..

Anyone wants predict what will happen if the US defaults as is looking more likely ....

Taking a wider view I can see China starting to step up and say ... we are the new world power .... I have no idea on the outcomes nor the fall out except that it will hurt the US and the west in general a lot, if China / Japan and Asia in general stopped buying US and other western bonds ..... money to buy imports would be hard to find... ideas & thro's ....


To quote Charles Dickens ..

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

 

[dibo]

Joe Hockey is running around saying the shutdown and possible default are proof that Australia needs to take urgent action to deal with its fiscal position, so we're going to privatise HECS debts and Australia Post.

He's a dead set numpty, an intellectual dwarf.

The shutdown and debt ceiling are proof that Australia needs to get away from sloganeering and brinkmanship and Australia's politicians need to work in the national interest, not their political interest.

 

[midfielder]

HHHHhhhhhmmmmm the world is playing a cruel game with us ... [Dibo try to keep Dark side libs ... the Force ALP out ] but when the ALP were just in power we had the WFC with a new government and a very new treasurer ... if this goes into melt down we have a new government with a new treasurer .... my experience is treasurers get better over time ..

Gotta say but Hockey is not the man who I would have there if this things goes pear shaped ... that has to be MT ....

Back to my question away from how bad Hockey may or may-not be is we could be looking at a turning point in history .... China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong have very strong economies and Chinese internal growth could arguably pick up a fall in Western Exports ... add Some South American countries ...

Tis interesting in many ways the US gap between spending and revenue is huge and much goes on interest ... from the outside they need to both cut spending and raise taxes ... to continue as they are is impossible they become a big Greece ... and the politics seem so polarised over there you wonder do they do a Soccer Australia ... ie go bankrupt and start from again although the implications and stakes are somewhat bigger..

 

[true believer]

middy you have to first understand that the tea party is a creation of the Koch brothers misinformation machine .
there was never a "tax revolt" it is a shelf organisation that was around for
10 years before the latest stunts were being pulled.
the Koch brothers are big oil. they fund things like the heartland foundation .which also fronts people for
the climate change denial lobby .directly funding marc morano , steve McIntyre ,bjorn lomborg etc.
this group also funds the republican far right congress at an average of around 700k each (yes I would consider that bribery)
murdoch actively supports this group . as well as projects in Australia (the distruction of the NBN and for his business
associates. support for the Australian denial lobby . jones,hadley etc)

the long term goal is the removal of power from the countries governments replaced by the rule of trans nationals .

their along way down the track of achieving that aim.

 

[midfielder]

TB

You may be right regarding their goal but you would hope it is never allowed to happen...

I posted some time back the power of the big multi nationals ... regardless of who is in power in Australia they face the issue of global capital movements ... and the need to create and environment that global wants its invest its money...

More over we have some power .. imagine if you lived in a poor country with little resources ... especially kept an eye on the Chinese corporate companies owned and controlled by the Chinese government ..

Interesting noises coming out of China in recent days ... saying US influence is fading ...

 

[true believer]

You may be right regarding their goal but you would hope it is never allowed to happen...

the US republican congress has a gerrymander larger than Queensland under joe. so they've pretty well
already achieved this.

Interesting noises coming out of China in recent days ... saying US influence is fading ...

china is getting ahead of itself . the reality for them is, the worlds second largest air force is the US navy.

 

[true believer]

where are you tony ?

 

[dibo]

Interesting read in The Guardian:

The Guardian: Why the 1% should pay tax at 80%
The Reagan-Thatcher revolution changed society's beliefs about taxes. If we want economic growth shared fairly, we must rethink

• Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty
• theguardian.com, Thursday 24 October 2013 23.30 AEST

Before 1980, both the US and the UK had top marginal tax rates of 70% or more. Photograph: AP

In the United States, the share of total pre-tax income accruing to the top 1% has more than doubled, from less than 10% in the 1970s to over 20% today (pdf). A similar pattern is true of other English-speaking countries. Contrary to the widely-held view, however, globalisation and new technologies are not to blame. Other OECD countries, such as those in continental Europe, or Japan have seen far less concentration of income among the mega rich.

At the same time, top income tax rates on upper income earners have declined significantly since the 1970s in many OECD countries – again, particularly in English-speaking ones. For example, top marginal income tax rates in the United States or the United Kingdom were above 70% in the 1970s, before the Reagan and Thatcher revolutions drastically cut them by 40 percentage points within a decade.

At a time when most OECD countries face large deficits and debt burdens, a crucial public policy question is whether governments should tax high earners more. The potential tax revenue at stake is now very large.

For example, doubling the average US individual income tax rate on the top 1% income earners from the current 22.5% level to 45% would increase tax revenue by 2.7% of GDP per year – as much as letting all of the Bush tax cuts expire (only a small fraction of them lapsed in January 2013). But of course, this simple calculation is static: such a large increase in taxes may well affect the economic behaviour of the rich and the income they report pre-tax, the broader economy and, ultimately, the tax revenue generated. In recent research, we analyse this issue both conceptually and empirically using international evidence on top incomes and top tax rates since the 1970s.

There is a strong correlation between the reductions in top tax rates and the increases in top 1% pre-tax income shares, for the period from 1975-79 to 2004-08, across 18 OECD countries for which top income share information is available. For example, the United States experienced a 35 percentage-point reduction in its top income tax rate and a very large ten percentage-point increase in its top 1% pre-tax income share. By contrast, France or Germany saw very little change in their top tax rates and their top 1% income shares during the same period.

So, the evolution of top tax rates is a good predictor of changes in pre-tax income concentration. There are three scenarios to explain the strong response of top pre-tax incomes to top tax rates; each has very different policy implications.

First, higher top tax rates may discourage work effort and business creation among the most talented: the so-called supply-side effect. In this scenario, lower top tax rates would lead to more economic activity by the rich and hence more economic growth. If all the correlation of top income shares and top tax rates seen in the above data were due to such supply-side effects, the revenue-maximising top tax rate would be 57%. This would imply that the United States still has some leeway to increase taxes on the rich, but that the upper limit has already been reached in many European countries.

Second, higher top tax rates can increase tax avoidance. In that scenario, increasing top rates in a tax system riddled with loopholes and tax avoidance opportunities is not productive either. A better policy would be to first close loopholes so as to eliminate most tax avoidance opportunities, and only then increase top tax rates. With sufficient political will and international co-operation to enforce taxes, it is possible to eliminate most tax avoidance opportunities, which are well documented. Then, with a broad tax base offering no significant avoidance opportunities, only real supply-side responses would limit how high top tax rate can be set before becoming counter-productive.

In the third scenario, while standard economic models assume that pay reflects productivity, there are strong reasons to be sceptical, especially at the top of the income distribution where the actual economic contribution of managers working in complex organisations is particularly difficult to measure. Here, top earners might be able to partly set their own pay by bargaining harder or influencing compensation committees.

Naturally, the incentives for such "rent-seeking" are much stronger when top tax rates are low. In this scenario, cuts in top tax rates can still increase top income shares, but the increases in top 1% incomes now come at the expense of the remaining 99%. In other words, top rate cuts stimulate rent-seeking at the top but not overall economic growth – the key difference with the first, supply-side, scenario.

To tell these various scenarios apart, we need to analyse to what extent top tax rate cuts lead to higher economic growth. Again, data show that there is no correlation between cuts in top tax rates and average annual real GDP-per-capita growth since the 1970s. For example, countries that made large cuts in top tax rates, such as the United Kingdom or the United States, have not grown significantly faster than countries that did not, such as Germany or Denmark.

What that tells us is that a substantial fraction of the response of pre-tax top incomes to top tax rates may be due to increased rent-seeking at the top (that is, scenario three), rather than increased productive effort.

Naturally, cross-country comparisons are bound to be fragile; exact results vary with the specification, years, and countries. But the bottom line is that rich countries have all grown at roughly the same rate over the past 30 years – in spite of huge variations in tax policies. By our calculations about the response of top earners to top tax rate cuts being due in part to increased rent-seeking behaviour and in part to increased productive work, we find that the top tax rate could potentially be set as high as 83% (as opposed to the 57% allowed by the pure supply-side model).

Until the 1970s, policy-makers and public opinion probably considered – rightly or wrongly – that at the very top of the income ladder, pay increases reflected mostly greed rather than productive work effort. This is why governments were able to set marginal tax rates as high as 80% in the US and the UK. The Reagan/Thatcher revolution has succeeded in making such top tax rate levels "unthinkable" since then.

Now, however, we have seen decades of increasing income concentration that have brought about mediocre growth since the 1970s. And with the Great Recession that was triggered by financial sector excesses, a rethink of the Reagan and Thatcher revolutions is underway.

The United Kingdom increased its top income tax rate from 40% to 50% in 2010, in part to curb top pay excesses. In the United States, the Occupy Wall Street movement and its famous "We are the 99%" slogan also reflects a view that the top 1% has gained at the expense of the 99% – a view endorsed by our findings about the highly unequal distribution of income gains during the recovery.

In the end, the future of top tax rates depends on what the public believes about whether top pay fairly reflects productivity or whether top pay, rather unfairly, arises from rent-seeking. With higher income concentration, top earners have more economic resources to influence both social beliefs (through thinktanks and media) and policies (through lobbying), thereby creating some "reverse causality" between income inequality, perceptions, and policies.

The job of economists should be to make a top rate tax level of 80% at least "thinkable" again.

• This is an updated version of an article originally published by VoxEU

 

[midfielder]

D

Excellent article and a real can of worms..... I totally agree with increasing taxes ... it's the how ... as for the rich getting richer and not paying their fair share of tax very true .... I am aware of a guy on the CC who has move than 30 million and yet he and his wife get the age pension ... not use reporting him its so well wrapped up in trust and companies ...

The result is poor people will need to and are struggling much harder to get out of being poor and it is becoming much harder to move up the ladder so to speak... regardless whether its left or right policy both sides in Australian seem caught by major movements in global capital ... I could write a story from 1984 of my cousin who was the youngest in a family of 7 in Mt Druit whose mother was on drugs and whose father was a drunk ... in a house hold where fights and yelling was common... I compared this to a client who earn't over 350, 00 a year had only one child a daughter and lived in Crows Nest, she went to the best schools with tutors ... both girls turned 18 on the same day ... one was working in a shop two days a week having left school at 15 ... the other was off to Sydney Uni to become a doctor ...

I have a long time friend recently back from the states and he says the way things are going with kinda the extreme sides of both sides i.e. Tea Party getting control of parliament ... don't be surprised if their is not a revolution maybe not in the French style ... he says the miss trust and at times dislike of the other side is close to some groups taking up arms...

In Australia the Vic right for the Libs ... OK its nowhere near Tea Party but only because they do not have control of seats across Australia... the Unions in the ALP hopefully will also loose more power in saying who gets what seat and or position in party rankings... The recent move [maybe for the wrong reasons to start with ie keep Kevin 07 in power] but the move by the ALP to allow rank and file a vote for the leader is a great move...

How you increase taxes without a global capital walk out is the difficult path both sides have ... neither know the answer ... neither have the will to try and find the answer ... Today with the Greens at one end and Fat Tony at the other you wonder if common sense could ever succeed ...

 

[true believer]

well less than a hundred days in and abbott has fubared the relationship with Indonesia .
that arrogant imbecile doesn't even understand that the issue isn't spying. which we've been doing on
the indo's since sukarno was president .
the issue is." you made them lose face " how good are the self styled "adults"
the only blessing is the reality that this could be a 1 term government is firming

 

[midfielder]

well less than a hundred days in and abbott has fubared the relationship with Indonesia .
that arrogant imbecile doesn't even understand that the issue isn't spying. which we've been doing on
the indo's since sukarno was president .
the issue is." you made them lose face " how good are the self styled "adults"
the only blessing is the reality that this could be a 1 term government is firming

Tis interesting and is not an easy position...

Sometimes I do question the media... spying is not a new story ... and the Guardian has had this info since the Wiki leaks over three years ago ... there call but why not release during the election or the last governments term...

You make a valid point pertaining to the saving face ... however just when the two governments appeared to be on the cusp of signing some agreements about the "BOAT PEOPLE" this appears as news and is released in Indonesia by the Guardian... I am not saying it was released by left wing journalist to derail the talks ... however the question is worth asking the Guardian after what 3 years you choose to release this particular news item at this point in time among all the other things wiki leaks gave you ...

TBH I have no idea what response TA should take ... to assume he is not taking top level advise on this and is firing from the hip [as the Greens and ALP are saying] IMO is foolish ...

AS I said I have no idea on what is the way forward but it is a new weapon in the Australian political landscape for political parties to use these kinda things ... the Greens in particular ... IMO this could be a dangerous trend ... the Libs will not be in power forever ....

 

[dibo]

You make it sound like the Guardian and the ABC conspired to hold it back, rather than they hadn't yet found it among the motherlode of other material that Snowden leaked.

On what basis do you assume that (and I guess the right-wing press who are also running the line have similar thinking).

 

[midfielder]

You make it sound like the Guardian and the ABC conspired to hold it back, rather than they hadn't yet found it among the motherlode of other material that Snowden leaked.

On what basis do you assume that (and I guess the right-wing press who are also running the line have similar thinking).

No I don't blame the ABC at all or any Australian media outlet for that matter... they simply reported what others had reported...

Spying story is old news and could have been released in two months time ... as the event took place in 2009.

What I am saying at a point in time when two governments where close to signing some agreements the spying story is released by the Guardian ... would the ABC or Fairfax lets say the left media have published the story at that point in time ... would say News / AM talk Back lets say the right media ... have published the story at that point in time... my guess in both cases is no ... the ABC / Fairfax and News would have weighted the position the sitting government was in ... and reasoned this is not a good time akin to our national interest ... then say two or three months down the track release it ...

The Guardian see's a PM struggling with his imagine and the Greens screaming how bad he is at this and leading off Kevin O7 ... a war will start ... says look we can sell a few more papers get some more hits and get our name in and about .... I blame if anything a new foreign media player attempting to get themselves known...

Since then HHHMMMmm EEErrrrrr young Tony has not covered himself in glory ... as TB said above he needs to allow the Indonesians to save face ...

Rightly or wrongly and a huge bit of arse thrown in boat arrivals where down 75% ... in part because of the ALP PNG policy and in part [the arse bit] because one of the biggest people smugglers was caught and jailed ... and in part because of what both the Australian & Indonesia where working together on it ... strong rumours had an agreement between the two governments that the boats could be returned .... and the people put into Indonesian refuse camps ... in return Australia would take into Australia the same number maybe more refuses from Indonesia ... and those people returned by boat could never be re settled in Australia ... it's in both governments for a reduction in the people smuggler trade ...

Some would argue a spy story that has already be withheld and could be released in say three months should not have been released at that point in time...

 

[dibo]

So anyway, the ABC and The Guardian only got the info a couple of days ago.

http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2013-...efends-reporting-on-snowden-documents/5103444