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Pies4shaw 
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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| Magpietothemax wrote: | | Pies4shaw wrote: | | I wake up this morning and Australia is still an extraordinarily racist country. Well, who'd have thought? |
This position is simply not true. There were a myriad of reasons why peole voted no, - genuine racism was that of a small minority. This can be proven by the fact that when the Referendum was first announced, just after the election of the Albanese government, polls indicated that it enjoyed majority support of over 60%. This figure plunged over the last 18 months not because people suddenly became racist, but rather because the popularity of the Albanese government plunged, and mistrust of its motives grew proportionately. It was Marcia Langston who shot the "yes" campaign in the foot when she publicly reviled all those who intended to vote ''no" as "racists, or stupid". |
Who said anything about the vote? Not me, that's for sure. |
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David 
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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| pietillidie wrote: | | stui magpie wrote: | | pietillidie wrote: | Cringeworthy on many fronts, from actually using an idiotic referendum (did you learn nothing from Brexit, you morons?), to the horror lies from the usual dimwits who can only motivate themselves to get out of bed to kick someone in the nuts (did you learn nothing from Brexit, you morons?).
All that just to humiliate an entire people. Grotesque right across the entire spectrum of politics, for and against. |
Stop comparing it to Brexit, it's not the same.
It was a sound notion poorely sold. From the start the country was voting Yes but then the lack of detail and poor communication left a vacuum to be filled by conjecture, fear and misinformation.
The same sex marriage plebiscite showed what can be done if you get people on board with a change proposal that has zero impact on the majority but some positive for a minority.
Interesting that the Yes vote largely mirrors the population of Greens voters. ie, the further you get from the various CBD's the stronger the No vote.
The Yes campaign started the race with a 30 metre lead, shot themselves in the foot with the starters pistol and limped through the race as the No campaign ran past them. |
It's just like Brexit in its psychiatric splitting.
The data has also long shown that levels of bigotry towards indigenous and black ethnic minorities are significantly higher than gay bigotry, unless you live in a Catholic or Orthodox country. If my memory serves me correct, one study showed Australians were miles more likely to be fine with a gay person living next door than an indigenous, black or Muslim person. And you and I both know that from experience, partly because gay folks aren't a 'dirty underclass', but are instead associated with relative affluence.
But that aside, the mechanism itself is behavioural poison. Once you call a two-choice referendum, it then gets mapped to sides. It could be Doritos versus CCs, for that matter. Have you noticed that 90% of the discussion is talk about talk? X said Y, and he's such a dickead, so Z.
The most energy generated on the topic by a long shot has come from hatred directed at some twat supporting the Yes vote. Once that happens, people might as well put their fingers in their ears and go 'la la la'. They've now got their reason.
Predictably, as the reality of such a vote dawns, tension rises, the histrionic nutcases and opportunists start their shrieking, people start arguing, the media plays people off each other day and night, avid sides form, a culture war is mapped, and before you know it people finally have a reason to get out of bed: hating on someone and opposing something. Just the act of focusing on the expenditure is enough to kill the vote because it sounds like a lot of money, and that amount of money being spent on someone else means less for me. And that will happen no matter how good the campaign.
Even better, people get to kick an incumbent government in the processes, much like in a state election, by-election, or American mid-term. It's all but a foregone conclusion, content aside.
Note that elections are always close even when one candidateis complete rubbish because the splitting process happens like clockwork when parties and sides are involved. Just look how hard has been to support and critique both Palestinians and Israelis this week without fruitcakes trying to force you one way or the other. People are simpletons.
So, it was never ever going to win. Not a chance in hell, no matter how it was sold short of handing out free TVs.
In the end, those who supported it can blame the naysayers, and the naysayers can say it was sold poorly, and the can can be kicked down the road. There was a 99% chance of that happening, and it happened.
There's no way in a million years you'd have bet your house on the yes vote winning no matter how good the campaign. No way at all, even though you were mature enough and experienced enough to step back and see the bigger picture yourself. |
I agree with most of this. Not so much that people are simpletons (I wouldn't put it that way) but that side-taking – and the attendant notion that only binary positions are possible – is a deeply embedded cultural inclination, and that it does freeze out the capacity for nuanced discussion.
I think the Brexit analogy is spot on, by the way. Obviously the respective Yes and No cases were moving in different directions in these two referendums (in terms of change vs status quo), but the broad ideological alliances and positions on either side and the sensibilities motivating each campaign had a lot in common.
What should be obvious now (and probably should have been obvious even immediately after Brexit and Trump) is that neither of these results were flukes. Instead, they reflect entrenched class and cultural fault lines within Western liberal democracies, and suggest that this kind of conservative backlash – against what is seen as the "elite" consent-manufacturing of mainstream media, politics and culture – while contested and not always successful, is the ascendant politics of our time.
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"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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I agree to a point.
But not every faction is hardened in concrete.
Honestly, the people putting it forward $%$ed up big time.
Hell of a lot of people simply didn’t care enough to look for answers, I asked the questions here, however I was originally yes, switched to no, then I listened to an indigenous friend, and a couple. Of other level headed friends, so I asked, when I had time I read. Sorry, when I made time.
I hate voting, I hate queues, I hate pamphlets and people shoving them down my throat. I voted the Tuesday after the grand final. I claimed deafness to the yes and no people at the door, no queue. I stood there, pen raised. Instead of goodes I thought if Bobby, and his incredible story. And I voted yes.
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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Tannin 
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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There are a couple of very odd things about this whole saga.
First, the cast-iron, unshakeable belief held by the yes camp that sneering at people is an effective way to persuade them. It isn't. The yes camp somehow managed to take a widely-held sense of goodwill and a 80%+ national willingness to support recognition in the constitution - and to do something practical - and piss all over it until they had turned 80%+ support into 39%.
Even odder is their continuing belief, in the face of all the facts, that the thumping loss they worked so hard to engineer was someone else's fault.
Did we have all the usual kooks and loonies and neo-Nazis and anti-vaxxers posting all the usual nastiness and lies? Of course we did. The Peter Duttons and the Pauline Hansons of this world pulled all their usual nasty tricks and told all their usual nasty lies. And there are worse around than those two. But they are always with us. Every question put to the nation, every election campaign, we see the same antics from the usual suspects. And who did they persuade? Well, not all that many. The people they were talking to, the people credulous enough to believe the "they are taking your back yard" lies were always going to vote the party line. They are the same people who voted for Morrison at the last election and will vote for Dutton at the next one, no matter what.
Mainstream Australia is perfectly capable of detecting A-grade bullshit if it's spread thick enough (see the last election and Scotty "I don't hold a hose mate" Morrisons demise) and most of the no campaigners achieved very little by spouting so much of it. Sure, they took the no vote from less than 20% to about 40% by appealing to Liberal, National, and One Nation voters, but they were going to get those people anyway. And the harder the yes campaigners sneered, the more rusted-on that 40% became.
The other 20% - the 20% of Australia which took the no vote up to the resounding 60%+ mark and ensured the defeat of the proposal were, for the most part, the undecideds and the "weak yes" people.
Migrants led the way. Migrants remembered their citizenship ceremonies, remembered being told "You are an Australian now, and equal with every other Australian. You get exactly the same rights, exactly the same vote, and have exactly the same responsibilities as every other Australian."
Particularly for people coming here after living in non-democratic countries, this is a really big deal. And nobody ever gave them a convincing reason why they should vote to give one particular racial group special privileged treatment in the constitution. Privileges forever denied to all other Australians. Many non-migrants thought along the same lines, of course.
Remember, 50% of all Australians alive today were born overseas or are the children of parents born overseas. 80& of all Australians alive today were born overseas or are the children or grandchildren of people born overseas.
When tackled on this point, the yes camp relentlessly and idiotically talked about irrelevant things like crime rates and poverty and health - things which are palpably ridiculous reasons to not spend whatever it takes to deal with, and even more ridiculous reasons to enshrine racial discrimination forever in the constitution.
But they are clueless. Just pick up today's Age or Guardian or read the ABC - they are all running around sneering at everybody else and refusing to take responsibility for their own stupid strategy of (a) combining two completely different policy ideas (one obviously good, the other obviously bad) into just one question, (b) never, ever, ever saying what they actually intended to DO if they won the vote, and above all, (c) sneering and pointing fingers at everybody outside their own ego-massaging echo chamber.
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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^But they're regularly incapable of detecting BS, as you yourself have argued dozens of times.
E.g., they voted for Tony Abbott. They voted against a mineral wealth tax. They happily voted for pitiful, inferior broadband. They laughably cling to someone else's royal family. They believed clueless unqualified morons on climate change. They supported Man of Steel John Howard and his world-wrecking Iraq War.
The opposition leader is a world-class fruitcake and embarrassment, as with every second Glib leader, because incompetent weirdos have traction in the very same electorate.
And if your implicature is correct, the electorate is apparently so empty-headed and puerile, it forms its opinions based on whether it is praised like a toddler or 'sneered' at.
So, what is it? The electorate is competent, halfwitted as you've argued repeatedly in the past, or episodically competent when it aligns with your biases?
Similarly, you can't have it both ways by saying the 'yes' campaign turned them off and was clueless, but in any case there's nothing it could've said because the idea was wrong to begin with. So, by your own reasoning and that of any serious observer, they were on a hiding to nothing from the outset.
The only learning here - and you'd have thought grown adults might already have this covered - is this: Don't try to solve an extremely complex, generationally entrenched challenge lacking clear definition let alone obvious solution, through a cowardly, idiotically simplistic, divisive one-shot referendum, setting up the very people you claim to be concerned about for egregious public and international humiliation.
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In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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slangman
Joined: 11 Aug 2003
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| pietillidie wrote: | ^But they're regularly incapable of detecting BS, as you yourself have argued dozens of times.
E.g., they voted for Tony Abbott. They voted against a mineral wealth tax. They happily voted for pitiful, inferior broadband. They laughably cling to someone else's royal family. They believed clueless unqualified morons on climate change. They supported Man of Steel John Howard and his world-wrecking Iraq War.
The opposition leader is a world-class fruitcake and embarrassment, as with every second Glib leader, because incompetent weirdos have traction in the very same electorate.
And if your implicature is correct, the electorate is apparently so empty-headed and puerile, it forms its opinions based on whether it is praised like a toddler or 'sneered' at.
So, what is it? The electorate is competent, halfwitted as you've argued repeatedly in the past, or episodically competent when it aligns with your biases?
Similarly, you can't have it both ways by saying the 'yes' campaign turned them off and was clueless, but in any case there's nothing it could've said because the idea was wrong to begin with. So, by your own reasoning and that of any serious observer, they were on a hiding to nothing from the outset.
The only learning here - and you'd have thought grown adults might already have this covered - is this: Don't try to solve an extremely complex, generationally entrenched challenge lacking clear definition let alone obvious solution, through a cowardly, idiotically simplistic, divisive one-shot referendum, setting up the very people you claim to be concerned about for egregious public and international humiliation. |
You are sounding very much like Steven May and Jordan Dawson.
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- Side By Side - |
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David
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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I think that's a poor response to a thoughtful post, slangman.
Where I'm aligned with Tannin is I think (and have said on here since the beginning) that the Yes campaigners in the media took a self-defeating approach from the outset. It started with publicly expressed anxiety about losing, long before the polls actually moved into the majority No column, and talking relentlessly about fake news and misinformation – with the implication being that the poor stupid citizenry will always fall for whatever three-ring-circus trick is performed for them – and overall doing an extremely poor job of actually prosecuting the case. It was as if someone had given them a coin and they immediately proceeded to attempt to bury it in the ground, rather than working out how to spend it.
Effective politics is about inspiring people, energising them, talking to them, banding them together. Every door in the country should have been knocked on, community rallies should have been held – the whole thing. Taking up a lofty position above the crowd, announcing yourself as the sole holders of Facts and Reason, and sneering at people below is not only the opposite of effective politics, but it does the work of populist conservatives for them by essentially becoming exactly who they say you are.
Listen to Peter Dutton for five minutes and it becomes immediately obvious that he's no political mastermind. His immediate press conference after the Referendum was tone-deaf and pathetic. He seemingly barely has any idea of what he's doing, except astutely recognising that campaigning against the referendum would be a winning strategy for the opposition and hurt the government. But the most maddening thing is that he and those like him don't even have to be any good at this, because the other side is so bumbling and inept.
Is our culture selfish, fearful and prejudiced against the Othered? Yes, of course it is. Many if not all cultures around the world are, to some extent or other. And you'll always wring political capital from pretending that's not true. But even focusing on any of that from a left-wing vantage point is a hopeless strategy, because you can't shame people into changing their opinions, and – as is becoming increasingly clear – you can't win through a divide-and-conquer strategy either, by cordoning off the "racists" and trying to scare people away from being associated with them. That only breeds resentment and fosters culture wars.
Politics is first and foremost about speaking to people about their material interests, the things we all deep down already know that we need: by, for instance, saying that we're doing this for First Nations people today because it's part of our broader project to do this for you, which is to fight for your interests, raise you up, ensure you have the basic things you deserve like a living wage, freedom and dignity, and defeat those in power who oppress you. Unfortunately, the Labor Party can't say that with any sincerity because they don't believe in it anymore, and because they're now committed to serving those same powerful interests. But an effective progressive politics very much can and should approach things that way, and it's never too late to start trying.
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"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
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stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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^
The thing to remember is that most people don't make decisions rationaly using logic and facts, they make emotive decisions and rationalise them afterwards. TP is a perfect example in this case. (Not having a dig Jo, just your case is a perfect example)
When you want to get people on board to make a siginificant change, fear and distrust are powerful emotive reasons to say No to it and yes, as far as the Sneering goes, you're never going to convince people to agree with your view by insulting them, sneering at them or being condescending. It's the surest way to push them away.
The whole Yes campaign should be written up as a textbook case of how Not to market and deliver a Change Management process.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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eddiesmith 
Lets get ready to Rumble
Joined: 22 Nov 2004
Location: Lexus Centre
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This was a massive, massive failure by the PM and blaming the electorate and Abbott is laughable because it was ALP heartland and safe seats that overwhelmingly rejected the referendum.
So maybe the electorate is gullible, it’s the same people that delivered a lying, corrupt campaigner a third term with increasing majority that couldn’t find any reason to support Albo’s referendum campaign. |
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slangman
Joined: 11 Aug 2003
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| David wrote: | I think that's a poor response to a thoughtful post, slangman
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How so??
It was an emotive rant by someone who seems to think that their opinion and ideology is better than anyone who voted No.
I posted earlier that the dumbest thing that Yes voters could do is blame the No campaign, the coalition, Jacinta Price, No Voters etc.
The whole idea of the voice to Parliament was resoundingly rejected by Australians for the idea itself.
Pietillidie resorted to the losers rant tactic of blaming everything and everyone else for the Voice not getting the majority.
That is 100% in the same category of loser whinges as May and Dawson from a couple of weeks ago.
The “ poor response” you mention should have been directed at Peitillidie for the emotive laced sook that had me rolling my eyes at its ignorance.
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- Side By Side - |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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| stui magpie wrote: | ^
The thing to remember is that most people don't make decisions rationaly using logic and facts, they make emotive decisions and rationalise them afterwards. TP is a perfect example in this case. (Not having a dig Jo, just your case is a perfect example)
When you want to get people on board to make a siginificant change, fear and distrust are powerful emotive reasons to say No to it and yes, as far as the Sneering goes, you're never going to convince people to agree with your view by insulting them, sneering at them or being condescending. It's the surest way to push them away.
The whole Yes campaign should be written up as a textbook case of how Not to market and deliver a Change Management process. |
Oh I agree totally! It was the pure emotion of Bobby in the Grand Final that made me write yes! I chose my good fortune over my fear!
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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David
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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Guy Rundle’s analysis:
https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/10/16/voice-to-parliament-australia-vote-no/
| Quote: | The era of reconciliation has ended. Settler Australia refuses to be ‘the other’ to a redemption story
Well, in the end, the question occurs: what was that all about? As Israel moves remorselessly towards an annihilation of half of Gaza, as a mildly leftish government resoundingly falls in New Zealand, the referendum for recognition and a First Nations Voice to Parliament has failed absolutely.
The ABC called it at 7.20pm, before Western Australia had even finished voting. The only jurisdiction to vote Yes was the ACT, which feels like a booby prize. It was never even close. It was a night without succour or relief for those who had campaigned for years, and put their hopes into it. With early votes and postal votes to come in, the Poll Bludger projected a final result of Yes 40%, No 60%, and it may go lower.
Recriminations might now begin on how the Yes campaign was run, but this is largely irrelevant. The Yes campaign was indeed pretty terrible, but there seems very little likelihood that a first-rate campaign would have made a difference. Possibly Victoria, with its 46-54 result, could have been turned to Yes, but even NSW, with its 41-59, was beyond recovery, as were Tasmania and South Australia.
Queensland and WA were out of the question. This was a rejection of the Voice proposal at its core, and as such a rejection of the principle that underpinned it: that there was a significant division between First Nations people and other Australians, that should be recognised in the establishment of new institutions.
The rejection of the Voice proposal went pretty exactly as you’d expect. The Yes 40% will almost certainly be shown to be made up of majority votes among the inner- and middle-urban knowledge class of the major cities, those under 25, First Nations people, some non-European migrant groups and sections of the upper-middle-middle class in teal seats.
As Bob Birrell and Katherine Betts noted, tertiary education was an overwhelming predictor for a Yes vote. However the Voice came about, it quickly became a knowledge-class cause, a distinctive expression of how the world was and should be. Once it entered the referendum process, requiring double majorities, the Voice became a white, or non-Indigenous, object.
As a test of where national feeling about Indigenous/non-Indigenous relations and rights lay, the Voice was a terrible one. It proposed a complex and highly specific object, emerging out of the blue for most Australians, with fuzzy details at best, and a strange remit, of giving advice but having no power. It was part of reconciliation and recognition — whatever that was, many asked — but it was also practical, about Closing the Gap. No simple picture of what it was, was provided.
The Yes camp seemed to be pursuing a sort of “small target” strategy, trying to avoid the process getting bogged down in questions of detail of the proposed remedy to our nation’s plight. But that assumed that most Australians thought our nation had a plight, some unaddressed absence around which we were wrapped, defining us. Most Australians didn’t, and so the Voice seemed an answer to a question the world wasn’t asking.
Hence, the core of the electorate split along lines of knowledge and its absence, and universal morality, rather than specific group loyalties. That’s the tertiary educated in a nutshell, especially those on the humanities side. Non-European migrants have a basic solidarity around questions of colonialism, and the sham of colour-blind “equality”. And gen Z, tertiary-educated or not, has been formed in a radically networked world, in which position/identity itself is fluid. Such groups shared the same assumptions that the Voice proposal worked off: that oppression and disadvantage are structural, embedded in history, often invisible in action.
For the remainder of the voting public, this conception of a continuing process doesn’t operate nearly as strongly. Who Indigenous people are, where they live, how they live, are subject to all sorts of half-conceived notions. Few people are now unaware of dispossession and massacre. How accurately they calibrate that, or have some picture of how it occurred, is another question.
Protection acts, reserves, missions, the White Australia policy — how much do many know of it? Very little, apart from the Stolen Generations, one suspects. And how dominant a role do they believe such events play in current disadvantage?
The Yes case couldn’t convince any great slice of the “middle” 30% of voters that creating a Voice for Indigenous people was a necessary step in the nation’s journey, a completion as much for all “the others”, as for Indigenous people themselves.
But for this middle group, voting No was not about the passionate defence of a distinct set of values, or way of life, against an onslaught of change. It was for the most part, one suspects, because Yes hadn’t made the case that Indigenous people should be a special category of citizen, for reasons arising from our history, with special institutions, however anodyne they might be.
That is where the great divide between Yes and No lay — over the legitimacy of this complex manoeuvre whereby the path to full equality passed through the permanent recognition of specialness, and the creation of a rather unwieldy new institution to both express that and achieve it. The way the numbers look suggests a crucial asymmetry: No got almost all the undecideds and waverers. The Yes case was pretty much wholly composed of those committed to it, an end-point of what one watched across six months, the relentless grinding-down of the Yes response to polls.
With those numbers, Indigenous Australians have no partners in reconciliation on the other side — not because the narrative of arrival, dispossession and oppression is being actively denied by a pro-western story that has any great support, but simply because this group of the non-indigenous simply do not acknowledge that there is now, in this period, a significant difference at all.
They do not see themselves as on “the other side” of a struggle, and hence there is no defining struggle as such, no agon. Whatever racism and disadvantage people will acknowledge as currently existing, they do not see it as necessarily expressing the “colonialist” narrative that the Voice requires, in order to be legitimate.
If that’s the case, then this resounding No vote marks the end of the period known as “reconciliation”, one that began in the late ’80s, whose arc rose through the ’90s and 2000s and which began to fall in the 2010s. That curve upwards had some nasty stuff beneath, such as the intervention and its continuation. But however inadequately, “reconciliation” still seemed a real and living notion. If it no longer does, it is not because we have returned to conflict, but because the “other side” to the Indigenous demand — a surviving notion of Anglo destiny and invested meaning — has dissolved in the last decade or so.
What’s dissolved it? What hasn’t? What was once a bounded continent nation-state, with a few TV and radio channels and a dozen newspapers, is now a society connected to everything, everywhere, all at once, its conceptual borders thinning. What was once an Anglo society with a growing migrant supplement is now, in its major cities, a post-Anglo space with migrant notions of arrival, autonomy and self-creation at its dynamic centre. The No vote thus contained both a section of people who felt they were passionately defending something against an onslaught, and those who lived in a space where there was nothing to defend. But also nothing to change.
Thus, though many non-European migrants voted Yes, the historical fact of their steady, decades-long arrival has renewed the vitality of the notion, strong in Anglo culture for decades, that the meaning of this country is as a place where one can arrive and remake oneself, build a life. The stronger that gets, the more it must undermine the claims of Indigenous specialness, no matter how much migrants would not want it to.
Mass voluntary migration, to be possible at all, must not only achieve the recognition that it is possible to make your life over again from a suitcase, but it also pushes it to the centre of the Australian experience — the creation of something from nothing at all, the excitement of new existence. While the content of Indigenous culture has moved to the centre of Australian life over the past decade or so, the form it required — the cultural centrality of inherited place — has been, well, displaced in a way that has deprived Indigenous people of the heroic narrative it needed to win a referendum. That Australia is a country of newness, of no ground, of lightness, of largely individualised trajectories through time, and of such a love of novelty that many white Melburnians will say they live in “Naarm”. What could be more ungrounded than that?
Should one be correct about that deep shift in culture, really a shift in being, on this continent, then the struggle for First Nations recognition — as it has been conducted — is largely concluded. The continent is redefining itself. Having dethroned Anglo suprematism, it has now passed by Indigenous recognition, on the way to something else.
Labor state governments may continue treaty processes with multiple groups. Big capital-T treaty appears out of the question. There seems a sudden, general feeling, that the need to do this, the old “fierce urgency of now” has departed. The same goes for any truth and reconciliation commission — unless Labor still has some perverse courage. But one presumes that the Albanese government will now back away from Indigenous causes very, very rapidly, and become a government of the suburban masses (some of whom are Indigenous, of course), aligning itself with the many, not the few.
What Indigenous leaderships will do remains to be seen. But they may have time out of the spotlight to think about it, as the country and the world moves on, and the bombs rain on another Indigenous people half a world away. |
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"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
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Magpietothemax
magpietothemax
Joined: 27 Apr 2013
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Demographic analysis of the referendum vote shows that the "yes" vote was preponderant only in inner city areas, among highly affluent upper middle class layers who like to think of themselves as "progressive". The poorer the area, the more likely the vote was "no". 80% of traditional Labor party seats rejected the Voice. This reflects the overall collapse of support for Labor in the working class. The Labor party only staggered into government last year with a historically low vote of 33%. It won this election simply by default - the Liberals had self-imploded.
The wholesale rejection of the Voice reflects the rejection by the working class of the Albanese government itself. Why would any sane person believe that Albanese and his underlings would have any concern for the indigenous population, while they openly solidarises himself with the Netahanyu government, and its genocidal intentions to depopulate Gaza forever? While they attempt to trample democratic rights by strongly discouraging (and in Minns'case, attempting to ban), proPalestinian protests?
Why would any working class person believe a word Albanese says about concern for the impoverishment of the indigenous population, while his government refuses to lift a finger to address the economic distress that vast numbers of working class families are feeling as a result of the cost of living crisis, and real wage cuts??
The No vote is nothing other than a rejection of the Albanese government. It is also a rejection of Dutton, because even though the No vote won, Dutton'
s popularity has remained at abysmal levels.
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Free Julian Assange!!
Ice in the veins |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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| slangman wrote: | Pietillidie resorted to the losers rant tactic of blaming everything and everyone else for the Voice not getting the majority.
That is 100% in the same category of loser whinges as May and Dawson from a couple of weeks ago.
The “ poor response” you mention should have been directed at Peitillidie for the emotive laced sook that had me rolling my eyes at its ignorance. |
I wanted the referendum withdrawn as soon as I apprised myself of what was happening <snip> I very clearly strongly oppose using referenda to engage complex problems as a matter of commonsense. So, get my view right or eff off.
Sadly, I predicted exactly what would happen. Exactly. No awards for that, though, as it was blindingly obvious. On what planet could I be to blame for something I deemed idiotic and predicted would only set indigenous people up for egregious humiliation?
<snip> You think I 'lost' something. It wasn't my game and it wasn't my loss; all that happened was a powerless tiny minority that has been kicked from pillar to post forever was humiliated yet again. I didn't even vote because I'm too removed from Aussie politics to think I should vote on such things. I only regret I wasn't there to help sane people hit this thing on the head early, before the damage was done.
Similarly, I never voted on Brexit here as I'd just arrived and it wasn't my battle. Brexit dimwits sounded just like you once, though they tend to hide in shame these days. As do the twits who supported Iraq. As do those who voted for Tony Abbott. As do those who imaginarily voted for Donald Trump as imaginary American citizens. Fiddling away like excited nutters while their bounty and fortune declines and they sink deeper into the mud of their bad judgement.
Even worse, if history is any guide, you ought to be the one worried about losses, because every Glib 'win' ends up a huge loss for tax payers: Iraq; the undermining of the climate change response and green energy transition; the third-world NBN; political capture by big mining; the putting off dealing with urban sprawl; the degrading of the environment; the inability to stop the country and tens of millions of animals burning to a crisp even while denying global warming; the fruitless juvenile acting out to China; the periodic flare ups that deter tourists and international students; the reputational damage of things like this; irreversible species loss wherever one looks; and no doubt more.
It's your tax loss not mine when more expensive fixes and patch up jobs are required after these imaginary 'wins'. And now you've just 'won' two decades of kicking the costs of indigenous trauma and dysfunction down the road. On what planet do you think the costs of the intergenerationally entrenched dysfunction and ostracision will decline after national humiliation and political dismissal?
I lose nothing; I pay taxes here <snip>. I was trying to save indigenous humiliation and your future losses, which if Glib history is any guide will be far worse than anyone expects.
Australia's just lucky it has great fortune, which included illegal indigenous dispossession and theft; fortuitous mineral wealth; the importing of the fruits of the industrial revolution en bloc from the UK after the dirty work was done; and security by remoteness. Very lucky given just how shortsighted, wasteful, lazy and unambitious the Australian polity can be.
I actually can't recall Australia fixing a single difficult problem in my lifetime. I could be wrong, but Keating's economic modernisation was the last great effort to write home about, and since then it has been a process of gradual corrosion through Glib 'wins'. What's actually improving? Not urban sprawl. Not crime and safety. Not education and training. Not the economy and work. Not reputation and influence. Not social care for children, the disabled and the elderly. Not support for parents and mothers. Not opportunity and career possibility. Not housing affordability, life stress and happiness. Not regional esteem and relationships. Not the environment and biodiversity. Not farming, soil and water management. Not technology, R&D, entrepreneurship, venture capital and investment. Not future productive capacity and infrastructure.
Virtually every Australian socioeconomic problem is gradually getting worse, or has hardly budged in recent years. Only gradually worse because it's an extremely lucky country that doesn't have a stack of pressures, but nonetheless worse.
I will have missed a few things to make a point, no doubt, but I can't recall many wins despite all the good fortune. Maybe the leadership of Turnbull and Albanese would be the biggest wins in memory purely because it meant because the usual Glib crazies and wreckers were sidestepped.
Australia is an amazing country despite itself, not because of all that 'winning' the nation's conservative crazies and psuedo-libertarians have been doing.
But there you are, celebrating the great 'win' of humiliating indigenous people before the world while assiduously avoiding complex problem solving as costs balloon. If only you knew how pitiful and cringeworthy your 'win' really is.
<Please lay off the insults and personal attacks – thanks, BBMods.>
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Last edited by pietillidie on Tue Oct 17, 2023 8:12 am; edited 1 time in total |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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^
Nice rant.
The First Nations Peoples who wrote the Uluru Statement asked for regognition and a voice to be put in the constitution. That requires a referendum.
Proposing to Hold the referendum wasn't the problem, it was everything else.
If for example it was 2 separate questions, one about recognition and one about the voice, there was a far better chance of getting Bi-partisan support, which ultimately was necessary. No referendum has succeeded without it.
If they had provided much more detail up front of exactly what the Voice was, how it would work, what it could do and more importantly what it couldn't, they could have headed off the misinformation campaign before it grew legs.
Once it was clear the direction is was going, rather than blunder ahead they should have taken the opportunity to do more consultation and communication and delayed holding the referendum until it had a clear chance of success and if that meant changing some things, then change them.
Geezuz you really could write a thesis on how they just stubbornly bumbled from one fuckup to the next.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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