Australian Politics

Paywalled, archive link below

https://archive.md/TDAdY

“You simply can’t achieve something like that by accident. Reckless indifference, perhaps. Wilful acts of bastardry, more likely. Accident, no,” he said.

Henry, who called for personal income tax rates to move with inflation, said not only were young people being hurt by increasingly high average tax rates, other policy areas were stacked against them.

“Young workers are also being denied a reasonable prospect of homeownership,” he said.

“They are burdened by the punishing costs of securing a tertiary education.

“And it is they who will have to bear the multiple burdens of catastrophic environmental destruction.”

As an older Gen X, I agree.

In my defence, I voted Independent for the first 20 years and have only Voted Green for the last 20 and I have never voted for any politicians who has ever won either at a local, state, or federal election.

That said, look what happened when Shorten tried some reform polices at the election before last, Australin's voted en masse for fcuking Morrison! So... what do voters ?

In short:

The NSW government has won a bid to suspend industrial action on the state's rail network.

The full bench of the Fair Work Commission has decided to impose a cooling-off period until July 1.

What's next?

The rail union said it was ready to meet with the government tomorrow to continue talks to "land the deal".

Crossbenchers including teal independents and the Greens say they will attempt to reform the federal corruption watchdog in the event of a hung parliament. The watchdog announced today it would reverse its decision not to investigate corruption allegations brought to it by the robodebt royal commission against six public servants.

a lack of action now to plan for decades ahead will leave the nation with persistent poverty, income inequality and further biodiversity decline across the country.

Seems unlikely to be "bold political action" from voters, consequently not from politcans either.

Vote Green ?

This is it, this "balanced reporting" and uninformed electorate is going to lead to Potato Head getting in.

We had a single election cycle of Labor and they didn't manage to completely fix our economy and all the Liberal fuckery of the previous 2 cycles, so we better give the liberals another chance to fuck us harder.

Every time I run into a Liberal voter I ask the same question "What one thing is most illustrative of them being strong on the economy?"

I have never been given a good answer.

PS not a huge Labor fan either but I know which side of the Overton window I prefer to be pushing on.

A step in the right direction in my view in terms of limiting foreign investment purchases though as is mentioned in the article its a small fish with easy workarounds already popular. Also unfortunate that it is only 2 years at this stage.

The new politIcal [sic] donation laws will have a dramatic affect on how federal elections are funded in Australia. Could they entrench the major parties and compromise our democracy?

Bad processes tend to make bad laws. The government’s actions have cast a pall of illegitimacy over its political finance regime. The new framework is unfair and ineffectual in significant ways and yet democracy enhancing in others.

We are all trustees of democracy, with an obligation to protect and deepen democratic practices. An urgent task in that continuing struggle is to protect the strengths of these laws while jettisoning the elements that are egregiously bad.

Mining and manufacturing companies could soon receive major tax breaks after a key pillar of Labor's flagship decarbonisation policy all but passed parliament.

Tax incentives for renewable hydrogen production and critical minerals processing passed the Senate with amendments from the Greens on Monday night after the government struck a deal with the minor party.

The Australian Government website has the best overview of what's actually in it that I've seen

Sandell said while Greens’ primary vote held up, they did not pick up any of Labor voters – despite the party’s decision not to field a candidate in the seat.

In short:

A controversial West Australian MP has legally changed his name to Austin Trump, aka "Aussie" Trump.

A month out from the state election, the response from voters in his electorate has been mostly negative

Political analysts say it is an extreme sign of a nascent trend of conservative politicians aligning themselves with the new US president.

'Extremely cringe', locals say

the notthechaser material continues

• 5 year battle.
• ~$400,000 in taxpayer funds wasted in legal fees.
• Liberal, National, and Labor in anti-transparency unity ticket.
• Minister Bridget McKenzie acted beyond her powers.
• Rex Patrick is a bloody legend.
• We now have it confirmed a Governments documents may not be shredded, and do in fact belong to the Nation and not the Ministers. That is until they find a loophole.

Despite appointing a shadow minister for government efficiency, Dutton also kept Adelaide Liberal MP James Stevens in his role as the shadow assistant minister for government waste reduction.

Original URL: https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/this-tweak-to-the-voting-system-would-seriously-advantage-labor-will-it-happen-20241031-p5kmu4.html

(Human Rights Watch)

Dutton at it again with the Australia Day BS.

Albo supports shifting from a PM called election within a 3 year term to a 4 year term of fixed length.

"If you've got a three-year cycle, in practice, that often means that you really only have a shorter window of perhaps a couple of years to bring about substantial reform, by which time you're looking at the next election," he said.

Having a fixed term of parliament would remove the ability for prime ministers to call early elections, as well, which typically favour the incumbent government.

“This couple hundred grand might not sound much in the grand scheme of government spending, but if we double it then round up and have a media campaign, it can start to sound scary.”

“This is serious money. We are talking about a yearly taxpayer money spend that is about as much as what we spent on Scott Morrison’s empathy consultant.”