Is the Labor Party ready to govern?

SirRumpole said:

IMO the only person in the Liberal party with the ability to unite the country rather than divide it is Turnbull, but the apparent reluctant of his party to support him shows how far to the Right they have moved.

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Smurf1976 said:

Is Labor ready to govern? Probably not.

But the real question is for how much longer can the Coalition continue to govern?

Sooner or later, Labor will indeed be governing for the simple reason that the Coalition will lose an election. That seems like stating the obvious, but the key point there is the Coalition being kicked out rather than Labor gaining mass support and "winning" as such. Once voters collectively decide to remove Abbott and co, Labor is the only realistic alternative to form government.

That's my guess as to how it will happen if the status quo remains in terms of leadership and policy direction of both parties. People don't seem to really like Labor as such and I can't see that changing soon, none of the parties is offering truly inspiring leadership or policies, but the Coalition is on a collision course with rather a lot of people and in due course that will be reflected at the polls. All Labor needs to do is convince voters that they are less bad rather than being good as such.

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DB008 said:

I agree 100%.

People will get sick of the Libs and put the ALP back in.

Both have achillies heels

Libs - Work choices, business bias

ALP - ETS/Carbon tax, boarder protection, union influence (to an extent)

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Tisme said:

I think the ALP's main problem is the perception that they will spend vast resources to make fringe dwellers, the uncouth and the indolent feel like comfortable members of a majority society. ...and I don't think it is merely vote catching, but a self appointed sheriff of the social conscience in play.

They should focus on learning how to govern, so that when they get back in they aren't like kids in a lolly shop with only a threepence in the pocket while holding a 2 shilling grab bag.

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overhang said:

Well no but the problem is we have a government currently that can't govern effectively.

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drsmith said:

They're doing alright turning back the boats with another success and a policy platform Labor is increasingly saying it supports. National security is the first priority of any government.

https://www.aussiestockforums.com/f...=4171&page=170&p=877057&viewfull=1#post877057

The problem as always is that whatever Labor now says, it's not a policy platform Labor supports in its heart. The scratch marks on the floor over their time in office and the two years since is proof of that.

Scott Morrison and Jim Molan sum it up perfectly.

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drsmith said:

They're doing alright turning back the boats with another success and a policy platform Labor is increasingly saying it supports. National security is the first priority of any government.

https://www.aussiestockforums.com/f...=4171&page=170&p=877057&viewfull=1#post877057

The problem as always is that whatever Labor now says, it's not a policy platform Labor supports in its heart. The scratch marks on the floor over their time in office and the two years since is proof of that.

Scott Morrison and Jim Molan sum it up perfectly.

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SirRumpole said:

The question is how high the asylum seeker question ranks in the minds of the electorate. Is it more important to them than the Libs trying to punish people for being sick or increasing the cost of tertiary education or backing off on corporate tax avoidance or protecting the perks of negative gearers and high income superannuants ?

Now that Labor has decided not to ban turnbacks, that could pacify those in the electorate who would vote Labor if they stopped boat arrivals. It's a calculated gamble that may pay off.

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Bill Shorten wants Labor to fight the asylum-seekers war again. He remains deluded about the electorate's unwavering majority support for genuinely tough border security policies, not posturing.

Do not think that the spectacular policy u-turn engineered by the Labor leader over the weekend, in committing Labor to turning back people-smugglers' boats, has defused the issue.

Quite the opposite. This bomb is now ticking.

The policy reversal is being described as a shrewd tactical manoeuvre to neutralise the Abbott government's obsession with security and its success in stopping the people-smuggling boats.

It is not. It represents the worst of both worlds, again.

The new Shorten policy is a re-run of Labor's policies from 2007 to 2013 when it claimed the moral high ground and ended up locking 50,000 people in detention centres – including 3,000 children, while another 1,200 drowned at sea – and blew out costs by a staggering $11.6 billion over five years as its budget estimates and forward estimates proved to be a fantasy.

Shorten has just committed Labor to risking a similar debacle.

To get his supposed game-changer over the line, he had to make so many concessions to the left faction that he delivered a cynical compromise that lacks all conviction and common sense.

On Saturday, Labor's left faction moved a motion at the party's national conference seeking to inset this commitment into the policy platform: "Labor rejects turning away boats of people seeking asylum."

Policy pastiche

To defeat this motion, Shorten ended up with a policy pastiche that is similar to the disastrous signals sent by Labor in 2007.

Let me count the many ways:

Shorten has promised to end Temporary Protection Visas. This was exactly the green light that a previous Labor Immigration Minister, Chris Evans, sent to the people-smuggling trade in 2008.

He has promised to double Australia's refugee intake to 27,000, phased in over 10 years from 2016 to 2025.

This will be hugely expensive. Every refugee or asylum-seeker arriving in Australia costs the government, on average, $78,000 in their first year. Last financial year, the cost was $1.077 billion.

He would broaden the Migration Act by incorporating the United Nations Refugee Convention. This invites a return to the legal quagmire Labor created. The UN convention has an extremely loose concept of asylum-seeker, basically endorsing claimants who provide little supporting evidence and are far from danger.

The turn-back policy will be transparent, not conducted in secret. It will be demilitarised as much as possible. It will be limited to Indonesia, raising the obvious problem of boats departing from Malaysia, Sri Lanka and elsewhere.

Labor would provide $450 million to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for regional refugee processing centres.

Labor is not even remotely united on the morality of this policy. Among those who have vigorously opposed the Coalition's turn-back policy, and predicted, wrongly, it would fail, are the deputy leader, Tanya Plibersek; the party's Senate leader, Penny Wong; and its left factional leader, Anthony Albanese, who came close to defeating Shorten for the party leadership. All three would be key members of any incoming Labor government.

Labor has projected the additional cost of these measures at $2.7 billion. This is as credible as former Treasurer Wayne Swan's projections for a budget surplus.

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overhang said:

Well first off this whole time we have been told that the boats have stopped yet we ended up with a boat in the waters off WA, should really be "reduced the boats" but yes it has been a great success from the Labor stuff up. So on border security they have been effective but on national security they have used fear mongering to pass their draconian policys that take us one step close to fascism. The government hell bent on driving investment away from renewable energy sector, a government spending at levels greater than Labor did, a government not willing to engage in sensible tax reform but would rather take the easy route and force the states to do the fighting for them. Once the electorate are cluey enough to realise that the threat from ISIS is minimal and that this government is a far greater threat to our liberty's and way of life then we will see real pressure on Abbott. They will most likely win government though as Shorten has no backbone.

We must have the worst run of successive governments in our history.

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drsmith said:

They've stopped the boats getting here and that's what counts in breaking the business model of illegal people smuggling.

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drsmith said:

There is indeed a difference.

1,200 deaths at sea.
50,000 arrivals by boat.
$11.6bn in cost blowouts and counting.

That's the difference.

The so-called secrecy which seems to be the last bastion of difference now is about not providing information to assist the people smugglers as happened under Labor with their boat-by-boat shipping news service.

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overhang said:

To stop the drownings .

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SirRumpole said:

If Keating was still Labor leader Abbott would be toast...

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On the Senate: "I would forbid him going to the Senate, to account to this unrepresentative swill over there…"

On the economy: "The accounts do show that Australia is in a recession. The most important thing about that is, is that this is the recession that Australia had to have."

To Malaysian PM: "APEC is bigger than all of us - Australia, the U.S. and Malaysia and Dr. Mahathir and any other recalcitrants."

On John Howard "The little desiccated coconut is under pressure and he is attacking anything he can get his hands on"

On John Howard "What we have got is a dead carcass, swinging in the breeze, but nobody will cut it down to replace him."

On Howard's 1996 election campaign: "Soon we will be at the stage where he will be offering us a free set of steak knives."
On Peter Costello: "The thing about poor old Costello is he is all tip and no iceberg."

On Peter Costello: "He's the greatest L plater of all time."

On Wilson Tuckey: "You boxhead you wouldn't know. You are flat out counting past ten."

On John Hewson: "(His performance) is like being flogged with a warm lettuce."

On Andrew Peacock: "I suppose that the Honourable Gentleman's hair, like his intellect, will recede into the darkness."

On Andrew Peacock: "We're not interested in the views of painted, perfumed gigolos."

On Andrew Peacock: "Can a soufflé rise twice?"

To Richard Carleton: "You had an important place in Australian society on the ABC and you gave it up to be a pop star…with a big cheque…and now you're on to this sort of stuff. That shows what a 24 carat pissant you are, Richard, that's for sure."

On Jim Carlton: "I was nearly chloroformed by the performance of the Honorable Member for Mackellar. It nearly put me right out for the afternoon."

On the Libs: "Mr Speaker can I have some protection from the clowns on the front bench?"

On the Libs: "Those opposite could not operate a tart shop"

On Steele Hall: "The Honorable Member has been in so many parties he is a complete political harlot."

To former ALP MP Jim McClelland: "That you Jim? Paul Keating here. Just because you swallowed a ****ing dictionary when you were about 15 doesn't give you the right to pour a bucket of **** over the rest of us."

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