The Albanese government

[SirRumpole]

That's where the political Left has lost the plot in my view. It's lost sight of the original aim, equality, and has turned into relentless advocacy in a way that amounts to a demand for privilege.

Exactly, like the gender equality issue. There are plenty of genuinely clever and capable women around and I'd say the self respecting ones want to be judged more by their achievements and capabilities than their gender. Same with people from a non English speaking backgrounds. They may have to work a bit harder but if they do then they deserve the positions they get if all placements are merit based.

Having token appointments just makes a laughing stock of the whole system.

 

[Sean K]

Albo probably wasn't thinking that Trump would get back in and Krudd was a relatively safe appointment. But, the Orange Man did get back in and it's completely scuttled our diplomacy with the US.

I understand Trump is transactional and we just need to offer up a decent carrot to get carved out of the tariff fiasco but Kevin has so far failed.

Now, Farrell can't even get on a plane.

Maybe his wine business will work out.

 

[SirRumpole]

Albo probably wasn't thinking that Trump would get back in and Krudd was a relatively safe appointment. But, the Orange Man did get back in and it's completely scuttled our diplomacy with the US.

I understand Trump is transactional and we just need to offer up a decent carrot to get carved out of the tariff fiasco but Kevin has so far failed.

Now, Farrell can't even get on a plane.

Maybe his wine business will work out.


View attachment 195010

How long did it take Turnbull to get tariff exemptions, about a year wasn't it?

Anyway, the thing with steel and aluminium is that although we export a bit to the US, we import a lot as well. So if we sell less to the US, then we just cut our imports and use more of our own production for ourselves.

 

[mullokintyre]

How long did it take Turnbull to get tariff exemptions, about a year wasn't it?

Anyway, the thing with steel and aluminium is that although we export a bit to the US, we import a lot as well. So if we sell less to the US, then we just cut our imports and use more of our own production for ourselves.

Nah, why muck around.
Close all the military /spy bases in OZ to the US, and tell whoever is there to piss of back to America seeing as our special relationship sare no longer of any great importance to the US.
Tariffs would be sorted out pretty smartly then.
mick

 

[sptrawler]

Exactly, like the gender equality issue. There are plenty of genuinely clever and capable women around and I'd say the self respecting ones want to be judged more by their achievements and capabilities than their gender. Same with people from a non English speaking backgrounds. They may have to work a bit harder but if they do then they deserve the positions they get if all placements are merit based.

Having token appointments just makes a laughing stock of the whole system.

Yes the aspect that stands out the most in society IMO, is how the equality thing has liberated women to wear as lityle as possible, it's amazing how little women get around in these days.
Guys just don't seem to take as much notice, so more comes off, obviously my generation were way too interested in girls.

 

[JohnDe]

 

[Sean K]

You know you're in trouble when Leo has a jab at you for approving mine development.

But, any attempt by celebrity activists to influence politics is probably going to backfire.

The Woylie is pretty cute though.

I wonder why Plibo approved this, but has stopped other projects for potentially flimsier reasons.

Leonardo DiCaprio has slammed the Albanese government for giving the green light to the expansion of forest mining activities in Western Australia’s Northern Jarrah Forest.

The Oscar-winning actor, famed for his environmentalism, condemned the move in a post to his 80 million followers on Instagram.

It came after Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek last month approved mining company South32’s bid to expand its Worsley Alumina bauxite mine near Boddington, southeast of Perth, in a move that has devastated environmentalists.

In a lengthy post, DiCaprio blasted the Albanese government’s decision.

“The Australian government has approved deforestation within the Jarrah Forest of Western Australia, clearing the way for the mining of bauxite, the main ingredient in aluminum (sic),” he wrote.

“The mining company @south_32 is set to clear 9,600 acres of this old growth forest, which is home to threatened species like the Critically Endangered Woylie,” the 50-year-old, well-known for his environmental activism, continued.

“This operation will destroy critical habitat for over 8,000 species, 80 per cent of which are found nowhere else on Earth.

“While native forest logging was banned in Western Australia in 2024, clearance of native forests for mining is still allowed due to separate government policies that prioritise mining development over environmental protection.

“This new approval is in addition to South32’s previous deforestation, bringing the total area of Jarrah Forests cleared to over 38,000 acres. @rewild and @wild.ark stand to protect these towering ecosystems that are already at risk of climate change.”

 

[Smurf1976]

Leonardo DiCaprio has slammed the Albanese government

Giving undue weight to actors and musicians commenting from a position of privilege on things they know nothing about is exactly what the majority are fed up with.

Not much more can be said.

 

[Sean K]

Giving undue weight to actors and musicians commenting from a position of privilege on things they know nothing about is exactly what the majority are fed up with.

Not much more can be said.

Yep, it didn't do Biden or Harris any good. Although, Trumpet had his share of minor celebrities supporting him, like Stallone and Musk, which was a surprise. Not sure if the Left, or celebrities, have learnt the lesson yet. Clooney seems to think he's running the Dems at the moment.

 

[JohnDe]

 

[JohnDe]

This is doing the rounds on my facebook feed -

 

[mullokintyre]

One of the problems about making promises in an election year is that there is always some smart arse pointing out where the promiser has dudded the promisees (again).
Albo's list of unfulfilled promises are starting to outweigh the ones he managed to keep.
Mick

 

[JohnDe]

Labor’s energy panacea shot down by reality. The only one way to end this doom spiral into energy poverty and economic stagnation is to change the government to one that will not need the Greens or teals to survive and to bring nuclear power into Australia’s grid....despite the fact household power prices have risen by about $1000 a year, and the benchmark electricity price is set to rise by another 9 per cent in the next 12 months, Labor is in denial about its culpability for a clear broken promise; with the Treasurer this week trying to muddy the waters with an obscure reference to a short-term dip in wholesale power prices last year, even though, at $88 a megawatt hour in the December quarter, they were 72 per cent higher than Labor’s modelled forecast.​

Before the 2010 election, Julia Gillard only had to say just once, “There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead”, for her broken promise to haunt her out of office. Yet not only did senior Labor ministers make the $275 per household a year cut to power prices their one big commitment, repeated nearly 100 times, but when challenged over whether he thought it could be delivered Anthony Albanese declared: “I don’t think, I know.”

And Albanese went on to justify his complete and absolute assurance by reference to RepuTex modelling that he claimed was the most complete modelling ever done by an opposition. Yet he’s not willing to explain why this very same modelling has been mysteriously airbrushed from Labor’s official website.

Even now, despite the fact household power prices have risen by about $1000 a year, and the benchmark electricity price is set to rise by another 9 per cent in the next 12 months, Labor is in denial about its culpability for a clear broken promise; with the Treasurer this week trying to muddy the waters with an obscure reference to a short-term dip in wholesale power prices last year, even though, at $88 a megawatt hour in the December quarter, they were 72 per cent higher than Labor’s modelled forecast.

Indeed, after refusing to concede the government’s bad faith, the Treasurer continued to insist, in defiance of the incontrovertible evidence of our power bills, that “the only way over the longer term that you get … downward pressure on prices” is introducing “cheaper, cleaner, more reliable” renewable energy into the system.

This is wilful reality denial. It’s invincible ignorance. And it’s only going to get worse if Labor remains in office; and much, much worse if it becomes a minority government dependent on the Greens and the teals.

If renewable power is our energy panacea, why are Labor governments doing secret deals to keep open coal-fired power stations? That the most climate fanatical government in the country, the Victorian Labor government – which wants to make coal use illegal within a decade – is now in urgent talks to extend the life of yet another coal-fired power station shows the utter folly and intellectual bankruptcy of Labor’s energy policy.

Jim Chalmers
As this paper reported on Wednesday, the Yallourn power station, which supplies 22 per cent of Victoria’s electricity, may need to be extended well beyond its current planned shutdown in 2028. This is on top of an earlier secret deal to keep the Loy Yang coal-fired power station open, at an undisclosed cost thought to run to hundreds of millions of dollars a year, to avoid the closure of large industrial power users such as the Portland aluminium smelter. Plus the NSW Labor government’s deal, costed at about $200m a year, to extend the life of the country’s largest coal-fired power station, Eraring, over similar fears of grid destabilisation and the closure of the Tomago aluminium smelter.

So here’s the madness of Labor’s energy policy: consumers are forced to subsidise intermittent wind and solar power to reduce emissions; the consequent price rises due to the high costs of “firming” plus the required extra transmission lines mean the government is forced subsidise consumers’ power bills (subsidies that will inevitably have to be extended in next week’s budget); meaning that the government then has to subsidise the coal-fired plants that government policy has rendered uneconomic in order to keep the lights on when the wind won’t blow and the sun can’t shine.

It’s a giant money-go-round made necessary by Labor’s ideological obsession with running our power system to reduce emissions rather than to keep electricity affordable and reliable.

Electricity, of course, is at the heart of our modern way of life, essential to everything from cooking our food to heating and cooling our houses, making a transaction at the shops and even charging our ubiquitous smartphones – and if Labor has its way, it will soon also be essential for running our cars, too, even though its EV policy will make the electricity supply steadily more precarious and expensive.

More and more, electricity will be needed in ever vaster quantities to power the AI behemoth that will soon be central to an advanced economy, as shown by Microsoft’s bid to reopen the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in the US, something that would be inconceivable here because of Labor’s obscurantist set against the only form of reliable, emissions-free baseload power.

Energy policy is the folly that’s behind the nearly 9 per cent decline in household living standards over the past two years (the world’s worst economic performance, by the way) and the cost-of-living crisis that’s the number one, two, three and four voter concern as we go into the election. Along with Labor’s addiction to spending and taxing that’s keeping mortgage costs high.

A coal fired powered station at Yallourn in Gippsland. Picture: Andrew Henshaw
Quite apart from all the other problems that the Albanese government has created or exacerbated – the record migration-driven pressures on housing costs and supply, wage suppression and infrastructure overload; the productivity-crushing advances to union power; the green veto on almost all new resources projects; the explosion of Jew-hatred on our streets; and the reinforcement of indoctrination over education in our schools – this energy insanity alone should be enough to hound the Albanese government from office in disgrace.

That this promise was always utterly implausible gives Labor no “get out of jail” card. Rather, it only compounds the elemental idiocy of a government that made a no “ifs” and no “buts” commitment to cutting power prices that it must have known was false.

Former prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.
After all, shortly after becoming minister, the government’s chief climate evangelist Chris Bowen proudly likened the energy transition to a second industrial revolution: requiring the installation of 22,000 solar panels every single day and the erection of 40 large wind turbines every single month for eight years – plus the construction of at least 10,000km of new transmission lines – to meet the 2030 target of 82 per cent renewable energy.

The notion that this gargantuan commitment could be funded while power prices fell rather than skyrocketed was always an absurdity (as absurd is giving such a critical portfolio to Bowen after his manifest failures as border protection minister in the Rudd-Gillard era).

Yet such was the government’s brazen insistence on a green jobs bonanza, the chorus of rent-seeking crony capitalists in support, and a media that elevated every weather event into proof of climate catastrophe that this modern version of the emperor’s new clothes has hardly been called out, even by the opposition. And that’s before we even get to the madness of most of our wind and solar assets being imported from China and over 70 per cent of wind farms being foreign owned.

The only one way to end this doom spiral into energy poverty and economic stagnation is to change the government to one that will not need the Greens or teals to survive and to bring nuclear power into Australia’s grid. Because if it doesn’t happen this time, it won’t happen.

 

[Smurf1976]

Labor’s energy panacea shot down by reality.

The big problem isn't the means of generating electricity.

It's that knowledge and intellectual discussion has been brushed aside completely by both major parties and most of the rest and we're left with "I believe" type statements where facts and calculation ought to be.

This crisis didn't come out of nowhere, the seeds were sown decades ago and have been germinating ever since.

I say that as someone who's not anti-nuclear but nor am I pro-nuclear. What I advocate is hard facts and calculation to answer the question with all options on the table.

 

[wayneL]

Who is under *60 here? Would you be happy to be sent off to fight Russians on behalf of Ukraine?

 

[sptrawler]

Who is under *60 here? Would you be happy to be sent off to fight Russians on behalf of Ukraine?

I wonder if politicians and high court judges are exempt, as they usual are from punitive legislation.

 

[mullokintyre]

Who is under *60 here? Would you be happy to be sent off to fight Russians on behalf of Ukraine?

AS a pilot, I wonder if they would conscript me into the Air Force and let me fly an F35???
Mick

 

[qldfrog]

How can a supposedly left government do that:
"Three million people carrying student debt will see 20 per cent wiped from their loans. A person carrying the average $27,000 debt will see a $5400 reduction. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has committed to the $16bn debt reduction by July 1."
A cleaner at your shopping mall will be taxed to pay for a wanker 3y holidays in gender studies or choreography degree.
Serious degrees get a job during or after studies and pay back their debt
This is an absolute joke for the left imho

 

[wayneL]

Castrato.

 

[SirRumpole]

Castrato.

There is QandA for that sort of thing.