Next Federal Election
I don't doubt your heart is in the right place @Opti, you remind me of one of my heroes, the problematic Christina Smith from Beachport SA, who, like so many 'charitable' westerners, thought that believing 'they are just like us, they just need opportunity' is being generous-of-spirit. There's a third stage, we are trying to get to in Aus, but astonishingly seem forever to delight in thwarting, that comes after 'ooh, aren't they exotic', and 'we're all the same'..
if you have the time and attention-span, the wonderfully perspicuous Jared Diamond expresses it well in the opening of the book The World Until Yesterday:
.
{quote} Why do we find "traditional" societies so fascinating? Partly, it's because of their human interest: the fascination of getting to know people who are so similar to us and understandable in some ways, and so unlike us and hard to understand in other ways. When I arrived in New Guinea for the first time, in 1964 at the age of 26, I was struck by the exoticness of New Guineans: they look different from Americans, speak different languages, dress differently, and behave differently. But over the subsequent decades, in the course of my making dozens of visits of one to five months each to many parts of New Guinea and neighboring islands, that predominant sense of exoticness yielded to a sense of common ground as I came to know individual New Guineans: we hold long conversations, laugh at the same jokes, share interests in children and sex and food and sports, and find ourselves angry, frightened, grief-stricken, relieved, and exultant together. Even their languages are variations on familiar worldwide linguistic themes: although the first New Guinea language that I learned (Fore) is unrelated to Indo-European languages and hence has a vocabulary that was completely unfamiliar to me, Fore still conjugates verbs elaborately like German, and it has dual pronouns like Slovenian, postpositions like Finnish, and three demonstrative adverbs ("here," "there nearby," and "there faraway") like Latin.
All those similarities misled me, after my initial sense of New Guinea's exoticness, into thinking, "People are basically all the same everywhere." No, I eventually came to realize, in many basic ways we are not all the same: many of my New Guinea friends count differently (by visual mapping rather than by abstract numbers), select their wives or husbands differently, treat their parents and their children differently, view danger differently, and have a different concept of friendship. This confusing mixture of similarities and differences is part of what makes traditional societies fascinating to an outsider.
Another reason for the interest and importance of traditional societies is that they retain features of how all of our ancestors lived for tens of thousands of years, until virtually yesterday. Traditional lifestyles are what shaped us and caused us to be what we are now. The shift from hunting-gathering to farming began only about 11,000 years ago; the first metal tools were produced only about 7,000 years ago; and the first state government and the first writing arose only around 5,400 years ago. "Modern" conditions have prevailed, even just locally, for only a tiny fraction of human history; all human societies have been traditional for far longer than any society has been modern. Today, readers of this book take for granted farm-grown and store-bought food rather than wild food hunted and gathered daily, tools of metal rather than of stone and wood and bone, state government and its associated law courts and police and armies, and reading and writing. But all of those seeming necessities are relatively new, and billions of people around the world today still live in partly traditional ways.
Embedded even within modern industrial societies are realms where many traditional mechanisms still operate. In many rural areas of the First World, such as the Montana valley where my wife and children and I spend our annual summer vacations, many disputes are still resolved by traditional informal mechanisms rather than by going to court. Urban gangs in large cities don't call the police to settle their disagreements but rely on traditional methods of negotiation, compensation, intimidation, and war. European friends of mine who grew up in small European villages in the 1950s described childhoods like those in a traditional New Guinea village: everybody knew everybody else in the village, everyone knew what everyone else was doing and expressed their opinions about it, people married spouses born only a mile or two distant, people spent their entire lives in or near the village except for young men away during the world war years, and disputes within the village had to be settled in a way that restored relationships or made them tolerable, because you were going to be living near that person for the rest of your life. That is, the world of yesterday wasn't erased and replaced by a new world of today: much of yesterday is still with us. That's another reason for wanting to understand yesterday's world.
As we shall see in this book's chapters, traditional societies are far more diverse in many of their cultural practices than are modern industrial societies. Within that range of diversity, many cultural norms for modern state societies are far displaced from traditional norms and lie towards the extremes of that traditional range of diversity. For example, compared to any modern industrial society, some traditional societies treat elderly people much more cruelly, while others offer elderly people much more satisfying lives; modern industrial societies are closer to the former extreme than to the latter. Yet psychologists base most of their generalizations about human nature on studies of our own narrow and atypical slice of human diversity. Among the human subjects studied in a sample of papers from the top psychology journals surveyed in the year 2008, 96% were from Westernized industrial countries (North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel), 68% were from the U.S. in particular, and up to 80% were college undergraduates enrolled in psychology courses, i.e., not even typical of their own national societies. That is, as social scientists Joseph Henrich, Steven Heine, and Ara Norenzayan express it, most of our understanding of human psychology is based on subjects who may be described by the acronym WEIRD: from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic societies. Most subjects also appear to be literally weird by the standards of world cultural variation, because they prove to be outliers in many studies of cultural phenomena that have sampled world variation more broadly. Those sampled phenomena include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, punishment, biological reasoning, spatial orientation, analytic versus holistic reasoning, moral reasoning, motivation to conform, making choices, and concept of self. Hence if we wish to generalize about human nature, we need to broaden greatly our study sample from the usual WEIRD subjects (mainly American psychology undergraduates) to the whole range of traditional societies. {end quote}
https://m.
"No Australian should have to check their bank balance to see if they can afford to see a doctor."
Encouraging words from an Australian government.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-22/labor-medicare-promise-to-make-gp...
I'm a big believer in the above quote
but sadly, the system is so run down and left to wither, I think labor's position is a bit of a cynical vote buyer
it pains me to say it, but I have been conditioned to pay to see a gp, and am happy to do so...
the service is simply better, simply better and is the only way I can get continuation of service. same doctor, better doctors, follow ups, and a feeling of not so rushed
there's still the odd clinic around where I can bulk bill (if you can get in that is...) but the service, the doctors, and general care factor, is quite shit
the system needs fixing, not sure simplistic guarantees that appeal to voter's basic instincts is the way to do it...
That's a bloody big vote-buy.
And if the whole system has been so let go, surely this is a huge kick start for it.
It kinda sounds like you're happy to take it out the back paddock and put it down Syppo, which is a shame in my books.
I've been paying for GPs too, but if we can give bulk-billing a big push, that sounds good to me.
Will also take pressure of Emergency departments, which have become a defacto GP for those who can't afford one.
And I dare say, if people can get medical help sooner rather than later, it'll save the country a fortune down the track.
Maybe look at it as an investment, although I'd like to see some reputable figures.
I certainly don't want to take it to the back paddock and kill it andym
even in its sad state, it's a (broken) bedrock of what once was...
I just think this is dumb policy on the run, free doesn't make it better
it's a clearly a cynical vote buy, because labor are in such a woeful position, and they know it...
I imagine the half wit big brains meeting for election strategy went something like this...
we're in trouble
yep yep...
polls are abysmal
yep yep yep...
we can't have an election on cost of lving
nope nope nope...
can't do power
nope nope...
dont dare mention woke stuff
no, no no...
don't dare mention immigration
no no no no, no no no....
what do we do?
what's left? ...what's worked before?
murmur mumur grumble grumble murmur...
mediscare!!!
let's make it a mediscare election!
genius!!
...cue half baked medicare diversion policy...
90% free?
believe it when I see it... and maybe just maybe, the northern beaches of sydney don't necessarily need free medicare!
quality is better than free... (just ask the japanese!)
and, just like their housing policies... It all just reeks of lipservice, bullshit, and bandaids... whilst they're still importing so many bodies...
not convinced
but anyway... they need to do sumthin...
they're in such a dismal position, good luck to em
anything is better than dutton...
but they still suck, big time
We should abosultely give full bulk billing a big go. It doesn't take away from your ability to pay for a 'superior doctor'.
Not really sure how you would propose to move forward with anything then Syppo - if you want to reject policy at the slightest whiff of political expediency then you're going to have nothing.
To me, looking after the less-well-off is a measure of a fair and just society.
I don't vote Labor but universal healthcare is something worth supporting.
Policy needs to go ahead. As painful as it is it needs a push regardless of the cost. I'm also a big advocate of public transport. We need to invest heavily in new metro lines. Yes there will be cost blowouts. Yes there will be some corruption. But we need to deal with those on the go. We need cheap, accessible public transport to grow our cities. I was in London last week and my god the tube is good. You would be crazy to drive a car. Then train to Paris and metro everywhere around Paris as well. We are not bad in Aus but more can be done.
looking after the less well off should be the priority, not free across the board
I would rather see dental included, than giving free stuff to the already incredibly wealthy
I think the free idea is dated, and going back to it will come with losses elsewhere
japan has the best system in the world, it isn't free, it is quality
once upon a time, you could possibly argue we and the UK had the best system in the world...
that ain't coming back with free stuff!
What is the solution? Does it mean testing people's incomes when they visit the doctor's office? The system needs to be simple and cheap to implement. Sometimes, free is the easiest, most affordable option.
Just for reference, the US healthcare system is a bureaucratic hellhole. The amount of waste is incredible. Here are some numbers, judge for yourself:
- The US healthcare system spends about $1 trillion annually on administration, a quarter of all healthcare spending.
- Estimates suggest that over $265 billion is wasted annually due to administrative complexity.
This is the money that should go towards better care. But it's spent or essentially bullshit. We don't want that here, we want a simple system so people have no fear of asking for medical help when required.
^^ through legal and other means people who you would normally expect to be captured / excluded by income testing find ways to benefit - greed will always prevail. Family trusts and the vagaries of our taxation system!
The solution is to make government programs universally free with minimal administrative costs and tax people/ corporations appropriately to cover all program costs …. like they do in those Nordic countries, you know the ones that always rate the highest in the world on those happiest indexs
I was curious on this world happiest score thing people keep mentioning.
Not sure how they work it out cause fuck i could never be happy in those countries with those climates.
And i was surprised Israel rank's up there.
And Australia doesn't rank too bad either, number 9 out of 145 countries.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/happiest-countries-in...
Australia is really good. Not because things are perfect here, it’s more that things are messed up elsewhere. More I travel more I learn this lesson. Every time I go somewhere I can’t wait to come back home.
So true flollo
GuySmiley wrote:https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/feb/24/coalition-nuclear...
Yep , a vote for spud the dud is a vote to keep the coal burning, that’s always been his plan . He really is the brain fart we don’t need .
Dutton’s gross hypocrisy
The article is paywalled but the properties were purchased mostly by his family trust, his SMSF or by a company he shared with his father!! Houses, apartments, farms, childcare centres and a shopping plaza Dutton has dabbled in the lot!!
I was hoping Richard Marles was a good defence minister.
Perhaps we should hire the virgin pilot who reported the live fire in the Tasman sea instead.
They say they have a good relationship with China but don’t even know when they are firing live ordinances off our coast.
Perhaps they should ramp up the planned missile production and also chuck a few long range ones in the mix.
…and where are the yanks and British in all this?…certainly not patrolling.
Weird times indeed….give them an inch….
Marles? A mincing ponce and ex Geelong Grammar boy who like everyone in this current abortion of a Government is clueless.
What did someone once say about "The cream of the working class"?
Anal, Bowen, Watt, Gallagher, Burke, Wong etc.
A rogues gallery of incompetence.
"No Australian should have to check their bank balance to see if they can afford to see a doctor."Encouraging words from an Australian government.
.....
Might be more accurate to say " No Australian should have to check their doctor's religion before a visit".That's all this shit bag government have.
Words. Most of them lies.
Optimist wrote:I was hoping Richard Marles was a good defence minister.
Perhaps we should hire the virgin pilot who reported the live fire in the Tasman sea instead.
They say they have a good relationship with China but don’t even know when they are firing live ordinances off our coast.
Perhaps they should ramp up the planned missile production and also chuck a few long range ones in the mix.
…and where are the yanks and British in all this?…certainly not patrolling.
Weird times indeed….give them an inch….
Here we go again.
Was curious to see the Canadian response when their sovereignty was recently attacked. 'Twas a united response that fuelled a wave of nationalism irrespective of political stripe.
Now, when Australia's sovereign borders are threatened we get white ants like Optimist making hay. I guess it's an opportunity to shift the spotlight off Spud's share and property trading, hey Opti? An issue you're curiously silent on despite recently ranting about Albo's house.
I wonder if any of Spud's 26 properties were sold to foreign interests?
Cue Optimist, 'I really don't like either party' etc etc
aaron61][quote=AndyM wrote:"No Australian should have to check their bank balance to see if they can afford to see a doctor."
Encouraging words from an Australian government.
.....
Might be more accurate to say " No Australian should have to check their doctor's religion before a visit".That's all this shit bag government have.
Words. Most of them lies.
Curious as to which doctor's religion would turn you off. Or do you just assume their religion by their name. Fucking weird comment!!!
aaron61][quote=AndyM wrote:"No Australian should have to check their bank balance to see if they can afford to see a doctor."
Encouraging words from an Australian government.
.....
Might be more accurate to say " No Australian should have to check their doctor's religion before a visit".That's all this shit bag government have.
Words. Most of them lies.
No idea what this means, though it does sound grubby.
And do you realise that the LNP will match "this shitbag government"'s commitment to a revitalised bulk billing system?
Kinda undermines your partisan view, no?
I just liked the use of the pejorative 'shit bag' - something archaically wholesome about it.
like someone in a crowd wearing suspenders and a trilby calling Albanese a 'stuff wit'.
I'm working on replacing the word "shit" with "stool" in the Australian lexicon.
Much less vulgar.
I won't blame marles or albo
I'll blame decades of negligence and the suicidal selling of our soul - from both parties
this is a wake up call - a big one!
and with anything military taking 5 years + turnaround, our leaders have failed on so many fronts
the ignorant and the peaceniks are still saying we need to look after ourselves...
good luck with that
the truth is, there's nothing albo/marles could do really, as china has done nothing wrong - technically...
but labor's blind faith ignorance and gloating about getting china back on side has just been exposed for all it is... hollow, ideologically stupid, and dangerous...
https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/the-americans...
we'll take a coupla hundred tons of crayfish
and give you a couple thousand tons of gunboat
how do ya like me now?
bitch!
labor made a lot of political hay outa saying morrison ruined our relationship with china
personally I think it's literally the only thing he got right in his miserable decade of deceit
shoulda held that trajectory
labor firmly back in the bitch position
Wow, that news.com article is positively hysterical.
And out of interest does anyone know where the Tasman Strait is?
Didn’t come up with a Google search.
he was clearly running with a little poetic license...
but I wouldn't say hysterical
he even outed his own dramatic license...
"... One does not need to be so dramatic to be concerned. The main point being made by Beijing is as much political as it is military.
That point is easy enough to read: do what we say or you will be destroyed. The manner of the message is also clear. Get out of the Taiwan Strait or we’ll occupy the Tasman Strait.
This is an age-old tactic of warfare known as “gunboat diplomacy”. When you can sail missiles unmolested to within minutes of a competing nation’s capital, there is not much need to fire them..."
the dude's saying the quiet part out loud
the part our hapless politicians are still unwilling to make clear
the part that is clear to the higher ups who know stuff, who are told stuff...
as evidenced by basically the whole western world having a revelation sub 2% gdp military spending ain't gonna cut it
and, what they don't say is as telling as what they do say...
meanwhile, albo and co. are still just printing money to buy votes with whims
Nah mate it was rubbish.
Totally shitbag.
It’s true our politicians seem more interested in their real estate portfolio rather than housing for the masses.
It’s the main indicator to me of who is the one with the best intentions for the people…..none at present it seems…..none with solutions….big talk with no solutions is easy.
There is a lot more to the solution than just negative gearing although a reduction to one home as an investment would help.
People don’t need the govt involved but they do need the govt to plan a way for them to own a cheap functional home in all regions with their own money.
A basic human right in Australia one may think.
There are a lot of empty factories who can no longer afford power which could be converted and building modular houses transported to cheap land supplied by the Govt with zoning changes and for a modest profit.
Then they would not have to spend a dollar on housing people as people could actually afford to house themselves.
I’ve got nothing against people investing their hard earned cash to make themselves rich if that’s what floats their boat.
I do however find politicians without practical solutions a waste of taxpayer money.
Generally I think Labor has done well in some areas but they need to get a grip on housing land supply and on cheap energy like the buyout of gas companies etc.
People can’t afford to run a business….and so business shuts down….this in a country with 300 years supply of clean burning gas.
An energy source for everything from road transport to cooking your Sunday cafe breakfast…..back up baseload power etc etc.
And the future….bio gases, bio gas cars, modular homes delivered flat pack,
I think marles missiles is a great project but only short range …..and apparently we are building drone subs……but missiles….great big long range missiles…..nobody wants to mess with those……nobody including China wants one pointed at them….everyone behaves with missiles it seems.
stunet wrote:Nah mate it was rubbish.
Totally shitbag.
It did have a certain "scent of stool" about it.
I particularly liked the graphic I've reproduced below, all it needed was the words "bang" next to Canberra and Sydney.
sypkan wrote:labor made a lot of political hay outa saying morrison ruined our relationship with china
personally I think it's literally the only thing he got right in his miserable decade of deceit
shoulda held that trajectory
labor firmly back in the bitch position
That was actually the most ballsy policy call, and thus statesmanship, done in recent times. I get the impression he was making it up on the fly, but nevertheless, he revealed the face behind the mask and it was not what we had expected. Hail, Scomo, statesman.
Don't worry too much crew, those ships (and their attendant sub) would become a Aus/US sub party treat if they tried anything. They're a looong way from home, resupply, reinforcement. It's more about the message and a reminder of intention. Type 55 destroyers do have a significant missile loadout, though, at over 100 it's way more than what we have on our ships. Magazine depth.
Here's a better article than news which I won't bother to read:
https://www.twz.com/news-features/chinas-sudden-live-fire-naval-drills-o...
Chinese Type 55 destroyer - battle vs US ships, battle last section of vid, missiles go bang
Might as well put this up in the politics subforum, to spare the front page. It's 18 months away or so, but here we go.
This is how Dutton wins:
https://www.afr.com/politics/enter-the-liberal-party-working-class-heroe...