Ned_Flanders
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how was labor dragged to create medicare?
The Greens
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how was labor dragged to create medicare?
I feel like I'm banging my head against a wall trying to get through to you and some others that it's the naivety of the Greens as to how things actually work and how they can actually move to get the outcomes that they and we all want is the problem, that is naivety.
I'm banging my head against a wall just as you and some within the Greens continue to bang your heads against a wall and with the same outcome: NOTHING!
SSwans2011
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**** yeah they passed a progressive policy 45 years ago!!!!
Hahaha what a load of pretentious horseshit.
You're too smart and the "fake" Greenies just haven't clued on.
No no no no; you are so full of yourself that you can't see the forest for the trees.
It was the ALP that embraced and Legislated after the historic Mabo case and it was the ACTU that was vociferous in backing Mabo, only for Howard and the DLP mongrel Harradine to pass the 1998 Native Title Amendment Act after the the equally historic and important Wik decision.
From 1996 until 2007, we had a far right Government in place. From 1983 'till 1996, it was the ALP that reintroducing six-monthly indexation of unemployment benefits, poverty traps in the welfare system were eliminated, introduced subsidised homecare services, established the Family Income Supplement. There were biiiiiiig improvements in family payments, sole parent benefits and far improved incomes for the bottom 25% or so of households. There was the historical and immensely significant enactment of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 which made it unlawful to discriminate on the grounds of sex.
They handed back Uluru to the Pitjantjatjara and enacted the Australia Act, severing all the remaining constitutional ties to the UK which was to be a precursor to a Republic, but that was scuttled by the pretentious gits in the ALP like Phil Cleary and the so called "trendy left", who wanted to make the election of what would and should have been a ceremonial Head Of State into a f****ng Presidential Election, replete with big money election campaigns, political division and political favours and much angst as the Presidential candidates jostled for supremacy instead of the eminently suitable, and rational act of the Senate electing the President - we've had a President in the Senate since 1901 for f**k's sake!
The ALP were the instigators of the incredibly important and significant APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) which would prove one of the most pre-eminent, high-level international summits on the planet.
There were a hell of a lot more "progressive" things that the ALP did whilst it occupied the treasury benches from 1983 to 1996 including securing the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, stopping the Gordon-below-Franklin Dam which ended up in the High Court, which, in a landmark decision, found that the World Heritage Properties Conservation Act 1983, also ALP enacted legislation, which the government of Tasmania claimed the federal government had no powers under the Constitution to pass either the regulations or the legislation, was constitutional.
The ALP secured the nomination of the wet tropics of Queensland as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987, preventing the forests there from being logged. It was the ALP in this era that prosecuted the case for environmental sensitivity and made it possible for millions and millions of trees to be planted through grants and the facilitation of such schemes right across Australia. Australian's became aware and actively pursued measures for protecting the environment and became very water conscious in the cities due to the LEADERSHIP of the ALP - it became common place for people to put half a brick in their cistern to save water when using the toilet for heaven's sake! Would you consider any of those policies "progressive"?
I'll give you a really big clue. All of the above and much more besides was only able to be done because the ALP was in power - the only major Party that does anything "progressive" in Australian politics because it isn't an "anti" party but I repeat, it can only do things when it is in Government and from 1996 'till 2007, it was not in government! When it did form Government again and wanted to pass progressive policies on the environment once again, it was thwarted by the political bullshit of Brown and the Greens so Brown and his Greens wouldn't be, in his deluded mind anyway, marginalised and the ALP being seen as the Party for the environment! In other words, the pretentious Brown chose political aggrandisement over the environment and he and the Greens are forever condemned because of it.
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See that word that you used so flippantly, movement, well that's what the ALP has been doing for over 120 years and will continue to do for another 120 and beyond.
The Australian workforce is no longer made up of a majority of blue collar workers, of engine drivers, foundry workers, miners, shearers, labourers etc etc etc. It's now made up of people who are involved in the service industries, in IT etc etc and they, like labour in the past, they sell their labour and their expertise so they now make up the preponderance of the ALP because the ALP has moved with the times and helped to shape it for the better for labour in the 3rd decade of the 21st century.
The ALP has always been about improving the lot of the "working class", improving the lot of labour and lo and behold, because of the fact that the ALP has made it possible for the children of labour to to get the same educational opportunities as that of the well-to-do and well-healed, f**k me!, there are now children and grand-children of labour that are Lawyers, Doctors, IT professionals, educators .... f*****k, can you believe that?!
I wasn’t using the word movement flippantly, the ALP has to reckon with what the Hawke-Keating government did to organised labour and what that did to the “movement” of the party. To me they still fail to acknowledge that they made mistakes that hurt working people, got too cosy with the corporates and that this lost them elections. I know it’s not going to happen.
The Greens have put their own political position ahead of the environment for at least the last 15 years.
Until they accept that change is going to have to happen incrementally, they will remain insignificant except to hamper progress.
Until they accept that change is going to have to happen incrementally, they will remain insignificant except to hamper progress.
Ned_Flanders
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You said ever. Not recently, ever. Also it wasn't 45 years ago - that was V1 which Fraser shut down and turned into Medibank Private.
Are you saying the greens were responsible for Medicare, even though the greens didn't exist in parliament back then?
Or how about the NDIS? Or HECS? All that the greens too?
ExcitementMachine
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This is a bit rich coming from what I've experienced from you in other threads.
I've read posts where you're cheering on the Australian economy to crash and accusing anyone who is not in Keating's pocket on international views a Morrison shill, who's deserving of carrying the burdens of said governments even though they've never voted for liberal conservative.
That's the attitude and geberal sentiment you're bemoaning of the greens in this thread.
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Absolute rubbish.
No one knew politics would lurch to the right worldwide.
'Incrementally' is another avoidance word for 30 years of inaction.
It's too late for incremental changes.
The coal lobby has both major parties in their pocket.
The only thing that will change anything substantially is direct action to stop coal mines producing coal.
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They will compromise on meaningful action.
You vote for climate bastards so you're not helping at all.
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SSwans2011
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No, I didn't say the Greens were responsible at all. I said you referenced a policy first implemented 45 years ago, then reimplemented 25 years ago. It doesn't do much to disprove my point. I don't vote for my political parties based on what they did literal decades ago.
HECS a progressive policy - you're having a laugh. A large portion of current Australian politicians didn't even pay for their tertiary education, and tertiary education was free (and admittedly made free by the Whitlam Labor government) when the Hawke Labor government introduced it. Good luck telling university students that they should vote for the ALP because they introduced HECS.
The NDIS is another example of a policy that was close to the status quo in a large portion of OECD nations by the time it was implemented, and having done some volunteer work for NDIS recipient organisations, its rollout has been questionable at best, which is admittedly largely down to the current government, but also in part due to the design of the policy.
Any progressive policy "ever" was hyperbole, I will concede. Let's say virtually any progressive policy in a quarter of all Australians lifetimes instead.
Ned_Flanders
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Hecs is a progressive policy, because before that it was pay as you go. Hecs meant I was the first person in my family who even got to go to uni
SSwans2011
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It was pay as you go until the Whitlam Government abolished tertiary fees in the mid-70s.
The Hawke government introduced HECS in 1989. And prior to free tertiary education, about 80% of students didn't pay fees anyway due to Commonwealth sponsorships and subsidies.
Gough Whitlam's free university education reforms led to legacy of no upfront fees
A generation of Australians will forever remember Gough Whitlam as the man who gave them a free university education. Whitlam's abolition of university fees cemented him as a Labor folk hero yet his higher education legacy remains contested and contradictory.
The uncompromising nature of the Greens is the particular reason I won't vote for them. By definition, an uncompromising party which got into Government would be a totalitarian one.
SSwans2011
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Yeah because the minority ALP Government in the ACT where the Greens hold the balance of power hasn't gotten anything done, and the Greens have been totally uncompromising and totalitarian there.
Not like that exact government has implemented policies which give people MORE freedoms or anything.
ACT politics doesn't count. Everyone has an education there. Look at the Vax rates. They're clearly lacking the large proportion of complete and utter idiots with which the rest of the country has to contend.
I don't think any one party should rule by themselves, it wasn't the intention of democracy. I just know that it's bad when the two parties I prefer fight each other and therefore get less achieved than they otherwise would. Contrast that with the LNP alliance of rich people and bogans which win more often.
SSwans2011
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Ah, so they're totalitarian except for when they're not.
The Federal party has behaves like that. And the party meetings I went to had people who behaved like that.
Interestingly, they barely exist in Victorian State Politics, the second most progressive state/territory. It's different across states and territories.
But we're talking specifically about the Federal Greens here.
- Oct 19, 2020
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How can you compromise on fracking ,gas ,carbon capture and uneconomic billions in subsidies to prop up the coal industry when it's all unnecessary?
Your plan is 'same as usual thanks' .
Do you think the ALP supports that, or just doesn't oppose it? They could oppose all that and get not-elected again, if you'd like them to?
Why do the Greens so desperately not want the progressive side of politics to be elected? The only answer can be to carve out a little bit more of the progressive vote for themselves so that they get a bit more AEC money?
