Australian Politics (2 Viewers)

[love.is.around]

Re: What do you think of Kevin Rudd as PM of AUST?

Well, he must be doing a good job, because 66% of Australians are content with him!

 

[Generator]

Re: What do you think of Kevin Rudd as PM of AUST?

It's hard to judge Rudd because sifting through his rhetoric vs policy is a difficult process. Considering he seems content to govern without doing anything too controversial, he will be remembered neither fondly or harshly.

Insightful.

 

[Sicherhetsdient]

Re: What do you think of Kevin Rudd as PM of AUST?

he is a fucking shit PM. both parties are shit if you as me


vote LDP

 

[whatashotbyseve]

Re: What do you think of Kevin Rudd as PM of AUST?

Insightful.

Thankyou kind sir.

Every country has then - PM's/Presidents who aim to make a difference but end up being vanilla bland. Rudd won't be remembered in 20 years. Except maybe as the man who fucked up our economy for a decade.

 

[Lentern]

Re: What do you think of Kevin Rudd as PM of AUST?

Thankyou kind sir.

Every country has then - PM's/Presidents who aim to make a difference but end up being vanilla bland. Rudd won't be remembered in 20 years. Except maybe as the man who fucked up our economy for a decade.

Nonsense, Rudd will be remembered as a conviction politician, unafraid to take the tough decisions, standing up the unions and the environmental lobby who under Latham and Beazley had dictated terms to the ALP. He will challenge the almost universal perception that the chicago school of economics is right, embracing Keynes against the advice of the reserve banks, the IMF, even Swanny will tell him he's wrong but Rudd will stand by his convictions. The longevity of his government will be because he is a man of ideals, of vision, of substance, unlike the jellyback populism of Turnbull and Nelson and Hockey.

He'll enrage his own party by defying the traditions set down by Hawke, Keating and Beazley. At times it will seem as though his position as leader is under dire threat, the Gillard Lemmings on one flank, the Swan roosters on the other but he won't succumb to the pressure they force upon him. Finally he will install a radical economic policy that will appear to threaten the economic security of middle Australia, in actual fact it will stimulate growth and raise heaps of revenue but by that stage the press will have found their new golden child and he will be defeated by the very thng that made him a force to be reckoned with, his refusal to compromise his beliefs.

 

[incentivation]

Re: What do you think of Kevin Rudd as PM of AUST?

Nonsense, Rudd will be remembered as a conviction politician, unafraid to take the tough decisions, standing up the unions and the environmental lobby who under Latham and Beazley had dictated terms to the ALP. He will challenge the almost universal perception that the chicago school of economics is right, embracing Keynes against the advice of the reserve banks, the IMF, even Swanny will tell him he's wrong but Rudd will stand by his convictions. The longevity of his government will be because he is a man of ideals, of vision, of substance, unlike the jellyback populism of Turnbull and Nelson and Hockey.

Does the ALP pay you?

If not, I'd see a Doctor about your delusions.

Of course, Rudd never has and never will venture into the depths of 'jellyback populism'...

 

[whatashotbyseve]

Re: What do you think of Kevin Rudd as PM of AUST?

Nonsense, Rudd will be remembered as a conviction politician, unafraid to take the tough decisions, standing up the unions and the environmental lobby who under Latham and Beazley had dictated terms to the ALP.

Of all the things you have said Lentern, some of which I could moderately concede, this is by far the worst. Makes the tough decisions? As I have said before, Howard had the waterfont dispute, the gun control reforms and planning the GST in his first term. Against what from Rudd? Numerous awful stimuli packages? Stands up to the unions? Sharon Burrow is on Rudd's back pocket, and given what a fat cow she is, thats quite a feat.

He will challenge the almost universal perception that the chicago school of economics is right, embracing Keynes against the advice of the reserve banks, the IMF, even Swanny will tell him he's wrong but Rudd will stand by his convictions. The longevity of his government will be because he is a man of ideals, of vision, of substance, unlike the jellyback populism of Turnbull and Nelson and Hockey.

I am genuinely speechless. More holes than Swiss Cheese in this.

He'll enrage his own party by defying the traditions set down by Hawke, Keating and Beazley. At times it will seem as though his position as leader is under dire threat, the Gillard Lemmings on one flank, the Swan roosters on the other but he won't succumb to the pressure they force upon him.

He is a career democrat, he won't enrage anyone. If anyone is in a Wayne Swan camp for PM then send them to the nearest neurosurgeon.

Finally he will install a radical economic policy that will appear to threaten the economic security of middle Australia, in actual fact it will stimulate growth and raise heaps of revenue but by that stage the press will have found their new golden child and he will be defeated by the very thng that made him a force to be reckoned with, his refusal to compromise his beliefs.

The first sentence is 100% correct, why did you go on? It is radical, and it does threaten our economic security.

 

[moll.]

Re: What do you think of Kevin Rudd as PM of AUST?

Pretty sure Lentern was kidding. Or he has tourettes and accidently typed that post.

 

[whatashotbyseve]

He is hard to read. I pray he was joking, if thats the term, because if that post was leaning any more left it would fall over.

 

[moll.]

From what I've read of Lentern's previous posts (I normally read everything that's written on this thread. I generally find it informative), he seems to be of the centre-right persuasion. Or at least unaligned.

 

[Iron]

Na, he's a Labor hack of the Beazo wind-bag variety

 

[spiny norman]

In his previous posts he has said all long-standing leaders (eg. Hawke, Howard) have their past rewritten to be exactly the same, and that Rudd's will be done likewise. So yeah, I'd say that was sarcasm.

But yeah, Lentern, he's almost okay. His prose is fucking awful though, and I'm becoming more convinced he's in fact the same guy who writes those most atrocious of Rudd speeches (you know the ones, the cloyingly bland).

I think he's most entertaining when he's writing fan fiction. I think he's best when he just talks about the shit going on today, and doesn't try to either be funny or show his oh so fantastic knowledge of the politics of old.

 

[Iron]

hear hear

I am uninterested in his awkward adolescent prose - especially on pre-Howard politics. But I am interested in his salvation

 

[Lentern]

In his previous posts he has said all long-standing leaders (eg. Hawke, Howard) have their past rewritten to be exactly the same, and that Rudd's will be done likewise. So yeah, I'd say that was sarcasm.

But yeah, Lentern, he's almost okay. His prose is fucking awful though, and I'm becoming more convinced he's in fact the same guy who writes those most atrocious of Rudd speeches (you know the ones, the cloyingly bland).

I think he's most entertaining when he's writing fan fiction. I think he's best when he just talks about the shit going on today, and doesn't try to either be funny or show his oh so fantastic knowledge of the politics of old.

Meh close enough. Political narratives make for great reading and as a result Rudd like Howard before him will have history rewritten to imply his premiership was recieved very differently to the way those with keen memories will remember it.
.
I've supplied a few excerpts before which if you flick through this thread you'll probably find that show Howard was viewed as a weak little populist in his first term. Ducking for cover at the first whiff of unpopularity, real Jim Hacker kind of stuff. The Port Arthur Massacre prompted incredible demand for a government to make strong moves to increase gun control and as a result was overwhelmingly popular. It was not popular in national party homeland but those were seats that labor had buckleys chance of winning anyway. As for the waterfront dispute, Howard rode in to government on the back of empty but powerful rhetoric about the unions bullying their way about the place. It would have been braver for Howard to do nothing.


Finally the GST, which politician advised Costello to leave the acronym GST out of the tax reform package? Which politician was willing to cave to the demands of the Australian Democrats? Which politician asked Costello to lower it to 8 percent on the eve of it's introduction because he thought it would be more popular? It was the same one every time, also the same one who suggested to Costello that perhaps a two term strategy for balancing the budget was a more politically sensible idea then radical cuts that the treasurer deemed neccessary.

But when we watched the Howard years he was a conviction politician, the strong man, unafraid to wear the tough decisions, the buck stopped with John.



Oh and the speculation about my actual politics, I'm just waiting for Peter Costello and Stephen Smith to break from their own parties and form a party together.

 

[Iron]

Yeah, Howard Years was good, hey

 

[Lentern]

Yeah, Howard Years was good, hey

It was a bit like Arrians biography of Alexander.

 

[spiny norman]

Oh and the speculation about my actual politics, I'm just waiting for Peter Costello and Stephen Smith to break from their own parties and form a party together.

See I find that strange, as it's not like they're politically close together (I mean, Smith's far to the right of norm in the Labor Party, but Costello's probably centre->right of the Liberals). Are you more attracted to individuals than policy?

 

[Lentern]

See I find that strange, as it's not like they're politically close together (I mean, Smith's far to the right of norm in the Labor Party, but Costello's probably centre->right of the Liberals). Are you more attracted to individuals than policy?

Costello is pro Kyoto, pro republic, pro reconiliation, anti Hanson and I'm inclined to thnik there's a reason why he dedicated very little of his book to the Tampa affair and practically never speaks about it in public. I recognise he wouldn't have been as deeply involved as Ruddock, Downer or Howard but he still would have been in the thick of things unless he deliberately put himself outside it. I think he's a small l liberal dragged into the conservatism or a dry Liberal prime minister.

 

[Iron]

Costello is
a non
starter. He stands for nothing but a hazy personal ambition. Pls, lets move on from this aweful man.

Though I like what Bob Ellis said about his memoirs

For he told us almost nothing of himself. What quarrels he had with his parents, what marks he got at school, what it was like to share a bedroom for eighteen years with the Reverend Tim Costello. Why he was caned so often, and left his parents' religion and joined his wife's. What he thought about God, and Christ, and why he thought Christ anti-union. Whether his fundamentalist parents liked him wedding an Anglican. How long he was in and around the Labor Party and why he left. What his close Labor friends the Eassons thought of his defection to the anti-Christ, the dark side and his boots-and-all marriage to a Liberal leader's daughter.

We don't know if he ever saw a movie, or went to a play, an opera, a ballet, read a novel or bet on the Melbourne Cup. We don't know if he was raised teetotal, and what pain attended his first alcoholic drink. We don't know if he had a pet dog, or a visiting parrot he befriended and fed. We aren't told where he stood on Apartheid, Nelson Mandela, Bobby Kennedy, the hanging of Ronald Ryan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Pogo, Peanuts, Pink Floyd. His grandparentage, parentage, childhood, school days, undergraduate years, adolescent comradeships and rapid marriage take between them twenty-two pages; the fight for the GST seventeen.

No great emotion troubles the rising young mover and shaker - no lust, no fleshly disappointment, no drug-bust, no hangover, no detailed love of a football team, no hot, rousing day at the cricket, no beloved eating house, no details of how he fell in love or felt at first sight of his firstborn baby. No thrill at first putting on a lawyer's wig or walking at thirty-two into Parliament House.

Few feelings of any human sort are admitted. We seem to have an ambition-machine here, or, worse, a policy nerd, a number-wrestling corporate accountant, a two-legged White Paper. The caustic clown, the parliamentary Groucho, the happy Houdini, the unstoppable Woody Woodpecker has gone missing. The jesting gladiator we love to boo and clap and curse has vanished into air, into thin air, and into the Official Version, rewritten history.

 

[Lentern]

Costello is
a non
starter. He stands for nothing but a hazy personal ambition. Pls, lets move on from this aweful man.

Though I like what Bob Ellis said about his memoirs

Let's all take as gospel what David Marr says about John Howard then shall we? Or Tom Switzer about Bob Brown? Or Andrew Bolt about Peter Garrett?