Australian Politics (4 Viewers)

[what971]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

The way Paul Keating destroyed the Liberals in Parliament debates was the stuff of legends. He made parliament time on ABC watchable.

 

[Aerath]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

The way Paul Keating destroyed the Liberals in Parliament debates was the stuff of legends. He made parliament time on ABC watchable.

He makes the Comments section of the SMH enjoyable, too.

 

[Stott Despoja]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

Also, I think that Australia will collapse within an hour of Kerry OBrien leaving journalism

So long as Tony Jones is there to lean and leer into the camera our world will survive!

 

[chicky_pie]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

Am I the only one that really hates Laurie Oaks whenever he writes a opinion article bashing the Liberals and worshipping Rudd?

 

[withoutaface]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

I really don't see the link to that scene...

 

[TacoTerrorist]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

Islamification of Australia commences now.

Were you born an idiot or did you just watch too much Today Tonight?

 

[Captain Gh3y]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

Cool

if we can increase immigration to fill jobs why don't they get rid of the fucking baby bonus?

it's contributing to our de-volution as a species

 

[Slidey]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

I love this "immigration will fix it" tactic. Dispite the fact that for the last 10 years the government has been focusing on increasing immigration, and has made detailed population projections showing the exponentially increasing immigration levels needed to maintain population growth, good old Rudd goes ahead and opts to exponentially increase immigration levels!

And dispite the exponential problem, you simply don't want to have such high immigration levels anyway, because you run in to big problems with assimilation and integration into Australian culture.

Immigration is NOT the answer. It is a quick fix. Efforts need to be focused on welfare for the aging population as well as providing incentive for young women and families to have children.

 

[Captain Gh3y]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

And dispite the exponential problem, you simply don't want to have such high immigration levels anyway, because you run in to big problems with assimilation and integration into Australian culture.

Maybe the problem is Australian culture then.

 

[Slidey]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

Maybe the problem is Australian culture then.

The onus isn't on Australian culture (which is actually extremely multicultural relative to other Western countries) to change.

 

[Captain Gh3y]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

Australia doesn't have culture.

Obviously

There are people all thru Europe, South America and Asia who are hard working, educated or at least value education, will have kids

but instead of bringing them in where they'd make more of the ridiculously easy life in Australia we encourage the most useless scum in the world, commonly referred to as strayan anglo bogans to have 5 kids each so they can spend their baby bonuses on plasma tvs and vodka cruisers

no wonder we're an international laughing stock

The onus isn't on Australian culture (which is actually extremely multicultural relative to other Western countries) to change.

Ok I'll show you a picture and you guess which Western country it comes from

http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/img/2006/ep2/cronriot.jpg

-_-

 

[Slidey]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

Obviously

There are people all thru Europe, South America and Asia who are hard working, educated or at least value education, will have kids

but instead of bringing them in where they'd make more of the ridiculously easy life in Australia we encourage the most useless scum in the world, commonly referred to as strayan anglo bogans to have 5 kids each so they can spend their baby bonuses on plasma tvs and vodka cruisers

no wonder we're an international laughing stock


Ok I'll show you a picture and you guess which Western country it comes from

http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/img/2006/ep2/cronriot.jpg

-_-

You can dick on about how 'bad' Australia is all you want, but the fact of the matter is healthcare, education and quality of life rank in the top 10 of all OECD (developed) countries, so I'm really inclined to think you're just trying to paint an ugly picture of Australia by referencing extremes and stereotypes.

And obviously, we're going to keep up immigration at some level, don't be a fucknut. The problem is when you try to make immigration account for large deficits in fertility rate. Without immigration, Australia's population would start to fall. Now immigration can't keep our growth rate above 0% for much longer, which is why it's really important to focus on the true problem: people are having fewer kids (which is a result of people becoming more cultured and educated).

See: demographic transitioning.

 

[Enteebee]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

THIS.

Plus, why should we be encouraging people to have kids just because they get money out of it? Shouldn't the people who want kids because they actually want them have them?

/does not like kids and wouldn't have one if you gave me the entirety of our GDP

We're not encouraging people to have kids to get money... the money is there to support people who have kids, kids cost money, right? So a lot of people won't have kids because they can't/don't want to deal with the financial burden.

 

[Slidey]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

/does not like kids and wouldn't have one if you gave me the entirety of our GDP

And that means other people should feel as you do about kids?

If you've any economic, political, or social knowledge, you'd understand how important children are to the future of Australia and its citizens, right?

 

[Slidey]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

I know that, and I agree that throwing money around isn't the best solution, but it works for the reasons NTB said.

A better, more sustainable solution, is to encourage an atmosphere of respect and appreciation for children; a society where having kids is recognised as a desirable goal by the educated and the cultured.

As for your question about how we coped before the government subsidised it: see the demographic transition link I posted earlier. This problem is a recent one, which is why government subsidisation of children is also recent.

I'm still not sure you fathom the eventual implications of the desire not to have children. Without immigration, Australia has negative population growth. How do you plan to deal with the future disproportionate number of elderly people and their intensive care and health demands, combined with an ever-diminishing labour force (one which is already strained to deal with health issues today)?

By 2045, the number of people above the age of 65 years old will have more than doubled to 30%.

 

[Enteebee]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

Kids cost money, but kids are also a choice. People have to weigh up their priorities if they want to become parents, it's not the government's place to subsidise your lifestyle choice.

Maybe in the libertarian dictatorship of malfoy we wouldn't have government subsidies, but for the most part voters like the idea of making it easier for parents to handle the extra burden of having kids.

You would in the end suggest that if people want more babies out there they should give money through charity, but myself and a lot of people think that's a flawed system and as such isn't as fair as because it leads to more disadvantaged people than you would otherwise have.

How did people cope before the government decided to give families ridiculous concessions just for having kids?

I have no doubt people could cope... but the idea is to continually improve lifestyles. Anyway, for starters it would be much harder these days as in the past you had at least one parent at home, these days doing so puts you at a significant disadvantage to all the other households out there that have 2 parents working full time...

For the most part though, these measures are about encouraging population growth (which slidey dealt with), if you do not either encourage your own population to have children, or entice young workers from overseas then you end up in a terrible situation.

 

[Enteebee]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

A lot of the problem with that is that while feminists are all like "yay, women working!" there's been a devaluation of stay-at-home mothers. I really, really don't like children but I have a lot of respect for women who actually have kids because they really want to, and they stay at home with them because again, they really want to be good parents. That's not to say working mothers aren't good parents, but those that choose to stay home don't get enough respect a lot of the time. Choice should mean real choice (i.e. either work or stay at home) not just "choice to work."

I really doubt... it's the feminists that are the real force behind getting women out working these days. It's because they want money.

Personally I blame capitalism.

 

[Slidey]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

A lot of the problem with that is that while feminists are all like "yay, women working!" there's been a devaluation of stay-at-home mothers. I really, really don't like children but I have a lot of respect for women who actually have kids because they really want to, and they stay at home with them because again, they really want to be good parents. That's not to say working mothers aren't good parents, but those that choose to stay home don't get enough respect a lot of the time. Choice should mean real choice (i.e. either work or stay at home) not just "choice to work."

Also, I find it's hard having respect/appreciation for children for a couple of reasons... A lot of parents are utterly incompetent and don't discipline their children. It's hard to have an appreciation when a lot of kids these days are running riot (not so much our age, but even 5-10 years younger, I guess. I can see the difference even in my own family) - there's been an erosion of parental responsibility by the state (e.g. ridiculous anti-smacking campaigns, don't beat your kids up, sure, but there was one case last year where someone had 4 kids taken away from them for smacking, also not holding parents responsible when young kids commit crimes), partially because the state is willing to intervene so much in terms of what parents are/aren't allowed to do, and partially because there's this mentality of "oh, the government will look after it."

You bring up some valid points, but you haven't answered the real question: what do you plan to do about the aging population?

Perhaps you missed my edit above:

I'm still not sure you fathom the eventual implications of the desire not to have children. Without immigration, Australia has negative population growth. How do you plan to deal with the future disproportionate number of elderly people and their intensive care and health demands, combined with an ever-diminishing labour force (one which is already strained to deal with health issues today)?

By 2045, the number of people above the age of 65 years old will have more than doubled to 30%.

 

[Slidey]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

No, you can't answer it with that. I quote my above reply to Captain Ghey:

And obviously, we're going to keep up immigration at some level, don't be a fucknut. The problem is when you try to make immigration account for large deficits in fertility rate. Without immigration, Australia's population would start to fall. Now immigration can't keep our growth rate above 0% for much longer, which is why it's really important to focus on the true problem: people are having fewer kids (which is a result of people becoming more cultured and educated).

See: demographic transitioning.

I recently read one of the government's analyses of the aging population problem and it concluded that immigration is vital to solving the problem, but it is not the solution, as in order to solve the problem we would need exponentially higher levels of immigration each year. Not only would it become impossible to satisfy those levels of immigration, but pretending we could, it would cause immense integration and displacement problems w.r.t. Australian culture and legal system.

I'll try to dig up the paper for you, but I imagine you can understand the basic idea behind it: trying to maintain exponential growth by addition requires ever higher additions each time to keep up.

 

[Enteebee]

Re: Australian Politics Chatter Thread

Wasn't actually. See my post about agreeing with Slidey regarding respect and appreciation. Also, see what I said about people should want them and about priorities, it's not necessarily even a subsidy issue. Seriously, there are generally massive emotional and other implications for a kid born to parents who don't really want one in the first place.

Don't really want one? Er... The point of a subsidy isn't to make parents who don't want kids have them, the point of the subsidy is to make it easier for parents who want kids (but maybe can't handle an instant $2000 upfront burden) to have them.

Yeah, but what about people like pensioners/the disabled who get nothing compared to all the family subsidies? I think that's pretty fucked.

So you're ok with subsidies for pensioners/the disabled now? The idea would be that looking after families produces more wealth (more kids etc) which can then go on to later be taxed, to look after more pensioners/the disabled.... It's an investment. Without childcare assistance etc you simply have a much smaller workforce to be taxed later on.

I don't think we need to necessarily look at removing subsidies to families to increase subsidies to the disabled... Hows bout we keep the subsidies for the families, improve subsidies for the disabled and raise taxes on luxury items more?

I believe in no immigration restrictions other than if you have a serious criminal record, so I'm happy to ramp up immigration levels to cover perceived shortfalls.

Sure, that costs money too though... Maybe not as much, but it costs money and there are definately problems with having a large % of your population as immigrants new to the country who don't feel they have any roots here.