Humble servant of the Nation

Parliament set to sink to its lowest ebb

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Finally, it is over and the results are in. The result of the same-sex postal survey is entirely predictable and mirrors polls taken over the last five years. The question remains, why has the will of a large majority of the people been ignored by the parliament for so long?

This has been an entirely unnecessary vox pop of the Australian people on a question so few are actually invested in. It has been ugly and divisive. The best thing we can say about it is at last it is done.

It should never have happened. The parliament should have acted or indeed it might not have acted and we would all be a lot better off than we are today. But the political needs of the Coalition had to be sated and so the Australian Bureau of Statistics was dragged into oversee a $122 million non-binding, voluntary postal survey that may yet come to little or nothing.

The cost of it has to be counted more than in simple dollar terms. It has to be measured somehow in more nebulous but more important ways. The loss of national unity, a lid lifted on bigotry and prejudice where discrimination against one group of people was openly countenanced by community leaders.

Full column here.

318 Comments

  • Dismayed says:

    Oh dear the unemployment rate fell because the Participation rate fell. Hillsong Morrison is delusional. No surprises.
    http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=37388#more-37388

  • Dismayed says:

    No surprises. “But eastern Australia ranks alongside these in the top 10 of the world’s major deforestation fronts – the only one in a developed nation.” QLD Beautiful once,
    barren now. Oh and abbott’s $2.55 billion pay the polluters no direct action has been nullified by clearing in QLD alone.
    https://theconversation.com/australia-is-a-global-top-ten-deforester-and-queensland-is-leading-the-way-87259

    • Bella says:

      Land clearing has tripled to an alarming rate after the LibNats watered down & basically removed the hard fought environmental legislated protections for high-value regrowth on freehold & indigenous lands.
      Labor reneged on it’s promise to reinstate those protections in Qld but AP now has form on failed promises after she sold-out to Adani so I doubt this government will suddenly get tough on tree-clearing when they’re being paid to sit on their hands just like the Qld Fibs always have been.

      If deforestation continues at the current rate the only koala you’ll find in our state will be in a zoo because all we’re focused on now is the exploitation of our complex ecosystems & it will lead to extinctions.
      Also, people are so indoctrinated with consumerism & self-interest so that coupled with the perversion of the political process by corporate dollars means the future is bleak indeed for our environment.

      • Bella says:

        I see yet another weak election promise has been announced by a scrambling Palaszczuk promising to plant 3 million trees over the next 6 years. Wow. She can’t let the fact, that in that time the state will lose 330M trees to deforestation, get in the way of trying to look ‘green’ for next Saturday.

        Her idea is like starting a massive bushfire then trying to put it out with a garden hose. Pfft.

  • Dismayed says:

    I suppose Fiji are part of the Global warming scam, hysteria and conspiracy eh Razor, Carl, and the rest of you deniers?
    http://www.theage.com.au/world/fiji-to-move-more-than-40-villages-inland-as-seas-rise-20171117-gznzrx.html

  • Dwight says:

    Now this is just sad:

    Thanksgiving meals were cut short last year because of political divisions, study reveals
    With the data they collected, they discovered that Democrats were five per cent less likely than Republicans to travel for Thanksgiving in 2016, compared to the prior year.
    While Republicans were more willing to travel to a Democratic household for the holiday, they were also more likely to leave earlier than usual – by over 40 minutes.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5086527/Thanksgiving-cut-short-year-politics.html#ixzz4ymlrQYF8

    • Jean Baptiste says:

      What a load of bollocks! Or at least the methodology is. Somehow it is “inferred” that a progressive visiting someone living in a deplorable voting precinct must most likely be visiting a deplorable? Huh?

  • Wissendorf says:

    I just watched a game of international rules. I thought I had seen every sport with balls but I’d never struck this one. Australia won but I”m not sure how. They played Ireland , a suspect claim as there were no red heads to be seen. Big boofy lot probably all baltic ring-ins with names like Lars and Gunnar. But it made a nice change from the ‘RL World Cup’, that must be the most lopsided contest in Australian sporting history. I’d be ashamed to take part in such a one sided farce. And I regretfully won’t be taking my place at the QCC on opening day of the Test though I can see the Gabba from here. Alas nature had other ideas. Takes forever to type anything with on e hand so I maybe a bit quiet for a while but i read the blog daily.

  • Wissendorf says:

    I just watched a game of international rules. I thought I had seen every sport with balls but I’d never struck this one. Australia won but I”m not sure how. They played Ireland , a suspect claim as there were no red heads to be seen. Big boofy lot probably all baltic ring-ins with names like Lars and Gunnar. But it made a nice change from the ‘RL World Cup’, that must be the most lopsided contest in Australian sporting history. I’d be ashamed to take part in such a one sided farce. And I regretfully won’t be taking my place at the QCC on opening day of the Test though I can see the Gabba from here. Alas nature had other ideas. Takes forever to type anything with on e hand so I maybe a bit quiet for a while but i read the blog daily.

  • Trivalve says:

    Back from Bennelong. The denizens were disappointingly tight lipped re the marriage debate. Been to a high school reunion this afternoon, good to see the historically first Asian student from our old school turn up. ‘I was the only one’ said he. True. No-one needed to point out that it’s now the reverse. Much talk about th effect of the marriage debate on the vote in the electorate but do people really consider that the deciding factor? I doubt it.

  • wraith says:

    I didnee just get on to yank Carl’s chain, there was this, I hope it doesnt slip between the ‘blog crack’

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-i6KznDr2U

    priceless, just pricesless

    • Henry Blofeld says:

      LOL wraith that is indeed a priceless comment from Cory and even he started to “crack” up! I am liking Cory a tad more than before but couldn’t embrace his Party. Cheers

    • Jean Baptiste says:

      Spotto. He’s a caution aint he? It’s like forbidden secret desires keep bubbling to the surface.

      • Carl on the Coast says:

        Yes, yanking aside and when you’re on the back foot, it seems all it takes nowadays to tickle one’s fancy is to engage in a touch of “Trump-like” smutty, salacious sniggering.

        Each to their own I ‘spose.

        • Jean Baptiste says:

          That was very funny Carl. The bestial beatitudes of Bernardi! I’ll bet he had been rehearsing that routine all day. Had “set up” written all over it!
          (Apologies to Donleavy)

  • Henry Blofeld says:

    Putting my “cherries” on the line as it were pre race, Mr Insider, and tipping QLD Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk to win the QLD State Election next Saturday and also tipping Kristina Keneally to knock off John Alexander in the Bennelong By Election too, such is the stench of the rotting fish head that is Turnbull’s failed government. Kristina will be an asset to the incoming Shorten Labor government and suspect that’s what she is aiming for and possibly even the top job ultimately. Bets are on!

    • JackSprat says:

      On Kristina and being an asset – are you from NSW Henry?

      She was a disaster as a Premier.

      • Henry Blofeld says:

        She came in at the fag end of the very long Labor rule JackSprat when there were no seats left on the “titanic” and did an admirable job in the circumstance. No pollie of any persuasion, past or present imho could have done any better. Remember the great John Howard at the end of his tenure, he was “timed out” rather than elected out. Kristina’s smart, personable and very electable as the Polls are now showing. Cheers.

      • BASSMAN says:

        “She was a disaster as a Premier”……..Only because she inherited a mess from a mob of incompetents that she did not have time to clean up. She will be a senior minister in any Labor government if she gets up in 2019. A position John Alexander could never attain….good bloke that he is.

        • Henry Blofeld says:

          Exactly BASSMAN she in fact was a good Premier who inherited a shocking mess. Labor had been in for some 15 years wayyyyyyy too long for any Party. She will give a top account of herself in Bennelong and I think will win. This is her “fresh start” unlike when she was Premier. Cheers

        • Tracy says:

          To put it bluntly…..bollocks!
          While she may be straight she was happy enough to take the votes from Tripodi and Obeid to make her premier, I find it extremely difficult to believe in the culture that was the ruling NSW labor party/Terrigals that the shenanigans of the movers and shakers wasn’t widely known and turned a blind eye to.
          The stuff that came out at ICAC was probably the tip of the iceberg and whether she likes it or not it was still going on when she was Premier.

      • Boadicea says:

        No blonde jokes please gentlemen!

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