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.
No doubt Charles Manson’s death is newsworthy, but worthy of an obit in the NYT?? Anywho he got to 83 spending the vast majority of his years in prison, so the food can’t be too bad.
On crims got to see the renamed Tough Nuts on Regan last night. I hadn’t seen it before. An extremely unpleasant individual with apparently not a one redeeming feature. Would kill or hurt kids, animals, men and women without a skerrick of remorse.
I see that Terry McCrann’s pining for a return to the comedy of Abbott and/or Costello:
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/business/terry-mccrann/tony-abbott-or-peter-costello-can-save-coalition-from-wipeout/news-story/21cfc53a8403f575b7b88976049dd520
Laurel and Hardy would do a better job of running of running the country.
In real life Abbott and Costello hated each other.
Same story with Steptoe and Son.
Oh and due to the unreliable coal power being unavailable the Gas companies forced prices to much higher prices
Coal fired power plants in Vic. continue to drop offline with close to 1000mw of power not available because the ageing coal power units are no longer reliable. Why don’t the News outlets report these massive power failures?
@Mack the Knife says:
NOVEMBER 17, 2017 AT 1:34 PM
“Nobody chooses to be gay.
Good god. Wake up to yourself and your prejudice there man. Nobody would choose to be gay man! Why would anyone opt for angst if they had a choice? Gays are born. Saying they can choose not to be gay is just another of those lies that haters like so much. Just bloody wrong, and ugly.
Excuse me, you are going a bit overboard as usual wraith. Not going to elaborate because I don’t want to argue with you, but I will say that whatever 2 consenting adults do behind closed doors is fine.
I dare say wraith, went back and read the comment to Bella, and I believe you verballed me. Bisexuals choose to be that way, and I am pretty sure there are some men around that are born deviants, not born gay. Had a friend who was drugged with mandrax and raped by a “gay” man when 16 years old, and he was known to dally with the odd female friend as well. Big kaleidoscope out there wraith, there is no such thing as a default gay person. For instance, my daughter-in-law has a gay female friend who I know very well and she has the odd bat for the hetero team. I’m pretty sure she was not born gay, but is a product of her early (dysfunctional) family environment.
Anyway, I shall repeat what I wrote previously,, what 2 consenting adults do in private is their business.
Mugabe not keen on a career change.
I recommend people read Gerard Henderson’s article suggesting why we should thank Abbott for the ssm survey. He explains a whole lot better than I’ve been able to how the method achieved a whole lot more celebratory outcome than if it simply went through parliament. Thanks Tone’s.
Ridiculous stuff. Abbott’s plebiscite was a fix for the Coalition after he called a party room meeting. The Libs were astonished to see the Nats had been invited too by Abbott. It was the only way he had the numbers to defeat a private members bill from a Lib backbencher. Ultimately many Libs regarded the sneaky invitation as the last straw and Abbott lost his job over it. Eight hours later they came up with a plebiscite in order to break the impasse. Abbott has done his level best to ensure SSM never became a reality. One of Henderson’s strangest columns and a compete denial of recent political history.
Bless you dear Milton, your loyalty to ex ousted and reviled PM Tony Abbott knows no bounds. You must explain this strange “phenomena” to your humble correspondent some time. Cheers
What are you on…can I have some
Tunbull keeps this up, they’ll be drawing a chalk outline around his PMship.
Suspending parliament or the reps looks awful. Looks like they’ve lost control of the joint. They haven’t but that’s what it looks like. WAP as they say.
Too late Dwight its already drawn. With No 24 consecutive negative Newspoll only a week or so away no one is listening to Turnbull or his sad government imho. He promised so much but has delivered so little. Cheers
You were too soon, Jack.
As Turnable himself would say, it’s a great time to be alive.
Wheels within wheels, grinding away.
Just checked the footy tipping, good round folks.
Reminder for next round of Champions League, Wednesday am
Lousy Spurs. Watched that one. Arsenal were brillant early on.