Fake News.

alans said:
obviously you do have a very short memory, or you weren't even in Aust at the the time. Actually, if you chose to do your research, you would discover that The Australian editorially promoted Gough Whitlam and the Labor party in the 1972 election. The same anti democratic paper also supported Bob Hawke's and Kevin Rudd's elections. Iam somewhat surprised that you didn't close your last sentence with that other old hoary chestnut the the Queen and / or CIA actually deposed Gough. Ha Ha.
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Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and Kevin Rudd were all from the right wing of the Australian Labor Party. Centre left or further left havenever got good press from Murdoch. Malcolm Turn bull was centre-left in the Liberal party and got done over by Murdoch.
When I was young, all major parties were a big step further to the left. They all shifted to the right after globalisation happened and killed-off the unions. But even that is not enough for Murdoch - he wants even more stupidity.
 
I am 78 years of age and have an excellent memory. I can remember what happened in Australian politics as far back as world war two. After Menzies was elected in 1948, nothing much happened except fpr a couple of times when the Labor Party was in power. The Liberal Party have never had a vision for Australia's future and certainly NO PLAN except to exploit the status quo. The National Party are just bloody idiots.
Americans are very different to Australians - they actually do something with their country. We just sit and vegetate. -Risk averse ?
 
acotrel said:
If the ABC ever put a spin on their news, they would be held to account for doing it. The Conservatives cannot even handle the truth.
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like the ABC reporting the Aust navy personnel tortured an illegal boat person by holding the boat person's hand to a hot exhaust manifold, like the more recent saga that saw ABC commentators, posing as journalists, conduct a witch hunt on George Pell. I can cite numerous other instances to refute your particular claim and unlike most commercial media outlets, the ABC has to be dragged kicking & screaming before making any appology for bad journalism.
 
acotrel said:
Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and Kevin Rudd were all from the right wing of the Australian Labor Party. Centre left or further left havenever got good press from Murdoch. Malcolm Turn bull was centre-left in the Liberal party and got done over by Murdoch.
When I was young, all major parties were a big step further to the left. They all shifted to the right after globalisation happened and killed-off the unions. But even that is not enough for Murdoch - he wants even more stupidity.
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the centre left or communists have never got much of a reception from the Aust public either; doesn't that tell you something? As for the unions, they killed themselves off with demands for higher wages, conditions, penalty rates, holiday and long service leave. You only have to look at the agrument that the ACTU and Labor are prosecuting at the moment wrt wokers who chose to be paid on higher casual rates then looking to double dip with holiday, sick and long service leave entitlements. It has been my own personal experience that most centre left and beyond are only chardonnay socialists and have no real concern for the workers here in Aust.
 
acotrel said:
Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and Kevin Rudd were all from the right wing of the Australian Labor Party. Centre left or further left havenever got good press from Murdoch. Malcolm Turn bull was centre-left in the Liberal party and got done over by Murdoch.
When I was young, all major parties were a big step further to the left. They all shifted to the right after globalisation happened and killed-off the unions. But even that is not enough for Murdoch - he wants even more stupidity.
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the centre left or communists have never got much of a reception from the Aust public either; doesn't that tell you something? As for the unions, they killed themselves off with demands for higher wages, conditions, penalty rates, holiday and long service leave. You only have to look at the agrument that the ACTU and Labor are prosecuting at the moment wrt wokers who chose to be paid on higher casual rates then looking to double dip with holiday, sick and long service leave entitlements. It has been my own personal experience that most centre left and beyond are only chardonnay socialists and have no real concern for the workers here in Aust.
acotrel said:
alans, have you actually watched Sky News ? The current debate about Facebook is about the power to manipulate voting patterns in elections with biased information. The antagonists are not the Australian government and Facebook. They are Rupert Murdoch, the ABC and Facebook. The ABC and Facebook are not overtly politically biased, however the clams by Conservatives that those two alternatives are biased, are used to give Murdoch an excuse. With Murdoch, the bias is blatant and unashamed. That Murdoch is a danger to democracy has been proved by the Trump debacle in America.. We should not look at events in isolation. In many western democracies, Rupert Murdoch has the power of veto during elections. In Australia, no politician gets elected if Murdoch is against them. In 1974, he conspired to, and successfully deposed the democratically elected Whitlam Government.
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and you still haven't answered my original question re Dan Andrews ; for our international readers he is the Cuomo ? of Aust, or the issue re George Pell: Has Louise Milligan recanted her false and misleading assertations for this wrongly jailed priest? You do know the High Court of Aust quashed his conviction 7 nil, an outstanding exoneration of an innocent man hounded into jail by a baying pack of self styled media vigilanties.
 
you know, all news sources have an editorial bias and agenda. all of them. it's always been that way.

unless you see it yourself, you're at the mercy of some reporter. and even if you do see it yourself, you only see it from one side. the only practical solution i know about is to assemble a selection of viewpoints, read em all and make your own decisions as to what the original facts were and which source has which sort of bias.

the fewer sources you scrutinize, the likelier you are to get fooled.
 
alans said:
the centre left or communists have never got much of a reception from the Aust public either; doesn't that tell you something? As for the unions, they killed themselves off with demands for higher wages, conditions, penalty rates, holiday and long service leave. You only have to look at the agrument that the ACTU and Labor are prosecuting at the moment wrt wokers who chose to be paid on higher casual rates then looking to double dip with holiday, sick and long service leave entitlements. It has been my own personal experience that most centre left and beyond are only chardonnay socialists and have no real concern for the workers here in Aust.
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Wealth inequities are greater in Australia than in most other democracies. And prices of consumer goods are higher. It is one of the things the Americans mention when they come here. We don't tip our workers in restaurants, we pay them properly, so the customer pays more. Most of our small businesses are coffee shops and the like. THese days most entrepreneurs do not even consider manufacturing hardware because there is no point in trying to compete with China. Unions are a legitimate expression of industrial democracy. There are only two remaining which are active. They are in the construction industry. The guys in those unions read Murdoch's newspapers at morning tea time, because they are tabloid and contain the football news. That is how they decide whom they are going to vote for. When Tony Abbot was facing odd against Julia Gillard, they voted for Abbott. Look at how the LIberal Party is towards the CFMMEU and the AMWU. The union guys shot themselves in the foot. THe Australian economy is currently built on three things - tourism, teaching foreign students and the construction industry - we sell houses to foreigners.
 
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In recent times there have been several outbreaks of Covid 19 in Victoria. They have come from the quarantine centres which cater for people who arrive on international flights. 30 percent of the people who currently arrive in Australia are foreign nationals, they are not returning Australian citizens. Why are they coming here if they are not immigrants or people buying houses ? Our whole economy seems to be a ponzi scheme.
 
Hey Mr Acotrel, Chairman Dan’s stuff up didn’t differentiate so what is your point??
Go down to Trades Hall and grab the secretary of either of those unions you mentioned and accuse them of being an Abbott supporter!!! Go on, I triple dare you.
Australia is not in the top 10 countries with the biggest gap between rich and poor but the USA is so again what is your point about tipping??
 
acotrel said:
Wealth inequities are greater in Australia than in most other democracies. And prices of consumer goods are higher. It is one of the things the Americans mention when they come here. We don't tip our workers in restaurants, we pay them properly, so the customer pays more. Most of our small businesses are coffee shops and the like. THese days most entrepreneurs do not even consider manufacturing hardware because there is no point in trying to compete with China. Unions are a legitimate expression of industrial democracy. There are only two remaining which are active. They are in the construction industry. The guys in those unions read Murdoch's newspapers at morning tea time, because they are tabloid and contain the football news. That is how they decide whom they are going to vote for. When Tony Abbot was facing odd against Julia Gillard, they voted for Abbott. Look at how the LIberal Party is towards the CFMMEU and the AMWU. The union guys shot themselves in the foot. THe Australian economy is currently built on three things - tourism, teaching foreign students and the construction industry - we sell houses to foreigners.
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Its taken me a little while to get some facts about your so called wealth inequality here in Aust. However, a couple of points need to be raised: 1 income as determinate of a countries wealth doesn't account, mainly because it is measured on pre tax and doesn't reflect Aust's highly redistributive tax & transfer system. According to KPMG 60% of Aust households pay no net income tax, and this is on top of the fact the some 50% of Aust's population is on the govt teat. The second point I wish to raise is that a more widely used measure of income inequality is the Gini coefficient, measured on a scale of zero to one, where the value closer to zero indicates a more equal distribution of income. Two studies, 1 from the Aust Bureua of Statistics the other from the Melbourne Institute of House Income show Aust"s Gini coefficient to be around 0.3, a figure that has remained largely unchanged over the last 20 years in Aust. Furthermore the Gini coefficient on income shows Aust is close to the OECD average and that Aust has the third most equal distribution of wealth in the developed world and lags only behind Japan & Belgium. Its a bitch when dogma and misinformation tends to cloud your judgement hey?
 
Tiger Shark said:
Hey Mr Acotrel, Chairman Dan’s stuff up didn’t differentiate so what is your point??
Go down to Trades Hall and grab the secretary of either of those unions you mentioned and accuse them of being an Abbott supporter!!! Go on, I triple dare you.
Australia is not in the top 10 countries with the biggest gap between rich and poor but the USA is so again what is your point about tipping??
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I have a close relative who was a union guy on the Melbourne CBD construction sites. If anybody should know about this, he must. Do you think my brother would tell me lies ? The CFMMEU these days does job safety analyses before they do any work. That does not mean they will not interrupt a concrete pour over a wage issue. However when they do JSAs,, it represents an unfunded productivity gain for their employers.
 
When John Howard was Prime Minister, there was a fatality about every ten days on construction sites in the Melbourne CBD. A minor incident resulted in the unions being told to do job safety analyses by the Workcover inspectors. The fatalities almost ceased entirely. But in recent times the rate has increased slightly. The CFMMEU is under continual attack by the Liberal Party. because they stand up for their members, and we cannot have that. In the new world order, industrial democracy is unimportant. Profits are a zero-sum game ? What you have got, I have not.
We do not have employee share ownership or productivity gain-sharing in Australia. When Telstra was privatised, there was a loyalty share issue for employees. It meant the unions could attend the shareholder meetings. After 3 years, most employees had sold their shares. The union approach is ' give us the money and we will buy our own shares'. It is a power game in which the workers are the losers.
 
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Fast Eddie said:
Alans it is really quite unreasonable of you to bring facts to the argument ... ;)
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I know what we had, and what we have now. The great number of Australians on the government teat is a result of globalisation. Statistics can be used to tell lies. There is a probability associated with every so-called fact. Much depends on who is telling the story. One of the things which has become quite outstanding is the number of elderly women who are sleeping in cars and camping in tents in council car parks. MY wife is a volunteer in a charity shop in our town. More people than ever are seeking help. This is not the Australia I spent my life working for and paying taxes at the highest marginal rate. We can afford to do better.
 
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In Australia, we have become shit-scared of government debt. The claim is that future generations will be penalised. When I was young I went into debt to buy a house. My kids could have been stuck with the debt when I died. When you borrow to build infrastructure, you are adding value and thus creating wealth. Social housing is infrastructure, but for some reason we cannot build that.
 
One of the good things about Covid 19 is, it is a moment of truth. - Reality bites ?
 
acotrel said:
When John Howard was Prime Minister, there was a fatality about every ten days on construction sites in the Melbourne CBD. A minor incident resulted in the unions being told to do job safety analyses by the Workcover inspectors. The fatalities almost ceased entirely. But in recent times the rate has increased slightly. The CFMMEU is under continual attack by the Liberal Party. because they stand up for their members, and we cannot have that. In the new world order, industrial democracy is unimportant. Profits are a zero-sum game ? What you have got, I have not.
We do not have employee share ownership or productivity gain-sharing in Australia. When Telstra was privatised, there was a loyalty share issue for employees. It meant the unions could attend the shareholder meetings. After 3 years, most employees had sold their shares. The union approach is ' give us the money and we will buy our own shares'. It is a power game in which the workers are the losers.
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You really should do more work on your research before you start sprouting dogma and the usual CFMEU bullshit. The most recent report from Safe Work Australia on work related traumatic injuries for the years 2003 to 2015 show the following : A total of 91 workers died in the whole of Victoria, not just Melbourne CBD, from construction related injuries, not the 35 per year or 455 for the same period as you and your ":brother" claim. A total of 469 construction workers were fatally injured across the whole of Aust in those 13 years. In fact the report states that work place fatalities, across all sectors declined by 44% from 3.0 fatalities in 2007 to 1.6% in 2015. The most fatalities occurred, in decending order : Agriculture 17%, transport, postal & warehouseing 10.6% and construction 3.8%. While every fatality is an absolute tragedy for family, friends and workmates, overblown rhetoric like your " a construction fatality every 10 days" is totally spurious and is more of a reflection of the usual trade union group think. Never let a good story get in the way of the facts.
 
acotrel said:
In Australia, we have become shit-scared of government debt. The claim is that future generations will be penalised. When I was young I went into debt to buy a house. My kids could have been stuck with the debt when I died. When you borrow to build infrastructure, you are adding value and thus creating wealth. Social housing is infrastructure, but for some reason we cannot build that.
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...and if you tell that to the young people today, they won't believe you..." (best said with thick Yorkshire accent);)
 
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