Tom Marshall-Davis

There's Barton in 1901 and Deakin in 1903 running unopposed, but feels like "technically 100%" goes against the spirit of the exercise.

It's an awful movie. But it's genuinely interesting. The movie doesn't deny that Amazon staff are underpaid, or that their work is demeaning - the message is that they deserve to be badly compensated for demeaning work, because they're all idiots.

Anyone see the Amazon War of the Worlds movie? Where the moral is that the 24-hour surveillance state is actually good so long as you get rid of the bad apples, and the Amazon delivery-guy son-in-law is an incompetent clown who only saves the world cos of Amazon's new same-day-delivery drone? Wild.

Reflection: ‘Thinking Beyond Liberal Narratives of Progress’ Symposium | Australian Women's History Network Eli Branagh and Tahlya Evans reflect on their experience hosting the ‘Thinking Beyond Liberal Narratives of Progress’ symposium.

NEW at #VIDAblog!

Eli Branagh and Taylah Evans discuss their experience hosting ‘Thinking Beyond Liberal Narratives of Progress’, a one-day symposium held in response to the recently published Personal Politics: The Remaking of Gender, Sexuality, and Citizenship (2024).

Find out more here ⬇️

The point of the Warringah rules - and any so-called democratisation push in the Liberal Party today - could only ever be to hand the party to its parliamentary extremists, using an appeal to the membership and the branches to dress it up in some phony legitimacy.

As proxies for "moderate" and "right" the combined support ("support") for Price-Hastie-Taylor and Ley-Spender(?)-Wilson seems pretty realistic. But when you shed genuine prospective leaders for three elections in a row, none of the options are realistically going to drum up much actual enthusiasm.

Seems to reflect, more than anything, how little name recognition any of them have. Price and Hastie making a fuss seems to have swallowed up whatever support Taylor might've had (even though Price is a Senator, and a Liberal of convenience).

This is all very exciting - I guess that's the word - but remember that defecting to (and, inevitably, becoming the parliamentary leader of) these far-right parties is a well-established way for right-wing Coalition MPs to make what (to them) is meant to be their graceful exit from politics.

Horne was always a keen observer of the national grindset.

Abbott was so bad as PM that his own socially conservative side of the party were plotting to dump him after less than 18 months - including Hastie's predecessor in Canning the late Don Randall. He's got considerably weirder since.

You aren't swayed by Peter Fitzsimons pointing out that it could, hypothetically, be worse?

'Cold, hard truth': Hastie breaks silence after Ben Roberts-Smith verdict Former SAS captain and Liberal MP Andrew Hastie has expressed his relief at Ben Roberts-Smith losing his defamation trial, saying the courage of former colleagues in giving evidence against the Victor...

The party's at a low ebb when the best endorsement for a guy people are actually talking about as a leader is still "he thinks war crimes are bad, sometimes". www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06...

Doesn't there need to be a backbench for there to be a backbench revolt?

"I am an unknown, and, that is, I am an unknown even to myself" - Alexander Downer, sounding out colleagues on the prospects for a bold new Downer experiment, Nov. 2007

Former PM accuses Labor of betraying intl law over Palestine recognition Former prime minister John Howard has accused the Albanese government of “betraying” international law by recognising Palestine as a sovereign state.

John Howard's engagement with international law has never been anything but instrumental. The only way to read comments like this is that they're entirely disingenuous, meant to turn the language of international law back on Israel's critics after the UN findings. www.skynews.com.au/australia-ne...

We enter now a golden age of shit newspaper headlines. Do the Liberals play it as it Leys? Is the Price right? Is he Taylor-made? Have they been too Hastie? The possibilities are endless

So far as I know fixed 4-year terms became a Labor fixation after 1975, *paired with* 4-year Senate terms. Bad, but justifiable as old-school Labor anti-Senate posturing. It's only in the early 2000s it became raw cartelisation, when Labor backed 8-year Senate terms(?!) and 4 years became bipartisan

"[McGauran was] welcomed by John Howard and Peter Costello, neither of whom have any morals ... What the Victorian Liberal Party is actually doing is advertising its own immorality. No decent person could belong to such a party" - Malcolm Mackerras, after Nat McGauran joined the Liberals, Jan. 2006

This is almost identical to most of the logos university Labor club tickets run under in student elections

"it was asserted that Fairfax used the word 'sociopath' to describe Mr Turnbull ... Fairfax ... used [the term] ... to describe a variety of people, including a convicted killer, fox hunters and Saddam Hussein" - Canberra Times, on Turnbull (and company), suing Fairfax for defamation, Aug. 2001

"You will carry John out in a box. John has got nothing else in his life but this job" - John Hewson, on John Howard's "succession" plans, Sep. 2005.

(2/2): "The first is the politicians, including me. We sent them ... We gave them lists of bad people ... to kill or capture. They did that, very effectively. The second ... is the military chain of command. It is their job to ensure soldiers are 'swimming within the flags'" (autobiography, 465-466)

Quote (1/2): "Damn right I support this man. The 'Brereton Inquiry' into alleged war crimes ... found that 26 soldiers may justifiably have to face civil court ... I told the most senior political and military leaders that if the wrong thing had been done by some, two groups bear responsibility ..."

Not irrelevant that Brendan Nelson, the Director or Chair of the Australian War Memorial for a decade between 2012 and 2022, has written things that certainly *imply* that he doesn't believe (Australian) soldiers, and Ben Roberts-Smith specifically, should be held accountable for war crimes

Australian War Memorial defers military history prize after judging panel awards it to book on Ben Roberts-Smith Exclusive: Governing council ‘retrospectively’ decides the Les Carlyon literary award should go only to first-time authors, ruling out Chris Masters’ book

"We can't give the award to the war-criminal book, that'd be embarrassing".

Nope, you're right, this is much better.

www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Absolutely shameful hagiographies of Charlie Kirk by “liberals” like Ezra Klein and Gavin Newson. It’s like Fortuyn all over again.

It is perfectly possible to oppose the killing of people you vehemently and wholeheartedly disagree with.

A concern about Price's remarks that I have is that they feed into the false conspiracy theory that migrants who came in under Labor helped Labor win the 2025 election (debunked by the simple fact that they generally hadn't been here long enough to be voters.)

"Do we dance to the tune of the lords of the rings, or do we dance to the tune of the Australian dates involved, including the 100th anniversary of the federation of this country?" - Tim Fischer, kiboshing proposals to hold the Referendum in time for the 2000 Olympics, Feb. 1998.

"Having an Australian head of state certainly sizzles, but it's the sausages that worry me. The fact is that after some years of campaigning for a republic the ARM apparently has none ready to throw on the barbie" - Robert Todd, Nov. 1997.

Working through primary source material for the Republic (which I find pretty dull), so I'll be entertaining myself by dropping whatever zany nonsense I find in below. (This is mainly for my own edification, but hey).