Tom Marshall-Davis

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).

I mean, being an Australian watching the US is a lot like being in On the Beach, the Nevil Shute book. You kinda just helplessly watch Americans destroy the world and wait for the fallout to come get you

Incremental lowering of standards. Dubya happened so everyone said "well at least Nixon did X", then Trump happened so we all said "well at least Bush did Y", and now Trump II's speedrunning the collapse of international liberal democracy and we're left with "at least Trump I was only Z".

Remember ten years ago, when the weird Aryan shit and the goofy Trump-movie mashups were a thing only parody accounts and earnest sycophants'd because it was embarrassing? Those were the days

Looks very exciting - always seemed like the image of the far-right as peopled by lower-class louts was a post-seventies thing. It's always very strange reading about Australian preselections in the '60s and before, where the extreme right elements all seem to have a profession or a title or a PhD

We'll know we've matured when everybody starts pretending to be Tom Wolfe instead. And better for the heat, too

Only real downsides of a move to Queensland are the heat and everyone in The Culture pretending to be Hunter Thompson for like 10 years. Could work.

This is actually something the government can just, like, *do* too. There's nothing constitutionally problematic about enlarging parliament. The Senate would be just as unrepresentative, and Tasmania and NT could be adequately represented without being OVER-represented (which is the problem now)

Bigger parliament, longer terms in PM’s sights After Labor’s record election victory, the Albanese government has opened the door to totemic changes to the democratic process.

The last time parliament had a big enlargement (y'know, 40 years ago) there were about 9.9 million voters. Now there's 18 million and it's the same size. "Politicians bad," sure, but it's unhealthy in a democracy for voters to be half as represented as they used to be. www.smh.com.au/politics/fed...

Going on four hours since they were officially upgraded from "scuffles" to "clashes"