Indigenous Voice to Parliament

[stui magpie]

Oh dear.

Do you make your tinfoil hats with the good Al Foil or just use extra layers of the cheap stuff?

[David]

[stui magpie]

The Labor party was born from the Union movement. Their ideology was never progressive, they were the founders of the White Australia Policy.

However, Albo is undoubtedly left wing. He's just more pragmatic than Shorten (who is an imbecile) and focused on how far left he can go and still retain votes.

To call Albanese right wing is ludicrous.

[Magpietothemax]

The Labor party was born from the Union movement. Their ideology was never progressive, they were the founders of the White Australia Policy.

However, Albo is undoubtedly left wing. He's just more pragmatic than Shorten (who is an imbecile) and focused on how far left he can go and still retain votes.

To call Albanese right wing is ludicrous.

On what basis is Albanese "left wing"?? Beacuse he is the leader of Labor's "Left faction"?

[stui magpie]

^

I'm curious. How old are you?

[Magpietothemax]

^

I'm curious. How old are you?

You did not answer my question, yet you ask me another (irrelevant) one??

[think positive]

I’m still reading

Still confused!

I’ll have a harder look next week!

[David]

[stui magpie]

^

I read the Waleed article the other day. He wries well IMHO, quite balanced.

[Magpietothemax]

In the article above, Waleed gives a completely abstract /mysterious explanation for why support for the Voice has dissipated so radically over the last year.

The collapse in the support for the "Voice" referendum simply reflects the collapse in support for the Albanese government itself. When the Albanese government first announced the Voice, just after it had been elected, its polls indicated strong support They thought they could cash in nicely on this wave of support, which in itself is proof that the Australian population is not "racist" as many on the Yes side want us to believe.

What happened since then is a cost of living crisis, and the total refusal of the Albanese government to take any measures whatseover to alleviate the economic distress of vast swathes of the population.

Instead, the Albanese government has:
1) worked with the ACTU bureaucracy to ensure that wage rises were all well below inflation, hence real wage cuts for the working class
2) cut the public health budget
3) cut public schools funding and but increased that of private schools
4) $300 billion in stage 3 tax cuts for the rich
5)$368 billion in military spending

As a completely logical consequence, the popularity of the Albanewse government has plunged, and with it, the Voice.
Fewer and fewer people trust that a goverment which is so indifferent to their wellbeing would in any way be concerned about the wellbeing of the Aboriginal population. Their rejection of the Voice refrendum expresses their distrust of the government, and this in fact is a healthy response.

[stui magpie]

I voted early today, voted Yes.

Fair lot of people voting early. Interesting, the Yes campaign had 2 people handing stuff out, the No campaign had 4. Of the people on the queue who were holding handouts, about double were holding No compared to Yes.

One fruitbat who I assume has mental illness issues joined the queue and proceeded to loudly espouse a variety of conspiracy theories. Governments monitoring your phone usage, personal data, the USA wanting Australian land, Oprah drinking blood, the bloke just went on and on. AEC staff warned him a couple of times but he was a big unit, about 6"1' and 120kg so no one else, including me, engaged with him. When he said he was sending Dick Smith to kill Bill Gates and called himself a Disney character I nearly burst out laughing but I didn't need to engage with some erratic crazy cnut so I just laughed inside. People behind me in line said It wouldn't be an election queue without some crazy person.

[Tannin]

^ Oh. Was that you? You should have introduced yourself.

I would have said g'day and given you some handy tips on keeping yourself safe from Bill Gates and getting discount Disneyland tickets.

[Magpietothemax]

I am going to boycott the referendum.
However, due to the anti-democratic nature of Australian electoral law, it is a criminal offence to encourage a boycott of the vote itself, and non-attendance will incur a fine.
So i will deliberately cast an informal vote.
This is because both the official "Yes" and the official "No" campaigns have absolutely nothing to do with alleviating the horrific poverty endured by the vast majority of the indigenous population.
Never once has the "Yes" side explained exactly how this new non-elected body in Parliament will ameliorate the massive social deprivation of the Aboriginal population. That is because they cannot.
...and as for the "No" campaign, they are either directly involved in dog whistling, or are concerned primarily that the privileges and profits of some of the existing mining and pastoralist interests might be disrupted by the institution of the Voice proposals.
Both the "Yes" and the "No" campaigns are united on one fundamental point: they both have declared that they agree with slashing federal spending for Aboriginal people.
In other words, both Albanese and Dutton are united : they are both committed to spending money on nuclear submarines while slashing government spending for the indigenous population, and likewise for public health and education.

[David]

New poll has come out today with 59% Indigenous support and 41% opposition to the referendum, which is very different from the 80% support figure Yes advocates have been bandying about over the course of the campaign (which itself was based on two small polls dating from January and March this year that apparently had some shortcomings in their methodology).

The takeaways from a figure like that are significant: in this case, we can still say definitively that there is clear majority support among Indigenous Australians for the Voice. On the other hand, the 41% leaning towards No tells us that there is clearly a significant level of Indigenous opposition that can't simply be brushed off as a few conservatives + a far-left rabble. It's enough to say that opposition to a constitutionally enshrined Voice is a fairly mainstream (albeit minority) view among First Nations people.

Paywalled link to the poll here: https://www.theage.com.au/politics/fede ... 5eb19.html

And full report can be downloaded here: https://resolvestrategic.com/__static/1 ... ).pdf?dl=1

[pietillidie]

New poll has come out today with 59% Indigenous support and 41% opposition to the referendum, which is very different from the 80% support figure Yes advocates have been bandying about over the course of the campaign (which itself was based on two small polls dating from January and March this year that apparently had some shortcomings in their methodology).

The takeaways from a figure like that are significant: in this case, we can still say definitively that there is clear majority support among Indigenous Australians for the Voice. On the other hand, the 41% leaning towards No tells us that there is clearly a significant level of Indigenous opposition that can't simply be brushed off as a few conservatives + a far-left rabble. It's enough to say that opposition to a constitutionally enshrined Voice is a fairly mainstream (albeit minority) view among First Nations people.

Paywalled link to the poll here: https://www.theage.com.au/politics/fede ... 5eb19.html

And full report can be downloaded here: https://resolvestrategic.com/__static/1 ... ).pdf?dl=1

I think you're greatly underplaying that; it's far higher than I expected, assuming the numbers are reliable.

Given the generational disenfranchisement, disengagement and decentralisation of indigenous peoples, I'd have rated 1/3 support as good. So, I'd rate that as very strong-to-landslide backing.

I was expecting to have to explain far lower support on the bases I mention above. Once a community is fractured and dispersed generationally, consensus no longer means what it means in situations where we all share the same immediate incentives and life parameters (houses, mortgages, cars, jobs, vocabulary, etc., reinforced and repeated socially).

Generational disenfranchisement leads to greater dropping out and opting out, and completely undermines coordination and consensus building. So, that's a huge number in the circumstances.