Who Cares: The 2013 Australian Federal Election Thread

Tim thats a good point, but the problem is they're all overpriced apartments and often pretty pissy for the price (tiny, badly built). I'm not surprised they arent selling. Also haha yes Docklands urgh what an urban planning disaster thats been.

My comment about there being not enough _affordable_ urban development is a Sydney-centric gripe.

tbf when I nearly took a job in Melbs two years ago I actually considered Docklands as that's where work would have been!

If I were dictator, these are the first people against the wall:

adding:

- people who bitch and moan at the *TINY TINY* national debt because debt is a bad thing, yet in the same breath nag the hell out of ME (yes ME actual ME) to take out a 25yr home loan on a $700k house

^^^^ that, a hundred times.
THOSE PEOPLE. Most of whom probably bought a few houses at 30k each and now earn that on each one as a rental.

btw if there were genuinely a housing shortage here, this is what would happen

http://www.eveandersson.com/photos/south-africa/cape-town-township-khayelitsha-30-large.jpg

and that is not happening

THOSE PEOPLE. Most of whom probably bought a few houses at 30k each and now earn that on each one as a rental.

dead set they are fucking evangelists. they bought a house back when they were $150k (roughly 30% of annual income) and just expect that we can afford to drop 4–5 times that despite wages not going up anything like 4–5 times, and they nag and nag and nag and nag and nag and nag and nag

WEll sure, but people who want to buy are forced to rent. When in a healthy market, people who want to buy should be able to buy, while those who want to rent would continue to rent.

x-post

wtf did i leave that '30% of annual income' figure in the post for, ignore ignore xp

precisely

300%?

300% pure love.

and yet here we are, life renters, because (a) it's affordable, (b) we can save/invest the difference between rent and mortgage payments on the same place (which is seriously 200-250% extra) and (c) because gillard, rudd, swan, howard, costello and keating farm cocks

by that i mean if you rent a place for $400/wk, if you were to buy the same place it'd cost $1200+/wk in mortgage payments

btw we did a stack of ~accountant~ research and discovered that you get tax kickbacks up the goona if you rent out a property to someone else, but if you live in your own house you get fa

i'm angrier than usual because i am unwell and all the windows are leaking

To most people - housing: essential, human right. POlicy is geared towards treating it as any other non-essential commodity, when there are really compelling social and economic reasons to make it affordable to own your own. There are thousands of people who don't want to live in the big cities but feel compelled to, for instance.

I mean, there's a job going in Melbs I'd be perfect for and would have a good chance of getting. The thought of ditching rental life and moving down to, say, Geelong (where the majority of the fam will be in six months anyway) is pretty tempting at times.

what's amazing is how quickly we went from ~the great australian dream~ to germany-style renting is the norm. a major difference is germans don't have their entitled parents hassling their kids to drop 600 kiloeuros on a bedsit in alexanderplatz

xp geelong is definitely better than it used to be but you'd be tied to owning one car per person, and there's only one train line (which you may have heard is not reliable because melbourne)

oh hai gillard, rabbit, these are ~the real issues~, not boats

I may have spent several months in 2010/2011 commuting Geelong to Elsternwick for work, so I am quite familiar with that. I don't drive, so I'm fairly relaxed about slow trains.

ah k

Tho I'm pretty happy with my rental situation tbh, the unit I live in is massive and a bargain for its size and price. Because I'm only on a contract til end of the year it suits -- if situation changed and buying was what I wanted, I'd be stupid pissed about prices. My annoyance at housing affordability is actually NOT selfish right now!

yeah, we won't be buying either (it doesn't make sense in an inflated market)

it is amazing how the very people who are terrified of inflation in every other area (currency, grocery prices etc) just sort of sit and gawp at property hyperinflation like it's perfectly fine. i know it's because they're investors but the hypocrisy is incredible. it also reinforces how incredibly out of touch both major political parties are—most people i know (many quite well off) can't buy into housing and are pissed off about it.

...which brings us round to how soundly democracy is failing

okay, democracy in itself is not failing, but the part about representing every person is failing. another thing about all the people i know is that many of them are disengaged from politics beyond the gladiatorial/spectator sport aspect of it all, because they're being ignored

Oh it's the usual, we have the two closest-together major parties in Western democracy, but the most rabidly partisan, tribal voters.. it was bound to happen. Why are we surprised.

john faulkner keeps telling the alp they've lost touch with the people but they're all 'DUDE SHUT UP, WE'RE TRYING TO RUN THIS WESTERN SYDNEY FOCUS GROUP'

xp the tribalism is utterly utterly whacked. i don't get it. i do not get it. i'm also sick of people who are bolt-on howard lickers accusing me of being a labor shill because i'm not as extreme as they are. it's not even possible to have your own opinions where those people are concerned. if your values don't align perfectly with one of the two majors, you're lying to hide something. that's what amounts to discourse these days.

get a blog adam

oh also there's this thing where gillard/swan might say e.g. 'we will increase family benefits slightly' and the murdoch press runs this with a straight face

http://www.independentaustralia.net/Wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/australian-budget-front-cover_090512125211.jpg

and there goes analysis, out the window

Labor would do better if it professed some level of pride in the product it's selling. Dudes, you've won more elections than you've lost since the eighties, the country is not rabidly against you as an insittution, so quit acting like the last 30 years of history are some kind of clerical error. Oh and Liberals, get some fucking policies, you fuckfaces.

seriously, if murdoch were dead and the profit-haemorrhaging news ltd had been allowed to fall on its arse 40 years ago, we wouldn't be having this race to the right

anyway thanks for listening, i'm of the high horse for the time being

http://i3.ytimg.com/vi/zQAHjDwYq6U/mqdefault.jpg

xp utterly utterly otm. labor has deserted itself along with its support base. no narrative, no consistency, gillard doesn't even respond to the party majority (e.g. marriage equality, which the party officially supports)

Other things I would do if I was dictator: execute everyone involved in Q&A - please note, getting partisans from every side to argue with each other is not balanced, it is retarded.

Marriage equality is... uh.. I've got fatigue about the issue. Yes, it'd be nice, but it seems that small-l liberals these days don't do anything to come up with solutions to other problems that need some good progressive thinking. It's all "oh of course I'm a progressive, I believe in gay marriage, and.. I like refugees!". Okay, great, get out there and do some shit to solve some of the easier problems (i.e. gay marriage is all very well and good and I support it, but it mostly benefits the stable, well-to-do in the gay community anyway. Whereas the ones who are discriminated against in the workplace and can't get affordable housing and who have health problems... uh. less so, sorry that was a parenthetical too far)

yeah, nobody ever becomes more informed by watching that inferno of people screaming and tweet-screaming xp

what's amazing is how quickly we went from ~the great australian dream~ to germany-style renting is the norm. a major difference is germans don't have their entitled parents hassling their kids to drop 600 kiloeuros on a bedsit in alexanderplatz

that, and no faeces inspection shelf

mmmm faeces

the two things that really grate with me re marriage equality are

1. it's incredibly incredibly easy to rectify (really, it is an actual administrative change, it's not even a constitutional matter)
2. unlike all the other major 'issues' gracing murdoch's front pages, there's very seriously no valid argument against marriage equality (e.g. at least with boats you can reasonably argue that smugglers are cruel/deceitful/murderous, with carbon tax you can reasonably argue that it doesn't work to solve the core issue or hit the right targets, etc)

(obv i mean the fact of it being an issue is what grates with me, not the equality itself)

Those two things are true. The simplicity of it is the #1 argument. But it's not a magic wand, and gay people will face far bigger issues even after it's resolved in favour of equality - largely because of bigger societal causes that are also the cause of gay marriage not being legal. Marriage inequality is a symptom of a bigger thing.

oh it really is, and the everyday discrimination pales in comparison, but the fact remains that it's p much the only major inequality that's easy to fix

that, and no faeces inspection shelf

cbf checking right now but i'd almost put money on germany having a lower incidence of bowel cancer

maybe... but a shelf!!

Affordable new apartments are tricky though - in the absence of direct govt investment at any rate. Like restaurants etc you're talking about a massive investment upfront on a bet about what the market will bear in future. Some developments are wildly profitable but the risk is high enough that people will only go in on an apartment block venture if they've convinced themselves wild profits are in the offing. This is (one reason) why they're expensive - most of them then drop into negative equity for several years so as an investment proposition they're pretty poor, which is why that market is dominated by foreign investment.

what is that whining coming from the other room, oh it's 'Christopher Pyne', brb after I destroy the television

that guy

every single person who 'likes' pyne falls within a clean subset of the murdoch readership

Yeah Pyne awful as always

twitter is saying he's still butthurt about losing the last election

the affordable housing thing is... vexed to say the least. was talking to someone from the community housing org that I rent my place from, he's fine with negative gearing for example where I thought he might not have been. having written about it for a while in a past life, everybody in affordable housing has their own idea on the problem, and everyone else is wrong.

basically all reasons mentioned so far in this thread play a part in the housing clusterfuck to varying degrees.

i'm sure they do

although surely the one indisputable fact is that housing is inflated

Does doing this work or

yes but i can't see what you're doing

Who Cares: The 2013 Australian Federal Election Thread

ahhhh

My seat's rusted-on labor, but not for the reason you'd expect (unless you kno where I live). Danby's been in the seat nigh 20 years now. He's one of only 2 jewish MOP. He ain't ever gonna lose while he's running. He won again of course. I'm cool with this, tho a green candidate in my area would seem as possible as in Melb so I'm not sure why all the StKilda hippie parents didnt get in.

I was on the phone to mum y'day and heard dad in the background come in the door and realise she was talking to me and he yelled "LOL HOW ABOUT THOSE GREENS OF YOURS" at the phone, and I calmly advised mum "actually Adam Bandt won his seat as it happens" and that shut him up.

bahaha. does he know they have three senate seats too?

gillard hate will not be a patch on abbott hate six months in

― Esteban Buttiérrez (Autumn Almanac), Wednesday, March 20, 2013 8:52 PM (1 year ago)

eight months in but still

to quote the Washington Post, "one of the world's most hated Prime Ministers"

old but still funny

http://www.smh.com.au/national/abbott-lame-gay-churchy-loser-says-his-daughter-20090813-eiu1.html

sounds like a kid to invest in

thankfully a certain poster in this thread's incredible impersonation of julie bishop last night amazingly cheered my spirits

― hipster racist (King Boy Pato), Sunday, September 8, 2013 9:20 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

every time i see her rancid smug face i think of this and lol, even though i didn't even see the impersonation.

to quote the Washington Post, "one of the world's most hated Prime Ministers"

― "that guy from nokia mobile phones!" "what mobile phones?" (King Boy Pato), Thursday, May 22, 2014 9:17 PM (1 year ago)

haaaaaaaaaaaaaa