- Would the vote on the private member’s bill for marriage equality have played out differently with all parties allowing conscience votes? Both Tony Abbott for disallowing conscience votes, and Julia Gillard for allowing the vote to go ahead knowing that it would fail, were cynically dodging behind parliamentary procedure to avoid properly representing the electorate on this issue.
- Mitt Romney revealed his inner sneering plutocrat, but will it really cost him the presidential election? and how much of the money he’s raising is going to go to his campaign and how much to the general Republican machine? What will it mean for Congress?
- Another damning Aboriginal death in custody report raises scarcely a blip on the national radar.
As usual for media circus threads, please share your bouquets and brickbats for particular items in the mass media, or highlight cogent analysis elsewhere, on any current sociopolitical issue.
I rather enjoyed Damon Young’s skewering of the slippery slope argument on the Drum today:
Oops, I guess I need some kind of anchor for that link. Let’s try that again
Anyone else notice that Tony Abbott said that Cory Bernardi said something really horrible (gay marriage leads to beastiality), but that’s not why he had to resign. The problem was that he said that awful thing while in too high profile a position (as Tony Abbott’s parliamentary secretary). Tony Abbott is totally cool with members of his party “freelancing on the back bench”. WTF, Tony? Seriously?
Not just you, Arcadia. I think it’s pretty obvious he was not sacked for offending a large swathe of the community, but rather for making the Liberal party look bad.
Christopher Pyne gave me a moment of hilarity this week when I heard a sound byte on the radio where he accused the Government of “scraping the bottom of the scum bucket” with regards to a scare/smear campaign on Tony Abbott. Because they don’t need to do that, he does it so well himself and also their constant negative focus on Julia Gillard. And then I got cross at my radio station for again giving air time to more quotes from the Opposition.
via @Drag0nista’s weekly roundup of Australian political journalism, this thoughtful piece:
* Tim Dunlop (The Drum/Unleashed): What sort of country are we?
I’ve given up watching Q&A for the sake of my blood pressure, so can anyone with a tougher constitution tell me if anything amusing arose from having Kelly O’Dwyer on with Tanya Plibersek? Was the former forced to defend her willingness to play to the misogynists?