This fortnight’s Newspoll shows Labor’s two-party lead unchanged on 56-44. Kevin Rudd’s approval rating is down three points to 62 per cent, while Brendan Nelson’s is up two to 16 per cent.
The weekly Essential Research survey has Labor retaining its 59-41 lead. Peter Costello is rated best person to lead the Liberals by 26 per cent against 13 per cent for Malcolm Turnbull, 8 per cent for Julie Bishop and 7 per cent for Brendan Nelson. However, Kevin Rudd is preferred to Peter Costello head-to-head 53 per cent to 27 per cent.
916 Comments
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There is one thing that is fact. The GG is the Queens represtentative.
That would be the Queen of Australia – our Head of State.
Apparently whoever is our Head of State automatically gets Australian Citizenship, something that I think should be revoked.
You implied that ANY scientific theory can potentially be over turned by another theory (which is stating the absolute obvious). I implied in my response that SOME theories are just supported by so much evidence that alternate theories would simply have to be MODIFICATIONS of existing theories, rather than complete rejection of said theory.
The fact you can’t even recognise the point I made is evidence that you do not know what you are talking about. So please, stick to irrelevant case law, it is more entertaining.
Creationism is not a scientific theory. It can not be tested or falsified (year 8 science 101). Thus it should not be treated as a scientific theory, thus it should not be taught in science classrooms.
The theory of evolution does not attempt to explain “how the earth came to be”, it attempts to explain speciation. So this statement is just meaningless or misleading.
Amigo Ronnie & Vera,
His oiliness is slip sliding away. Is a bit rich his campaign complains about the Mooooooooooosey being a treated like a celebrity candidate.
A pot calling a kettle here. he is the one who started it as a celebrity candidate especially after being “endorsed” Ophray.
Being immune – at least for today – from the wiles of GP, I can only marvel that you all bother to respond to him.
With these trolls, nothing is settled, everything must be re-argued from the ground up (e.g. “Who is really our Head of State?” “Is Rudd is a communist?”), and anyone who disagrees with them is called old-fashioned twit names like “dolt” and “imbecile”.
No point arguing with them, yet argument rages. They’ll never concede an inch, never argue rationally, never answer a question, always set out to cause maximum offense and disruption.
As I wrote above, my head is particularly clear today, so I’m not biting. This post is not in response to GP, but more in response to the utter pointlessness of arguing with him or anyone like him (they’re probably all the same person anyway).
He sounds like a political karaoke duet between Joe Hockey and Andrew Bolt… and about as much in tune with reality. Ignore him and he WILL go away.
GP, he never said ‘the buck stops with me’ in relation to the economy, and that article proves it. Nice try again though.
He is the future of the Liberal Party remember.
GP
It’s true that science is endlessly “improving” itself and that old theories are discarded. But that doesn’t mean that the old theories don’t have any utility, just because they are wrong.
Newton’s Law of Gravity is wrong but it’s correct in 99.999% of cases so it still has great usefulness. Almost all advances use it, rather than calculating based on the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.
Climate change is obviously much less “scientifically proven” than gravity. But I think that current theories of AGW are 95% likely to be right (which is what the IPCC says). Something that is 95% likely to be correct is a pretty good bet. If, for example, astronomers said that a meteor was 95% likely to hit earth and kill us all, we would try to blow it up, pray, build shelters etc. 95% is good enough to act on.
Could you show where the High Court has determined that the “Sovereign”, as used in that 1907 ruling, isn’t the *actual* head of state? If they have done so, then “Sovereign” isn’t the word they should be using.
I’m sure we all know the line about how arguing on the internet is like the special olympics.
Much of this thread has gone past “debate” into childish picking on each other; claims, and counter claims. Much of the time about things that happened in the past: as far back as 1907!
Here’s the case:
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/1907/31.html
See for yourself. The judges of 1906 would have cut off their right hands before they wrote a judgement in any way derogating the status of the King as head of state. GP is just pulling our chains as all smartarse Young Liberal prats like doing when they are bored.
Or a simpler question, why is the Queen (her heirs and successors) referenced in our constitution 26 times if she has absolutely no role in our system of government whatsoever?
Did the framers just put the monarchy in there as a joke? And 100 years later, DFAT copied the joke onto their official protocol webpage?
Maybe. Another explanation is that he actually believes the stupidity that he spouts. There are Liberal M.P.s who believe the same thing. I received this email from Cory Bernardi after he said that Kevin Rudd wants Australia to become a “North Korean” style Republic.:
”
Thank you for your email regarding the republic debate on 20 April.
In response to your question, the Australian head of State has been recognised by successive governments as the Governor-General, an Australian appointed by the government of the day.
Once again, thank you for your correspondence.
Yours sincerely
Cory
CORY BERNARDI
Liberal Senator for South Australia
Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Community Services
“
Finns
Palin is an idiot. They can’t hide her for two more months. Her first gaffe proves it. She has not even the most basic idea about the economy. She somehow thinks Fannie and Freddie were run by the taxpayers.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/08/palin-makes-her-first-gaf_n_124792.html
Adam, the judges distinguish the Constitutional Head of the Commonwealth and the Sovereign. They are not one and the same thing, at least by my reading.
Costello is out bad-mouthing Australia today. I suppose this is not “talking down the economy”. Merely “reciting the truth”.
Funny how it’s the truth when Libs say it, but it’s destructive self-indulgence when Swan or Rudd say it.
What I would like to know is why Cozzie’s had 10 months to pipe up in Parliment and yet hasn’t said a word in that place. He saves his commentary for the Coward’s Castle of an overseas destination.
Qu’elle gutless wonder. Always was, always will be.
Generic Person
1/ Can you tell me when a GG is appointed , does th PM consult or advise Queen of England beforehand ? (my #147 queston you may hav missed)
2/ re CC you said in #142 “Nothing in science is ever truly settled: a theory is only settled until another scientist disproves it.”
Thats alittle circular , one may never get to an end on anything that way , so perhaps I should ask you with th 3700 scientists ,…what level of probability of there collective certainty of CC would be acceptable to you ?
Oh dear. The Sovereign is the Queen, her heirs and successors! That is what distinguishes a Monarchy, or constitutional Monarchy from a Republic!
Didn’t you do at least ONE political philosophy subject at uni?
GP, they do indeed “distinguish the Constitutional Head of the Commonwealth and the Sovereign”. They say:
“It is not easy to see how, in such a case, he [the Governor] could perform this duty without dismissing his Ministers and finding others, and that power is manifestly one the exercise of which could not be reviewed by any authority but the Sovereign.”
Thus the Court is clearly aware that the Governor is subordinate to the Sovereign, and they do not mean their use of the expressions “Constitutional Head of the State” and “Constitutional Head of the Commonwealth” to derogate in any way from the status of the Sovereign as head of state. Ever since Australia has been a state, it has had only one head of state, the Sovereign.
I’ve never understood why “constitutional monarchists” want to fudge this point. If I was a monarchist, I would defend the institution of monarchy, not try to deny its existence with transparently spurious arguments and deliberate misrepresentation of court judgements which they apparently assume no-one will bother looking up.
And why does the Govenor General have to swear loyalty to the Queen of Australia?
Yes, he is dealing in semantics. But also if you read earlier replies, he implies that he thinks Creationism counts as a scientific theory. So he actually doesn’t know much about the protocols of the scientific method.
Of course. Because if they are arguing that the Monarch doesn’t do anything, then that is just another reason why we should be a Republic.
There’s no reason keeping someone or something in our constitution if it doesn’t do anything.
GP @ 131
You were ‘laughing uncontrollably’ – perhaps a bit of sober reflection would be more useful? It could dwell on: body count? exile count? homeless count? the number of orphans? the number of jihadis generated? a generation of kids deprived of schooling and thoroughly traumatised? the destruction of a nation’s infrastructure? I must have missed something.
You create a straw man: ‘lefties who proclaim to be bastions of freedom and human rights’. I didn’t proclaim any such sententious rubbish. I would as soon accuse someone of being a bastion of ‘callous, unthinking and hypocritical tory support for a murderous and unjustified invasion for selfish national interests, human rights be buggered and the human toll be buggered’. Regardless of perspective, it is a style of discussion that does not really work very well.
GP, having had a look at your posts, I see that you are clever enough to know that the Iraq War was never about removing a murderous dictator. Another straw man.
Instead, the Iraq war is clearly an on-balance judgment. Howard/Costello got the balance judgment wrong and the Iraqis paid a far greater price for this mistake than they ever paid under Hussein, and with the same level of personal choice in the matter – none. It is true that a major consideration here was in relation to what was happening to Kurds and to Marsh Arabs. Both groups were urged to armed rebellion by the US. Both groups covered by US air power. The Kurds being financed, armed and advised on the ground by US ‘advisors’ and were in active civil war against Hussein. It was a bit like Ossetia, the Russians and the Georgians and the US – but to some that would merely be another opportunity for uncontrollable laughter.
True, Hussein was a murderous and evil dictator who used chemical warfare on his own citizens. There were no civil rights. True, he deserved to be removed from office. But, hang on, given that he was such an evil character, why had he previously been so well-supported by the US? As were many other murderous dictators with long histories of support by the US? As are many of the non-democratic arab regimes currently supported by the US? Clearly the Iraq War benchmark for action was not the murderous nature of the dictator, or the lack of democracy, or the presence of non-existent WMDs, or the supposed but non-existent support of Hussein’s for jihadis or even, really, the suffering of the people- given the horrendous toll during the war, and given that the pre-war sanctions was causing wide-spread malnutrition amongst Iraqi kids even before the war started.
So, despite some bull shit retro-fitting by Howard/Costello/Bush, that it was all because Hussein was evil, the nastiness of the dictator was really not what it was all about, was it?
No 169
Why would Their Honours refer to the Governors-General as the constitutional heads of state/commonwealth if the Queen, in their view, was the head of state?
Whilst the Sovereign has superior rank, she is not deemed as head of state otherwise the judges would have explicitly stated that she/he was. The judges specifically contrast the role of the Sovereign with the role of Head of State/Commonwealth.
No 172
Remember that Kevin Rudd supported the war in Iraq. At the end of the day, if you want to criticise the value of the war, criticise Bush. Howard was merely acting on the advice provided by the CIA. If that evidence was fabricated or manifestly wrong, then the responsibility is solely in the hands of George W. Bush.
GP 173:
1. I already dealt with that question.
2. No they wouldn’t have, because (a) that wasn’t what the case was about, and (b) no-one in 1907 had ever suggested otherwise.
It’s not my fault if you have no understanding of Australian constitutional history.
Diog, [Palin is an idiot] – She maybe an idiot. So is Obama because they came from the same factory.
Obama was a creation of his campaign machine: Young, attractive, articulate, media savvy, inexperience, style over substance and “different” namely Black. Created especially to win over the Left, Liberals and Blacks.
So the McCain camp simply copies the same template: Young, attractive, articulate, media savvy, inexperience, style over substance and “different” namely Female. Created especially to win over anything but the Left, Liberals and Blacks.
Spot the difference.
You answered your own question; the words “constitution heads of state/commonwealth” mean something different to “Head of State”.
Um, no. They didn’t have to say the Queen is the Head of State because everyone who isn’t stupid knows the Queen is the Head of State (or rather at that time the King). Only stupid people debate this point, because they don’t have any real arguments for saying why our Head of State should be determined by birth right alone.
Do I have to do ALL your reading and comprehension for you?
Think of it like a picture. We have a document called the constitution that is up the very top, below that is the Head of State, currently the Queen, below that is the Governor General, below him or her is the Prime Minister and all the cabinet ministers, below them are all the other ministers, below them are the House of Reps and the senate (together on the same level), and below that is the population of Australia who elect people to parliament.
GP, Rudd did NOT support the war in Iraq. You are either very ignorant or a liar. Which is it?
Hansard 18 March 2003:
Mr RUDD (Griffith) (4.44 p.m.)—Of all the questions being asked today by the parliament and the people of Australia in this great debate on Iraq, the most simple is perhaps the most profound. That question is: why? Why war? And why is Australia in this war? If, on the day that the Prime Minister of Australia takes the nation to war, the people of Australia are still asking themselves that question `Why?’, is it any wonder that we are now a nation divided?
The tragedy is that we need not have been divided, because the history of this place is that we have always striven to maintain a bipartisan national security policy. But there comes a time when bipartisanship is no longer possible. That time has come. It has come because this government has walked away from the consensus that has governed the national security policy of this country for a quarter of a century following the withdrawal of our troops from Vietnam. Under that consensus, Australia maintained the centrality of its alliance with the United States, the centrality of its adherence to the UN collective security system, and the centrality of our strategic engagement in our region. These have been the three pillars of Australian national security policy for the last quarter-century. They are the three pillars of Australian Labor Party national security policy. But, under this government, two of the three pillars have collapsed: our policy of strategic engagement in the region and now, with this unilateral policy on Iraq by the Howard government, our policy of adhering to the collective security system of the United Nations. It is for these reasons that our bipartisan consensus on national security policy has collapsed: because you on that side of the House have abandoned it—and have abandoned it comprehensively.
I come to this debate as a longstanding and passionate supporter of the US alliance, an alliance formed by Labor in 1941, an alliance that has delivered great benefit to this nation, to the region and to the world, and an alliance that continues to deliver great benefit. I say—and many would disagree—that America has been an overwhelming force for good in the world. There was the stabilisation of Europe after the war, the stabilisation of East Asia in the post-1975 eriod and the world’s dependency on an open American market to drive the world’s prosperity. America has not been a perfect superpower. We remember Vietnam, we remember Chile and we also now remember Kyoto. But measured against great powers and superpowers in the history of humanity, America has been among the most benign in its use of its great power. That is why today it causes me great pain as a longstanding friend of America to fundamentally part company with this administration’s policy on Iraq and the policy of global military pre-emption on which it is based.
Discorrere con certe persone e come lavare la testa all’ asino.
Some people believe what they chose to believe, and rational discussion with them is a complete waste of time
ADAM
You ar amongst a nest of far left anti American hordes of posters here , who regard that Rudd speech praising USA with horror , and treat Putin as an equally benign peace keepr of liberty & human rights…hence my overwhelming popularity
Yes Ron, I know that.
The point about the Rudd speech is that despite his strong support for the US alliance he did NOT support the Iraq War. Opposition to the war was and is ALP policy, and he like all ALP members, including me, is bound by it.
No 181
I stand humbly corrected. A careless throwaway line on my part.
So you are choosing to admit to being very ignorant as opposed to being a liar? Plea accepted and noted for future discussions.
Brenda can relax for a week. Allbull’s having a holliday.
“Turnbull takes break, Nelson takes heart
MALCOLM TURNBULL has dropped a subtle hint – by taking the week off and going to Europe – that he is not about to make a grab for the Liberal leadership.”
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/turnbull-takes-break-nelson-takes-heart/2008/09/08/1220857456747.html
No 183
No I’m not admitting to abject ignorance. Reading up on the situation at the time, I had confused Crean’s notional support for the war with Rudd. You’ll note that caused some outrage in the ALP caucus.
one of many it would seem
No 186
Dario you have not the competence to even recognise that Rudd said many a time that the “buck stops with me” and pledged to “end the blame game”.
Crean also opposed the war, moron.
Mr CREAN (Hotham—Leader of the Opposition) (2.44 p.m.)—The Prime Minister today, in a reckless and unnecessary act, has committed Australia to war. The Prime Minister had his moment of truth, and what did we see? We saw capitulation and subservience to a phone call from the United States President. This is a black day for Australia and it is a black day for international cooperation.
Why do you keep making ridiculous statements which I can refute in one minute?
No 188
This is what happened according to loony left site:
“Speaking on ABC television on March 23, Crean declared: “The government’s decision to commit them [the troops] was wrong but we’ve got to be realistic about this. They are there, and what we’ve got to hope for, in the current circumstances, is that their task is completed quickly and successfully.”
In other words, on paper, the ALP continues to declare publicly that the war is “wrong”. In practice, however, it has no intention of insisting on the most elementary demand of any party opposed to the war: the immediate withdrawal of Australian special forces troops, warplanes and naval vessels from the Gulf.
Crean’s comments raised a few voices of protest in Labor’s ranks. Harry Quick, a backbencher from Tasmania, declared that “all hell” would break loose in the ALP caucus. But the predicted battle never materialised. Meetings of the shadow cabinet on March 24 and of the full caucus the following day fell right into line. Labor frontbencher Mark Bishop told the media that Crean’s remarks “have the overwhelming endorsement and support of his colleagues.”
Crean baldly insisted that there had been “no change” in Labor policy. But, when asked by the Greens to support a motion in the Senate calling for the immediate withdrawal of Australian troops from the Middle East, Labor Senators insisted the word “immediate” be changed to “safe”. And in a revealing indication of where the Greens are heading, the party agreed to the change.”
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/apr2003/alp-a01.shtml
I also might add that Crean evinced an intention to support the war if the UN approved.
“World Socialist Web Site” ?!!?
So presumably it is alright to quote loony right sites as a reliable source of info about John Howard’s statements and beliefs?
1. Opposition to the war without UN approval was and is ALP policy and was articulated by Crean, Latham, Beazley and Rudd in succession.
2. Yes of course. If the UN had sanctioned the removal of Saddam’s regime the ALP would have supported it, just as we supported Gulf War I. But the UN didn’t approve it.
So you support your arguments by refering to sites that you think are loony?
Time to get a new argument.
http://scaletext.law.gov.au/html/pasteact/1/641/0/PA000170.htm
{[i] Under international law and diplomatic practice, the Governor-General is the Australian Head of State. Soon after Federation, on 8 August, 1907, the High Court of Australia ruled that the Governor-General is the “constitutional head of the Commonwealth” and the State Governors are the “constitutional heads of state” : R v Governor of South Australia [1907] HCA 31; (1907) 4 CLR 1497; see this column, 9 January, 2007, “High Court resolves Head of State debate.” }
http://www.norepublic.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1392&Itemid=1
I think these two quotes are self explanatory.
In reference to dealing with the sates, not the Economy. Should we have taken everything Howard said on Immigration as referring to the Economy?
Was it UN approved?
In any event:
The false information which underpinned the invasion of Iraq was produced by the United States. Australia relies on US intelligence on such issues under the ANZUS alliance and as such Howard can hardly be held responsible if the information turned out to be false. Blair and Bush? Yes, I agree with any criticism with respect to them.
That said, I believe the UN should be abolished such that the sovereignty of nations can be maintained.
They actually aren’t “Head of State” because that term means something different to “constitutional head of government” The reason the Queen is our Head of State is because she is born into that role. The only thing above her in our political system is the constitution itself.
But if you insist that Queen has absolutely no role whatsoever in our system of Government, that is another reason why we should 1) become a Republic 2) Excise all references to “queen” from our constitution.
LOL
says a lot for little johnny’s standing in the world if as Generic would have us believe Blair and Bush knew the information was false but kept the fact from Rodent!
Hello Generic Person
I asked two questons in my #167 , one re Monachy & one re CC , which you may not had a chanse to reply to
Can I now add a 3rd queston re Iraq now , can you tell me whether Crean , Latham or Rudd hav ever said they supported th intial invasion of Iraq by USA ?(please do not include th post FA invasion status just so I understand whether you ar suggesting Labor ever supported th invasion itself)
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