Australian Politics Forum

LABOR is paying the price for promoting a pathetically childish morality that cares more about seeming good, not doing it.

Its election campaign has been derailed as Labor candidate after candidate has been outed as hostile to our border laws.

At least 17 now have been revealed as critical of the Abbott government policies that actually stopped the boats and saved hundreds of lives.

Worse for Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, they have been hostile to the boat policies he claims he will not change if he wins the election.

Yeah, right, voters will say. As if.

Yeah, right, agrees Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull — himself an expert on moral posturing and turning on a dime.

On Saturday, Peta Murphy, Labor’s candidate in Dunkley, became just the latest to embarrass Shorten, this time on national security laws as well.

She was exposed as having been a committee member of an activist lawyers’ group which attacked our terror laws and even complained that the mass-murdering Islamist al-Shabaah had been listed as a terrorist group.

Now meet today’s exhibit: Marg D’Arcy, Labor’s candidate for Kooyong.

D’Arcy three years ago suggested we actually “sponsor asylum seekers to get on safe boats” to Australia, and last year tweeted to the ABC’s Q & A that ‘Stopping boats is not answer [sic]”.

In fact, she insisted, “it was reckless to talk about turning back boats” — which is now Labor’s official policy. In fact, Shorten says Labor even reserves the “option” of boat turnbacks.

But who cares about Shorten, right? As D’Arcy sniffily tweeted when Shorten helped to sack her beloved prime minister, Julia Gillard, he just “blows with the wind”.

I do feel a flicker of sympathy for Shorten, who, urged on by his cluey immigration spokesman, Richard Marles, did belatedly declare last year that Labor had learned its lesson from its catastrophic decision in 2008 to scrap our tough border controls.

Shorten said he would not repeat what the preening prime minister Kevin Rudd did back then — weaken our laws on the alleged grounds they lacked “compassion”.

Most press gallery journalists had cheered Rudd’s catastrophic mistake. The Age even crooned then that “a stain was removed from the soul of this nation” and “Australia began the process of restoring some of its lost humanity”.

But check the price of Labor’s “compassion”: 1200 men, women and children drowned as they tried to sail here to claim Labor’s prize of a warm welcome. Another 50,000 illegal immigrants did manage to land, many taking the places of genuine refugees, and taxpayers were forced to pay $12 billion to deal with them.

In the end, this armada was eventually bringing in thousands of people from Iran and Sri Lanka, neither country notably unsafe, and even some from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Myanmar and Nepal.

In the meantime, we have been reminded of the savage cost of admitting people we should have kept out. The last three terrorist attacks here — the Martin Place siege, the shooting of police accountant Curtis Cheng and the stabbing of two police in Melbourne — were all committed by Muslim “refugees” or their children.

Yet all this brutal reality — so overwhelmingly obvious — has made zero impression on the thinking of many of the Left.

The consequences of their moral posturing are irrelevant to them.

It seems that a few hundred drowned children is a small price to pay for the satisfaction the Left gets of seeming holier-than-thou.

Children must drown so that Mr Activist may seem good.

But as I say, I almost feel sorry for Shorten, because he at least finally forced his party to do what it should have done nearly a decade ago — back the kind of laws that it took Tony Abbott to restore.

Yet Labor’s years of sanctimony had meanwhile helped to breed a new generation of Labor candidates who no longer cared that what counts most in a politician is not what they feel but what they do.

Not what they planned, but what they achieved.

And so poor Shorten had the first week of this election campaign knocked sideways by a conga-line of people just like D’Arcy.

It started with his candidate in Melbourne, Sophie Ismail, who said she was against boat turnbacks — and even won moral support from Shorten’s chief rival, frontbencher Anthony Albanese.

It got worse by the day.

Next was Cathy O’Toole, Labor’s candidate in the marginal seat of Herbert, who had been photographed earlier this year holding a “Let them stay” sign in protest against boat people being sent to Nauru.

Then there was Michael Freelander, Labor’s candidate in the Sydney marginal seat of Macarthur, who likened the detention centre at Manus Island to a “concentration camp” and falsely claimed that this men-only centre was used to “torture” children.

Knock, knock, Michael. Boat people “tortured” at this “concentration camp” have an option no Jew in Auschwitz ever got: they can just decide to go back home, or even to Cambodia or Papua New Guinea, and the government will open the gates and even fill their pockets with our money.

But on it went. Luke Gosling, the candidate in the Darwin seat of Solomon, and Fremantle candidate Josh Wilson were the next to have been pictured at protests against sending boat people to Nauru.

Cont'd...

Cont'd...

Tasmanian senator Lisa Singh damned boat turnbacks.

Shorten’s team are trying to look on the bright side.

It’s better that this inevitable dissension played out in the first week of this long campaign and not closer to the election.

And, hey, doesn’t it let Shorten show he’s determined to stick with the tough laws? Actually, it makes us wonder how long he can keep it up when so many of his team think those tough laws are vicious — and when he might need to do a deal with the Greens to form government.

But, wait. There is one more candidate in this election who has form on being weak on boats and terrorism, and who adds some context to Shorten’s trouble.

He’s the candidate who when Rudd was prime minister was against sending boat people to Nauru, too.

He’s the candidate who didn’t publicly back Tony Abbott’s plan as Opposition Leader to turn back the boats.

He’s the candidate who warned Abbott against treating terrorism as “a bravado issue”, and bagged his proposal to strip terrorists overseas of their Australian citizenship, claiming that it raised “very big legal and practical issues”.

He’s the candidate who mocked Abbott’s attacks on the Islamic State as exaggerated, saying IS was “not Hitler’s Germany, Tojo’s Japan or Stalin’s Russia” and suggesting a “political settlement” in Syria would sort them out.

That candidate? It’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull himself — the man now warning that Labor can’t be trusted to not go soft on national security.

Take your pick on which side can be trusted least.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/andrew-bolt/rebels-throw-bill-shorten-overboard-on-border-law-policy/news-story/138d45a9d2dadcd3329a4dd06127232b

Bull Shitten's in real trouble now! ;D ;D ;D

How can Liberals claimed to have stopped the boats when within the last two months ... at least three boats of Tamil refugees have arrived.

Sri Lankan would-be migrants returned by Australia 'may be' in detention, being treated properly: authorities

Sri Lankan's Government has confirmed 12 would-be migrants sent back to Colombo by Australia last week are currently in the hands of its Criminal Investigation Department (CID).

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-10/sri-lankan-migrants-returned-by-australia-maybe-in-detention/7399666

Abductions, torture and sexual abuse of Tamils by Sri Lanka's security forces continue under the new government of President Maithripala Sirisena, according to a new report released on Tuesday, which calls on the UN to refer its reports to the International Criminal Court for further action against those responsible for the crimes.

http://tamilguardian.com/article.asp?articleid=15400

____ wrote on May 16^th, 2016 at 11:58am:

Quote:

................Mr Dutton also said the Government's assertion it has stopped the boats remained accurate, because the dozen on board were sent back to Colombo last week.

"We were able to successfully return those 12 people, which included men women and children, back safely to Sri Lanka on the sixth of May," he said.......................

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-10/sri-lankan-migrants-returned-by-australia-maybe-in-detention/7399666

the activist Layers are upset with the new border security laws as they can't make themselves millionaires anymore dealing in Illegal boat peoples misery..

they are nothing but scum of the earth..

so they joined the Labor/Greens party to try and open up the borders again because they know that a Labor/Greens coalition will do exactly that..

Division is when 44 coworkers back the other bloke :)

Sprintcyclist wrote on May 16^th, 2016 at 12:29pm:

____ wrote on May 16^th, 2016 at 11:58am:

Quote:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-10/sri-lankan-migrants-returned-by-australia-maybe-in-detention/7399666

Refoulement is illegal and in the near future, members of the last government will be prosecuted.

The boats arrived ... and are still coming to Australia ... so the Turnbull mob didn't stop the boats.

Its time wrote on May 16^th, 2016 at 12:33pm:

Division is when 44 coworkers back the other bloke :)

LOL! Another Shorten thread - come on Righties just admit the love you have. Nothing like a good tug looking at a picture of Shorty - LOL.

Vic wrote on May 16^th, 2016 at 12:39pm:

LOL! Another Shorten thread - come on Righties just admit the love you have. Nothing like a good tug looking at a picture of Shorty - LOL.

not sure why they're so surprised that so many labor members don't agree with off shore detention ....

Vic wrote on May 16^th, 2016 at 12:39pm:

Its time wrote on May 16^th, 2016 at 12:33pm:

Division is when 44 coworkers back the other bloke :)

LOL! Another Shorten thread - come on Righties just admit the love you have. Nothing like a good tug looking at a picture of Shorty - LOL.

Should we be talking about Labor MP Tim Watts, Member for Gellibrand, Victoria instead? I mean, he is the one running as Leader of the Opposition, right?

Armchair_Politician wrote on May 16^th, 2016 at 1:23pm:

Vic wrote on May 16^th, 2016 at 12:39pm:

Its time wrote on May 16^th, 2016 at 12:33pm:

Division is when 44 coworkers back the other bloke :)

LOL! Another Shorten thread - come on Righties just admit the love you have. Nothing like a good tug looking at a picture of Shorty - LOL.

Should we be talking about Labor MP Tim Watts, Member for Gellibrand, Victoria instead? I mean, he is the one running as Leader of the Opposition, right?

you could try talking about the libs policies ..... oh wait, you can't do that can you! ;D ;D ;D ;D

Armchair_Politician wrote on May 16^th, 2016 at 1:23pm:

Vic wrote on May 16^th, 2016 at 12:39pm:

Its time wrote on May 16^th, 2016 at 12:33pm:

Division is when 44 coworkers back the other bloke :)

LOL! Another Shorten thread - come on Righties just admit the love you have. Nothing like a good tug looking at a picture of Shorty - LOL.

Should we be talking about Labor MP Tim Watts, Member for Gellibrand, Victoria instead? I mean, he is the one running as Leader of the Opposition, right?

Should we? The OP Heading is "Bull Shitten thrown under bus by ALP rebels"
indicating the thread is on Bill Shorten? If it were Tim Watts, he would be referenced in the Thread Title wouldn't he?

At least 17 now have been revealed as critical of the Abbott government policies that actually stopped the boats and saved hundreds of lives

Most people capable of thought would agree with them.

They do not really seem to have saves any lives, they just sent them to drown somewhere else.

In the end it didn't even save Tony, they made him walk the plank.

Dnarever wrote on May 16^th, 2016 at 7:40pm:

At least 17 now have been revealed as critical of the Abbott government policies that actually stopped the boats and saved hundreds of lives

Most people capable of thought would agree with them.

They do not really seem to have saves any lives, they just sent them to drown somewhere else.

In the end it didn't even save Tony, they made him walk the plank.

most people DON"T..

and was a large part of the Useless Labor/Greens coalition been thrown out..

but hey...

don't let a few lies get in the way of a good story Bro..

Billiar would be proud of you..

Labor really should have vetted their candidates better. The fact that so many have now publicly disagreed with one of Labors most poignant electoral issues (illegal boats policy) is astounding.

Labor won't win votes by going soft on illegal boats and immigrants (as those people would vote green already); they will lose votes to the Liberals though.

Webtoad wrote on May 16^th, 2016 at 8:36pm:

It is not fact at all. It is bullshit. Not one ALP endorsed candidate will go to this election without a public declaration supporting ALP policy across the board, including on refugee/boat policy.

If you have a link which proves me wrong, I'm sure you'll post it.

Webtoad wrote on May 16^th, 2016 at 8:36pm:

Liberal's primary in todays poll, crashed 10%
Labor is in stagnation.

Neither are benefiting with their illegal refoulement policy : Sending Tamil Boat Refugees back to rape and torture camps in Sri Lanka.

Australian Politics Forum
http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl General Discussion >> Federal Politics >> Bull Shitten thrown under bus by ALP rebels http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1463363690 Message started by Armchair_Politician on May 16^th, 2016 at 11:54am