I thought it might be interesting to ponder what people would do if Australia had a citizen elect Prime Minister vote, similar to the USA citizen elect Presidential vote.
If you could vote directly for Australia's PM and the choice was a 2 horse race between Dutton and Albanese, who would you vote for?

Albanesius has shown himself to be a great statesperson by attempting the Voice coup and then The Voice By Stealth, adhering to the absolute lies about 'poor, poor women' and 'wage gaps', adoring mass immigrants from out-of-synch Third World countries that can't win a cricket match, pushing for clean air when China and India who are the main providers of immigrants are feeding smoke to the atmosphere in huge volumes, by licking the nuts of young criminals, by making a show of attacking the Union that stands out as hairy-chested men while the sheila ones get all the fat, treading the top of the razor wire over Israel and the Gazans and their supporters, staying schtum over cutting kids gonads off,** and pursuing relentlessly the International Socialist Agenda of making us all equally poor with the poorest in the world.

In doing these things he has done a Captain Sobel for Australia and created the motivation for many to oppose all of those mad things, to rise in their righteous democratic wrath to demand corrections, and to force politicians of all kinds to actually address the issues, and has shown us that We, the People CAN say NO - and must do so over and over until they listen.  He has given us back our sovereignty as The People.

What a statesperson!  As for the poll - I am NOT jumping into 2025 under either of THOSE men!  Who is the third option? Jacinta Price?  (tick)


**

Mr Average Albo v Mr Nowhere near average potato.

By Laura Tingle
4h ago


If Peter Dutton has dominated the story of politics this week it is because he has dominated the political agenda this year, as well as this week. (AAP: Bianca Di Marchi)

Peter Dutton held a "doorstop interview" at Parliament House on Tuesday. That's news in itself, at least for the media. The opposition leader doesn't tend to do many press conferences at Parliament House these days.

The last one was on July 2.

Tuesday's doorstop was at 1:45 pm… just 15 minutes before Question Time begins and he had to be in the chamber.

The subjects? Well, here's the list at the top of the transcript produced by his office:

Subjects: Labor's embarrassing international nuclear snub; Labor's energy policy shambles; Labor's international student cap mess; the Coalition's plan to revive the home ownership dream and boost building across Australia; Labor's Big Australia policy; electoral reform; Labor's cost of living crisis; Labor's continuing immigration and visa shambles; the Prime Minister's lack of leadership.

You may detect a certain tone in the descriptions. The colour and politically disciplined messaging in such descriptions, particularly from Dutton's office, have always been a marvel to behold.

We are now just a week from the end of parliamentary sittings for the year. All week, Parliament House has been operating with a freneticism which reflects the widespread perception that parliament will not return next year, either for its scheduled fortnight of February sittings, or for the proposed early budget on March 25.

Whether it does is another story. This is the story of politics as it unfolded this week, brooding under that expectation about next year.

As is probably clear from the opposition leader's subject descriptions, the purpose of the 'doorstop', which ran for less than 15 minutes, was attacking the government, rather than necessarily outlining any detailed plans of his own.



Oppositions are supposed to criticise and challenge government policies. But if indeed the prime minister does decide not to bring the parliament back, and instead goes to see the Governor-General as early as January 17 to have parliament dissolved ahead of a March election, that means we could be potentially a little over three months from polling day.

Yet we know diddly-squat about what the Coalition's policies will be, and Australia is about to go into its great Summer snooze.

The four issues regarded as the battleground of the 2025 election are: cost of living; housing; energy and climate change; and immigration.

The general policy prescriptions for the cost of living, according to the Liberal Party website, include "by cutting wasteful spending" (unspecified).

On housing, there is a plan to "unlock up to 500,000 new homes by funding essential infrastructure" and the ongoing plans to let people access their super.

There's an expectation that Dutton will unveil some more details on the Coalition's nuclear energy policy. But at this stage this seems to be more likely about ramping up questions about the comparative cost of the government's policy.

And even with all the other questions around nuclear energy, this is not something that will deliver any power to the grid at any time when Dutton or any of his colleagues will still be in parliament.

Finally, there is immigration. Dutton reiterated this week that the Coalition would cut permanent migration as well as the number of international students, even as the opposition announced it would not support the government's legislation to put a cap on international student numbers.

"We believe, as I've said before", Dutton told the doorstop, "depending on the economic conditions at the time, we'll set the NOM [net overseas migration] according to that and according to the mess that we inherit from this government. That's the approach that we'll take."

The NOM or net overseas migration is not actually a target, just a forecast based on all the temporary visas — students and skilled workers — who come here on a demand basis. So it remains completely unclear how the Coalition will set it, or cut it, short of cutting the number of workers and students upon whom business, agriculture and our tertiary education sector depend.

Nonetheless, Dutton declared that "if the prime minister is too weak and too insipid to deal with it, if the prime minister can't make decisions that are in our country's best interests, I will — and we will — make the decisions that are necessary to solve the housing crisis that Labor's created by bringing in 1.67 million people over five years* (*just noting Labor's only been in office for two-and-a-half years), and we will get our country back on track."



Which brings us to the prime minister — who has been tied up with international summit season — and the government.

If Peter Dutton has dominated this story of politics this week it is because he has dominated the political agenda this year, as well as this week, even with his rare appearances before the Canberra Press Gallery.

...

Captain Nemo wrote on Nov 23^rd, 2024 at 8:57am:


Quote:


It has been an issue because of the way that the political cycle has wrapped around the Covid economic fall out.

Things will likely return to normal. The issues have not really been related to the incumbent governments it is just that they copped the blame.