Shorten a Joke

The Coalition’s bounce in the polls is nothing more than a honeymoon – one of those honeymoons you sometimes hear about where the bride and groom sell up, quit their jobs, and travel the world with no real intention of returning, Labor says.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said it was important not to read too much into recent polls. “Just as there’s a honeymoon period with marriages, there’s one with new leaders as well. This one just happens to be one of those ones where the couple goes and lives in another country for a few years, maybe does a stint in New York, some backpacking through Europe and Asia on the way home, before returning relaxed, refreshed and with a couple of high-school aged kids,” he said.

Mr Turnbull was unreachable for comment, lying on a beach in the Maldives sipping cocktails.


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We must remember this Follow the power: Shorten’s gaffe-a-thon … by CrikeyUncategorized

Bill Shorten’s week of gaffes. He may have pulled the ultimate power move on the Heath Services Union yesterday, but this week The Power Index is finding it a little difficult to take Bill Shorten seriously.

When the self-described “Gillard man” makes statements like: “I haven’t seen what she said, but let me say I support what it is that she’s said,” as he did yesterday on Sky News, we wonder whether Shorten really deserves his spot at the top of the Political Fixers power list.

When questioned how he can support the PM if he doesn’t know just what she’s said, Shorten responded with: “My view is what the Prime Minister’s view is.”

http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/04/27/follow-the-power-shortens-gaffe-a-thon-bof-beats-on-judiciary-twiggys-trap/

what a bell-end

he should join the circus

Branch-stacking: Bill Shorten is failing the Labor Party

Today we focus on Labor's flaws, especially in Victoria, where federal leader Bill Shorten's Right faction wields substantial power. In a series of articles this year, The Age has revealed fraudulent conduct in state Labor, including instances of branch-stacking and the use of gift cards to buy memberships – against party rules.

Labor has a long and disgraceful history of this. Indeed, its more colourful characters have made it an art form, one that has endured over many decades – despite leadership changes, despite exposure and shame. Put simply, branch-stacking is fraud on the broader membership and, ultimately, on the people who would support the left spectrum of politics. It is a device designed to deceive every other member of the party.

Mr Shorten is making only a pretence of cleaning this up. His platitudes calling for tough action against branch stackers ring hollow. Instead of ensuring Labor in Victoria is washed clean from top to bottom, and instead of commissioning an independent inquiry into it, he has implicitly sanctioned an investigative committee that amounts to an inside job.

To be clear, it is Mr Shorten's Right faction that has been shown to be behind much of the branch-stacking and corrupt conduct, and he seems unwilling or incapable of facing up to it. His failure to do underscores the lacklustre nature of his leadership to date and his patent aversion to reforming the Labor Party generally.

The Age has long called for Labor to democratise and to purge itself of the disproportionate influence brandished by unions and factional chiefs in its policy-making and preselection structures. We say to Mr Shorten, as of now you are failing on several counts. It is entirely within your power to demand an independent inquiry into Labor's internal practices, and you should do so now. So far, you have demonstrated a tendency to wimp out.

Labor must clean up its internal administration, eradicate the bullying in its factions, and remove itself from the tentacles of corrupt union leaders. For the good of voters who align themselves with the left of centre of politics – indeed, for the health of Australian democracy more broadly – Labor must become a transparent and fully accountable party, not one that allows its branch operatives to deceive its members and cover the party in muck. Over to you, Mr Shorten.



Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/comment/the-age-editorial/branchstacking-bill-shorten-is-failing-the-labor-party-20151106-gksw1p.html#ixzz3tRO02NrT 
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Both Parties are a bloody joke Pete

Someone has to run the country...can anyone suggest another alternative to Labor and Liberal.

Don't say Independents...what a schmozzle that would be...would never get concensus at all.

As for the Greeens....we would be living in bark huts and rubbing two sticks together to make fire.

God help us all if ANY party had full go, can you imagine what we would have been if idiot Abbott had had a clear go -- and none of them are that much different -- except most have a brain

There is no question in my mind, the best man (out of a possible suss lot) is Malcolm Turnbull. I personally would rather see the Libs at the helm rather than Shorten and his cronies any day.

 

Well Turnbull is a smart bloke but he still has the old Abbott Policies and needs to get going with somme more empathy as well AND also get rid of a few of the other heartless mongrels in the party --which I DON'T think will happen

Shorten does not get it. Unions only cover 10per cent of Australia’s private workforce these days and the numbers are sinking. Former ACTU Secretary Bill Kelty saw it coming in the mid-1980s. Kelty was around when Bob Hawke was Prime Minister. Kelty and Hawke saw the need to modernise the way the workforce was represented.

Asked recently why unions had failed to make inroads into the services sector, former ACTU Secretary and Labour Minister Simon Crean said, “I don’t think they have traditionally focused on it. It requires a new style of leadership. It requires an intense understanding of where the jobs and economic opportunities are coming from.”

Shorten shows time and time again that he is not the man for the Lodge. How could he be? If he were a Kelty or Hawke, he would be prepared to call the CFMEU for what it is. Imagine what what Kelty or Hawke might have done. They were about setting the agenda, not reacting to it.

From opposition, how powerful would it have been if Kelty got on a plane and flew to WA to find a settlement for the Gorgon LNG project - to get it back on track so it could start earning revenues for the Australian economy? He would have wanted to find out what part excessive labour costs and disruptions had in driving the project cost up from $37 billion to $54 billion. He would want to understand why the project was running 60 months behind schedule and why huge modules - some weighing more than 2,000 tons - all have to be made off shore.

Out of control unions and their claims have made the Australian resource sector amongst the most expensive in the world to invest in. How can new investment be attracted when Labour governments are prepared to fight these investors and not sort out our domestics?

Hawke would have been in tune enough to sense the damage that enterprise bargains imposed on projects like the Sunshine Coast Hospital have done, and the further harm as they are then extorted across the whole of the Queensland construction industry and the nation. He would have worked out that the public eventually pays as the high cost of new infrastructure erodes recurrent budgets for new health and education services. It was Hawke who drew the line in the sand and told the BLF that enough was enough. It led to their deregistration.

https://sourceable.net/bill-shorten-out-of-touch-and-out-of-date/

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