579, get it right, for once. hard right politics is total freedom or anarchy. everything between the enlightened, reforming, conservative, sensible centre & the hard right is varying shades of Libertarianism. if you wish to continue losing friends & un-influencing the average Aussie voter, then keep lying to & stealing from them.

the Abbott government's most important promise was to balance the budget ASAP, so they have not broken 1 single promise or told any lies at all.

and here is a tip, i am not even an LNP supporter at all, but a conservative swinging voter who is honest enough to give credit where credit is due. i will however be preferencing labour ahead of the LNP at the next QLD state elections if they continue on with selling assets.

Poirot, so you are going to continue the left wing habit of picking up your bat & ball & going home every time you cannot honestly win the debate or answer a simple question. how sad & pathetic?

Both of you, try googling or reading a book on the philosophy of "common sense realism" or to give it its full contextual title "enlightened, reforming, centrist, conservatism", you know, the people who invented modern western democracy that tolerates your desire to attack it.

579 & Poirot, BTW as you both well know the LNP is so similar to Labour because it is in fact a left of centre party with many closet Fabian socialists like Malcolm Turnbull in it.

Dear GrahamY,

We obviously have different views of Tony Abbott. Both are garnered through personal observations and assessment of his behaviour.

I would contend the validity of mine probably suffer less from not being as closely aligned to him politically as you are, but possibly suffer more from the obvious degrees of separation.

My own take on Abbott before that speech was one of being prepared to wait and see. For instance I had written on this forum my hopes for how the time he had been spending in aboriginal communities might have translated for a more insightful response to issues facing some of those communities once he got into power.

But what he did on that day tarred him forever in my eyes. The enormity and horror of it was overshadowed by the reaction to Gillard's response but not to me and the more I looked at it the more my eyes were opened to the type of man he is and what he was capable of. I notice you didn't reference the speech nor Senator Boyce's take on it.

I remember an occasion, when I was still with the Democrats, when I met a judge I knew in the local supermarket. He was a member of the Labour Party and I was the campaign manager covering two electorates and two candidates one of whom was the victim of some pretty unsavory tactics by the Greens. I was spitting chips about what she had gone through and related my disgust. His reply was there was hope for me yet because to succeed in politics you really need to be a 'hater' and he should know because it was those hated the hardest were the ones who got to the top in his own party.

Cont..

@Poirot

I note that Poirot is trying to re-imagine herself as a voice of reason and moderation:
<<There are also some disgusting right-wing tweeters who I avoid like the plague.There are also lefties who are over the top - and I avoid them as well.>>

Then there was her comment a week or some ago which allowed that New Matilda did not always reference their material properly (mind you it was issued and part of an attack on "sceptics").

It’s a pity we know her too well to swallow the remake

ROFLMAO

Yes, thank you, ROFLMAO or SPQR or whatever you call yourself (you appear to use both of them liberally, so I'm not sure which to address you by:)

Regarding:

"Then there was her comment a week or some ago which allowed that New Matilda did not always reference their material properly (mind you it was issued and part of an attack on "sceptics")."

Could you refresh my memory by posting the comment referenced..I can't remember it - and judging by your usual standard, you've probably got it wrong - again.

Thank you (in anticipation)

.....

imacentristwhatever,

"Poirot, so you are going to continue the left wing habit of picking up your bat & ball & going home every time you cannot honestly win the debate or answer a simple question. how sad & pathetic?"

What are you talking about?

I'm still here....

Mr Hockey said the Senate was in danger of becoming “irrelevant” and Australian voters could face a change of government, after The Australian revealed the Prime Minister was being pressured from Nationals and Liberal senators to compromise on its paid parental leave policy.

Opposition Treasury spokesman Chris Bowen jumped on the remarks, saying Labor would “fight to win” if a double dissolution was called.

“If the Treasurer and the PM want an election, bring it on,” Mr Bowen said. “The PM and the Treasurer would do better to re-evaluate their policies, to think about why the Australian people and many people in the Parliament have rejected them so comprehensively.

Who knows how Tony Abbott and Clive Palmer will work it out because both of them are capable of saying one thing one day and something else the next.”

Independent crossbencher Nick Xenophon said he was willing to negotiate with the government but said broken promises had undermined their budget measures.

“The government needs to know that their moral authority in relation to many parts of the budget has been diminished because they are doing things contrary to what they promised just before the federal election in terms of health and education cuts,” Senator Xenophon said.