Interactive,

You are right about Pyne: dreadful fellow. Even his 'mates' in the truly dreadful political class find him irritating. You can blame the "doctors' wives" in the leafy eastern suburbs of Adelaide for him polluting parliament.

Craig Minns,

Your smug admonition to 'civilised discussion' is likely to stir things up rather than tone them down - even if it was your place to be making such po-faced condemnations. We have an editor/moderator to do that, thankyou.

I find that the more robust kind of language is used when some people give a clear impression that others really should not be permitted to express opinions differing from their own and, occasionally, when a contributor preaches with the idea that everything rotates around him or her. All people are entitled to express their opinions and, generally, it is only when some holier-than-thou smart aleck taunts a poster and sneers at those opinions as though they are unworthy that the tone changes. When and if it does, the creator of OLO will deal with it - not Craig Minns.

Thank you for the excellent example of Kohlberg's Stage 2 of pre-conventional morality, ttbn.

You're really good at this. First you nailed "I'm all right, Jack, screw you" and now this!

It's not often we're lucky enough to encounter a genuine textbook example in the wild, as it were...

Anyone who knows anything about Menzies knows that Bob was hardly a left leaning centrist.

Instead of refuting Everald's peculiar remembrance of history, perhaps it would be more positive to tell him the facts of life?

The Australian political body politic has changed completely out of sight to what was fifty years ago. The Australian Labor Party is no longer the socialist and extremely racist party of the working class and disadvantaged class white Australians. It realised long ago that with rising prosperity, it was losing it's traditional voting base. It needed a new voting base and it chose migrants over it's own people. Labor then became the "Immigrant Party" with it's electoral strongholds in the immigrant areas of every capitol city.

The "centre" was once the preserve of Don Chipp and his Australian Democrats, who were primarily class conscious Labor voters who did not want to associate with the working class peasants. But the Democrats imploded as they grew progressively more leftist. Most of the survivors either went back to the Labor Party, or teamed up with the now defunct Communist Party of Australia, to become The Greens. .

For many years, the Liberals' were the centre -right, with strong connections to the business class. It teamed up with the Country party (now the Nationals). But with ever increasing immigration, much of it from third world countries, it too realised that it needed to suck up to the immigrant vote. So it shafted the white Australian people it has once fought for, and like Labor, did everything it could to destroy the influence of the Australian people in their own country.

With all political parties now sneering at their own people, and sucking up to immigrants, it was hardly surprising that a party would arise which would represent white Australians. Evereld thinks that this is just terrible. How he reconciles the existence of numerous ethnic associations who are only interested in the welfare of their particular religious, tribal, or ethnic groups, but thinks that when white people do it, it is evil, is something he might enlighten us on?

Do you realise Craig Minns, that posts & the attitude it displays is the reason most Ozzies, even those with a university education are coming to despise academia?

Hasbeen, you do realise that the attitude displayed by ttbn is contemptible...don't you?

I recommend you look up the work of Lawrence Kohlberg. I'll even make it easy for you

http://www.simplypsychology.org/kohlberg.html

Perhaps if some of those who post here could move toward developing their moral sense towards stage 4 a few more people might actually bother visiting the site. Yes, I realise that would mean that the endless circle jerk might come to an end,but it might mean that you lot of miserable old buggers might get to enjoy some intelligent conversation for a cha...gawd, what am I saying? OK, as you were. What a silly thing to suggest...

Craig Minns,

Rather than post a link, perhaps you could provide a critique of any of the 'miserable old buggers' comments, using Kohlberg's theory. That would give you a chance to display your erudition, please avoid excessive jargon.