My internet is down again. This time I know it is the modem because I connected an old modem to the NBN box and it fired up. Couldn’t connect because Telstra no longer supports my old modem, but still it works. I pointed this out to the last Telstra Indian guy who called me back following my initial call. Let me explain again, I said patiently at least five or six times before logic won through and he agreed to send me a new modem. In the meantime, incommunicado and no TV. I am in church using its internet connection to write this and feeling disconsolate. I suppose it is a way of partially practising for Bowen’s blackouts to come.
My right knee went belly-up the other day. X-ray and ultrasound planned. In the meantime, hobbling with a walking stick. Albo seems to be a shoo-in to win the election if the polls are close to being right. What does that mean, I ask even more disconsolately nursing my knee.
How bad do you have to be to be kicked out of office? Promise to bring down the cost of living. Promise to bring down electricity prices. Promise to bring down immigration levels. Promise to build new housing. Fail miserably at everything promised and get re-elected. Of course, Dutton offers nothing to inspire voters to switch to the Coalition. That is the real problem.
He has that 60 percent of voters who wisely voted ‘No’ in the referendum to potentially inspire. But his strategy seems to be to match or more than match Labor’s unaffordable spending promises. Of course, he promises to cut immigration by more than Labor and go nuclear in a decade and more. OK, but who cares? I don’t. I intend voting for Clive Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots and to put One Nation second; that is, if they run candidates in my electorate. I am debating whether to put the Greens or Zali Steggall last.
Imagine if Dutton really became Trumpian rather than simply being pilloried for being Trumpian while not being the least bit Trumpian. He would stand tall. Promising to ditch net zero and everything to do with climate hysteria. Promising to cancel all uncommitted projects to build wind and sun desecrations. Promising to bring back ‘beautiful clean coal’ and to fast track the development of gas. Promising to cut immigration to the bone for at least three years. Promising to apply cultural compatibility tests to would-be immigrants. Promising to lower taxes and slash regulations, and to set Jacinta Price à la Elon Musk onto the task of cutting government waste. Promising to increase defence expenditure to 3 percent of GDP within three years. Promising to pass a law ensuring that men in frocks are not mistaken for women. Promising to put a stop to the Aboriginalisation of Australia and to ensure that racially based preferment and DEI meet their timely death.
I am daydreaming of course. Australians aren’t ready, even the 60 percenters. Maybe never will be. A Trumpian Dutton would lose, no doubt. But he is on course to lose anyway and in the worst possible way. A pale imitation of a conservative leader, out to appease all sides in the hope he might scrape enough votes and preferences to crawl across the line. And what then? What then would be a continuation of Australia’s decline, albeit on a slightly less steep slope. Bad rather than worse than bad. What a depressing choice we have in front of us on May 3. We have had depressing choices to make for a long while.
Peter, you are not alone in Warringah in intending to vote for the Trumpets and One Nation. We know of a number of similar voting intentions. The disenchantment with the LNP is widespread. It was what led to the rise of the dreaded Zali in the first place.
It doesn’t matter who you vote for, it’s always a politician gets in.
Except when you vote for Trump!
Meh…a 25% cut per year for two years won’t do much to ease housing demand. I posted the figures on a previous OT; you’d need at least a 50% cut indefinitely to allow the housing stock to return to where it needs to be to house just our present population.
Nor has he addressed the role of indiscriminate mass immigration in undermining social cohesion.
Dutton is merely fiddling at the edges of policy.
Roger
This is what worries me most.
You’re not alone.
This sort of thing seems to happen on public holidays. My old mum’s Telstra modem went tits up yesterday…on Good Friday.
My stepbrother, who lives nearby, is helping her with it, but getting anything done will be a hard ask.
The bad issue is so many oldies like my mum rely on their old-style phones. So when the modem or the electricity goes out they have no emergency phone service. Thanks NBN. /s
Australia will get what it deserves. A Marxist Guv’ment.
Peter
Rather than voting for Palmer’s latest invention, the Trumpet of Patriots, as your first preference please consider the Libertarian Party (forced to change its name from Liberal Democratic Party by John Howard’s law change).
They have a candidate in Warringah, and have a serious principled background to their policies, unlike the T of P.
No.