Australia General Discussion

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What is the actual point of tuition deregulation, besides causing needless suffering to those who pay the fees? Does it save the government money or something?

The rationale is that if the universities can charge higher tuition, they will make up the shortfall in government funding - some of which appears to be going ahead regardless of whether or not the deregulation passes.  As to the students who have to pay the fees, it should be pretty clear how this government feels about them.

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Thank god the Labor party is putting equal rights to a conscience vote.  Otherwise, we would just end up ramming this policy down the throats of the public which supports gay marriage 2 to 1, at least.  Lol.

The most disappointing news out of the last week has been Shorten's agreement with the Coalition on not having any room for the people who are drowning in the ocean.  It's times like this where I feel really hopeless at the fact that whether the Labor or the Liberal party has control, this country continues to maintain brutal and dehumanising tactics to "discourage" illegal immigration.  On the plus side, this controversy brewing over the Abbott/Dutton proposal to let politicians strip Australians of their citizenship, rendering them stateless without due process, seems to be occurring not just outside of but also within the leadership, with Pyne, Brandis, Bishop, Andrews and Turnbull all on record as having problems.  When a policy is too fascist for Chris Pyne and George Brandis, you really have to wonder.

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I wonder how many Liberals will vote for marriage equality and how many Labor against. I'd expect the Nationals to be near universally against.

I don't know that the Liberals have committed to holding a conscience vote, so you'd expect all of them to vote against it?

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Good news for people smugglers - come to Australia to collect your paycheck!

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Could the upcoming Royal Commission roll him or is that all going to be hot air?

my prediction atm is hot air, from what I've seen so far.  Right now I'm still coming to terms with the fact that the Labor party that I once championed myself was also guilty of paying people smugglers.  Jeeeesus christ.

Tonight a deal was announced by the govt with the Greens, btw, for $2.4 billion in savings by making cuts to pensions for the wealthiest, with increases for lower income brackets.  A pleasant surprise.

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I don't agree with the changes to the pension and I'm surprised the Greens do.

The Greens have been dudded. Their support was based on a vague idea of considering superannuation in the tax white paper. The Government has said there will be no changes in this, or the next term. So they're including it, with no specific actions behind them.

I dunno about that, the Government has generally lied a lot about virtually everything already, so I wouldn't be surprised if there were pension cuts in a post-election budget

Also, with the Greens PV increasing in the past weeks they've given ammo to Labor by linking the Greens to the Libs, it doesn't make sense politically or economically.

This is purely speculation, but my (admittedly biased) take is that the Greens can probably use an example of collaboration with the government, and I supported the changes without realising the super commitment was even a part of it, so the usefulness of that promise isn't super relevant to me.  The Greens are launching a full scale attack on both major parties over treatment of refugees and it helps to provide another issue where there appears to be strong disagreement with Labor, I suppose.  Who knows though really.  Why do you disagree with the pension changes?

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I don't support the changes because they aren't fair. A person who own their own home and has like 400k in invested will lose access to the pension when their super would pay out at most 20k a year. A for what? Some will get $30 an extra every fortnight and govt will save 2.5billion - it doesn't really seem all that 'fair' to me. People who have worked their entire lives with the assumption that they will have a part pension to support them are having the rug pulled out from under them.

The more I hear this line of reasoning the more alienated I feel.  Was watching Question Time yesterday and was not enjoying the way Labor is handling this at all.  The price of homes being what they are, we'll never be able to afford a house here; we don't entertain it as a serious concept.  If you own a home and have 400k invested, good for you, I hold no animosity towards you, but I also don't think you're really being hard done by.

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This looks pretty dire for Abbott.