I'm glad the video covered some good points, I recommend viewing or at least skimming, instead of knee-jerking at the title.
One of the big issues with political donations, being a form of capital influencing politics, is that people with more available capital can have more influence. On an idealist level, this contradicts some expectations we might have of a democracy with fair representation, like the ideal of one-person-one-vote. But looking at present conditions rather than ideals, we have to consider wealth inequality: I'm no expert but I think it says a lot that in 2023, the Australia Institute claimed "Ninety-three per cent of the gains from economic growth have gone to the top 10 per cent of income earners. The rest of us — the bottom 90 per cent — have only got 7 per cent of that economic growth." (also note, "the top 10 per cent of income earners get a lot of their income from profit", whereas the bottom 90 per cent mainly get it from wages. The importance being they have very different political values and priorities to most workers.) So, we can see that even though the worker class vastly outnumber the owner class who make money from profit, their capital and therefore ability to influence politics, even as individuals rather than interested corporations, far outbalances the masses even if we were somehow all aligned.
When some parties have enough funding for constant print, internet and television ads while others are basically unknown by most until election day, it's a shame. Look at Clive Palmer as an example of disproportionate funds, although the same applies to the big parties even if we're so used to it. I've seen some countries give free airtime (maybe 5 or 15 minutes?) for every party or candidate to explain their platform, I think that's a great idea at the least to reduce unfair advantage.
Another reason for removing lobbying is that I'd rather my union (for example) not waste their money on it. In a recent survey they did, one of the questions was what priorities do we think the most of their money should be spent on, and one of the options is lobbying the Labor Party. It's just a coping mechanism for putting their preferred party ahead in a broken system.
I think it's nice to see that that the proposed South Australia laws also acknowledge the status quo and in some cases give some advantage to newer parties which don't have all the seats and existing exposure of the main parties.
Eh, while that hypocrisy is real, your post didn't really describe the situation. When it comes to 'terrorism', in the past few years and much of that article, ASIO have consistently been talking about neo-Nazism (particularly the NSN). Neo-Nazis are not anti-capitalist nor a minority group defending themselves (they are a clear aggressor). And of course they're bad for liberal democracy/capitalism and too foolish/idealistic to work alongside capital like 1920s fascists, instead desperately resorting to lone-wolf terror acts (to try and incite a nonsense 'race war'), so yes, they're being readily branded as terrorists, and correctly - they are explicitly aiming to promote terror.
As for the other cases being discussed like the Wakeley stabbing, I don't see how that's in the self-defense of a minority group. As far as I've seen, they're not attacking fascists or CEOs, or trying to enact systematic change. There's right ways to do political violence or self-defense, and these cases don't seem to be them them.
"This is the new thing, people will go to violence with little or no warning, and they [have] little or no planning in some of these that I've talked about," he said.
Both US athletes intended to bring black gloves to the event, but Carlos forgot his, leaving them in the Olympic Village. It was Peter Norman who suggested Carlos wear Smith's left-handed glove. For this reason, Carlos raised his left hand as opposed to his right, differing from the traditional Black Power salute.
Classic "no worried, she'll be right" attitude, Pete.
(has been answered in https://aussie.zone/post/12260517/10873558 , posted a minute after yours)
Anecdotally, the one in a park near where I lived was much large than that. Some examples of larger ones can be found just by searching images of australia war monument in park
(not including the huge ones in some cities, like the Anzac Memorial in Sydney or the Canberra Australian War Memorial)
As some other mentioned, the monuments were often built soon after the war by people who had recently lost their relatives. When there were massacres of Aboriginal peoples, they obviously didn't have the authority and resources to build similar memorials in towns, and to be blunt, the towns probably had few people who cared enough to build anything on their behalf, even now there are few public memorials (and often small ones) of massacres and Aboriginal loss. And that difference you pointed out reveals a lot about we see the historical effects of who has power and who writes history.
I haven't really thought about this much, because military commemoration is just normal here and I thoughtlessly assumed it was similar around the world. And I didn't really consider how unnecessarily big many of them are. Sure, it's easy for me to point to the US and say 'that's what real military worship is!' but you're right that there are many reminders of war around, most obviously the monuments in parks and national ceremonies (ANZAC Day, Remembrance Day). You mention that you have a foreign background; do you mention this because the monuments are not normal where your background is, or is it because our wars are offensive and seem atrocious to have statues for?
It's important to understand the intended purpose of many of these as similar to a gravestone, it's meant to be a respectful reminder of the town's loss rather than glorifying war, like Aussiemandeus said it's the towns wanting future generations to be aware of their town's sacrifice for the war effort. However, there is also the fact that national ceremonies are sometimes used as propaganda to glorify wars of invasion or imply they were all honourable: the only one of those ANZAC wars where Australia was actually invaded was WWII (various attacks), all the others were joining political allies (first UK, then US) in other continents in imperialist wars, and in many of the wars they were clearly invasive and Australia's participation should be denounced (including the Korean War, Vietnam War and Middle Eastern conflicts).
So while I can tolerate (critically) the community monuments commemorating dead soldiers, especially those built after WWII when sacrifice was in the self-defense of the country, we must also be critical of those trying to glorify war and imperial conflicts, just as we should be critical of those who glorify or trivialize the colonial invasion of this continent.
Reorganised my fridge. Not only is it more pleasant and easier, but I no longer have to throw out unused milk. Also organized my pantry and now have enough storage that I can bulk-buy a few regularly-used items when they go down to half price.
Have you found a good bargain lately
Yeah I found the meeting room where my office keeps the gourmet visitor tea. (don't worry: if you've watched the news, ever, you don't like my employer either)
Miraculously got some panko veal schnizel on discount yesterday. Came out of my pan blackened on the outside but tasted perfect.
My digital thermometer seems to top out at 100 so should get a cooking thermometer some day.
but open to other rabbit holes
If you like satirical comedy or entertaining educational shows, there's a lot on Australian television (particularly shows from the national Australian Broadcasting Corporation). Also, for people who enjoyed The Office (at least, the UK version, I haven't seen the US variant), I recommend Utopia - it's far from a clone but has a lot of similar themes of workplace life mixed with poking fun at bureaucracy and government.
but I don't live in australia, or have a VPN to access ABC iView!
Visit the sidebar resources of !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com, or even just YouTube will get you a lot of them.
@eureka
@aussie.zone