General News Tony Abbott Australia's new Prime Minister after election victory

Or any equality.

Shame.

 

I'm pretty disappointed actually, there's something about him that really creeps me out. I don't know if this will have a huge impact on marriage equality in Australia. I know he's anti same-sex marriage, but opinion polls show that the majority of Australians support gay marriage. I watched an episode of 'Insight' a few weeks ago about gay marriage and it really seemed as if it might actually stand a chance of being legalised in the not too distant future. There was even a member of Abbott's Conservative party there in support of marriage equality and she claimed that there were quite a few within the party who agreed with her stance. I feel as if it won't take too long for his opinions to 'evolve' on the matter. Labour didn't support gay marriage until very recently either, so I guess it's really just a matter of time before the Conservatives jump on the bandwagon.

 

It's weird how Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard were both born in the UK.

Oh and our main centre-right party have legalised gay marriage amidst overwhelming public support so it's not necessarily disastrous on that front. The prospect of austerity though? Ha. Your 22 year streak of economic growth might just come to a halt soon because of that, eek.

 

Opinion polls in the Czech Republic show that people over there have been for same sex marriage for years now, but their conservative government still hasn't legalized it yet, nor plans to in the near future.

 

True, but due to the very nature of democracy, government and opposition parties will eventually have to give in to the will of the people. Here in Ireland, opinion polls have shown that the population have been very strongly in favour of gay marriage for years now, but it was only when people became more vocal about it that the government actually decided to do something about it. Now, we're having a referendum on it next year.
I was reading an article a little earlier about how it could still be pushed through in Australia as there are still a significant amount of Green and Labour representatives in the Senate who either are pro same-sex marriage or allow a conscience vote. Also the parties that Abbott is going to have to negotiate with also allow conscience votes on same sex marriage and apparently the Conservatives have not entirely ruled out the possibility of a conscience vote. So there is still some hope there.

 

The Prime Minister of New Zealand about 18 months ago wasn't pro-marriage equality, but then he suddenly had a change of opinion and one thing led to another and now we have equal marriage. So there's always the chance of that happening.

However don't get your hopes up with Abbott, he sounds like an awful person.

 

He recorded a message to play to the Big Brother house mates....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH-3JVepDQI

 

Kevin Rudd
Where did he go?

 

This may be random but isn't there an author called Tony Abbott? o.o

 

1 - all digital media is going the way of digital distribution only.
2 - in 5 years time digital media file sizes (games/movies/etc) will be much much larger than they are now
3 - in 5 years time our internet will be so slow/out of date with the rest of the world that downloading said digital media , streaming, whatever.. will be pretty much completely impractical.


Not to mention the complete lack of care in terms of human rights issues - refugees, equality, workplace rights, etc.

Abbott is bad news.

 

Really? Surprising. I was under the impression that Ireland was one of the "backwards" Western European countries, along with Italy. You guys don't even have abortion, do you?

 

Socially speaking, we were quite backward up until very recently. Homosexuality was illegal here until the mid 90's (though decriminalised). Civil partnerships were only made legal in 2010 I think. But now around 75% of the population is pro gay marriage and it seems that there's less of a stigma attached to being gay here than there is in a lot of other Western countries.
Abortion is a bit of a sticky subject here, it's one of the few issues that we are still a little backward on. It is legal here, but only if the woman's life is in danger or if she is a high suicide risk, otherwise women have to go to the U.K. for it. But Ireland isn't really a Catholic country any more, religion is in rapid decline here and a fairly recent study has shown that it looks quite likely that religion will become virtually extinct here within the next couple of generations so really I can only see Ireland becoming more and more progressive on social issues.

 

Interesting that Liberal in Australia apparently means Conservative...

 

"Classical liberal", and that only in the economic sense. Socially, they're as backwards as the Middle Ages.

 

Sad...

 

the 11 years of conservative government between 1996 and 2007 while did wonders for our deficit, actually led us on a backwards slope to the 1950's. The defining moment was in 2004 when PM John 'Adolf' Howard changed the definition of marriage in the constitution, because it is what 'he believed was right', to exlude any union that was not between a man and a woman.

Meanwhile in the civilised world in 2004 countries like UK, South Africa, Spain, Canada and 'Little Brother' New Zealand were all working in great leaps and bounds towards equality. They embraced all, but not in Australia.

After 6 years of progress and on the cusps of several great opportunities to move forward and join the rest of the developed world with massive advances in technology and equality, we are once again thrust back into the 1950's with a far more conservative PM than the previous Liberal Howard.

The NBN (National Broadband Network) which will see our internet speeds join the digital and Fibre Optic revolution is half way through its planned 10 year build and $40 billion budget. This revolution will allow service in the outback to be more accessible so that people don't have to travel all day, or in some cases several days to see a doctor because they will be able to rely on high speed internet and live video streaming to consult a doctor.

The Liberals are going to scrap the rest of the NBN to 'SAVE' money and upgrade the copper network to increase the these speeds to about 10% that of the planned NBN...and what is the budget for that project? $23 billion...hmmmm

Marriage Equality???? Abbott has a gay sister and he is willing to deny her the right to marry her partner...if that's the way he treats family based on a novel called 'The Bible', then the whole country is fucked.

 

Ah. Australia's Mitt Romney.

I'm highly considering going abroad for a little while.

 

*sigh* Jesus. Okay when I found out he was elected I had a big rage on facebook and while I can't be bothered going through it again.....basically we're screwed. Any chance of gay rights are screwed, the internet is srewed, fundings to a lot of stuff is screwed we're all just screwed. Kevin Rudd wasn't 'great but he wasn't Tony Abott. I have him. There.