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Talking Politics
- Thread starter Legends of 2017
- Start date
Like your story Tassie Panther. We are all a product of our background. But the same backgrounds don't lead to the same attitudes.
My parents were raised in the depression. Father went to a tech schooling year 10. Apprenticeship followed. Mother the same but as she lived in inner (non gentrified) Sydney she was able to attend the girls high. Her parents never owned a car.
But there view was education was the key to their future and their childrens. They got to London in the 50s so dad could do engineering (institute not university) while mum worked.
And they saved hard and were frugal.hand me downs, repair not replace etc. And for them.the best education they believed was a private school for their children.
In the court I grew up.in every family sent their children to private schools but I was in scouts where we were spread evenly between state high, tech and private. So I didnt grow up with any social hang ups. Most of best friends today are from.those days so are a mix of schooling but obviously similar demographics. Much better than stereo typing people based on their schooling.
And to complete the circle, my friends didn't just repeat their own experience when it came to selecting schools for their children.
And my uni friends who taught in the state secondary system most sent their children to private schools.
My parents were raised in the depression. Father went to a tech schooling year 10. Apprenticeship followed. Mother the same but as she lived in inner (non gentrified) Sydney she was able to attend the girls high. Her parents never owned a car.
But there view was education was the key to their future and their childrens. They got to London in the 50s so dad could do engineering (institute not university) while mum worked.
And they saved hard and were frugal.hand me downs, repair not replace etc. And for them.the best education they believed was a private school for their children.
In the court I grew up.in every family sent their children to private schools but I was in scouts where we were spread evenly between state high, tech and private. So I didnt grow up with any social hang ups. Most of best friends today are from.those days so are a mix of schooling but obviously similar demographics. Much better than stereo typing people based on their schooling.
And to complete the circle, my friends didn't just repeat their own experience when it came to selecting schools for their children.
And my uni friends who taught in the state secondary system most sent their children to private schools.
Begrudgingly, I think my compromise is going to be trying to get the kids into a local systematic Catholic high school - not a high fee paying independent Catholic school of the likes of St.Kevin’s in Melbourne or Joeys and Riverview in Sydney.
Actually all the Catholic schools in my home town are of the low fee, systematic variety. We don’t have any of the elite independent ones. And a couple of the local systematic Catholic schools seem not too bad.
Morrison needs to be indefinitely suspended from Parliament after these damning revelations. Federal ICAC ASAP.
If and when we become a republic, I would rather we not have a president, or whatever we'd call the head of state. People will want to elect that person rather than them being appointed, which would make it political and be dangerous in terms of potential power struggle with the elected government.
I'd like to see a Council of Elders. Like a board, full of highly-esteemed, unimpeachable Aussie legends with no agenda other than what's best for Australia and allowing the government to do its job while making sure it doesn't overstep its bounds.
I'd like to see a Council of Elders. Like a board, full of highly-esteemed, unimpeachable Aussie legends with no agenda other than what's best for Australia and allowing the government to do its job while making sure it doesn't overstep its bounds.
Not sure how the German President gets into office, but that is a model we could look at as the President there is virtually unknown. If we have to have a President and we continue with a Westminster system then the President just needs to oversee things.
Don't mind the idea of a council of some sort as an overseeing role.
But I would return to the question of why we need any oversight of parliament. The people are sovereign and the parliament is supposed to be the representative of the people. You would certainly avoid the crap Morrison just pulled if any ministerial appointment needs the approval of parliament. What you would need is strict transparency rules in the constitution, so, the government is limited as to what it can do outside of parliament and everything the parliament does is in the public realm.
DS
Would much prefer Morrison have the shame of being told to resign by Dutton, rather Morrison resign off his own bat.
Yet you seem to think what Morrison did is just normal, semi-opaque run-of-the-mill governance. Bizarre take.
And here it is, Morrison's payoff to the GG in return for swearing in Morrison to an unknown number of ministries. Smelling a wee bit like corruption there mate.
Germany certainly is one Federated system we can take ideas from. However I find the Swiss Federated model even more intriguing.
In Switzerland they have no single head of state. It is a collective head of state - The Federal Council. They do have a Presidency and vice Presidency. But the President (and Vice-President) hold no more power than the rest of the Federal Council. The President simply chairs the Council meetings and cuts a few more ribbons. The Presidency (and Vice-Presidency) rotates around the table of the Federal Council each year. So the seven members are elected/appointed for a seven year period and during those seven years, each of the members will spend a year as President and as Vice-President.
Fair to say a what we propose in Australia as a Presidency or Collective equivalent is a bit different to the role they play in Switzerland. Not quite apples with apples. But it is an idea worth considering within the bounds of our Federated model. For example, what if each of our 6 states appointed a member to the council - there's 6. Then the two territories get one appointment between them (they could rotate each term - one term NT, one term ACT). There's our 7 Federal Council members to be appointed for a 7 year term. All hypothetical brainstorming of course.
And like the Swiss model, make it minimalist. There is no need for an elitist residence for the President (or any of the Federal Council members). They are just people like the rest of us, that happen to run meetings (when required) at a boardroom in Government House, Yarralumla. The rest of the time, Government House is a publicly owned facility able to be accessed and booked by the public for events. Perhaps combined with some sort of museum. The Federal Council members have their own residence they must maintain like any other person. They get an allowance more in the mould of the original intention of Municipal Council remuneration for their public service and travel.
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On the face of it this sounds like a great proposal.
Of course we have the added complication of what to do with the structure of State governance under a Republic model. My proposal above actually helps with that. Perhaps each state's Federal Council member fills the roll of the current State Governors as well?
Also I was slightly incorrect saying that in Switzerland the Federal Councillors are elected for 7 years. Apparently it's only 4. But it seems that most serve more than one term, hence they all tend to serve a year in Presidency and Vice-Presidency during their tenure, with convention being that these positions rotate every year.
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That's a really interesting account 22. Was your father (like your mother) also city raised in that era?
My maternal grandparents that I was referring to grew up between rural Tasmania and Launceston (which is only really a regional centre of the kind of size that Bendigo and Ballarat are). The norm was no high school at all. They and most of their siblings and peers were out working at the end of Primary School. High school existed, but it was mainly the domain of more well off families, or those few who got scholarships. I was under the assumption that this is how things were uniformly across Australia, but perhaps there was a big divide between the cities and more regional Australia with how accessible opportunities of this nature were.
My grandfather was pretty bright and was offered a scholarship to high school, but turned it down. His family were too poor to bare the opportunity cost of him not being out working. So he worked several jobs in his 'tweens' and early teens, Riding track work at the local racecourse and working in the stables. This lead to a job in a sports store workshop, manufacturing/sewing leather goods - saddlery, footballs etc, while at the same time working as an apprentice in a joinery yard that made timber boats and very early timber shelled caravans. WWII happened and it was his enjoyment trialing timber yachts he was building, that lead him to enlist in the RAN, rather than the Army like some of his brothers and close cousins did. On demobilisation at the end of the war, he went back to being an apprentice, but building actual houses in the post war era. And that was his career from that point onwards. Did really well out of it, that by the time my mother and her brother were children, he'd worked them into a position of being materially above even working class. Fair to say they were lower middle class (materially speaking) during their formative years.
In saying that, the class divide we discussed earlier has interesting cultural hang ups. Like I said in an earlier post. My mother and her brother (my uncle) both attended local public schools and did well there. My uncle was pretty bright and was offered a partial scholarship to a private school for the latter part of high school. He turned it down though, as he just felt it was a scene he didn't culturally fit into. Those people were the 'other' tribe so to speak. Which is interesting, because my grandparents who were from very humble beginnings - even below working class upbringing - were able and willing to cover the gap in fees above the scholarship funds.
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Hurley has to go. Untenable.
And let's give the *smile*'in army blokes a rest for a while, shall we? Julia Gillard would be good.
You know what happened when Howard tried to think outside the box Spook and appoint someone other than army blokes. Only thing he could have done worse is select an alleged paedophile priest rather than just one alleged to have covered up abuse.
On a serious note. Would someone of the background of Christine Nixon be suitable?
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