Because they take the title "opposition" too literally and oppose everything, regardless of whether its good policy or not. They're supposed to be the "alternative government" but their behaviour is almost completely defined by Tony Abbott's case of sour grapes which must be due for an entry into the Guinness Book of Records by now.
ok well lets take the issue of assylum seekers, the oppostion has a policy that has been proven to work. The government also has a policy that is not legal. I cant see any opposition for oppositions sake there, can you?
Tony Abbott is extremely highly educated and travelled, I can't see anything wrong with him saying no to bad policies that are cooked up by trade unionists and Bob Brown and handed to the government to implement. The Gillard government is so amateur that the opposition has to keep saying no to prevent them trashing things any more than they already have. To show how utterly stupid the government is, they are actually, and this is not a joke, telling the public that Processing refugees in Nauru would not work. Is Julia Gillard retarded?
Both parties' asylum seeker policies suck. The same law that nukes Labor's plan to play swapsies with Malaysia also makes the Coalition's Nauru option a non-(re)starter. Apparently the "solution" is to just re-write the laws and the two parties can't even agree on how to do that, largely because Tony Abbott is playing a broken record called "I want Nauru". The whole issue should be so trivial its barely worth mentioning, but both sides are choosing to have a public squabble over the location of where to enact what is essentially the same crappy policy. How Tony Abbott's proudly espoused "Christian values" allow him to support locking up innocent people on a remote desert island isn't something I fully understand either, but I suspect it has something to do with getting his name in the newspaper.
And just to add to that, if Tony Abbott came out and said: "I am a fiscal conservative and a Christian. If we processed all asylum seekers on the mainland we would save hundreds of millions of dollars every year, reduce bureaucracy and complicated arrangements with other countries and ensure a humane outcome for these people in line with the teachings of Jesus Christ our saviour" then I would support Tony Abbott's position. Read that again. I would support Tony Abbott if that was his position.
Love for Enemies Mt. 5.38-48 27 But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, 28 bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you. 29 And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloak forbid not to take thy coat also. 30 Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again. 31 And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise. Mt. 7.12 32 For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them. 33 And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same. 34 And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again. 35 But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. 36 Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.
Interesting that Gillard tells the nation that it's all Tony Abbott's fault, and that he is the worst man in the world. Bob Brown also refuses to support the Malaysia program, but she is not repeating his name as culpable. She is Bob Brown's little poodle. Her moral outrage seems to be rather elastic, much like her personal integrity.
Mate I keep saying this because half of your posts of a political nature could have been written by Kebbin Rudd or Julia Gilliard's speech or talking point writer. It's like it has come out of the Labor governments mouth and you take it as gospel. Which doesn't change the fact that we would have been ok without almost ALL of those measures. With or without Australia would have come out ok. It may have been tough without but we would have got through and all the malinvestment been purged. It's called a correction for a reason.
Right now if we held an election Tony Abbot and the Coalition would probably break records for the biggest romping of an election win. If Tony Abbot came out and went with the "Big A.D." asylum seeker policy, he would be unelectable. Australia simply doesn't want que jumpers here, simple as that.
I have been wondering this myself. Her clasp on power is so small that she can't afford to piss anyone off. Krudd can call her about the "spending" issue and say "go and get Frigged" and she couldn't do a single thing about it. My biggest query is why hasn't Tony Abbott been brining this up every chance he gets about Bob Brown.
Are you sure about that? I seem to remember the results of a poll recently that seemed to indicate that the majority of Australians wanted asylum seeker processing to be done on mainland Australia rather than either Malaysia or Nauru. My memory could be wrong however.
I don't pretend to completely understand this, but if onshore processing became the default Australian way of dealing with boatloads of people arriving here, it would seem likely that there would be a continuous armada of boats heading down here as arriving would be a guaranteed way of getting into the country and taking advantage of the endless appeals process if rejected. How is this humane if more and more people risk boarding those boats, and how will the country cope with potentially hundreds of boats arriving each year? It would seem to me that Howard's system was saving a lot of lives.
