You're right, I didn't mean to say they're not at fault for shooting people. What I meant to say was that we shouldn't get tunnel-vision either and assume that officers just need better training or vetting to make sure they don't miss or don't shoot as early.

Be cool if they could do something about the amount of gambling ads attached to sports. But no, it must be video games that are bad.

Yes. And on the other hand, the video game loot boxes are gambling itself, ads are bad enough.

The problem is the disproportionate force. The police should not be using those weapons. If an officer panicking goes this badly, we shouldn't be blaming that officer or the protest. The problem is that police were firing bullets into a protest, at all. That this was a plan they had on the table for this situation, and they're clearly happy with this plan.

Reminder: no out-of-area ('absent') votes in this election.

Council elections may not the be most exciting I find them much more interesting, because while my vote is still statistically negligible, it's much more powerful than in a state or federal election. So less popular choices have a higher chance of competing.

Unfortunately* it feels like most of my local candidates have almost identical policies, so my second and third preferences might as well be a coin flip. At least I know who's going last.

[Premier Jacinta Allan] also defended the state government's sponsorship of the Land Forces conference, and said delegates attending the event had the right to gather.

"Any industry deserves the right to have these sort of events in a peaceful and respectful way."

When your industry is undeniably dedicated to murder and maim, you don't deserve peace (or, for that matter, respect).

Rubber bullets are especially concerning. Many of us saw the damage they did to journalists and protestors who were shot with them in the US protests by police a few years ago.

Sounds like something out of a futuristic dystopian movie.

spoiler

I haven't seen a terrorism act invoked in my state but police have called a few designated areas this year and they bring the cavalry mounted troops to most protests.

I’m calling it now. Somebody’s gonna die or get seriously injured

Big ten-thousands protests generally try to be more big-tent than radical, so as eager as police are to make a show of force against anti-military protesters, my bet is that it will be limited to shoving. But honestly, I won't be shocked if your call turns out right.

lol - what abuse? He said these things in an earnings presentation, probably to board and investors.

Attempting to (softly) control other peoples' basic freedom, and their social life while at work, restricting them and alienating them from anything outside the office. The problem isn't their choice of words, nor that they admitted it to investors.

Maybe the way I'm saying this sounds melodramatic, that I'm jumping to the extreme case and assuming the worst. But those worst cases happen regularly, and these are the warning signs - when the owners want increasing control over workers to extract more profit, to "get the best out of them". Those employee pain points are social life: the company wants a childcare centre, a restaurant and a gym because "I don't want them leaving the building.", "I don't want them walking down the road for a cup of coffee. We kind of figured out a few years ago how much that costs." They could have lied and said they did it to improve worker wellbeing and get the best out of them, to reduce the travel-time needed, or any other seemingly innocent reason.

This attitude makes the universal truth clear, a board and investors see their workers as a resource for extracting maximum profit. It has to be that way, that's how they compete and survive. And it alienates workers.

And I don’t see any evidence anywhere that his people are enduring shit jobs.

I didn't say they were. I don't know their conditions. I'm refuting the common attitude that workers are just free to leave when they're being abused.

outrage reporting

You have a point. They said the quiet part aloud because their audience didn't need the propaganda bullshit they would have told other people. And so, they admitted an outrageous truth which, well, is pretty normal among businesses. The journalist is taking a quote and shining the headlights on them. But, they are not inventing a fake problem. There's no ethical justification for saying they don't want people leaving the building to enjoy a walk and a coffee on their break. Employer exploitation of workers is a real issue in society at large, it deserves attention, and this outrage is an opportunity to give it the attention it deserves.

As the one calling the shots, he’s entitled to run the business that way.

Legally, sure. But I don't care whether someone is legally allowed to be abusive, it's still abuse, and their abusive attitude towards workers earns outrage.

And sure, employees can probably leave legally, but if we allow this abuse to be normalized then there won't be another place to go in the industry. There is economic asymmetry at play, it's not viable to just leave a job whenever it treats someone badly. There are only so many jobs available and the market is increasingly moving towards monopolization in many industries.

People don't just work in shit jobs because they haven't considered leaving. They have legal freedom, but they are not empowered to leave without ending up somewhere just as bad or risking unemployment. So even if no-one is forced, they're inherently pressured, and that pressure is enough for them to accept abuse in order to keep themselves and their families off the dole. We need to create a society with an economy where people aren't subject to the whims of their employers.

There's a point made about how no courts were involved in the action. In wonder if the High Court has a pragmatic interest in stopping this kind of summary action. If the courts can be bypassed, what power will they have?

Seriously, watching that interview is a little painful with all the interrupting to try and railroad the conversation, and attaching weird attacks and assertions to make loaded questions, or rather, framing a claim as a question. I haven't seen it so bad outside of Faux News in the US.

Glad to hear Max got a quick mention of the Green Bans of the BLF in.

So their argument is:

No, that's not what they were saying. For starters, they're clearly pointing out that the hypocrisy is that "The CFMEU [is being forced into administration] on the back of a handful of rumours and allegations", contrasting that against the "damning findings" of the Royal commissions which were tolerated, not that the CFMEU "should be allowed to be corrupt" (where did that strawman come from?!). Also, the ETU are not the CFMEU.

That would miss the point of the protest. It was a mass action from the community, where a broad range of unions and non-union organisations participated, to rally together and voice our response to the extreme administration bills. I've gone into a little detail on my perspective here. Overall, we must recognise the way this bill was handled as a knowingly-inappropriate response to the situation and a threat to the whole labour movement.

In case I need to state it, I'm not defending corruption, I'm not saying that there aren't people who should be charged and removed. There are real problems with the CFMEU and the members should be empowered to root it out of their union. Putting in a dictator with huge conflicts of interest with the workers is not how to do that. That's how to union-bust.

and protest outside of federal liberal party headquarters demanding equal action on political corruption

The Liberal party didn't do this. The protest is critiquing the Labor party and their attack on the labour movement.

The Liberal party also probably couldn't care less about the protesters, might as well be vegans threatening to boycott a butcher. Union reps are a major component of the Labor party, and union rank-and-file are a large part of their voter support base.

For those going to the CFMEU protest tomorrow, be advised the location has been changed to the Trades Hall due to expected large crowd.

Seriously, shame on the opportunistic people who bothered giving her a platform.

It's a sharp reminder of the industrialisation of art as entertainment, more than as expression.

That's a great start! Congrats to the students and the communities who stood in solidarity to help them stay there.

Crosslinking: https://aussie.zone/post/12573641

Are the AFP employees (coppers) aware they are the wrong people to be handling this? They had an opportunity to help this kid, and instead just accelerated a terrorist operation until they could punish the victim.

This is very bad news for the worker movement.

The bottom line is that, despite their flaws, the CFMEU management enables construction workers to fight for better working conditions, including those working in roles where people regularly die in workplace incidents, where safety standards are a life and death matter. If they are replaced by a state-supplied dictator against the will of the workers which a union is created to represent, this introduces a conflict of interest somehow even worse than that in any of the accusations. We've seen in history how state-enforced class collaboration screws over workers. When employees are working for huge multinational companies like Lendlease, they need ways to defend themselves from all the corruption that comes with that. The CFMEU in its current state is not ideal, but it's a hell of a lot better than nothing, or one assigned by the government.

This has already had a chilling effect on the other more-militant trade unions, word-of-mouth is that some are asking members not to draw attention to themselves e.g. by flying banners at the recent NSW Labor conference. Giving the government this power to weaken unions at will is a horrible precedence which I sincerely believe will cost lives when it comes to safety regulations, let alone cost of living, preventing financial abuse of immigrant workers, and the inability to support social movement, such as the Green Bans of the BLF (who were deregistered in various states in 1986 and essentially brought into the coverage of what would become the CFMEU).