Here is the News.

He famously donated a lot of money to Labour, though that may have been more to do with services rendered than political aleigance.

£1m to Labour
£14m to the Tories.

Obviously the headlines about this referred to him as Labour donor.

At least New Zealand treats their indigenous people better than we do. Little Australia indeed.

Know nothing about the indigenous vote other than the result from the news. Seems to be portrayed as the country being full of bigots and racists (isn't everywhere these days), is that what it shows?

There are a lot of bogans in Australia.

One of the reasons why the Left lost the vote in NZ was because it wasn't racist enough for the locals. And "better than Australia" is not a very high bar to clear.

Me neither but I saw some Trump wannabe twat politician celebrating it.

Yes.

The proposal was a fairly modest thing.. that the constitution recognise indigenous people as the first people of Australia, and establishes a ‘voice to parliament’, which would essentially be a body specifically representing indigenous people to parliament.

The main reason given for opposing it was that it would ‘divide the country by race’, which is cute as, with respect to indigenous people, Australia already is divided by race.. and the political stripes of the people opposing this thing very much tilt towards the people who have a proud history of wanting things to be divided by race.

There is a very deep-rooted prejudice against indigenous Australians amongst the non-indigenous population, particularly the white population. I could point at boomers, because they are awful, but even people in my age groups were against it. That puts us at least 20 years behind the curve. And yes, I know the UK has regressed over the last decade.. but I reckon it’s miles better. After all, every shitty immigration policy the Tories float up is a photocopy of some hateful dehumanising bullshit that’s had bi-partisan support here for a generation.

The early polls were in favour of a Yes vote, but it trended down and down despite no new information. That suggests an awful lot of people who just needed an excuse, hence the hilariously wrong-headed ‘this divides us’ being the thing that sunk it.

NZ's new Kingpin PM has pretty much immediately caved to the minority sociopath party and will probably have a referendum on the Treaty of Waitangi, which is a pretty foundational document with years of reasonable legal precedent. It will lead to massive bs from the RW funded by lots and lots of money, claiming that Maori already have it too good (as long as you ignore health stats, life expectancy, education, opportunity stats, prison figures and victims of crime numbers, as well as casual racism).
We'll probably end up with a similar result to Australia. Colonisation was bad. Obviously migration is good.

What amazed me is how blatant it was (is?), it's like it was a recognised part of the culture and the cornerstone of their primitive humour. The worst was the constructions sites, obviously, "just run um down", that sort of shit delivered as instruction rather than a quip, with real venom. But outside the cloak of a group it seemed to run deep, bus drivers would warn you about people being stood outside the bus station. I wasn't a black man in 1970s Britain but when I look at my parents and grandparents their ingrained racism it seems based on lazy stereotypes, a lot of Australians I met had an uncontrolled hatred (I don't doubt the UK has hate groups, nor apologise for my ancestors, it's just that Australia seemed to operate on a blatant, next- level sort of attitude that took me back). They seem to have Asian cards marked too. We were queuing to collect cricket tickets and an Asian kid (15ish) was at the window, someone made a joke about Asians scrounging and the queue thought it was the most whimsical yarn of the season. I get that Aussie jokes have to choregraph the punchline a bit harder than the developed nations but if someone had started in a similar brazen manner at Trent Bridge it wouldn't (today at least) gained universal approval. This was 07-13 so it may have changed but the young were as bad as the old so the only surprise would have been a different vote outcome. It's a wonderful country but it is packed full of cunts. And Noodle, obvs.

Early in my time here I was in a cinema and a trailer for the film Selma came on. Selma, for anyone unfamiliar, is a story about black civil rights activism in America. Anyhow, there was a group of very respectable looking middle-class middle-aged women sat behind me and at the end of the trailer one of them, proudly and loudly, said ‘No. No thanks. They’ve got a Black President, what more do they want?’

I mean… where do you even start with that?

There were all sorts of ridiculous arguments run against the Voice - everything from racial division (there's actually a race power in the Constitution, which was used to treat indigenous Australians as non-citizens until the 1967 referendum), to it being a proposal to add something to the Constitution without it being defined (look up section 51 - there's literally 39 heads of power there which aren't defined).

It's just all a bit sad.

Sandwich debate....

I read this earlier and it screamed of we needed a reason to get rid of this guy and this was the best we could come up with