Ballarat Demolition Team

Why should people with the cash get here when other more worse off refugees have to wait in camps because of the cue jumpers.
Stupid post!

firstly, if you are going to call someone stupid, at least make sure you can spell queue.

when you say "afford" to get here, most of them literally spend their whole family's life savings to get one family member out here, and then hope to bring the rest out when they save up enough money. this is how desperate they are.

and im not sure about you, but if i had a shot at not living in a refugee camp, i would do whatever i could.

there was a show on SBS called go back to where you came from, i encourage you to watch it. they depicted a sudanese lady who was in a refugee camp in kenya, where they literally slept on the floor under a tarp. no clean water. they got rice once a day, but quite often the gangs of men would come and steal it from her just after she got it. her and both her daughters had been repeatedly raped. if i remember correctly she now had HIV.

but yet you are telling me she should sit there and politely wait her turn? put yourself in her shoes for a second. what do you think you would do? would you sit there and be like fk me, i better wait my turn? of course not, you are going to do everything you can to get to safety.

and before you say well you could catch a plane here, well thats more problematic than you think too. if you are being persecuted in your own country, you cant exactly rock up at the airport with all of your id cards etc, you are basically waving a massive sign saying come and kill me!

so thats why these people travel overland from places like afghanistan, to pakistan, india, malaysia, indonesia.

the problem then is, none of those countries are signatories to the UN refugee convention, which means if they are caught they can be deported straight away. so you cant jump on a plane at any of these countries either.

so what are you left with? paying some people smuggler your whole life savings for one shot at a country that will have you. but lol, jokes on them, we send them off to squalid conditions in papua new guinea never to set foot in australia.

and before you say well there is plenty of other countries they can go to, well yes thats also true. but do a bit of googling and you can find places like turkey, jordan and greece are straining massively with the problem of refugees.

i read somewhere (ill have to find it) that the official population of greece is 10 million or so, and they have 1 MILLION refugees or other illegal residents. now that is a problem. a few thousand arrivals into one of the richest countries in the world is almost a non issue, unless you want to politicise it for your own gain, which is what abbott did with his "stop the boats" mantra which appealed to the lowest common denominator in australia, white racist bogans who believe they own the country and forgot that them, or one of their previous generations also came here, a lot of them in similar circumstances.

From Indaily today- very well written and a sentiment I agree with
Dear Port fans: you just don’t get it David Washington | 6 February 2014 Victorian and South Australian players before the 1988 state of origin match.
Comment |

Dear Port Adelaide fans: I’m terribly sorry you feel so “disappointed” about the Crows wearing a replica of the old South Australian state guernsey in one game this year.

Would you like me to pour you a cup of tea? Or maybe massage your shoulders?

Settle in, because I’m going to tell you a story.

Once upon a time, in an Adelaide far, far away, the city was divided into football tribes. Some of them were very old, like your mob, which joined the competition that came to be known as the SANFL in 1877. My mob Norwood, relative latecomers, joined the competition in 1878.

Some of the teams had extraordinary periods of dominance – Norwood in the first years of the comp and again in the 1920s; Port in the 1950s and the 1980s; Sturt ruled the late 1960s with a sublime run of five flags. Even West Adelaide had their time in the sun, during the first decade of the 20th century.

Some clubs enjoyed very little success. South Adelaide, one of the early powerhouses of the competition, captured its last premiership in 1964. Yet, you could argue that its long-suffering fans are the most loyal in the whole competition. To front up week after week in the face of such a drought of success? That’s passion.

Every year, the best players from the competition would be selected to play against some of the other states, wearing the state colours. The game that really counted was against Victoria. On rare occasions, we won, sparking wild celebrations.

In the early 1990s, your club was clearly the most successful in terms of Premierships won. But in a competition of such long history and passion, did this mean your club was of greater intrinsic value than any other? No. All of the teams had history, pride and passion worth preserving and celebrating. Well – that’s what most of us believed.

Your club’s custodians disagreed. They believed that Port was indeed greater than the whole, and decided to make a run for the big league – the infant AFL, which was, at the time, nothing more than a slightly expanded version of the VFL.

The rest of the SANFL clubs and fans were blindsided, so a hasty compromise was put together. The Adelaide Crows, wearing the state colours, would join the AFL – it would be “the team for all South Australians”. It was, at the time, a team put together with a few outsiders, but mostly star SANFL players – including from Port.

See what I”m getting at?

The SANFL competition was immediately affected. After decades of our best players streaming across the border chasing money and glory in the VFL, the presence of a local team laid further waste to the talent in the local competition. More than 100 years of history mattered little in the face of this new world of glitz and glamour.

A few years later, you joined the AFL – in doing so, you became the only existing club from a competition outside the VFL to be allowed in. It was a gift that no other SANFL fan will experience, at least in the foreseeable future.

I cannot even begin to imagine the joy of seeing Norwood players run on to the MCG in an AFL final – or even a home and away game.

Understand? No?

Back to the story.

The fabric of the SANFL competition was again stretched thin. After some early success, your SANFL club – the Magpies – started to fray and falter, which was bittersweet to those of us who remembered the fierce battles of the past.

The SANFL was altered forever. No matter how much we told ourselves that it was “real” footy, old-fashioned suburban footy, it became a shadow of its former great self.

The days of standing room only crowds at tiny suburban grounds were over.

We would never again see some of the country’s best players slip on our club’s jumper while in their prime.

Premierships, while moments of undoubted joy, had lost a few degrees of sweetness.

Can you comprehend any of the sense of loss that the rest of us might feel?

Can you understand that, while many of us support the Crows in the AFL, our SANFL history is still vitally important to us? That we feel it slipping away as the new generations of football supporters only have eyes for the AFL? That we can see a day coming when the proud history of a club like Norwood will only be remembered by sad old timers (that would be us), regaling young bucks with stories while they try to disguise a yawn?

Can you grasp – in any way – that the proud history of the SANFL is something we want to celebrate, that we have a right to celebrate, through the achievements of the Adelaide Football Club?

No-one watching the Crows step out on to Adelaide Oval wearing a replica state jumper will equate these modern day players with the representative champions of the past. No-one believes that they have “won” a position in a state side.

It’s a nod – and a slight one at that – to what little living heritage remains for the legions of fans who grew up supporting SANFL clubs other than Port Adelaide, and who have followed an AFL club that was started by the SANFL and, in its early years, attempted to represent us all.

The links are tenuous, yes, I agree – nothing like your ability to barrack for the same Port Adelaide that was formed back in 1870, a fact you celebrate on the back of your AFL jumper. That’s a feeling that the rest of us will likely never know.

So will you give us this one nod to our past? Will you put yourselves in our shoes for a moment?

No. I see you’re still disappointed.

You don’t know the meaning of the word.

The coalition under Abbott is just a propaganda machine. He uses the media to not only get his point of view across but disgraceful distorts and perpetuates outright lies in order to support his position.

A few examples.

Budget Emergency & Labor's debt disaster

If this is true, then why is his government INCREASING spending over the forward estimates ... thats right, increasing it, not decreasing it.

The pre-budget release of the completely political 'it's Labor's budget mess we're fixing' was classic propaganda, the stuff that North Korea would have been proud of.

Also, he has repeatedly decided the need to curb increasing spending on pensions. I'm not sure how Labor contributed to this long standing issue because they didn't. In fact, it was Labor under Hawke/Keating that introduced the Super Guarantee that we all now enjoy, and it was the previous Labor government under Rudd/Gillard that proposed to increase the Super Guarantee from 9% to 12% but was vehemently opposed by the coalition.

Budget Deficits

The Budget claims that 2014-2015 is forecast to deliver a $30B deficit with their budget measures, an improvement of $20B from the estimated position ($50B) due to Budget measures, therefore claiming a fiscal windfall of $20B due to their superior financial management. They also claimed the the previous Labor government 'cooked the books' to come up with their estimates. Well $8B of this $20B budget improvement comes from manipulating the Reserve Bank, effectively cooking the books as they accused Labor of doing. A significant portion of the remaining 'savings' are just cost shifting to the States and Territories, like reducing Health and Education payments. Then to make sure they have the best chance of getting there, the government rips unprecedented massive amounts out of the foreign aid budget, hoping that the xenophobia that drives the 'illegal boat crisis' will allow them to get away with it without too much scrutiny.

Health and Education

It is widely accepted that approx $80B LESS will be funded by the Federal Government for Health and Education over then next 10 years. This is a $80B cost shift from the Federal government to the States and territories. Gonski and NDIS pre-election commitments have been broken.

University funding will be reduced by approx 20%, with the shortfall to be recovered by allowing the Universities to set their own fees from 2016. Student repayments of HELP will increase due to the interest rate increasing from 2% to possibly 6%. A double whinny for Uni students.

The Federal government is trying to divert attention from this cost shifting in education and health by creating a health and medical research fund, which will be funded by the $7 co-payment for doctors visits. The figures of a $20B fund are impressive, but remember that overall the government will be cutting funding to the sector. I have worked and am currently associated with health and medical research so the fund is a great thing, but unfortunately created by deceit and by ripping out funding the Universities, who will therefore have LESS funding for their own research.

GST

Abbott and his colleagues consistently stated prior to the election that thy have no plans to increase the rate of GST, claiming that to change the rate all States have to unanimously agree. Well actually, they DON'T. The Federal government has the power to change the rate of the GST without the unanimous approval of the States.

Also, with their clear strategy of starving the States of funding in Health and Education, they have deliberately setup a fight with the States, in order to goad them into requesting and demanding more funding. Anyone's guess what will happen? Yes, that's right, the GST rate will increase and the States will be blamed for it by the Federal government, even though they (the Feds) deliberated caused the issue.

Stop playing politics and allow us to govern

This is the genius of Tony Abbott. From the day he became opposition leader, he had a very clear and deliberate strategy to throw every parliamentary convention out the window. Bi-partisanship was dead.

He requested the suspension of standing orders so many times we lost count. This was a calculated move to allow him to grandstand in parliament and grab media headlines to get his message across. He used politics at every opportunity, and on many occasions when it was totally inappropriate.

He also is the master of repeating his message ad-infinitum with his infamous '3 word slogans'. Listen very carefully to the way he speaks. He very deliberately doesn't try to accuse the Labor party or his opponents, he does it in a way of commentary to strong suggest that what he says is fact. Most journos fall for it every time and rarely question him on it. It's a very clever way to get a message across and to be part of the everyone's thinking.

Now in government, he has appointed the most partisan speaker in living memory who so blatantly is favouring the government in parliament that's its an embarrassment. This is to ensure that Labor doesn't resort to the tactics that he so successfully employed himself in opposition.

So he used his infamous 'wrecking ball' to make parliament and the act of governing almost impossible, regardless of how competent or otherwise the Labor government was at the time.

He has almost single handedly brought down any respect the electorate had in politicians and the running of parliament.

But now that he is in government, any attempt to make his government responsible for their actions is met with the 'you' re playing politics' response. Let us govern he says. Well, this is where the karma bus revs up.


So im summary, this government will no doubt in my mind be looked at as the most deceitful in living memory, and will drag it so far to the right that in years to come, it wouldn't be totally outrageous to suggest that John Howard may himself disassociate himself from it as Malcolm Fraser has clearly done in opposing his former party for so long.

I'm not confident that Labor has the ability to capitalise on the absolute gift that has been presented to them by Abbott. Labor has no real right to expect to form government for at least 6 years. The action of the current government has given them hope, and I'm an certain that Abbott will be brought down by his own party to save themselves from disaster when the enormity of what they have setup with this budget takes hold. Malcolm Turnbill will drag the party towards the centre where they belong.

We can only hope.

I believe the Points System is crucifying country footy with the way association's distribute their player points and now it looks like a Salary Cap will be introduced for country footy next season which will make things even worse.
I know a country competition where attendances are the worst they have ever been in the last few years.
How can a successful team that gets the whole club in order (a club that's worked their backside off from a committee level to a playing & coaching group to give themselves every opportunity of winning a premiership) receive a penalty not of being able to recruit any further players for the next couple of years?
Are there any other sports that crucify a club for being successful or is it just SA Country Football??
The onus needs to be on the clubs at the bottom of the ladder to get their clubs in order, not rely on the associations to bring the successful clubs down to their level (by reducing their points from winning games) which brings the standard of the competition down to a level of ordinary footy!!
Lets use Victoria for a comparison, do they have the same issue?
No in fact their competitions are as strong as they have ever been and attendances are very healthy.
They try and recruit better players to get more bums on seats!!! It makes total sense!!
SALARY CAP:
In my opinion country footy is suffering (in SA) so why does Country Footy have to continue to suffer by introducing a Salary Cap.
Take a team that has a small community for example with a small population of juniors.
The club survives at A Grade level by spending money to attract players and remember they can only recruit so many due to the Points System.
What will introducing a Salary Cap do to those small communities that rely on Football in their small towns?
Not being able to recruit quality players will bring the standard of the competition down and what happens then? Smaller Attendances!
Who will want to go and watch the games?
Would you pay $7 to go and watch average players run around on a Saturday if you were not directly involved at a club? \
I'm certain that the local average Joe down the street would not be tempted to go and watch his local town's team play.
But if they are able to attract better recruits then of course-
-It means more attendance
-Which means more money spent at the club and town
-A higher participation level from kids because whether you believe it or not, some kids look up to a quality A Grade player, so they will want to play just like them.

POINTS SYSTEM:
SANFL Clubs are not happy with the amount of money being spent in Country Footy well money has always been a lure to recruit players but the amount spent these days I think is due to the Points System that was introduced.
Were there any problems or issues before the Points System was introduced??? No.
I have also heard SANFL clubs are not happy with the grass roots club trying to poach their former juniors back to their club.
For example a strong country club sends a kid to play SANFL underage footy then by the time he is in his mid 20's and playing reserves footy the grass roots club asks him to return - well why wouldn't they with the way this points system is setup??
Example-
The strong country club is severely penalised by the Association's Points System for being successful (Winning Games).
With games won over the past two years they are able to recruit 3 players (9 points) they win a premiership, then lose 4 players the following year for various reasons, but they hold their recruits and they've gone from 3 points to 2 points and the club has been penalised for winning so many games so they go down to 6 points and are unable to recruit any players.
How is it fair that a club works its back side off from the off field stuff to on field from committee to playing & coaching group and they then get told well you guys won too many games last year so we are docking your points for the next couple of seasons? DISGRACE!!

SANFL:
If SANFL clubs remember, they introduced two new clubs in Adelaide and Port Adelaide in the same season so of course that will weaken the competition when some clubs are already struggling for numbers of quality as it is.
Players being poached from SANFL clubs has happened since football has been a sport so that will never change and introducing a points system and now salary cap wont change a thing at SANFL level.

I have been told that there is going to be more information to come regarding the "Marquee Player". A regulation for 2016 (to be reviewed at the end of the season) will be implemented that defines a marquee player as someone who has played 20 AFL games or 100 SANFL games.
Effectively, if you have not played a significant amount at a high level, the SANFL is trying to ensure the only place a player can get good money is in the AFL Reserves competition.

I love how in the presentation they make a big deal about how they are saving the clubs money. They do not acknowledge, however, that they are restricting clubs from using the main tool they have to attract quality footballers. Who the hell is going to want to travel to a place like Lameroo, Bordertown, Port Pirie, Jamestown or Loxton if they cannot earn some good money in the process. Might as well play for an Amateur league club for the same money and have a sleep in.

They keep claiming this is about saving clubs, I cannot see much of a future for clubs in the Mallee, South East, Mid North, North East etc without the ability to spend a bit to attract good players. These are not the same population centres they once were, centralisation of the population means these regions do not have a lot of young families to draw from, they rely on people who are prepared to travel from the city to keep their clubs viable. Closure of bank branches, railways, regional offices, etc mean there are not as many young men relocating to the areas for work. The football club is usually the main (if not only) entertainment within these towns, the locals provide their disposable income here for their entertainment as they do not have the nightclubs, major sports, restaurants etc that their city counterparts have. How dare the SANFL pull the rug out from under these communities just to protect the AFLSA league and the Channel 9 league.

The fact that asylum seeker arrivals is even a political wedge is a blight on us.

And the boats haven't stopped coming. Those offshore gulags are still full.