Bali Expat Forum - Bali Travel Forum

Hi freo, no, no relation the the great mr. keating.

he was a great leader of australia and greatly adored by my family, up there with whitlam and bob.. he had the amazing ability to make the most intelligent of people look like absolute idiots - fortunately I didn't face that challenge here

Keep well.. And yes, I bit my tongue on the Rudd debate, but he is clearly the best thing to have happened to Australia since keating lost office to howard. Rudd is a gentleman, and you can very quickly see that he holds in his heart the interests of ALL australians..

Ct

I hated Keating as a leader, you are too young to have truely experienced life under Keating as a treasurer, let me tell you it sucked. As for our Mr "working family" Rudd, (and if I hear them say Working Family one more time I will throw up ) it was time for a change, and I have to give the man credit, he is pretty good at mouthing what the masses want to hear. Time will tell as to how good he really is. I actually liked life under little Johnny - as a country just about everyone did pretty well, not that you would know it for all the whinging going on. Well, perhaps in a year or two under the current arrangements everyone will have something to whinge about.

Afraid i agree with freo girl here Balilife, keating nearly ruined the place with the "recession we had to have". Life under little johnny was good and am afraid Kevin is already starting to show his true colours, and i think labour is only in for a short time before people start to wake up that they are all talk and cant manage the economy...

Howard played lap doggy to Bush too much for my liking, i was relieved to see him go.

they are all puppets anyway

working family

What I love about aussies and being one is that nothing is sacred when it comes to politics.

I couldn't disagree with both of you more - but that's the beauty of australia. My best mate in sydney is through and through a conservative liberal (he's a wannabe snob ) but he's a good mate. We argue till we're both red in the face and then we go and laugh our backsides off over a few beers.

Ct

Balilife, i grew up in a labour enviroment, family etc, and voted labour for most of my younger life, including "giving Bob the job". Keating was the end for me, and despite being a true blue collar worker all my life, still vote liberal today. And Milan, i agree, they are all puppets of the USA, regardless of labour or liberal... why is that

And Milan, i agree, they are all puppets of the USA, regardless of labour or liberal... why is that

I think you confuse me with Chili...
She is Italian who lives in Australia and I'm Indonesian who lives in Milan, Italy. I guess I better try to change my nickname here.
I don't follow Australian's politics...

oppss sorry, i did mean chilli., my apologies milan

that's ok goldminer.. I disagree 100%, but that's ok.

Keating in my view was a great leader of a great nation - and he wanted that dream to be realized for all australians, including aboriginals who have been kicked around by every liberal leader in the history of australian politics.

Us labour people say, there are a handful of rotten bastards in the labour party, and a handful of decent people in the liberal party

Ct

Balilife, us aussies seem to be fairly relaxed about our politics, as about life in general. The US have such a long drawn out process, even to select a candidate But why do we seem to have to be puppets to them, join them in their stupid wars?

I agree gm - I think most australians agree.. it's idiotic.

Austrailian politics is a bit boring for those of us who have no connection in Austalia. Can we talk about something else now please

OK Jimbo, but I have no connection to the US either and there's a hell of a lot of politics talk from there that goes on here.
p.s I was a huge Keating fan.

No offence, Bolli. But Jimbo is right in that it is boring... US is the centre of the Universe whether one likes it or not so it's much more stimulating although I don't participate much either such as in the thread of "Reality or Fantasy about Bali" by Bert, where Sumatera and her husband debated with others on issues in America. I find it interesting to read as an outsider.
In all the places in the world I've lived and been, America has always been one of the hot/most debated topics in that it can make or break a friendship even. I haven't met any as such on the Australian politics. Besides, this is a Bali Forum after all.
No offence, ok?

No worries Jimbo and Milan, but I will point out that the thread title does indicate that the topic is somewhat only interesting to Australians. So why open it and read ? People have banter and off-topic comments back and forth about all sorts of irrelevant stuff that may not be of interest to others (recent string with comments on some sort of football match for example, in a topic about zodiac signs - oh so Balinese, not), those not interested either don't read it, or take a glance and move on. It's a forum - you are not going to be engaged by every post.

I don't think it's fair to restrict a group of contributors from expressing an opinion just because you are not interested. These off-topic side-shoots never go on for long anyway.