Colin

Lived my early life in the bush.
Country life doesn't have to make you a conservative thinker.
Reading, drinking wine gives a broad perspective.

[Colin @RepublicofThink]

@francinepinnuck @THE_Russell @KateDennehy2 💥👍

[Francine @francinepinnuck]

@THE_Russell @KateDennehy2 3 old unwanted rusty obsolete submarines sometime in the next two decades for $368 billion to defend Australia’s massive coastline! Talk about bullshit from US and Dick Marles

[THE Russell - Find me at: @the-russell.bsky.social @THE_Russell]

The imbecile, Trump has imposed a new 12% tariff on Australian goods because of "Australia's inaction on slavery".
NOW would be a good time to cancel #AUKUS in retaliation!
THAT might wake him up!
#auspol
#AUKUS will #FAUKUS

[Colin @RepublicofThink]

@BobBurn97207272 Yeah a bloke who has a multi million dollar portfolio is upset he has to pay a bit more tax. We don’t feel sorry for him.

[Mangonnaise @Flumark]

@Nathan_Porter So you’re saying a Private Business did a shoddy job to make memes so Labor would look bad. Name and shame the fucking builder .

Site inspections.(TM)

[Colin @RepublicofThink]

@TheNoisyTrunk @n720ute The price of aviation fuel has increased 😆

[The Noisy Elephant @TheNoisyTrunk]

Guess who got a pay rise of over $107,000 since November last year?

Go on #Batters, WHO?

Which SENATOR in Australia got an EXTRA $2,057.69 per week - Not pay but INCREASED PAY?

Or for you #pensioners who get paid fortnightly, she gets an EXTRA $4,115.38 per fortnight, yes, ON TOP of her 2025 salary - Since November.

Yes, darlings, the VERY SAME PERSON who voted against increasing the minimum wage, against increasing #Jobseeker support.

The same person who is MISSING from parliament nearly HALF the time.

GUESS. WHO.

[Colin @RepublicofThink]

@TomPlayford3 @AshPolitik @MisinfoFact That shows how the Labor govt has bent the knee to rampant capitalist exploitation. Still that’s better than Pauline pretending to be for the battler. Nothing screams battler like accepting a $2m plane from a billionaire who wants her taxes reduced.

[Vee ♥️🖤🐾🏇 @tweeter_vee]

Jess Wilson Votes Against Keeping Big Money Out Of Elections https://t.co/UAFlyIQZGr

[Colin @RepublicofThink]

@goodfoodgal The reason we have a housing crisis is the LNP tax concessions Howard introduced in 1999. Nothing to do with Labor.

[Tim Richardson MP @TimRichardsonMP]

Today’s @LiberalVictoria under Jess Wilson is running Chat GPT questions to stop electoral funding integrity in the middle of the night!
No wonder One Nation are eating them alive. #springst

[Colin @RepublicofThink]

@Lisa9Sophia you were quick to mock Kos, but he succinctly spells out the gap in credibility with Hanson and ONP. Credibility is important, Hanson has none!

[Kos Samaras @KosSamaras]

Every few years our political class goes looking for the “quiet Australians.” In 2019 they found a flattering fiction…..the aspirational mortgage-belt couple, the franking-credit retiree, the tradie worried about his ute that was being threatened by EVs. It was all BS. There was zero data behind any of it. But it told us exactly which Australians our political and commentariat class are willing to lend agency to. It’s almost never the people who actually are the real quiet Australians.

The real ones don’t read the opinion pages. They empty your bins. They wipe your parents in aged care. They clean the office after you’ve gone home. They work the night shift at the meatworks. And the political class treats their labour as the one cost that can always be squeezed and the one claim that can always be deferred.

Watch what happened when 7,000 ASU members stopped Melbourne’s bins this year. The councils blamed the state’s rate cap. The state said the councils were sitting on healthy surpluses and crying poor. Each side pointed at the other, and the garbo, a human being who just wanted to stop picking up weekend shifts to break even, dissolved into the gap between two institutions. That’s the bet our political class makes again and again: muddy who’s responsible, and the public will shrug and move on.

But voters aren’t fooled, and this is where the political class keeps getting it catastrophically wrong. In Hume, the council that told 17,000 households their bins were a casualty of state stinginess is the same council that found $24 million to restore the Broadmeadows Town Hall. The money is always there for the building, the precinct, the plaza, their own renos. It’s the people who keep the suburb from drowning in its own waste who are told the well has run dry, that there is no money to help them feed their kids.

This is why the system is being turned over. We keep telling ourselves the revolt against the major parties, the surge to One Nation, is a story about culture or grievance or misinformation. A moral failing in the voter to be fixed with better messaging. It is nothing of the sort. It is an entirely rational response from an outer-suburban, mortgage-stressed working class that has watched its political class find money and agency for everyone except people like them.

My article on why Garbos are just as important as health workers - below.

[Colin @RepublicofThink]

@Chriskenny_sky Yes the rich and entitled created a housing crisis due to Howard’s tax concessions that made homes a wealth creation tool and led to a generation of people unable to buy their own home.

[🕶️🦉Sassy Leo 🦉🕶️ @Loud_Lass]

Angus Taylor tells us he wants an election
Bring it on...
#auspol

[Shayne Neumann @ShayneNeumannMP]

GOOD NEWS: We just voted to cut income taxes. And the Liberal Party voted against it. #asupol

[Simon Banks @SimonBanksHB]

The choice

Between an Austrailain wanting to buy their first home

Verses an Investor

Is a "ridiculous question" according to @SenatorHume

[Colin @RepublicofThink]

@SimonBanksHB @SenatorHume Hume and colleagues ignore they created housing crisis under Howard in 1999 creating tax concessions for people buying investment houses. This wealth creation vehicle skyrocketed prices so a new generation and low income workers were locked out. The crisis is all due to them 👇

[Misinformation Fact Checker. @MisinfoFact]

Pauline Hanson says young people don't want to work, but If you only showed up to work 12% of the time, you'd probably be looking for a new job.

Yet Pauline Hanson wants working Australians to take her seriously after an 88% absence rate at Senate Estimates.
#auspol #OneNation

[Colin @RepublicofThink]

@rahmstorf @climatemessages It’s not the administration pushing to close them, it’s the industrialists and billionaires in their luxury yachts.

[Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf 🌏 🦣 @rahmstorf]

I'm afraid that this is why the US administration wants to shut down ocean observations: they don't want the people to know what is happening in our oceans, as it does not fit their ideology and the interests of their fossil fuel industry funders.

https://t.co/G1E5zXdyid