Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 07/10/2026🧵 7/7 It's a framework and a bold idea, and the piece says how it could go wrong. It's fine to be angry, but anger needs somewhere to go. Join your union or community organisation and ask what to win. 000
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 07/10/2026🧵 6/7 For renters, rent rises are capped while the payment runs, with a safe harbour for interest-linked rises. A landlord can add the extra interest on their own loan and no more. They keep their tax support, but can't absorb the tenants' payment as well. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 07/10/2026🧵 5/7 It's funded by a levy on highly profitable firms whose profits are rising, the big banks first. Genuine investment earns a discount, and a firm can open its books to show its gain reflects real costs. Cutting service or sending work offshore doesn't earn one. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 07/10/2026🧵 4/7 One idea: a universal, tax-free payment set against the rise in interest on a typical loan. It rises if rates keep rising and switches off when they fall back to a reference rate. Everyone gets it, so nobody has to prove they deserve it. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 07/10/2026🧵 3/7 A big driver of this inflation is external. Energy prices jumped with the disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, and a rate rise can't change a price set on the world market. It cools spending, and the cost lands on people with loans and rents. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 07/10/2026🧵 2/7 The Reserve Bank lifted the cash rate to 4.60 per cent on 29 September, the fourth rise this year and the sixteenth since Labor won government. It will do what it does. The question is who carries the cost. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 07/10/2026🧵 1/7 Everyone is explaining why the latest rate rise is bad. That part is easy. The harder question is what can be done about it, and who would have to do it. The piece:revitalisinglabour.substack.comThe main problem isn't rising interest rates. It's who pays for themTowards a progressive approach to responding to inflation and interest rates 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 02/10/2026They stood him. The whole point of Vic Socialists existing was to try to get him elected to the Legislative Council. 110
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 02/10/2026This is a shitty headline, and that is entirely on your editorial staff, irrespective of what Heeney said. 020
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 02/10/2026I think there needs to be a change in the default structure of a bullshit story, from "a person from a different town, you wouldn't know them" to "sir ..." 000
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 23/09/2026🧵 (8/8) Full piece linked below. Would genuinely like to know what people make of the doctrine itself, this is the harder half of the argument to get right.revitalisinglabour.substack.comOnly a genuinely consistent internationalism can displace AUKUSIn the previous piece, “When everyone else is walking away from Washington, why do Australians still embrace AUKUS?” three things were argued: Australian opinion hasn’t moved the way Canadian and Euro... 000
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 23/09/2026🧵 (7/8) And it's blunt about what actually builds a doctrine like this: not a better argument, the patient, unglamorous organising work inside the ALP, unions, and the wider social movements and civil society that has to happen years before the moment that tests it arrives. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 23/09/2026🧵 (6/8) It also means being honest about a genuine debt owed to the Pacific, Bougainville, the Solomons, Timor-Leste, not aid handed out when convenient, an obligation that holds regardless. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 23/09/2026🧵 (5/8) The doctrine has to pass a harder test than most critiques attempt: what should Australia do if China itself faced unprovoked attack? Same standard, every time, or it isn't actually a standard. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 23/09/2026🧵 (4/8) Japan's Article 9 is the model for what durable looks like. It's held for fifty years against real pressure, including a direct request from a sitting US President, because it's genuinely understood and defended by a mass movement, not just written into law. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 23/09/2026🧵 (3/8) Since that first piece went up, the gap has only widened. Canada's just been offered EU associate membership, a status that doesn't even exist yet. Australia's posture hasn't moved at all. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 23/09/2026🧵 (2/8) This follows an earlier piece asking why Australian opinion on AUKUS hasn't shifted the way Canadian and European opinion has, even under Trump. This one answers the harder question: what should replace it? 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 23/09/2026🧵 (1/8) What should actually replace AUKUS? Not a slogan, an actual doctrine. New piece: sovereign, defensive Australian capability that can also be freely given to allies under real attack, not integration into someone else's war plans.revitalisinglabour.substack.comOnly a genuinely consistent internationalism can displace AUKUSIn the previous piece, “When everyone else is walking away from Washington, why do Australians still embrace AUKUS?” three things were argued: Australian opinion hasn’t moved the way Canadian and Euro... 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 21/09/2026🧵 7/7 That alternative doesn't exist in Australian politics yet. It needs to. Full piece on what Burke got wrong, why smarter doesn't help, and what actually would: revitalisinglabour.substack.com/p/there-is-n...revitalisinglabour.substack.comThere is no outflanking One Nation on immigration: Against the ALP's migration cutsThis is bad. 110
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 21/09/2026🧵 6/7 There's one recent case where the alternative worked. Andy Burnham took Labour into a poll lead over Reform UK without contesting immigration at all, Reform still leads on that issue. He did it with a confident economic offer on ground Labour could actually win. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 21/09/2026🧵 5/7 The comparative record on trying to out-manoeuvre the far right on its own terrain is unambiguous, and it isn't about execution. Denmark's Social Democrats, Germany's BSW, pre-Burnham UK Labour all tried it. All lost ground. Voters prefer the original to the copy. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 21/09/2026🧵 4/7 One Nation's response, posted within the hour: the same maximal grievance, restated, unchanged. No version of what Burke announced was ever going to move the verdict past insufficient, because the verdict was never actually about the policy's content. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 21/09/2026🧵 3/7 Half of doctors and construction workers on temporary visas, and two-thirds of nurses and aged care workers, came with a family member attached, Burke's own figures. Family visas aren't a side issue next to skilled migration. They're load-bearing for it. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 21/09/2026🧵 2/7 It's also self-defeating. Burke said Australia is "not a nation of mass migration," and that partner visas "have very little impact on housing, they're not just in the same house, they're in the same room." The same logic covers a student's partner. Nobody explains why it stops there. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 21/09/2026🧵 1/7 Tony Burke's migration overhaul will stop international students and graduates bringing their partners and children while they study. Real families, told the terms changed after they'd already built a life around the old ones. Opposed on that basis before anything else.revitalisinglabour.substack.comThere is no outflanking One Nation on immigration: Against the ALP's migration cutsThis is bad. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 14/09/2026🧵 (8/8) It's not really about Trump. It's about a century-old ambition Australia has never had to explain to itself. Would genuinely like to know what people think. 001
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 14/09/2026🧵 (7/8) Add a media culture that reports any distance from the US as a failure of Australian diplomacy, never as a legitimate question, and you get a country that's noticed everything and reconsidered nothing. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 14/09/2026🧵 (6/8) The Australian government pushed for a UN mandate, failed to get one, invaded anyway, and an intelligence analyst resigned warning the threat was being deliberately exaggerated to stay in step with Washington. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 14/09/2026🧵 (5/8) And there's a myth doing a lot of work here, that Australian foreign policy has been a principled force for good, occasionally let down. It hasn't. The 2003 Iraq War alone should end that idea for good. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 14/09/2026🧵 (4/8) But the bigger reason runs deeper and predates WWII entirely: Australia's own long-standing desire for regional dominance, pursued through alliance with Britain, then America once Singapore fell in 1942. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 14/09/2026🧵 (3/8) Part of it is felt impact. Trump's threatened to annex Canada. He's threatened Greenland's sovereignty. For Australia it's mostly been tariffs and visa friction. Real, but abstract. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 14/09/2026🧵 (2/8) It's not that Australians haven't noticed. Trust in the US has dropped here too. But noticing isn't the same as rethinking the relationship, and that's exactly what hasn't happened. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 14/09/2026🧵 (1/8) Canada just picked Europe over the US for its new submarines, and is reviewing its F-35 order too. Europe's trust in America has cratered. Australian support for AUKUS hasn't moved. Same Trump, wildly different reaction. Why?revitalisinglabour.substack.comWhen everyone else is walking away from Washington, why do Australians still embrace AUKUSSince it was announced by then Prime Minister Morrison in September 2021, the AUKUS pact has faced opposition from Australian progressive forces, from the ALP’s left and from further left again. 110
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 09/09/2026Who amongst us hasn't repeatedly put other people's lives in danger? 000
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 08/09/2026🧵 7/7 Real fixes: reverse wage stagnation, cap rent rises to real cost changes, strategic price controls where supply shocks are being exploited, and boost the pension instead, no cliff-edge, because nobody's drawing down their own compounding asset to fund it. 010
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 08/09/2026🧵 6/7 Calling this a "cash splash" (Herald Sun's headline) gets it backwards. It's not a gift, it's the worker's own deferred wages, and the cost lands on their own future, not on whoever's handing it out. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 08/09/2026🧵 5/7 Super Members Council modelling: a typical worker using this over 3 years gets ~$6,900 in hand, and retires ~$25,000 worse off. It's also, per the AFR, a near-identical policy to one the Coalition had costed and ready to announce before Sussan Ley was rolled. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 08/09/2026🧵 4/7 That's also why the scheme is built to expand. By year three, the underlying gap (stagnant wages vs housing costs) hasn't closed, it's just been covered by a payment that's now stopping. Cutting people off at exactly that point is a much harder political position than extending it. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 08/09/2026🧵 3/7 And rent increases don't reverse. When the three-year payment ends, the higher rent doesn't come back down, it's the new floor. The relief was temporary. The price rise isn't. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 08/09/2026🧵 2/7 Rent pricing doesn't need a real cost shock to move, unlike the "sellers' inflation" Isabella Weber describes for goods. Landlords just need to know tenants generally have more capacity to pay. This policy makes that public knowledge. The rent absorbs it. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 08/09/2026🧵 1/7 One Nation's formal super policy: workers paying rent or a mortgage can divert 3% of their compulsory super into take-home pay for three years. The housing stress behind it is real. The policy will make it worse, not better.revitalisinglabour.substack.comOne Nation's Superannuation plan won't ease housing stress. It will make it worse.On September 7, One Nation announced its formal proposal to allow workers to access some of their super. 201
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 02/09/2026🧵 8/8 Watson isn't describing a system that failed because of too much regulation. He's describing the unresolved damage of the deregulation he wants more of. 000
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 02/09/2026🧵 7/8 Weipa, 1995: Comalco offered individual contracts worth up to $20,000 more, on the condition that workers left union-backed agreement. 700 workers dropped to 71. Real wages spiked, then flatlined for years. That's what "flexibility" actually looked like. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 02/09/2026🧵 6/8 Even Saul Eslake, presenting to the Reserve Bank, found the same pattern, quoting economist John Quiggin's own 2000 assessment that much of that decade's apparent gain was just work intensification, not genuine productivity growth. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 02/09/2026🧵 5/8 He cites 1995-2005 as a decade of exceptional productivity growth. The real data shows three strong years right after the 1996 reforms, then a collapse to near zero. Averaged honestly, it doesn't clear the bar he claims it does. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 02/09/2026🧵 4/8 He wants unfair dismissal to succeed "only if the employer acts unreasonably." Australia already tried something close to this under WorkChoices. Small businesses were exempted entirely. Academics called it a shift "from safety net standard to legal privilege." 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 02/09/2026🧵 3/8 He calls the retail award's "120 different pay rates" proof of a broken system. Check the actual award: it's four variables, classification, age, apprentice status, time of work. Combinatorial, not complicated. A basic payroll system would resolve the "complexity" automatically. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 02/09/2026🧵 2/8 His own resignation letter in 2017 called the Commission "partisan, dysfunctional and divided." The only concrete example given was a case where his side lost, but won on appeal, with the Federal Court agreeing. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 02/09/2026🧵 1/8 Graeme Watson spent a decade on the Fair Work Commission. Before that, he was a partner at Freehills, the firm advising Patrick Stevedores in 1998, when the government helped it sack its whole workforce overnight. He's now calling for a return to that era's industrial system.revitalisinglabour.substack.comGraeme Watson wants to deregulate workplace rights: It was tried, and we’re still living with the impactOn 27 August, the Australian Financial Review ran an article arguing that Australia’s industrial relations system needs to return to a framework closer to the heyday under Howard and Reith. 100
Lisbeth “no I’m not related” Latham @grumpenprol.bsky.social · 31/08/2026I did write a whole article explaining how they don't understand how gas prices are set. 010