iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

“Robbing your constituents to subsidize your donors” is a great line.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

It’s a bit weird to say you’re “disappointed” in a PM you didn’t vote for and have criticised since day 1, isn’t it?

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

The problem with that is that no matter what you pay them, they will always need money to campaign.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I’m just a progressive that is tired of progressives wasting time and energy with magical thinking. You convince yourself that the problem is the ALP because that’s easier than dealing with the fact that your problem is the Australian electorate.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The Greens vote hit 11.76% in 2010. It basically hasn’t moved since then.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

If greens voters prefer a conservative government to a Labor government, they should put Labor last. It’s their choice! It’s a democracy! But the idea that the Labor government owes the Greens party something because most greens voters prefer a Labor gvt to a conservative one is nuts.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

They might want to “press ahead”, but they can’t actually do anything unless they earn power. To do that, they need to broaden their appeal beyond 12% of the electorate. And they have no plan to do that. So … 🤷‍♂️

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

That line of thinking leads nowhere. Labor optimised its vote for the electoral system we have and won the election. If the Greens want to implement their policies, they need to win an election, or offer Labor a deal that it is Labor’s interests to accept.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

When did I say anything about Tasmania? One of us is definitely on drugs, because I don’t remember that.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

It’s very weird how we conduct these elaborate, universal opinion polls to gauge the preferences of the Australian people, and yet greens supporters are convinced that even though 90% of Australians chose to support other parties, what they really want are greens party policies 🤪

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Can you please send me some of your drugs? Reality is a bit much for me, too.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Yeah I think we’re done here. Have a good evening.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

No it’s not. But the hard fact is that a party as far left as the Greens will only ever win 10-15% of the vote in Australia. Lots of people seem to be delusional about that. You can be left and powerless, or centre-left and govern periodically. Anything else is magical thinking.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

It depends what they want. If they want to replace Labor as the left-of-centre potential party of government, yes, that’s what they need to do. If they want to continue w a set of policies that appeals to 10% of the electorate, they should be realistic about what they can achieve with that support.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

This is getting a bit idiotic. If I propose a set of policies that I know only a small minority of people will support, I am not trying to win a general election. That’s the Greens. They have a message that only wins wide support in a handful of seats in the country. They know that. So …

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

No, that’s wrong. They *don’t* have a strategy to get elected to government. They are not trying to appeal to enough voters to win government: that would require a different set of policies. Their strategy is exactly as I described it.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The greens’ problem is that for the last decade, their entire strategy has been based on a fantasy of winning the balance of power in the lower house (unlikely) and then blackmailing Labor into implementing their policies (impossible).

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

It depends what you want to achieve. You can do a lot of grandstanding as a minor party w a few Senate seats, but if you want to influence policy outcomes towards your preferences, you have to be part of a coalition, which means accepting the limits of your influence.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

If you want more left wing government policy, the alternative is to convince more people to vote for left wing policy. That’s the constraint … ateotd, parties are just vehicles for consolidating public sentiment, and parties that want to govern need to attract the median voter to their coalition.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The City subreddits have been surprisingly calm and resigned, for the most part. Not everyone, obviously, but far from the wholesale rejection you might have expected.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Like I said, so what? The Greens hold a weapon that inflicts more damage on them than the government every time they use it. The Greens keep imagining that they can blackmail Labor into treating them as part of the government. But you can’t blackmail someone by punching yourself in the face.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

If Labor wins, that means that ON loses.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Another fantasy. You’re suggesting that the Greens facilitate a the election conservative government? I’m sure that will advance Greens policy objectives 🤣

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

They can team up with the Libs and Nats to block legislation. So what? As they found out last term, that’s a pretty blunt instrument and it has a tendency to blow up in their faces.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I still don’t understand why you think the greens have a role here. Labor won the election. They are going to implement the policies they ran on and won, not the policies the Greens ran on and lost. What am I missing?

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

It’s both. A party with the demographic weight of the Greens or Nats can only achieve the influence Greens want by doing what the Nats do (or at least did).

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

So the Greens campaign relentlessly against Labor and focus almost all their efforts on winning Labor seats, lose, and then expect Labor to treat the Greens as a governing partner rather than part of the opposition. That seems delusional to me.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The difference is that the Nats decided to trade policy purity and the right to compete with the Libs in return for a measure of power and influence.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

LOWER HOUSE PRICES! NO, NOT LIKE THAT!!

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Well, he *could* have been Pope Paul.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Speaking as a mediocre white man, I wish I had a fraction of Faruqi’s self-belief.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

That’s evidence of sound parenting. Reminds me of when one of mine was five, we were out shopping and chatting about an upcoming trip to London, which prompted this: “do you think the Queen fights for her right to party?”

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Hah, I prevailed on that one as well. Had to debate it with the corporate affairs team. 🤣

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

“Who cares, you’re gonna die soon anyway, vote for me” is one hell of an election pitch.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I work on NBN’s debt programs. In order to preserve my keyboard, I insisted we define it as “the Department of Communications” in their offering docs so we only have to write it out once. Every year or so, I have to explain to the department that their name is unfeasibly long and we won’t change.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

That’s a bit disingenuous, isn’t it Tom? I believe you entirely when you say your main concern is that the GOP is defeated, but clearly you also have a preference about what type of Dem holds power beyond mere electability.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

That is nonsense. There are many genocide scholars who have studied the holocaust and who describe what Israel is doing as genocide. I also find this personally offensive. I’ll stack my knowledge of the holocaust against any non-professional. They’re not the same, but they’re both genocide.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

He makes it soooooo hard to turn him into a demon!

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Any outlet that doesn’t boycott is going to be fair game for the next Democratic administration …

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

True, but I suspect that in many cases, prosecutors get a fair idea of what’s going on, particularly from the interactions between the jury and the judge during the deliberation process. But I could be wrong.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Not my area of expertise, but I was under the impression that that was effectively what happened … ie, the state would only go for a retrial when they thought that they had convinced the jury except for one or two holdouts. Is that not so?

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

If you reformed the political contribution system, they would. It’s difficult to overstate how different the landscape would be if politicians weren’t dependent on donations from health care companies. Which means you would need to have a large Dem majority and expand the Supreme Court.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Is that you looking for advice about being conned into getting a vasectomy, Cam?

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

A. That wasn’t the question she asked. B. What does your question have to do with what I posted? Did you actually read what I posted? Why don’t you try saying back in your own words what you think I said.

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John Nicolay @johnnicolay.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Perhaps you can explain to me why that question is relevant to what I posted, given that no-one else can.

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