That was a great election

Most of the population are not quite as excited by politics as I am, but this election result is really exciting. Getting rid of Scott was on most of our agendas, but this result goes much further than just doing that. This could be the election that drives a fundamental change in how Australian politics have played out, breaks the deadlock of an adversarial two party system and leads to positive change for people and the planet. It’s an opportunity to show that progressive policies within a mainstream political framework can do so much more than the angry posturing of the far right and blithely waiting for the free market to miraculously sort things out. Sure, I’d love far more radical action than we are likely to see, but pragmatically, this a great outcome.

For years now, the ALP has been drifting right. Most politics have been either drifting or leaping right. The LNP and ALP scrapped with each other over the moderately conservative vote and both pandered to the far right in terms of refugees, welfare, taxation and a carbon price. This left a growing segment of the community frustrated, and now the major parties have had a rude awakening that many Australians want environmentally and socially progressive policy. The massive (and they are really massive) swings to teal candidates perhaps suggests where the green vote would be at if not for a multigenerational campaign to paint the Greens as a fringe, fanatical, single issue party. Even in the face of 40 years of that messaging, more people have voted Green in this election than ever before, enough that in electorates without a teal candidate, the people have elected a green one. Thanks Queensland. Despite your poor performance at the last election, I think this means we can move the line of secession up and keep SEQ.

The liberal party has had a massive chunk ripped out of it. It was glorious between about 9 and 10 last night to watch conservative fucker after conservative fucker be booted out for a progressive candidate. But the National Party didn’t suffer the same losses. In fact, they lost no one. The first hour was depressing as massive NP first preferences decided rural electorates almost as soon as counting started. Here in the Mallee, we not only returned the NP with a greater majority, we got more votes for the ghost one nation candidate and UAP than for the greens. The backwaters of our country really are rural Vic, Nsw and Qld. Sorry everyone, my electorate voted in a queerphobic, vaccine objecting, climate sceptic LNP tool. Maybe you should kick us out.

This result increases the power of the National Party, the more conservative branch of the party, in the coalition. Many of the remaining liberal party members are from the party right as well, so it’s possible this gutting of the party will see it lurch further right again. It may develop into a mainstream ultra conservative party like the Republicans. Or it may break the coalition – the parties renegotiate their coalition after each election, and maybe the liberals won’t like sharing more power to their hitherto weaker conservative partner. Or maybe they will take on board the message that the community wants progressive policies and the major party battleground can move back towards the centre. Whatever way it goes, there’s going to be change, and it would be poking themselves in the eye to take the more conservative path. I don't mind watching them consign themselves to history though.

It looks reasonably likely that labor will get enough seats to form majority govt (sigh, I'd really love the extra kick that having to negotiate with Green and Teals would give the govt), but it will still have had an incredibly low first preference vote, and that vote hasn’t bled to the right. The UAP and One nation, despite the embarrassing support they received out here, are nevertheless only about 4% each. Greens, teals and centrist independents have between them got a first preference vote not far behind the major parties, and support for them has tended to flow on to Labor. It’s an incredibly clear message that Australia doesn’t want to be a conservative policy battleground and we are ready to tear apart the two party political domination. Labor’s policies are now the starting point for a negotiation further left. They will need to follow through with their promises on a federal ICAC, aged care reform and strengthen their climate action.  Their support of the Uluru statement last night was great. Hopefully they can be pressured on housing, health, refugees and welfare. Even with a majority govt, they know they risk losing the electorate next time if they don’t embrace more progressive policy. Scott thought he needed to get votes of the far right. Hopefully Anthony remembers that the vote of the centre left is far stronger.

The senate remains interesting though. Right now, with only a few seats undecided, neither an alliance of labor and greens nor of LNP and the far right have a majority. We’d need another 2 senators from labor or green to reach quota to hold a majority, but Pauline could get in again, and it’s still possible that Victoria (probably courtesy of the Mallee and Gippsland) will sentence us to a UAP senator. Passing legislation may all come down to whom the Jackie Lambie network supports!

Injury insanity vs election insanity

 

Being on the couch for 3 weeks of an election campaign has meant I’ve followed more election news than any sane person outside of politics or media should. Mostly it has involved being infuriated and offended, but it also continually reinforces to me how poorly we engage with politics in our country, and that is reflected in the bullshit that politics then gives us. Tony Abbot really spearheaded the descent of politics into a shouting match and waggling of penises. How can prime ministerial debate in the days before an election consist of responding to a criticism of the LNP childish racist name play on Albanese with Scott Morrison saying if Albanese isn’t able to handle some namecalling he can’t be tough enough to run the country? Are we in the playground here? How is this toxic macho bullshit still at the top levels of our country? Oh, yeah, because this is also a government riddled with accusations of sexual assault, harassment and bullying.

Australia has long had this cavalier “oh we’ve had enough of this lot, lets give the other lot a go” approach to politics. I have also long been infuriated with the lack of analysis of policy involved in this decision. This election it seems to have morphed into “we’ve had enough of the major parties, let’s give others a go”. Which sounds fine in theory, until one looks at who those others actually are. Unfortunately, most of them are single issue, raving nutters from the far right. I’ve had the dubious pleasure of looking at their policy platforms (and I use the word policy loosely in many of these cases) and they are rife with climate change denial, religious extremism (the Christian sort), nationalistic bigots, antivaxxers, billionaires and other self-interested people of privilege seeking to promote their interests. Clive Palmer doesn’t give a shit about you. Reignite Democracy aren't really seeking democracy. They stand against democratically elected governments acting within the law, with the support of most people and backing of evidence because it differs from their opinion. Sorry guys, that IS democracy. They did cosy up to Clive, running candidates under his platform, but that relationship has largely fallen apart. They have no polices, no plan, no action, just a bunch of blurb. Not unlike the LNP net zero stance. United Australia, the liberal democrats, the federation party, the citizen’s party, one nation and some of the LNP all specifically reject climate science. Australian Christians, Federation Party and parts of the LNP oppose a bunch of women’s and queer rights. Informed medical options are conspiracy fed non-medical hoohaa (picture anti 5g and fluoride to the antivax agenda). All of them do have websites listing some sort of ideas or policy if you too want to nearly fall off you chair in horror, disbelief and fits of laughter. I’m not going to bother linking you to them though.

So if you are thinking you just want to avoid the major parties this election, have a really close look at who you are voting for instead. Of course, there are some reasonable independents out there. Much has been made of the community supported independent campaigns and the teal independents this election. Whilst I find the combination of socially progressive but economically conservative to be a bit oxymoronic, these are pretty solid grass roots campaigns with a good policy foundation and genuine community support. Check out the Voices Of and Climate 200 websites for further information.  Other left wing minor parties started with a very specific platform, but have extended their policies to a broad range of issues. Once you work through the gazillion animal focussed policies of the Animal Liberation Party, they have excellent people and climate policies https://www.animaljusticeparty.org/our_policies .  Similarly, Victorian Socialists https://www.victoriansocialists.org.au/our_platform. Or Reason, who started out as the Sex Party (a much catchier name, I admit) and progressed to a broad policy platform https://www.reason.org.au/policy_suite. Fusion is a recent alignment of a bunch of microparties that also put together a reasonable perspective https://www.fusionparty.org.au/policy.  These parties are examples of how passion for single issues can evolve into a broad and constructive vision of the future that the far right just aren’t doing, because really, they don’t care about others or society or the environment or the future. It’s an inherently narrowminded, selfish movement.

Lumping the major parties together is also disingenuous. Whilst I think there are a bunch of problems in the Labor Party, there are fundamental differences between them and the LNP that make them a much better option. The Greens aren’t exactly a major party, sitting at about 10% of the vote, so I find it mildly entertaining, albeit frustrating, that they are lobbed into that category by right wing scare mongering. The Greens have a solid policy platform across all issues https://greens.org.au/platform . They don’t accept funding from mining magnates or the fossil fuel industry. They don’t have a history of abuse, harassment or corruption. Have a read of the 7 key issues they want to negotiate a balance of power upon. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/may/16/adam-bandt-outlines-seven-demands-for-labor-in-greens-balance-of-power-wishlist. If you can’t be fucked reading it, they are: no new coal and gas; dental and mental health into Medicare; building 1m affordable homes and better renters’ rights; free childcare; wiping student debt; lifting income support; and progress on all elements of the Uluru statement from the heart and are funded by ended fossil fuel subsidies, big business tax avoidance and a billionaire and super profits tax. Sounds terrible, doesn’t it? Who in their right mind would want any of that? They also have the only plan to address the actual cause of the housing unaffordability, to address rental issues and a plan that will limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.

The Mallee electorate has 8 candidates this year (how to vote card stolen from the greens website BTW), and half of them are far right. This is actually an improvement on 2019, in that we have fortunately lost Rise up Australia, Shooters and Fishers, Fraser Anning. But when Anne Webster (whose history of voting against all reason and caring can be found here https://theyvoteforyou.org.au/people/representatives/mallee/anne_webster ) becomes my 5th preference, you know the rest are bad. The One Nation candidate is one of their ghost candidates, living in Bundaberg and having not shown her face here at all. That’s a relief really. Stuck in the doldrums of following the election when I’d much rather be climbing, I hassled both of the independents with long lists of questions about how they would vote on local, national and global issues. I give Sophie extra credit for the effort in her responses, although I’m wary of her Murray Basin water plans, but in summary, she seems reasonably supportive of climate change action, aged care reform, Federal ICAC, abortion rights, LGBTIQ+ rights, refugee rights amongst other things. Claudia claimed to be in support of all of these things, but she is promoting how to vote Federation Party in the senate, which is very much not in support of most of these things,  then she also turned up at the IDAHOBIT breakfast ... Maybe she just has poor judgement of a party’s overall position, or maybe she is trying to buy support from minorities she does not actually support. Who knows. Don’t follow her senate ticket though! Do I think Sophie has a comprehensive understanding and plan for the future in the way the Greens do? No. But she seems the pick of the rest of the candidates, and I’ll give Claudia the benefit of the doubt before I’ll vote for Anne Webster.

The two party system and first past the post counting sucks. I’d love to live in a world where we had proportional representation in the lower house instead, but given it is what it is, it’s better to work with it than not work at all. RWNJ largely direct voters back to the LNP and if they do get any balance of power, it’s good bye to climate action, backwards on queer and women’s rights and hello to more racist dogwhilstling. Drawing a dick on the ballot paper is just throwing away your vote in a time when conservatives are far more politically motivated than the disillusioned left. It just lets their votes look like a larger proportion of the population. Vote based on policies and actions and evidence, not on blurb and nonsense. It’s been a campaign light on policy and high on hyperbole, but here are a few summaries of where the parties stand on issues to help you consider.

https://climateanalytics.org/media/auselection22_partyclimategoals_climateanalytics_1.pdf

https://www.anmf.org.au/pages/federal-election-2022

https://antar.org.au/2022-federal-election-scorecard?fbclid=IwAR0P7mVL59IIRvFTslPRrltU35Kg1NmZQ_7EMzBd3ZjLliWOI_Jh0c4xh0k

https://theconversation.com/lgbtiq-and-unsure-how-to-vote-here-are-what-the-major-parties-are-promising-on-health-183214

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/may/20/australia-federal-election-2022-labor-liberal-coalition-australian-policy-guide-who-should-can-i-vote-for-aged-care-icac-childcare-climate-change

People trying to lump the LNP, Labor and Greens in the same basket are misleading you for a reason. They are very, very different, and the best possible outcome I can see for this election is a minority Labor govt, with the support of Greens and Teals. If it happens, I’ll be drinking to celebrate, and if we get stuck with the horrorshow of the LNP again, I’ll be drinking to drown my sorrows.