Australian election

[Fambo Number Mive]

I see Labor are back in power under Anthony Norman Albanese, and Morrison's Liberals are out.

Good news for Australia, let's hope they can do more to address climate change under Albanese. Though Morrison seems to have done a good job on covid in Australia compared to ghouls like Johnson, although as someone who has never even been to Australia I'm relying on news reports for that.

Are the Liberals basically Australia's Tories and Labor like Labour pre-Blair? I am very ignorant of Australian politics so apologies if this post seems naive.

[jobotic]

I'm pretty ignorant. Labor obviously better than Liberals/Nationals (who are in permanent coalition???, who seem to me to be pretty right-wing with Labor soft-left/centrist.

Greens doing quite well too. Although seeing as the country will soon be burned to a crisp you might hope for that.

Seems to be good news anyway.

[jobotic]

This is like Johson and the Tories getting kicked out isn't it?

[canadagoose]

Thank God Morrison is out. He really was a shitcunt.

[samadriel]

Haaaallelujah, *thunk*

We fucking needed this, seriously. A hung parliament with about 11 progressive independents and Greens holding the balance of power, and potentially dragging the government to the left on climate and social security (the Greens, who look to be gaining three seats in Brisbane, have been campaigning about adding dental healthcare to Medicare and improving coverage of mental healthcare, and I think people are so sick of those gaps in Medicare, that probably won them their new seats on their own (although, y'know, floodsfiresheatwaves).

Y'know, back when Medicare was being formed, they actually consulted with dentists as to whether dental care should be covered by Medicare? Was the ebola virus not available to discuss medical research? How about sharks and crocodiles on tourism policy? "Yeah, we think tourists should swim in the ocean more! Oh, and visit swamps." [/antidentite]

I can't get over how happy I am with this result.  Finally, Labor have fallen short in a way that will improve lives!


Since you guys were asking,  the Liberal- National Coalition is a centre right conservative party which has been drifting increasingly rightwards for the past 25 years or so,  after their cunt then-leader John Howard kept winning and winning elections. Australian Labor is far superior to Blair's Labour,  although it drifts both left and right within its centre-left coordinates -- this election actually saw them take a less progressive tack after their Corbyn-like reformist agenda was rejected by our idiot electorate in 2019. The Australian Greens are basically European social democrats,  not afraid to propose taxing the incredibly wealthy to improve the state, which means they get called "crazy" all the time.

Is it true that the Greens have a single seat somewhere in London?  I thought I saw that on an electoral map many years ago.

[danwho9]

They should bring back Paul Keating - he really was the king of the parliamentary jibe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3Lu6FCVkNs

[canadagoose]

Is it true that the Greens have a single seat somewhere in London?  I thought I saw that on an electoral map many years ago.

Brighton, but you're not far off. The Scottish Greens (separate) also have seven MSPs in the Scottish Parliament.

[Goldentony]

The Dollop did an episode on Gough Whitlam and co and the 1975 election bollocks this week and im amazed you dont hear more about it because it's fucking mental. Australia really, really could not be fucked with giving a toss back then.

[zomgmouse]

I see Labor are back in power under Anthony Norman Albanese, and Morrison's Liberals are out.

Good news for Australia, let's hope they can do more to address climate change under Albanese. Though Morrison seems to have done a good job on covid in Australia compared to ghouls like Johnson, although as someone who has never even been to Australia I'm relying on news reports for that.

Are the Liberals basically Australia's Tories and Labor like Labour pre-Blair? I am very ignorant of Australian politics so apologies if this post seems naive.

Morrison did shit all for covid. Late on borders, late on vaccines... Most of the work was done by the state leaders.

the Liberals (who run together with the Nationals as a coalition) are indeed our tories and Labor are like Labour but they've very much gone post-Blair now. Extremely centre-to-centre-right but the Liberals are so far right the perception has made Labor seem like the "left" party. Comparatively I suppose that is true.

This was such a relief when the results started coming in. I was really nervous about it all but it seems like the crackpots were just empty noise this time round.

United Australia Party (billionaire crackpot fuelling the conspiracy FREEDOM movement) and One Nation (Pauline Hanson racist crackpot fuelling the racist crackpot movement) have won no seats. All the tiny minor parties who are full of more FREEDOM crackpots also did nothing. (Senate results incoming)

Greens gained a few seats and had a nice swing towards them. No Socialist party seats but again a pretty nice swing towards them. Although I think minor parties across the board had a swing towards them away from the two majors.

For anyone following this thread who isn't aware, Australia has a preferential voting system. #1 votes are counted and if a particular candidate doesn't have enough votes then those #1 votes get counted towards whoever you put as #2 on the ballot. And so forth. It means that even if someone is ahead on #1 votes a race can be won by a different candidate thanks to other preferences flowing in. I think this is a much better system than first past the post.

Anyway. We'll see what happens. This is all a huge relief for now. A good starting point to keep pushing for change.

[samadriel]

The Dollop did an episode on Gough Whitlam and co and the 1975 election bollocks this week and im amazed you dont hear more about it because it's fucking mental. Australia really, really could not be fucked with giving a toss back then.

Alan Moore's Brought to Light briefly covered the Dismissal with refreshing cynicism; great book, that one. A few years back,  Paul Keating said in an interview he would've chucked Kerr and Fraser into prison for treason if they'd tried that shit on him; ah, what could've been. That's a very rare example of someone treating the Dismissal with the gravity it deserves; it's treated as just another day by the Australian establishment,  who never admit that it was in fact a coup.

[Mobius]

Pretty happy about this. Casted my vote. Did me bit. Fuck off Scomo

[samadriel]

My only disappointment is that Dutton didn't lose Dickson - it was very close indeed. I hope the new lack of safety in his seat makes the Libs think twice about making him their new leader - I really don't trust the Aussie electorate not to elect a fascist next time. I'd rather have Tony Abbott in charge than Dutton, and that's saying something.

[zomgmouse]

My only disappointment is that Dutton didn't lose Dickson - it was very close indeed. I hope the new lack of safety in his seat makes the Libs think twice about making him their new leader - I really don't trust the Aussie electorate not to elect a fascist next time. I'd rather have Tony Abbott in charge than Dutton, and that's saying something.

yeah it is sad dutton, joyce, morrison and tudge and a few others have stayed. but we got to get rid of frydenberg, kelly, wilson, abetz, liu, keneally, butler...

many very historic and safe Liberal seats were lost. a great day

[famethrowa]

I just hate that the poison of Trumpism was attempted to be pushed on us by the Liberals and Murdoch, all these cute derogatory nicknames for Albanese and childish name-calling in general. Thankfully the public have rejected this pure boomer fuel, but I'm sure Sky news will go hysterical from here on.

[shoulders]

Why didn't Liberals just stick to the tried and tested formula of telling comfortably off middle class people they're hard up against it and Labor will put up their taxes + immigrants are bad?

Perhaps they did, I only got dispatches.

[pcsjwgm]

Even if I agreed with all of the Liberals' policies I still wouldn't have voted for them purely because of their unbelievably fucking annoying "there's a hole in your budget, dear Labor" ad.

[samadriel]

I'd love to know who came up with that one; universally hated,  and rightly so.

Word is the Legalise Cannabis party is getting more votes Australia-wide than the UAP. There's a hole in your bucket bong,  dear Palmer...

[Shaky]

Labor have an uphill battle ahead of them, and I'm not entirely convinced Albanese is the right man for the job, but it's great to see Morrison et al turfed the fuck out. Sad the hairless scrotum that is Peter Dutton remains but I'm sure he'll fuck up again in due course. Pleasing to see the Greens make a significant dent as well - my area has been snatched from the Libs and I'm very happy with that.

[Urinal Cake]

The crossbench and Senate looks like it's going be a struggle. I'd laugh if it plays out like Gillard again.

[famethrowa]

Why didn't Liberals just stick to the tried and tested formula of telling comfortably off middle class people they're hard up against it and Labor will put up their taxes + immigrants are bad?

Perhaps they did, I only got dispatches.

Well they kind of did, but went with the unusual gambit of shouting "It won't be good when the other guys win!!"

[samadriel]

https://fb.watch/d9TNQtwaFu/

Right wing lunatic clambers so far up his own arse he can see out of his mouth. A stunning tantrum.

[famethrowa]

https://fb.watch/d9TNQtwaFu/

Right wing lunatic clambers so far up his own arse he can see out of his mouth. A stunning tantrum.

More of this Trump shit, with adults calling other adults things like "bedwetters". Fuck's sake, fucken grow up.

[jobotic]

Good too see that evil scrotum doesn't always get his own way and culture war bullshit doesn't always work.

[Fambo Number Mive]

I've had Sky News Australia come up on Youtube a couple of times and though I've never clicked on their videos just going by their video titles they seem more like Fox News than the UK's Sky News.

Surely Australia is better placed than many other countries to replace coal with solar power?

[Psybro]

I've had Sky News Australia come up on Youtube a couple of times and though I've never clicked on their videos just going by their video titles they seem more like Fox News than the UK's Sky News.

Sky News in the UK is prevented from acting like Fox News by rules enforced by Ofcom, hence the energy expended on getting a Tory shill in the job running it.  It probably won't work because anyone willing to transparently whore themselves in that way will probably be too thick to do it properly.

[Blinder Data]

If things stay as they are, I think that the UK's next GE will have a similar result to Australia's. ScoMo and BoJo are two peas in a pod, overly blokey post-truth culture war shysters who have pissed off the public one too many times. Albo seems about as unconvincing and uninspiring as Keir Starmer, and yet will become PM despite a pretty average election performance.

Like Australia, I can see some big scalps being taken at the next GE (Dominic Raab, John Redwood, maybe even Michael Gove) but unfortunately it won't be done by candidates committed to fighting climate change - it'll be Lib Dems :/

still, a possible path to rid us of the blonde manchild has been shown to us by our Australian friends. cheers lads!

[jonbob]

Surely Australia is better placed than many other countries to replace coal with solar power?

The biggest obstacle is the Labor party is very heavily influenced by the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union and so they talk a lot about climate change, but they won't actually do much. 

[Mr_Simnock]

The biggest obstacle is the Labor party is very heavily influenced by the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union and so they talk a lot about climate change, but they won't actually do much. 

That's the issue isn't it, the economy is so beholden to those things even though they are actually making the country slowly uninhabitable. I do wonder how bad things have to get down there before change comes much more quickly, I suspect when the south east is simply a no go area for farming and habitation, just a searing hot wasteland.

[shoulders]

That's the issue isn't it, the economy is so beholden to those things even though they are actually making the country slowly uninhabitable. I do wonder how bad things have to get down there before change comes much more quickly, I suspect when the south east is simply a no go area for farming and habitation, just a searing hot wasteland.

Also, not particular to Australia, Labour parties worldwide having their vote cannibalised by reacting to the left taking a chunk by moving further right and 'doing what it takes' to get business and the media onside, to the extent of becoming almost a mirror image of the previous Conservative administration. Who then react by moving further right. Copy and paste for the next election. Every now and then some lukewarm liberal shash gets in on the basis of a 'defensive compromise' which then proves ineffective and gets turfed out.

That alone demonstrates what we've known for years, that whoever gets in has so many more layers of resistance from capital and private interests to fight. All of the Left are othered and the soft Left still reckon these interests can be bargained with? Bullshit, they will let you be their slaves and puppets at best.

[Mobius]

Thought this was quite nice

https://twitter.com/billybragg/status/1531617239438327808