THING THE FIRST: "Liberals" in Australian political parlance are the right-wing conservative party. THING THE SECOND: In Australia you vote for the party in your state and local district, not for the leader of the nation. THING THE THIRD: This post is biased as fuck and I make no apologies.
In an expected but still disappointing move Australia has voted the Liberal Party into power, meaning that the supremely camera-awkward suppository of all wisdom Tony Abbott will be the 28th Prime Minister of Australia.
The swing towards the Libs was not as devastating as thought for Labor, although still pretty savage in places (especially Tasmania). Nonetheless, Labor Leader and now ex-PM (again) Kevin Rudd has conceded defeat and stepped aside from the leadership, despite delivering a speech that looked as though he'd actually won the whole bloody thing.
The last three years of relatively solid economic stewardship under a Labor government have been marred by horrific optics as the entire party continually played a bloody game of stab-and-replace the PM, backtracked on election promises due to immediate political concerns, fought amongst themselves, got involved in corruption scandals, tried to outdo the Libs at being total jackasses but failed at even that, stabbed the new PM they brought in and replaced her with the old PM, and in general put their pants on their fucking heads and set themselves on fire.
The Libs meanwhile largely sat back and let Labor self-destruct, hid multiple policies until the eleventh hour and completely backtracked on one of them (the internet filter), hid its costings until two days before the election (although, frankly, every opposition does it and is more or less forced to do it due to some bullshit admin thing), somehow managed to convince the electorate that the economy is much, much worse than it actually is and generally speaking promised 'change' without actually specifying really what that change was and whether it was good or bad. They will most likely take this election as a mandate to do whatever the fuck they want.
They will be somewhat delayed by the Senate, Australia's upper house of parliament, which retains the power to block legislation it doesn't like. At present a minority of independents and Greens hold the balance of power in the Senate and both parties have to court them in order to get anything done. However, this election, with only part of the vote counted in each State and Territory, it's looking as though the Liberal/National Coalition will have enough power to create a rubberstamp Senate that blindly does whatever the party tells them to. It's that or a bunch of independent crazy right-wing loons have taken the balance of power instead. We'll know in a few days if we're as fucked as all that.
In voting in the Liberals, Australian voters have elected a party that has:
Relentless Liberal/Murdoch media attacks have withered away the public consciousness of these notable achievements of the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd government:
Who's responsible? A confusing fog of micro-party preferencing deals, general collusion in an attempt to keep third parties and the Greens out of power, a heavily centralised Murdoch press hammering home anti-Labor news stories day after day after day, a perhaps semi-apathetic public and Labor's own incredibly self-destructive tendencies, largely. Sure, it's not the end of the world. But by god it fucking sucks.
TL;DR The local equivalent of the Republican Party and George Bush have taken government in Australia.
PS If you're sad about all this like me listen to this little ditty. It's nice and quieting.
In an expected but still disappointing move Australia has voted the Liberal Party into power, meaning that the supremely camera-awkward suppository of all wisdom Tony Abbott will be the 28th Prime Minister of Australia.
The swing towards the Libs was not as devastating as thought for Labor, although still pretty savage in places (especially Tasmania). Nonetheless, Labor Leader and now ex-PM (again) Kevin Rudd has conceded defeat and stepped aside from the leadership, despite delivering a speech that looked as though he'd actually won the whole bloody thing.
The last three years of relatively solid economic stewardship under a Labor government have been marred by horrific optics as the entire party continually played a bloody game of stab-and-replace the PM, backtracked on election promises due to immediate political concerns, fought amongst themselves, got involved in corruption scandals, tried to outdo the Libs at being total jackasses but failed at even that, stabbed the new PM they brought in and replaced her with the old PM, and in general put their pants on their fucking heads and set themselves on fire.
The Libs meanwhile largely sat back and let Labor self-destruct, hid multiple policies until the eleventh hour and completely backtracked on one of them (the internet filter), hid its costings until two days before the election (although, frankly, every opposition does it and is more or less forced to do it due to some bullshit admin thing), somehow managed to convince the electorate that the economy is much, much worse than it actually is and generally speaking promised 'change' without actually specifying really what that change was and whether it was good or bad. They will most likely take this election as a mandate to do whatever the fuck they want.
They will be somewhat delayed by the Senate, Australia's upper house of parliament, which retains the power to block legislation it doesn't like. At present a minority of independents and Greens hold the balance of power in the Senate and both parties have to court them in order to get anything done. However, this election, with only part of the vote counted in each State and Territory, it's looking as though the Liberal/National Coalition will have enough power to create a rubberstamp Senate that blindly does whatever the party tells them to. It's that or a bunch of independent crazy right-wing loons have taken the balance of power instead. We'll know in a few days if we're as fucked as all that.
In voting in the Liberals, Australian voters have elected a party that has:
- Promised a far shittier National Broadband Network. Instead of fibre across the country, it's fibre to nodes and then copper to homes - unless you pay a fee - and even that's been delayed until 2017. Private telephone company Telstra will retain ownership of the existing copper network, which will be great for shareholders and fucking shit for people who would actually like to use the internet. Maybe a little internet filtering to boot, who knows.
- Pandered to xenophobic anti-asylum-seeker rhetoric that casts asylum seekers as 'illegal immigrants' (despite not breaking any laws) and throws them in jail indefinitely pending appeal of their asylum claims. Despite Labor taking a substantially similar hardline tack on the matter, the Liberals have outdone them by promising to attempt to remove the rights of asylum seekers to appeal to the courts, substantially removing funding for asylum seeker legal aid, and attempting to impose a media blackout on even reporting on the arrival of boats in Australian waters (a media blackout on speaking to, interviewing or filming asylum seekers already in detention facilities is already in place). They also said they'd try and buy up all the Indonesian boats but everyone called that stupid so they've quietly let that slip out of the media for now.
- Promised sweeping government cuts in a desperate attempt to get back to a budget surplus. Foreign aid? Gone. Indigenous legal services? Slashed. Family payments? Cut ( apart from a rather generous paid parental leave scheme actually). Education, research grants and child care? Cut, cut, cut. Money's not safe; public sector jobs aren't safe. About the only thing they're really big on is roads.
- Said there will be no conscience vote on same-sex marriage. I can't actually find it on their sodding policy page but the gist of it is they've seen gay people trying to be legally recognised as being in committed relationship with their loved ones and they sure as fuck don't like it.
- Committed to ending the carbon tax and replacing it with an emissions trading scheme. To be honest I have no real idea how this works out so I don't have a lot to say here.
- Made Tony Abbott their leader. I mean, come on, Tony Abbott?
Relentless Liberal/Murdoch media attacks have withered away the public consciousness of these notable achievements of the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd government:
- Largely protected Australia from the global economic recession somehow (although some will argue that the groundwork was laid for this by Liberal predecessor John Howard, and others will go further back to Labor musical-hero Keating)
- Threw out controversial workplace relations laws Work Choices that significantly compromised union powers and recruitment abilities
- Funded the shit out of education, childhood development, hospitals, renewable energy and welfare
- Began implementing the National Broadband Network to bring fibre-level cable to Australia so we're not all stuck at sub<15mb p/s (or worse in rural areas)
- Signed the Kyoto Protocol, attempted to get emissions trading schemes through parliament until a somewhat compromised Carbon tax stuck
- Got Australia to the G20
- Begun to close the gap between Indigenous Australians and formally apologised for stealing all their kids back in the 50s and 60s
- Instituted a muzzled and shitty mining tax sabotaged by corporate interests
- Instituted a National Disability Insurance Scheme similar to already-existing schemes for medical insurance
- Instituted plain cigarette packaging
- Managed to do it all while constantly knifing itself in the throat, throwing out entire cabinet portfolios, sabotaging their own national image for personal party politics and generally acting like a bunch of dingbats
Who's responsible? A confusing fog of micro-party preferencing deals, general collusion in an attempt to keep third parties and the Greens out of power, a heavily centralised Murdoch press hammering home anti-Labor news stories day after day after day, a perhaps semi-apathetic public and Labor's own incredibly self-destructive tendencies, largely. Sure, it's not the end of the world. But by god it fucking sucks.
TL;DR The local equivalent of the Republican Party and George Bush have taken government in Australia.
PS If you're sad about all this like me listen to this little ditty. It's nice and quieting.
