Comrades,
Acres of old growth
forest have been wasted on newsprint so the commentariat could
do their mostly uninsightful post postmortems on The Election,
but it's not really the seismic shift of tectonic proportions in
politics that everyone's been talking about. There's always been
room for a "third force" in Australian politics...just ask the
Country Party, without whom the Liberals would never gain power.
Ever. Then there's the spectre of the DLP for too many years,
eons ago now, Don Chip's Democrats kept the bastards honest in
the Senate for longer than they rightly should have, and then
the Greens came along and bought the unreformed Trots with them,
but hardly anyone else, and now with 12 Senators (that's a full
state, btw), they have a sizeable bloc of votes and now some
clout to go with it in the lower house. The Teals are obviously
not, in Lil' Johnnie's famous last words, "Labor groupies" nor
are they a "fake party", Honest John. They are independents with
three pillars of policy in common, we know that much, but
elsewhere on the legislative agenda, who knows? Where do they
stand on foreign policy, given there used to be no votes in it
and now there are, by all accounts? They can't even agree on a
colour scheme, one of them uses pink and should be sued for
trademark infringement by the Pinko's. But the Teals cashed in
big time on the sense of disenchantment that festered like a
pustule during the Pando. People had had it up to here with the
bullshitting and realised it's just not worth putting up with
anymore when times are tough. What the Teals have also done
exquisitely well is put privately educated privileged
professional North Shore & Eastern Suburbs women right into
the political frame, while a grand majority of "working class"
women can plainly see Labor as their only hope for affordable
child care and thence the pathway to good employment and money.
And they voted that way, whipping those Pinko's arses back to
Canberra with what will be almost certainly an outright
majority. While the Teals as a "loose unit" might not be a new
third force on their own, their staggering success just
emphasises the absolutely critical importance of retail
politics. Not only do successful independents have to pick the
timing of their run impeccably, but to have any chance at all of
winning against the Establishment, they must go in with all guns
blazing - knock on every door, put a pamphlet in every hand,
plaster your face all over the place, and now you have to be
constantly in everyone's very well targeted Facebook face, as
well. The Soschuls are a gold mine for these people. Just ask
Jacquie Lambie who uses it superbly, and now has a friend in the
Senate to join her in being professionally furious about
everything all the time, particularly if it's got anything to do
with Tasmania. And that's from a very small base of barely half
a million people. On inquiry, the Stats Guru suggested drawing a
circle ten kilometres in radius from my gaff here on the outer
edge of Sydney's inner-west on an electoral map, and that's the
entire population of TAS, man, woman and child, right there.
Crikey. No wonder the land is unaffordable. Apart from being a
fuckton of local by-elections, Federal elections always have had
that curious Federation flavour, unsurprisingly.
Pleasing to see that for the first time in decades, QLD didn't decide the outcome, despite the Greens having a startling clean-up of inner Brisbane seats they reckon they'd targeted as good prospects two years ago; if they have indeed rounded up the Yoof Vote which appears to be the case, then well done them, at what would have been very long odds indeed. Well thought out strategy gets you respect. Augers well for the future, you'd hope, if the young folk are that politically engaged. Climate is now not the "single issue" of old hippies or the Greenie Lefty past, it's right here, right now. Meantime, over in the Golden West, the cavemen and women went into the polling booths with their baseball bats swingin' and chainsaws whirring and tidied up the Tories in suburban Perth good and proper, annihilating ScoMo's rabble over there on the say-so of the WA Premier. Such was the Pinko's popularity on the other side of the Island - after being kept safe there during the worst scourges of the Pando - the good burghers of the West Strayan capital even elected a socialist former Malaysian dolphin trainer fluent in ten languages against all expectations. Few, if any, gave him more than two chances at being elected - none and Buckley's. If someone were to write some treatise of the Election they need go no further than "How The West Was Won". In Melbourne, where the Conservatives have no compunction whatsoever in eating each other alive for breakfast, the Tories were dealt a fell blow in the Tealslide as notions of affluence and leafy streets were rent asunder. A lot of really silly shit went down in Sydney, on both Shores, but nothing much at all was happening in the vast Greater West parts where it was simply tit for tat. SA and TAS continue to elect unrepresentative swill, as usual.
After ScoMo tested the Federation to breaking point during the Pando, it's still there, with all it's curious inconsistencies, local mysteries and strange politics. If memory serves, Albo is having one final meeting of the" National Cabinet", where abolishing it will be the first item on the agenda. Then when all the states turn Pinko next year it'll be back to the bi-annual "Premier's Conference" just like back in the day. Scomo's only legacy after leading the worst do-nothing Govt in living memory will be the complete & utter destruction of the Liberal Party as a serious political force. We know that. The final images of Scotty from Marketing scuttling away from Kiribilli House were telling. There is just nothing there, nothing behind the facade. Said it before, say it again, but from the very moment the Kid President Macron called him a liar, any political capital ScoMo had left was gone, spent, finished, evaporated in seconds - bouffée!. He was unelectable from there on in. Can't see any biography of ScoMo's time in office selling all that well. Someone with too much time on their hands would have already mocked up the book cover in a meme, no doubt. Even some scandalous scribbler with a sensational tell-all would struggle to get an advance on the book. The progressive/moderate/centre - and here's a new one, wait for it - the "modernist" wing of the Libs gutted and eviscerated at the polls and all they have left is an old hard right former Queensland cop as the new leader? Spare me. What short term hope have they got? None. The Tories lost 20 seats in the Ruddslide 15 years ago, and will lose a minimum of 18 this time out, so they're due for some extra time in the political wilderness. It's a long way back from there.
In the final paralysis, the best line of the night in the tally room came from some feckless faceless Liberal Party apparatchik who was asked for their opinion on where the conservatives may lurch after their monumental flogging at the polls and remarked "well, look, we don't want to examine the entrails before we have gutted the chicken".
There always has been room for a third way; as the Guru pointed out, the collapse in the primary vote of the two major parties has been going for a long time now and in the glowing light of hindsight shouldn't come as much of a surprise. But, as Labor have found out to their immense profit, when you effectively fan it out over six very different states all with their own distinct agendas, it's now possible to win majority Govt with just 33% of the national primary vote. The challenge now is to hang onto it, and that's a big ask in the current climate.
With folks more than ever seemingly worried about the future, Albo's over arching plan appears to be to have Straya in a "better place" at the end of three years, aka "the future", and says it might even take two terms given it's such a shocking time to be taking the reins of Govt. An absolute shocker, with everything at the whim of world events, the Honky dollar, and inevitable hard times on the way. It's a tough brief. So, a straight stride onto the world stage first up to shake the hand of Old Mate Uncle Joe - Mr President himself - could not have been better optics for Albo. While the road ahead will be long and the way will be hard, the honeymoon will be short. But in a twist of fate, it's just the opening stanza in the next political cycle of the Miracle of Democracy. The new Prime Minister knows that better than anyone. Three years to get it right, son. Solidarity forever.
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