Libs, There’s your problem
That’s not the problem, that’s the outcome.
Their “solution” (Deeming et al) is problem #2.
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I think it is really important for the future of democracy in this country that the various teal independents coalesced into a formal political party, so that for those inclined to the centre right they have an option other than an increasingly far right “Liberal”
Party especially the way Hastie seems to want to push it this week.
But I don’t think that they have the guts. And this leaves the path wider open to allowing the populist right extremism that has became mainstream overseas to become mainstream in our country too. I dread that outcome.
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I don’t think it’s a matter of guts. I think they vary politically a lot, perhaps more widely than a party could comfortably contain. David Pocock could almost be a Green, while Kate Cheney and Zali Steggall are basically Liberals who understand that climate change is real (which means they can’t be Liberals under the current looney-tunes Lib culture). When you have 90 parliamentarians like the ALP does you can get away with having such a diverse array of viewpoints in the party, but not when you have half a dozen.
Essentially you’re just shuffling the reactionaries over to the Nationals or One Nation, and the wets to the amorphous blob that is the Teals. And you expect someone out of that being able to form government?
There is nothing wrong with our democracy, we have free elections and a solid preferential system, and mandatory voting. The AEC runs open and honest elections, and political donations will become illegal soon everywhere, if the SA laws are any indication.
There needs to be some changes on advertising and the unfettered media interference, but our population is not entirely stupid and mostly get it correct.
Perhaps you could argue about influence from Corporations and Mining, but they don’t get to vote.
Liberals have issues at present and the emergence of rightwing extremism is troublesome, but nothing we have not seen before which will die away. Liberal will find their way and new Leadership will evolve.
I found Albo’s work at the UN refreshing and it was a clear message the we are not a U S or China pawn. Clearly work to do with our economy, and a bipartisan approach to taxation and climate change would be positive steps. I am actually more confident in our democracy than I ever have been before.
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The “Corporations and Mining” you speak of don’t need a vote. They get the benefit of exploiting OUR natural resources without paying even a pittance for the privilege. Why would they need a vote, when the current gutless government and the big business sycophant opposition are acting in unison to support them in their theft of our resources. A vote is only of use when a genuine choice is offered.
We have never been a Chinese pawn, but while we have 12 permanent US bases (including Pine Gap) and 6 rotating ones in “our” country, all rent-free and while we continue to donate millions of dollars to the Septics for nuclear submarines we don’t need, and without even any guarantee we’ll get them, I don’t think you can claim we’re not a US pawn in most areas. Sure, we recognised a non-existent Palestinian State at the UN, but words are cheap, as the Septics fully understand. What practical measures are we taking to bring the war criminals, Netanyahu and his gang of fascist thugs, to book, such as putting real pressure on the Septics to stop facilitating Israel’s genocide by continuing to supply them with armaments. How many more innocent childred need to be targeted and murdered by trained IDF snipers before Albo will demand that the Septics call a halt to the genocide, by cutting off relations with Israel ?
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No, I don’t expect them to win government. But I do expect them to stop allowing their side of politics to be hijacked by the populist looney right and pushing the rational* right into irrelevance as has happened in the USA (from where I am posting now) and increasingly in the UK (where the Conservatives are tending towards Reform light).
*rational meaning those who can construct a coherent argument and basis for their positions, even if personally I don’t agree with them.
Yet the vast majority continue to support these gutless governments and not your dystopian view. But then you were never a democratic scholar.
It’s a bit unfair to single out the UK conservatives mind you. UK Labour is basically indistinguishable from Reform Light these days too. I’m no Albanese fan, but FMD compared to Starmer he’s Gough reborn.
I’m not sure that the problem with the Libs being hijacked by the ‘populist looney right’ is a tractable one, to be honest. The libs are like that because increasingly their base is like that. All the hysterical Fox News/Sky After Dark stuff was probably once a conscious propaganda tactic by campaign managers to assemble a winning election margin, but that was 20 years ago. The people marinated in that culture for decades are now the ones in charge. People like Murdoch (or Howard or many others) found hysterical idiots useful and tried to breed more of them, now they’re overrunning the joint. Trouble With Tribbles except with cookers, climate deniers, and racists. The libs haven’t been HIJACKED by the loonies. They handed the loonies the wheel over a decade ago. The gullible Sky News viewers of 15 years back are their branch members and candidates now.
What that means is I don’t think there’s likely to be much if any common ground between a hypothetical Teal-like party and the modern Coalition. The Coalition will have the sort of angry entitled how-dare-you-take-votes-that-are-rightfully-mine resentment that the ALP hold towards the
Greens, and policy-wise they’re increasingly so far out there towards Trump territory that any sane Teal party would be hard pressed to side with them. Any compromises the Teals ask for in the fields of climate, for instance, would likely be too much because ANYTHING would be too much.
What I think this means is probably a long period of Labor government, largely unconstrained by scrutiny and increasingly corrupt because long-serving governments always are. They’ll be able to pass left-wing policies with the support of the Greens and right-wing policies with the support of the Coalition, so functionally they can pretty much do what they like. I suspect the first vote preference share of the majors will continue to drop, but we’re still a long way off the point where the two-party system breaks down and those numbers are reflected in parliament (and there’s going to be weird statistical artifacts in the meantime, like last election where the Greens lower house representation was almost wiped out largely due to the Lib vote cratering). Plus the ALP and libs are working hard to undercut and marginalise the independents by campaign funding reform favouring major parties - yay bipartisanship?
To me, it looks like the ALP have come to most of the same conclusions as me and are settling their snouts in for a very long comfortable lunch at the trough. For a govt with a huge majority three and a half years in power, they’ve made almost zero big ambitious reforms. That’s unusual when the other mob held the reins for nearly a decade, surely they did something that you want to undo? But … nope. Conservatism, small targetism, little bit of tinkering around the edges but don’t frighten the horses. We have a Labor government with a Liberal party defence policy, a liberal party emission policy (a Labor emissions TARGET, but Liberal party con-job methods of reaching that target). We have a Liberal party education policy, Liberal party welfare policy, slightly tweaked Liberal party tax policy, Liberal party fossil fuel policy, Liberal party aged care policy, Liberal party science policy. It’s not a government that’s come to power with an urgent drive to improve the nation, it’s one that’s happy just to leech off the open bar.
I don’t think any of this is good, in any real way. We’re going to be hitting terrifying and irreversible climate milestones within 15 years, for instance, and a fat lazy government now isn’t going to be up to addressing that, and is just going to make things harder in future. And for ‘climate’, substitute ‘housing affordability’ or ‘educational inequity’ or ‘the autocratisation of America’ or whatever. We’re approaching many many crisis points in history with a government that’s just happy to be invited, and an opposition high from huffing their own farts for two decades.
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Gough was 50 years ago and it is a very different World.
Hawke was the bloke who saw the writing on the wall, and pragmatic approach to policy can be attributed to him and Kelty. Those policy that you call Liberal started with his years and have hardly varied.
It is this way because it is what the Voters want, and while we could intellectualise about aspirational policies and courage and conviction, it is not that easy when you have a conservative nation, three year electoral cycle and a population motivated by today and little thought of tomorrow.
I am glad I am old.
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Your love for China Perce amazes me. You are cru=itical of Israel for Palestine but faile to mention the Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs. A least Israel has a defense in that they were attacked.
Do you even know what “dystopian” means ? Or did your old brain mean “utopian” ?
The majority which supports these gutless governments is substantial, but hardly “vast.” And while the mass media are controlled by a handful of capitalist oligarchs, this situation will continue.
We’re stuck with our conservative version of so-called democracy, with no hope of replacing it with a better system, nor even of ameliorating the faults in the existing system, while the Labor lot are controlled by self-interested businessmen and lily-livered politicians who see no personal benefit in improving the social order.
Dystopian" describes a futuristic, imaginary, or real society characterized by oppression, fear, and dehumanization, often as a warning about current social or political trends. Key characteristics of a dystopian society include restrictions on information and independence, pervasive propaganda, constant surveillance, and a figurehead worshipped by citizens under the guise of a perfect, utopian world. This genre uses exaggerated, negative scenarios to critique real-world issues and encourage social change
All in your grumpy mind.
What “love for China” ? My sole mention of China in the post you are replying to was to say “We have never been a Chinese pawn,” which is true, but in no way indicates a “love for China.” Your distaste for “the Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs” may well be warranted, and I may agree with you on that, but to mention it in a discussion of the Israeli attempt to wipe out the indigenous people of Palestine is a simple red herring. I do not have any particular love for China, but I respect their position as our biggest trading partner and as a major power in our region. There may be differences of opinion between Australia and China, but these have always been negotiable and once they give their word the Chinese, unlike certain of our allies, always keep to it.
As for Netanyahu and his gang of fascist thugs: they are maintained in power in Israel by the Septics who continue to provide them with whatever armaments they want. The only way to stop their Palestinian genocide is to persuade the Septics that it would be in their own best interests to cut off all supply to and support for the current Isaeli regime, and to work positively towards the realisation of the Two State Solution, with boundaries drawn according to those in force pre-1967.
We can do that by requiring the Septics to pay realistic rent for their bases here, or to remove some of them, and by taking a realistic say in the workings of Pine Gap, to ensure that no intelligence gathered there is passed on to the illegal Zionist regime in Israel. The last time we stuck our noses into the workings of the so-called “joint facility” at Pine Gap, our Labor PM was removed from office as a result of covert CIA action, which goes a long way towards explaining the current government’s reluctance to stand up to the Septics. All the same, it needs to be done, and could be achieved with the right publicity campaign. The alternative is to let Donald dump on all of us, and to watch more and more innocent Palestinian children perish, having been used as target practice for Israeli Defence snipers.
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We are strengthening our military ties with the US under this government not distancing ourselves from them. All the major bases in Australia have US personnel based there and the numbers are only increasing and we literally just restructured our facilities to appease the Americans. Our reliance of US for everything military wise has never been higher and there is no going back now
Yes I know we are strengthening our military ties with the Septics under this government, even though we should be distancing ourselves from them. This policy was started by the disgusting Morrison government and the present “Labor” government just doesn’t have the guts to reverse it. What this country needs is an independent, neutral foreign policy like New Zealand’s but as long as we are governed by individuals suffering from a servile Anglo-American imperial slave mentality we will never succeed in taking our rightful place among the nations of the earth.
“Our reliance of US for everything military wise has never been higher and there is no going back now,” you say. The first half of this sentence is abundantly true - but the second is wrong. It may be difficult, but we CAN achieve a position of neutrality. We must start by dumping AUKUS and reviving ANZAC.
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Come off it, Foxy. Your “key characteristics of a dystopian society” accurately describe our current world under the Septicaemic Empire. It seems you Labor right-wingers posing as leftists are really enjoying your best of all possible worlds.
AUKUS is only a small part of this at the end of the day and this was started decades ago. Our reliance on the US before AUKUS was huge and personnel have been building up rapidly for 10 years plus. Even if AUKUS was binned tomorrow the build up on Australian bases would continue and all the other joint military operations would continue aswell as all future commitments to US hardware
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For fear of coping a ban i am unable to correct on the ME, suffice to say you need some education on what is going on there. I will say only one thing, the 2m arabs living in Israel will disagree with you.
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