Australian Politics, Mark II

I’m pretty sure they did.

Lol, … how you come to that conclusion is beyond me.

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Easy.

Most Australians are red-neck yobbo bigots, and Tone and Barnaby appeal to them. Both of them win their own electorates easily.

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Wasn’t he in command of the first ship to sail at least as far as the antarctic sea ice? For one example. Pretty sure he was also the first to several other uninhabited places.

I think it was the ‘founded in belief’ bit that annoyed people most. Coming from a Hillsong happy clapper, to a roomful of people who routinely watch government casually dismiss their work and expertise for reasons of political convenience or religious conviction, it had very strong ‘belief > science’ vibes, especially for those who’ve been splattered with the ongoing war that religious types are waging against the biosciences on behalf of creationism.

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Don’t think he discovered anything first.

But I could be wrong once again.

Ummm, really? That’s what you think of us? Gee, I’m so glad that you were a advising the governments.

Well if you are a redneck yobbo, then you fit.

But I see that you have an Irish heritage and us Celts started civilisation so we are not yobbos, and the only ones we hate are the English. So you are not part of them !

Mmm, flattery, my friend, will get you somewhere. A defensive parry that I’ll let you have…

I am of Celtic stock but I’m also part of the “great unwashed"I read your posts with interests and usually find them both informed and constructive so I guess I just wanted to pull you up on that “elite” thing, there’s something about it that is a little off colour if you know what I mean? “Canberra bubble” / inside the beltway” and that sort of stuff…

Of course I could be wrong, but I don’t think there was much public awareness of this at the time. I think, similar to the Keating govt in terms of time in office, it was just time to go.

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Ironically given how things went later, but the way I remember it was that one of the big contributors to Howard losing was a perception that he was not serious about addressing climate change.

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Don’t forget Work Choices. He had lower and upper house control in his final term. Got giddy with the situation and over reached on industrial relations.

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Society today is very multicultural, with many Australians having little or low English levels. Therefore they tend to follow what the leadership of the cultural society pushes at them. If that society is LNP leaning then they will vote LNP, if it is Labor leaning, then they vote Labor.

That would be part of it.

The other part is that many older Australians tend to vote for one party or the other regardless of policy because that is “how they have always voted and always will”.

Then you have the religious side and that can be similar to both points above.
LNP = strong Christian/Muslim values
Labor = left leaning and very liberal.
Greens = nutjobs, total greeny fruitloops
(I know this is not true for me personally and for a lot of younger Christians but that’s how it is traditionally seen)

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Nothing to do with any “elite”.

My observation over many years is that we are a very conservative nation politically.

And a very wide cross section hold strong views on immigrants ( including immigrants and their kids) and as the Same Sex Marriage vote showed, Labor voters can be amongst the most most intolerant.

Maybe you have views on why we no longer join Unions and Liberals get more primary votes than Labor. Why the extreme like Hansen get large followings, why racial profiling is rife amongst our Police, Government Agencies and Media.

I do understand our irreverence to authority, but do not understand the tall poppy syndrome. We would rather cut someone down than support them. Blitz is a prime example of this, especially if you read things said on the last night of Trading this week.

I could easily blame all this on the lack of Leadership, but my experience as the local Mayor was that getting people to follow is not an easy task, especially when their minds are closed.

Don’t get me wrong, this a great place to live and I gave done very well, I just regret that we find ways to move backwards and ignore many opportunities.

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One of my pet hates is people arrogantly putting their feet up on chairs. OK, it may be that the floor is cleanish but it is still a bullshit thing to do. He could have just stepped in something dodgy and then someone comes along and sits there. Scummo.

Feet up on public transport is the worst. Pigs one and all.

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“Unemployment is now down to 5%,” he says. What a facile lie ! It’s the Tory three-card trick. They bullshit about all the new jobs they’ve “created”, but they’re taking no account of hours worked. For their statistical analysis, 40 one-hour jobs is the equivalent of 40 forty-hour jobs.

Are they knaves or fools you might ask?
The answer is, they’re both.

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I heard today that the jobless rate is steady and hasn’t decreased.

Might be people are just stopping looking

What impact do you believe compulsory voting has on the Australian publics, small ‘c’, conservatism?

I feel it’s a system that is resistant to large swings because of the number of low info voters who would vote down the same lines at every election; whereas in a non-compulsory system they would be less likely to vote, making our elections more reactionary.

Howard also lost his seat because finally enough voters realised he was a war criminal, bigoted f arking useless c unt

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Yes, there were a number of contributing factors, on top of there being many people who simply wanted something different.