The Australian right elite is clearly cracking up, and it is delicious to watch. The signs are coming like crows in winter, flying into a fortune teller’s marked-out space of sky. This week was a double-whammy, with the release of two polls showing that, as the headlines noted, Labor’s primary vote had fallen below the Coalition’s. Actually, it had done so in October, as numerous pollsters noted. And buried in the middle of the story (in the Oz), and not mentioned (in Nine), was that the two-party-preferred vote was unchanged at 52-48, a solid lead for Labor.
This was standard spin, desperate to not run the headline: “Coalition still dead!” The interpretation, of which there was none, was obvious. Peter Dutton has spent two years in opposition consolidating right-wing voters — conservatives shading towards cookers — and persuading them that they can trust the Coalition again, and doesn’t have to pledge a vote to sundry whacko outfits to the right of them.
Many in the mainstream and centre-left forget — due to an utterly irrational obsession — that Scott Morrison, a compromise candidate for the leadership, was seen by many on the right as just Malcolm Turnbull with fluid retention.
Indeed, the right seem as dazzled by ScoMo as we are, piling all calumny upon a man who won them an election they didn’t deserve to get — even if he, and others, then seemed to display no interest in actual governing. Since the 2022 defeat, they’ve been dutifully running the line that the Coalition lost because they presented no real alternative to Labor.
This was an import from US non-compulsory vote politics and doesn’t work in an exhaustive preferential system. But no matter. The purpose was to wage war inside the party, strengthen insurgent forces, and recompose branches. The deselection of Russell Broadbent in Victoria and Ian Goodenough in WA — is that not the best name for an Australian politician ever! — shows they’ve succeeded.
The question as to how many of them believe this guff as a general election principle has always intrigued me. One confirmation that they did was watching the Sky News panel during the election night coverage in Victoria in November 2022. Like freestyle climbers halfway up Arapiles, they scraped desperately for something to hold onto, and at one point, after a mournful round of “what about the forgotten people” simply ran out of stuff to say.
Having consolidated power within the right side of politics, the Coalition is now projecting a US style of politics, in which any concession to the real is abandoned in favour of getting in a partisan line. Consider Dutton’s response after Barnaby’s midnight street nap — that it was in Canberra, where there are a lot of Greens and Labor staffers, so no wonder nobody helped him up.
It is obviously infuriating to anyone rational, but that’s the point. It is designed to get the centre and left to respond by being both umpire and advocate. The left-populist response — that “Barnaby destroyed his first family and doesn’t seem too keen on being home to the second one, so maybe the pavement is where he belongs with the rest of the dogsh-” — is never going to be run, because there would then be an eight-way debate about the politics of family, choice, substance problems, collateral slut shaming, and unwarranted criticism of municipal cleanliness standards, etc.
So the two camps are diverging. The centre-left, Labor and the Greens, must project themselves as the new rulers, the steady agents of government and progress. The Australian right, which has never yet fully taken on the surreal disregard for truth of the US right, is now wheeling off into the outer world. Witness the “Advance” campaign in Dunkley, the ads suggesting that the High Court release of detained non-Australian criminals was not only Labor’s doing, but that Labor advocated for it.
This is the exact opposite of the truth, as regards the case the Albanese government presented. I do not recall such a blatant overall lie told in Australian politics, even in the “children overboard” heyday of the Rodent. That makes the Dunkley by-election interesting as a harbinger of future politics. It’s a blunt, nasty style, of the sort we have avoided in most spheres for decades. The visual style is aggro, with a ’20s/’30s mob air.
Labor has hoped that the mainstream right would stay within certain limits, and that some sort of self-regulating public sphere could be maintained. The left can’t match the right with blatant lies, because anything we can throw at a right-wing candidate would be something we wouldn’t see as wrong. For example, if you wanted to really detach a conservative vote from a right-wing candidate, you’d lie about their sexuality, fake up compromising photos, etc. That’s really it. Corruption, incompetence, lying, domestic cruelty? The right don’t give a damn. The only things the left can reach for are truths, or lies they would find it abhorrent to present.
So Dunkley might tell us something about whether these tactics will work. More by failure than success. Advance has pumped $350,000 and many volunteers into one by-election, something they can’t repeat in a full election. If Labor suffers a hit, it will still be difficult to say if they have made a difference. Should Labor hold the line, by contrast, it will be clear that US politics — the nasty stuff beyond most Australians’ experience or comprehension — is not yet of use in this country. That would put the right more out to sea than ever. And Dunkley is Frankston, so the sea is mostly effluent and used syringes.
The final part of the right crack-up? The Nightly, the Seven West sponsored evening news — …newswhat? It’s a news site that looks like a clickbait aggregator — what we owe Two and a Half Men, What Taylor Swift and Navalny have in common — where you can click through to a PDF version of a print edition that doesn’t exist. It claims to get the news first because it “comes out” in the evening, which suggests it was set up by the last all-print editor who hadn’t yet succumbed to emphysema. Best of all, the full edition… scrolls sideways! Yes, the dear old Global Mail is back again, Jokerfied.
We wish it great success, with its exciting new items of listicles and breaking news that either everyone else has, or is 18 hours old and hasn’t been swapped out yet. From that, you would say that the whole right shebang is in disarray, but we’ll hold off a final opinion until the Dunkley results come in, the Sky panel “analyses” them, and decides that what’s required is a junta, which we’ll read about in The Nightly 18 hours later.
Over the past four decadesI have read too many articles predicting the ultimately premature demise of one or the other side of politics to be convinced. I would have thought GR of all people would know better. Maybe he doesn’t really believe it and he is cynically serving up lefty feel-good screed for us lefties. Wouldn’t put it past him.
Still, we are living in interesting times. Labor is still considered left wing by most of the electorate despite being the only party with a coherent right wing policy program and the ability and willingness to govern accordingly.
But the main counter point the article lies therein. Most right wing voters aren’t interested in policy or governance. They are voting for the opposite, something approaching anarchy but articulating or defining what this means is against their religion. All this is definitely self limiting but will maintain 20 to 30 percent of the vote.
I’ve seen these predictions before . What usually happens is the Coalition is infiltrated by Christian extremists that want to abuse state power to impose a Christian theocracy but call it “religious freedom”… then they’re wiped out by the electorate, either booting them out or losing “unlosable elections ” (WA, NSW Libs before Barry O’Farrell, Victorian Libs).
Or the electorate gets sick of the “team” BS and the “Not the Clive Palmer Party” and chooses an Independent.
The other element is preferential voting. On the left, the first preferences that go to the Greens reliably flow to Labor (of course that can change). On the Right, the One Nation, Shooters etc, the preference flow is much less predictable … that partly reflects the incoherence on the Right
I think the general trend of the Liberals and Labor losing primary votes to minors and independents will continue. Something tha reinforces GR’s argument about the decline of the right is the advent of the Teals. I believe what they did in ’22 will come to be seen as a watershed in Australian politics.
Indi, won by Cath McGowan in 2013 and then her successor Helen Haines has not been reclaimed by the Liberals. Same story with Warringah won by Zali Steggall in 2019.
Similarly, I can’t see any of the five Teal seats won in ’22 going back to the Liberals. If anything, I see the reverse happening in 2025.
There is no reason to believe, with the trend of polling’ that the LNP will win anything like the 19 seats they need to form government. It won’t be all beer and skittles for Labor either, as their is a fair probability they’ll slip into minority in ’25 and need the support of Greens and/or Teals. After that happens, centre right moderates will have to have a die-in-a-ditch battle with the far right to drag the LNP back to the political centre, so they can once again be electable, OR the LNP will stay out on the far right and head further into the political wilderness. So, unless Advance has success in the dark arts, we can indeed reasonably expect to see the political right looking very shakey.
The “Liberal” party should change to the honest brand of “Conservative”party and then watch happens to the rusted on……….
Oh I do wish you would leave your inner Northern Melbourne enclave, and stereotyping mindset, Guy. It has become rather tedious.
There may be syringes on the beach at Frankston, but you’ll also find them at St Kilda . However, the water in the southern section of Port Phillip Bay is remarkably clear and not anything like “mostly effluent”. I regularly see stingrays, sand crabs, and assorted small fish there.
Sometimes I despair at the snobbery of those, like you, who profess “left leaning” viewpoints.
I think he was poking fun at the stereotype.
Yeah, but it’s too cheap: “See what I did there? I was parodying third-rate 90’s stand up”. Meh.
I’m amazed GR didn’t manage to slip in a reference to the single Mum with ten kids all called Wayne.
but with different spelling
Whoosh
I mostly despair at the self seriousness…
Brings to mind Tom Stade, the Canadian stand-up doing his old half-in-the-bag schtick – telling his comedy venue audience wherever his latest gigs are – that he is staying at an economically depressed area some way out of town. Just the name serves as a punchline. At the MICF, Frankston got the geurnsey. Stade, with all apparent sincerity, describes the locals as clearly being really healthy (or in training for the olympics) and refers to them, collectively, as “the athletes”. Never fails.
Sorry, that would be guernsey.
I wouldn’t eat anything that you can see.
I’m not sure Aussies really buy Advance’s unhinged style…. it works in the US because you can alienate 70% of the population and win. The US also has a solid proportion that believes in creationism and believe an American version of Divine Right of Kings. Here, people roll their eyes and think, “Sure Mate.”
I wouldn’t be writing Advance off, remember when the Voice to Parliament was proposed the majority of Australians supported it. When the LNP teamed up with Advance they blew the Voice into history with other thought bubbles. As well as targeting the rusted ons and swinging voters their strategy is to appeal to the baser side of the disengaged voter who resents compulsory voting and committing their time in such matters, which I am sorry to say includes a significant proportion of voters.
I don’t think the Voice is really comparable. Very rare to have a Y/N vote.
I wouldn’t write them off but I would. be sceptical that they can replicate success of Voice campaign in a by election or general election.
Hope not. But I’m pounded by sharp, fast, almost subliminal, and highly debatable statements on YouTube. Luckily I’m pretty fast with the remote and can hit “skip” faster than most.
but are you in Dunkley
I am still contemplating speaking to a friend who reduced the referendum down to a competition between whites and blacks.
“We are going to beat you big time” was one of the last things she said before I hung up.
And all this proved to me was the “unthinking acceptance of right wing politics has made it to the children of economic refugees in Australia.”
Pity we didn’t send them back, to starve in Scotland after WW11.
WW11? Scots weren’t starving after WWII, I very much doubt they will starve after an eleventh world war. Some writers claimed the English eives of servicemen were starving during and after the second world war but I doubt that because there was payments collected at the PO by their wives every fortnight. I know thst because my mother did that each fortnight and made a day out of it.
Pity some Australians don’t educate themselves before making smart-ar$e remarks.
Yes, and while they right claim a need for Advance and its talking points to counter Get Up lefties, but they avert their gaze from Australia’s RW MSM cartel that floods the zone to drown out anything centrist….
They can’t claim themselves the right’s answer to GetUp, which is funded by donations from the public that are often quite small, whereas Advance is funded by the wealthy, maybe even tax payer dollars as is the other right wing secretive lies for money user.
Why oh why oh why oh why oh why do all these evil horrible awful amoral incompetent irrational beyond-the-pale piece of sh*t rightwing nut job cooker candidates keep popping up in Australian elections? And sometimes, why, even getting elected? Why? Oh, why oh why oh why??? It’s…unfathomable. It’s…mystifying. Oh goodness me, it’s the most incredibly impenetrable political conundrum of our times…
Why all these non-progressive, non-Left, stupid, fat, ugly, dumb, smelly, racist, ignorant, violent, sexist, homophobic, trans-murdering, tinfoil hat-wearing piece of sh*t political candidates just…keep popping up, I mean. Oh, if only all you clever right-thinking Lefties could come to understand why all the dumb piece-of-sh*t right-wing (and/or conservative shading to cooker) voters who vote for these dumb piece-of-sh*t right-wing cooker candidates won’t instead do what’s good for them, and vote for the candidates we right-thinkingly know they should right-thinkingly vote for. Then you clever Lefties would fix everything up for them, wouldn’t you: those dumb rightwing pieces-of-sh*t. You’d make them less dumb, less right wing, and less piece-of-sh*tty, quick sticks, wouldn’t you.
Why oh why oh why oh why can’t these right-wing cooker piece of sh*t voters see how right-thinking you Lefties are? And how piece-of-sh*tty they are?
Etc.
To read a Crikey thread these days is to study Concentrated Political Witlessness at close range and in real time. Enjoy Trump II, soft paps. And thanks for nothing for him, from conservatives everywhere.
This is the second one of these today Jack. You can put forward whatever view/line you like. I used to enjoy your rants even if I disagreed with them. What you are writing now seems to me to be the kind of writing that infects US comments sections – full of righteous and wordy partisan abuse but containing very little subject related content. Please – I would like the old more thoughtful Jack back.
Eventually one gets fed up with the lofty, disingenuous, ‘who, us?’ culture war cynicism of the left. Guy is the most acute and most generously inclusive writer on the left in his approach to conservative politics, but he just can’t resist engaging in brutal destructive wedging even as he tries to disguise it as a lament,
Why do you think the Lib and Nat parties have been deracinated by US style culture war politics, Peter? why do reckon decent moderate conservatives like Broadbent and Goodenough get turfed? Excellent Libs like Trent Zimmerman booted by their own electorates? And even – as Rundle himself notes – a fairly innocuous (if formless) centrist like Morrison demonised to the point of Coalition schizophrenia?
Because that’s what the Left brutally sets out to do. Split the coalition into electoral oblivion. They too know very that exhaustive compulsory voting renders the absolutist polarity of culture war zealotry fatal for only one side of the Oz divide. Do they ruthlessly prosecute exactly the polarisation they then pretend to find so terrible. Look at how cynically the ALP Left – Albo, Gallagher, Wong – exploited Higgins and MeToo to paint Morrison as hopelessly misogynist. The real political victims? Zimmerman. Sharma. Freydenburg…the moderates of conservatism. The Teals differ not one bit in their bedrock (fiscal) views…but their usurping of those electorates will likely keep Labor in government for good.
Then the Left has the effing temerity to sneer at conservatives (shading to cookers) for letting our side of politics get taken over by ‘the right’. Exactly what the Left set out to help achieve. The problem the Left has, of course, is that the sickening hypocrisy, cynicism and self-serving brazen-ness if more and more of the mediocre new Left – soft pap progs is my label – means that more decent conservatives are deciding that the odious new Righties are the lesser noxious option.
That is Trumpism 101, Peter. The arrogant thinking that they can just do whatever they like – treat all conservatives like pieces of sh*t – and Australia’s electoral system (and basic decency) will always stave off any far right victory. The last time this happened was during the Weimar Relublic.
Guy is better than this. The Crikeytariat, mostly, isn’t. The threads below this kind of article always sully both article and writer. Rundle makes some unique and very good secondary points about non-left/prog politics. As usual.
Because the ostensible Left (Labor) have moved so far to the right on economic issues that the only remaining way the Coalition has to meaningfully differentiate itself is with wackadoo reactionary culture warring.
This is also why the Teals exist. Because they are moderate Liberals. They are successful in places that will never vote Labor because they still think it’s the 1970s, but also aren’t keen on the simplistic, intellectuallky bankrupt anti-everything of contemporary Conservatism.
The Coalition have nobody to blame but themselves. They’ve been on this path for the better part of 20 years, and other than the brief pause with Turnbull, have deliberately chosen to make it worse at every opportunity.
It cannot be stressed enough:
Every single Teal – as you say, moderate Liberals – replaced…an existing moderate Liberal. Every single one. Making zero difference to governing reality but also rendering the Liberal/Nats Coalition less likely and equipped than ever to resist the hard Right takeover you pretend to abhor. (But which actually provides you soft paps with an entire ‘faux Lefty’ political philosophy, albeit in cosplay reactionary silhouette.)
Exactly as ‘the Left’ wants. a split coalition, a peppering of electorally harmless right wing zealots to populate/strawman their contrived ‘Hard Right Danger!!!!’ narrative, in a perpetual culture war distraction from their surrender to the true dangerous vote of toxic ‘conservatism’…which is no such thing, but actually brute transactional amoral cynicism.
ie Trumpism. Or Putinism. Or whatever passing opportunist grabs power.
Without this panto scarecrow of a ‘hard right takeover’ to wave about, the privileged leaders of ‘the Left’ might have to start prosecuting and embodying a genuine Left material politics. Which among many other very hard political tasks would demand that they personally give up all the usual class divide /born-to-rule wealth, power and moral self-admiration trinketry that always comes with privilege unburdened by any sense of concomitant broader civic obligation.
Albo the Lefty Single Mum’s Houso lad might even have to offload his three meg heated, CGT rebated, tax-parasiting investment properties, huh. Oh nooeeesssssss!!!!!
Yes. But one not representing – and therefore bound to the policies of – the Coalition.
Which is The Point.
Not the point you are desperate to validate – that there’s some sort of grand lefty conspiracy to split the political right (as if the left could ever be that co-ordinated or influential) – but that the Coalition is largely travelling on the inertia of previous generations and becoming less and less attractive to voters every day entirely through their own conscious and very deliberate behaviour. Consequently, their representatives are not getting elected.
The window to save the Liberal party closed fifteen years ago when Abbott took the leadership. It briefly blew open with PM Turnbull, but was then securely nailed shut with Morrison.
LOL. You’ve somehow made painting Albo as some sort of property baron with his rookie numbers sound even dumber than when Max CM tries to do it.
Labor is equally as lost as the Coalition. They will survive as a nominally left but politically centre-right party supported by the more pragmatic moderate liberal “swing voters”. The closest you’re going to get to “genuine Left” any time soon is the Greens, who you presumably don’t like because they mix in social divide politics alongside with their class divide politics.
Working Class Labor ain’t coming back, any more than a moderate liberal Liberal Party is.
And voters understand this, which is why major party vote is decreasing every election and minor party and independent vote is rising. It’s fairly likely Labor will find itself in a minority Government after the next election.
“But one not representing – and therefore bound to the policies of – the Coalition.”
Doc, really. They are bound to their electorates’ wishes. Which amounts to an even worse political strait-jacket as an Indy, because Indy’s lack the pluralist ballast of a ‘broad church’ party (a term I use generically, ie to describe the other parties, too). Take a Dave Sharma…he is harder to the Likudian right on Israel-Pal than any Coalition government would be, so long as it included other (non Jewish-heavy electorate) moderates like Zimmerman and Broadbent. The real point is that the only ‘independence’ these Teals are willing to embrace in relation to Teh Evilz Hard-Right Morrison-Dutton LNP Legacy…is the pain-free symbolic Culture War stuff that isn’t a part of any genuine Left material political program at all, anyway. Big deal, yay, go Dan ‘I’m off to make a private sector fortune, dumb lefty suckers’ Andrews and his smirking rainbow bulldozer.
And you can’t help but strawman, can you, Doc. I did suggest some ‘grand conspiracy’. It’s banal culture war politics. My point is it takes to two the got to war; the Left gets far more in real electoral terms out of any Culture War than the Right/Murdoch’s sliver of self-interest. (Haven’t you noticed who is in government pretty much…mmm…everywhere?) And so the Left plays it every bit as hard – even harder – as any new Right does. Morrison got painted as some kind of whacky, QAnon, US Evangelical, misogynist crazy-man MRA, on the ludicrously over-amplified strength of the…YUUUUGE CIVIC CRIME of publicly admitting he’d asked his wife and daughters, who he loves abnd whom love him, what they thought about Higgins-Lehrmann. Oh no! What an evilz god-struck womenfolk hater!!!! The vicious, cynical, destroy-decent-real-feminists-like-Linda-Reynolds-and-Fiona-Brown strategy executed by the ALP Left on this #MeToo ‘culture war’ tosh was probably the most important factor in Albonese’s win. And it was confected garbage, just one examnple of the many Albonese especially has spent a political lifetime perfecting. He’s been around Left Sydney politics since the days of Larry Hand and Rats in the Ranks. We all know exactly how cynical – and capable – he is. As for his housing portfolio…oh whatever, do you think I give a f**K if he makes an easy quid in the same way as every other wannabe Sydney property hotshot of the last two decades (ie by tax-parasiting on the PAYE under and middle classes?). Fill you boots, Albo. But it costs. It – rightly – costs a would-be progressive leader a lot of political capital; maybe more than enough to render him pointless. And Doc: that you have not even a shred of understanding about the definitive importance of a would-be progressive, reformist political leader living the changes he wants to encourage a socially conservative electorate to support – even as a kind of contrived ‘public role play’, to make the progressive abstraction/ideal real enough for others who stand to lose financially to support, anyway – goes a long way to explaining exactly how you soft pap progs have destroyed any chance of a real ‘Left’ program ever being implemented.
The Greens???? Ha ha ha ha ha. In NSW at least they are even bigger posturing hypocrites than the ALP Left. Come and check out Greens politics in Balmain, mate. The biggest stance our local Greens MP has made of late has been taking up the cause of a tiny few entitled local rich ‘lefties’ who want to be able to keep using their great big GG-spewing brat-carriers willy-nilly, without ever having to pay a
tollcarbon tax or get held up for than five minutes at the emissions-reducing Rozelle Interchange. Don’t even start me on the localGreens-votersNIMBY’s petulant reaction to very reasonable housing Labor government housing density proposals. If you think the Greens – or the Teals – represent any kind of Left option, you’re going to be disappointed.chrs. bleakly and very very tiredly.
…’did NOT suggest some grand conspiracy…’ obvious typo apols
Love to hear your take on how Whitestone Strategic advances the cause of “true” conservatives. Ref: today’s Guardian Australia.
Russell Broadbent is NOT the poster boy for decent moderate conservatives. But thanks for the side-split. Speaking of cookers, check out Russell’s Facebook page.
Then there is the little matter of Frank Madafferi.
The “moderates of conservatism” ain’t no victims.
what on effing earth is any different about Whitestone, to the legions of connected lefty, greens, labor and indeed getup, teal, ngo and other progressive political marketing, networking, polling and messaging companies that french australia’s political landscape?
are you seriously suggesting there is something more illegitimate and sinister. bout a conservative pol-marketing crew than, say, the new consultancy daniel andrews has just created….good grief, how many lefty whitestones do you want me to cite…????!!
Follow the money, JR.
again, the same could be said of any partisan lobby or advocacy or consultancy outfit embedded in oz democracy, martz
Yes, but wouldn’t you think the fossil-fuel companies (traditionally amongst the wealthiest corporations in the world over the last 100 years or so) would be better resourced for campaign financing than a bunch of tree-huggers?
You don’t think maybe Australia’s richest woman would have more capacity than the average-earner struggling with a cost-of-living crisis?
You don’t think News Corp, founded originally with mining-money, might have more sway in a capitalist society than, say, a media organisation funded by a trust?
You don’t think $billionaire media-owning non-doms in the UK might have more financial and political clout that eviscerated unions?
What I say ‘follow the money’, I don’t mean follow some money, I mean follow the actual money.
And by they way: a no vote in the Voice, as mine was, was a quintessential moderate conservative vote. Absolutely a moderate conservative’s honourable, consistent, cogent and principled stance.
You don’t have a clue what either political or social conservatism actually is, do you. Not a clue.
LOL I don’t have a clue eh?………playing the man can be sign of MCI, but I digress.
Frydenberg et al lost to others because those Teal voters wanted a different sort of representation.
If actively promoting the interests of the honored society is OK behaviour for a “decent moderate conservative” then I am off to join the Young Socialists.
But whatever bangs your gong. Personally, I am outcome driven and not blinded by loyalty to ideology.
Anyhoo love how (some) No voters still feel the need to defend that vote. Now why would that be, I wonder?
‘defending’ my vote? against you? an internet cipher? ho ho.
but…why on earth would I feel any need to ‘defend’ it to anyone? honestly, you just betray your own ideological prog-reactionism in that last sentence, anonymous person. you simply cannot conceive of a Voice ‘no’ vote that was based on an honest, open and well-reasoned view that to do so was in both Indy Oz and the wider pluralist community’s best interests. always happy to make the case for ‘no’.
never felt the need to do so in a ‘defensive’ way…chrs
I have no idea why you feel the need to defend your No vote, however ’twas you who introduced how you had voted No (I could have said WTF, who cares what anyone voted, it’s over).
Anyway, the Member for Monash is not the leader of “moderate decent conservatism”.
Member for Monash is excellent at saying at great deal of nonsensical nothing. RB is the personification of a stopped clock.
The locals did the right thing by disendorsing RB, he does not represent the aspirations of his electorate (he does appeal to the vaccine conspiracy crowd).
Referencing the Voice vote was a general response to others in this thread who have cited the ‘no’ position – as the ‘yes’ advocates largely did during the reference – as an unexamined assertion of the proof f of a ‘right-sing take-over of ‘conservative’ politics. The reason it’s noteworthy is because it’s simply one of many culture war ‘satellite issues’ which The Left has come to see as definitive of the non-Left. So you argue genetically against it, thinking this defines and prosecute a ‘Left/progressive/moderate Lib’ case, for ‘decent conservatives’ to vote for.
Meanwhile the real vote-driving issues get united, via a tacit ‘consensual acquiescence of the culturally powerful. The things that are alienating social and politics conservatives are mostly about economic unfairness and unsusyainability, but also turn on the way the few social and civic instruments that the powerless and non-wealthy among them cling onto for civic and social stability are also being stripped away in this process. It’s about the mocking and undermining and sidelining by acutely transactional and hypocritical ‘soft pap prog’ politics of church, local community, a common morality, the place and role of men, education, a shared cultural identity of the pluralist collective rather than fragmented individuals.
The Left/progressives have to give these things and the people who they are important to a space and place in the political debate that isn’t relentlessly mocking, rotogravure-reactionary and patronising. Because if it doesn’t – as these Crikey threads never do – more and more will have little option but to ‘shade to cookers’.
You sneer at Russel Broadfoot. You prog lot turned Morrison into Andrew Tate. You got Trent Zimmerman turfed. Who then? Who is a ‘decent’ conservative? Alan Alda’s Republican candidate in the West Wing ie the soft pap prog’s wet dream of political fantasy?
No one wants a hard right victory on the non progressive side of oz politics. Or do you Lefties?
chrs.
sorry for the typos. my iphone’s on the way out…it’s an 8!
WTF are you on about. Or on, for the matter. All the same, my bad for being beaten by experience. Every time.
OK, so if you’re not intelligent and/or bothered enough to follow an argument please don’t waste my time by engaging in a conversation in the first place, anonymous person.
I am sorry for wasting yours.
I still get the last say AND without a word salad. LOL.
The right is the fault of the left.
There. Said it for you in 8 words.
no you didn’t. but that you think you did is a pretty fair
strawmansummary-by-demonstration of my great tedious slab, yes. so thnx & nice work, martz.Anytime, JR. I’m here to help. Have been both a proof-reader and editor in my time, so adept at spotting guff that goes around the houses with no reason other than to go round the houses.
Ask Clive Palmer and his mates!
Yes, the $64 question is, to what degree will American far right-wing style campaigning work in Australia? Dunkley will give us some indication, but Australia has some saving graces. Besides having an independent electoral body that prevents gerrymandering, we’re protected by our voting system and our diversity.
In the USA, if you rattle their cage and poke ’em with a stick, all the right wing quarterbrains will get angry enough to bother to vote. In a first past the post non-compulsory voting system, where only 60-something percent might turn out to vote, if 35 percent of the voters are RWQB’s, then they’re preferred candidate is probably going to be elected. In Australia, with compulsory preferential voting, if 35 percent of the voters are RWQB’s their candidate probably isn’t going to be elected.
In Australia, 51 percent of us are born overseas, or have at least one parent born overseas. This makes dog whistling to racists, and/or singling out an “other” to blame for all the nations problems, likely to lose as many or more votes than it wins.
We’re also less religious than the USA.
So, to some extent we are vaccinated against American RW style campaigning, but that doesn’t mean it won’t work some of the time.