Boy oh boy. You have to give it to the Coalition. It doesn’t muck around, does it? It’s ripping up the sinks and stuffing them in the cannon, firing everything at Labor. It’s been curriculum, it’s been “proles”, and now it’s voter ID, with a bill introduced into the House of Reps this week.
This is a new stage of its desperate fightback. It’s the moment when the junta realises it’s surrounded and needs to bring the Americans in, give them oil concessions, etc. Voter ID coming to Australia is like the mujahedin getting shoulder-mounted SAM missiles from the Pakistan docks, straight off the boat. Never seen a transistor radio before, now they’re taking MiGs out of the air.
Voter ID is the same sort of shiny new equipment, developed over years elsewhere and dropped in without context. Whatever problems we had with voter fraud in certain inner-city electorates disappeared decades ago, and all the participants are dead (and thus, still voting in ALP internal elections). There has been absolutely zero fuss about voter fraud here, in any sort of significant close result.
But of course there hasn’t been any serious voter fraud in the US either. The whole thing has been a fiction, built up by the right over the past decade, as it started to become clear that it was being surrounded by new groups of voters — Blacks with higher turnout, Latinos, Asian-Americans, a growing number of the college-educated, a widening gender gap — obstructing the possibility of a Republican majority.
But such efforts were done at the state level and have depended on one big thing: the voluntary nature of American voting, and the possibility of winning not by changing votes, but simply by getting new phalanxes of people to the polls. This dimension of US politics involves massive “get out the vote” efforts, which can be strenuous — driving round in buses picking up people on the day, providing snacks etc, mass soliciting postal vote forms etc. It can skirt close to the law, and it can look very dodgy indeed, even when it isn’t, and it’s that which gives the US voter fraud narrative its context.
We don’t have any of that, so it looks ridiculous. It’s the usual dead-cat animatronic thing — the issue rears up, attached to someone we haven’t heard from, in this case James McGrath; suddenly it’s all we can talk about.
But of course, a voter ID isn’t going to have anything like the effect it has in the US. There voter ID laws combine with a weekday election day, insufficient polling-place resourcing, felony charges for voting “illegally”, and a couple of million outstanding arrest warrants floating round the country. Voter suppression of this sort probably helped Donald Trump win one or two of the rust-belt states, and maybe even Florida. Elsewhere it has thrown statehouses, Congressional districts and even mayoral races to the Republicans.
But there’s a dirty little secret to voter suppression through ID laws in the US, and that’s that they get a few white Republicans as well — the elderly and poor. But it’s the ratio they’re after — the 90% Black vote for Democrats, combined with a relatively higher number of “irregular” lives among that group.
That ratio doesn’t obtain here, and so when the bill hits the Senate there will be complexities. It would be obviously foolish for Jacqui Lambie to back it, given that a proportion of her most loyal voters live in upturned tinnies on bricks on the north-west coast — and she probably won’t. Pauline Hanson is claiming credit for the bill, though it may actually disadvantage her. So it comes down again to senators Griff and Patrick, the Statler and Waldorf of Australian politics, the former two-member Senate contingent who managed to split, even though they were a Centre Alliance. What odds that South Australia will soon be getting a new centre for abalone excellence, and that much-hoped for serial killer museum tourist magnet?
Once the ID law’s through, we’ll move on. What’s next? A national security crisis? A loyalty test? A loyalty oath swearing allegiance to the “greatest country in the world”? Laws strengthening the place of Anzac Day? All this and more. On and on it will roll until March, the simulation of the simulation of a politics…
Note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the voter ID bill passed the House of Representatives on Thursday November 28.
I think it goes deeper than just voting process. There’s a growing local congregation of the Church of the American Right, which worships all of the same things that their US brethren do: gun rights, anti-vax, climate change denial and so on. These are the same people who believe that the Australian government’s actions contravene the Australian Bill of Rights, or that John Howard contravened the second amendment of the Australian constitution when he steered anti-gun legislation through Parliament. We saw them out in force a few weeks ago during the Covid lockdown protests.
These locals are now sufficient in number that appealing to them has electoral value, hence the sudden danger of voter fraud in Australia. Because, you know, if it’s happening in the U.S. it must be happening here too, ok?
In this, the Right is simply enacting a strategy it has employed for several decades now, recognising that the path to power is more easily achieved in a modern Western democracy by marshalling the forces of stupidity and ignorance than it is by developing good policy and then selling that to the public.
The reason they’ve kept at it for several decades is because it works.
“the path to power is more easily achieved in a modern Western democracy by marshalling the forces of stupidity and ignorance than it is by developing good policy and then selling that to the public.”
an excellent observation Graeski !!
One of the major reasons why idiots like Morrison and his ilk are so prepared to talk up a War with China is that he believes that the World will end in fire and brimstone and that only the devout Pentecostals will survive and the rest of us will fry. It is this child-like belief in talking Snakes and Virgin births and the other superstitious claptrap that lets them think that baiting China is ok as everything will be turn out fine (for them) in the end. They are a frightening bunch of dishonest rorting arseholes who should be removed
Don’t knock it. Have you ever taken a look at how much a prosperity religion pastor can make promoting talking snakes and virgin births to the gullible. As for the fire and brimstone:- there have been countless prediction dates for that over the years, and they were all wrong.
Morrison eluded to this on election night that was sent to mind the country till the end of the earth and that was close. His particular section of Pentecostalism believes they will be the only ones saved. Everyone else will go to hell including other religions.
Morrison does a lot of eluding, but I suspect he was ALLUDING to something on election night.
YEP that is what I meant
They only have to be right once, and when they are in a position to bring it about because they see it as a desirable thing ( and don’t get me started on the morality of their position) then the rest of us are going to be suffering for their poor judgement. The looks of betrayal when they are fed into the pit along with the rest of us will be of little consolation.
I think the part so many use as their right to cheat, steal, lie, manipulate is that once, whichever pastor, baptises them they don’t have to follow the rules or behaviours the rest of us mostly adhere to because the big lie is that they are now ^saved^ and an do whatever they please. Note that Morrison lies, chests, blames everyone else, knifes people to get their positions, rorts non-bloody-stop and, is the worst PM this country has ever hzd the misfortune to have as its faux leader.
“the path to power is more easily achieved in a modern Western democracy by marshalling the forces of stupidity and ignorance”
Sure is. Let’s not overlook all the good work being done by the federal government to destroy the quality of higher education and cripple / control state education.
But let’s also be fair. It’s not just modern Western democracies that recognise the value of this approach. The Taliban, ISIS and their friends also recognise the benefits of entrenched ignorance. Boko Haram translates as ‘Western Education is a sin”. Maybe the Morrison gang could form some useful partnerships with them, they have so much in common. Although I have heard the Taliban are not so keen on corruption, so maybe not.
Anyway, this is not so very new, even if the blatant attempts to increase ignorance and stupidity are remarkable. There’s the old, probably apocryphal, story of Democrat presidential candidate Adlai Stephenson campaigning in the 1950s. At the end of a speech to a public rally a woman in the crowd shouted, “You have the vote of every thinking American!” Stepehenson replied, “Madam, it’s not enough, I need a majority.”
If there 150,000 (which I think is on the high side) of these grubs in Australia now and they all voted they would represent about 1% of the total vote.
The noise they make online and broadcast by the Murdoch Scum Family is probably equal to 10% of the population.
The interesting thing about many of the rioters was they were ex-SAS who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. So is there something about the training or just that many saw to many tours in these war zones and have not been supported.
And, dear god, how sad it is that our right cannot come up with an original political thought and thus must import american ideas.
like halloween really.
And they take the Fifth when questioned.
The invasive American cultural voice within Australian politics, community, is not only scary; but a distinct threat to national independence, values and beliefs. Allied to and with LNP erosion of parliamentary democracy and climate threat; not to mention global territorial unrest, there is now real need for Australians to reflect, recommit to who we are and what it is that identifies national identity?
“Once the ID law’s through, we’ll move on. What’s next?”
As I said yesterday, what’s next is stage two of this plan, which is McGrath’s dream of an end to compulsory voting. The ID change on its own cannot do much. It requires stage two to really work. And with optional voting the full suite of dirty tricks comes into play: obstacles to registration, difficult access to polling, intimidation, deterrence and exclusion. The AEC will also be brought to heel so we can enjoy gerrymandering our constituencies just like our American friends.
Will Griff and Patrick be up for this?
Looks like AEC already has been “brought to heel”. Repeat voting is “vanishingly small” (0.00008) and no enrolled voters are being turned away. And yet the helpful Commissioner is “aware of all sides” of the non-existent “argument”.
“Australian Way” Morrison increasingly resembles “Tricky Dick” Nixon, in the terminal mad phase. Vindictive and soulless pygmy that he is, he’ll booby-trap the government to blazes, if he no longer feels he can win.
“And yet the helpful Commissioner is “aware of all sides” of the non-existent “argument”.”
Except, maybe, those How to Vote placards styled in AEC script and colours.
Those notices in Mandarin using the colour, format and typeface of the AEC were found not to be misleading?
That is either really stupid or conforming to something other Tham the AEC remit!
Also see it as a step en route to dismantling whatever semblance of democracy we still have.
this useless legislation is stupid enough, but it’s right on the back of Morrison boasting how wonderfully australian it was that his climate plan won’t be legislated, because, you know…. “freedom! liberty! we don’t need laws!”
Morrison really does take the p*ss massively. He’s reminiscent of Trump, at the power-lie stage, where he could say something and then a minute later stare you down while telling you he never said it. You could play him back the video, and he’d say it’s a fake, or deny you were there, playing back a video.
Anyone else feel confused as to where the boundaries of reality are anymore, or how reliably sane their fellow Aussies might be?
This isn’t a gas-led Oz, it’s a gas-lit Oz. Let us vote asap so we can either save our sanity, or just give up once and for all.
You nailed it Guy.
They’ll do anything to prevent Labor going over the books.
Which could be Labor’s pass-key to a couple of terms in government?
This first time they don’t have to promise/deliver all that much beyond a credible toothy bells-and-whistles ICAC (and an incremental advance on emission policy, so as not to spook the “Palmer-Hanson Pincer Alliance” believers) – rip into the Coalition’s time looting Treasury – then go to the following election promising more progressive policies : with the Coalition reputation/opposition on life support?
Ya reckon?
I cannot recall Labor in office ever having visited just retribution of the Otherside, no matter the appalling acts, abuses and failings – AWB, WMD etc.
Unlike the TURC and the get-Gillard enquiry.