After disastrous election results, conservative party acknowledges the need for change and…
…tries winding the clock back 10 years.
That’s the best they can do?
We have 30million people in Australia, and they need to recycle old men who lost an election years ago?
This is going to be hilarious. The libs are already completely out of touch, then they put Tony Abbott in charge. Tony Abbott the lizard-person… Famous for always choosing the unpopular path. You can’t make this up. His legacy was already mud now he wants to be party president just as the party dies.
Nailing the coffin shut.
Abbott and co played their part in the purge of moderate so-called small l liberals and now they are a minor party that unsurprisingly fails to represent the broad interests of right of centre voters.
You can hate the ALP right for keeping public schooling down to look after religious schools, backing socially conservative policies, neo-liberal economics increasing the wealth divide, an erosion of workers rights and govt services, anti environmental policies and being the mates of big business and foreign lobbies. But they keep the ALP relevant to a wider range of voters than a socialist workers party ever could and keep them in government. The Libs had breadth and a huge brand and they chose to give it up because they couldn’t see the big picture.
Now someone on the right might as well go for ON or a teal or perhaps even the ALP.
Never forgive him for the NBN cluster thingy, amongst other things.
What a piece of … I suppose Peta Credlin will appear soon as Deputy President!!
Liberal leadership is flailing about looking for some way to avoid going extinct, and a bright spark decided let’s pull an ex-PM out of retirement and see if he can do the job.
John Howard is too old, and won’t do it. Malcolm Turnbull is too rich, and won’t do it. Scott Morrison is too busy waiting to be raptured, and won’t do it.
Who do we have left…?
As a vehemently left winger, ha!
But also, I like a stronger centre right to keep the left wing in check too and be more representative of the actual predominant feeling of the electorate. But Abbott? Please. What a terrible but utterly predictable outcome that will produce nothing beneficial to the liberals and arguably leave them in the doldrums for many years to come. If they’re trying to get those that have moved towards the Nats and ON back on their side they’ve got it wrong yet again.
As a vehemently left winger
I like a stronger centre right to keep the left wing in check too
Wat.
I don’t think those two positions work together.
We want the right to crumble so politics moves further left, no?
We want the right to crumble so politics moves further left, no?
Why would the sole party of governance, Labor, move to the left if they can win elections unopposed? They haven’t given any indication that they plan to do this despite being in their second term whilst the Coalition dies out and the right fragments. Additionally, the main left wing party (The Greens) stalled at the last election and provides little threat.
The only semi-realistic threat right now is a far right cooker party in One Nation and Labor doesn’t need to move left to combat them either.
This presupposes that parties that be are static, that no new challengers are possible and that Labor is the “sole party of governance” (which is a pretty undemocratic notion). It also pretends that people will continue to vote Labor indefinitely just because the LNP doesn’t exist.
The Greens, to some degree, purposefully position themselves as the party to “work with” the Labor party, and extract concessions from them. Which historically has been pretty meh if you ask me (they royally dicked around with the ETS and called that a victory, for example). They’re also barely a left wing party: they talk about workers rights, yet don’t push to undo the Accords (which means striking is illegal except for protected industrial action, thanks Labor!), they want dental into Medicare, but see no reason to campaign for abolishing our system and replacing it with actual universal healthcare (we have a private subsidy model, with a bit of public healthcare sprinkled in). Their party is one who want to manage capitalism better and tax companies and the wealthy some more - not abolish the power structures that allow the wealthy to retain the monopoly on decision making in society, and put agency in the hands of the workers (i.e. socialism). They think the solution to our problems is to get “good people” to the levers of power. They’re quite fine with capitalism. That’s not very left wing, if you ask me.
Moving politics left isn’t about moving the Labor party left. The Labor party has and continues to move to the right. They are a lost cause and anyone who’s still a member, despite it all, is on board with that.
The only semi-realistic threat right now is a far right cooker party in One Nation and Labor doesn’t need to move left to combat them either.
Exactly my point. Having a “strong opposition” of a right wing party does nothing to move politics further left. And anchors the average opinion further right.
Do we really think the Labor party would have changed capital gains the way they did if right wing politics in Australia weren’t in shambles (yeah, One Nation is rising, but they’re so far much less effective in convincing wealthy people about much of anything).
In conclusion, yeah, can’t wait for the LNP to die. Not that I think that’ll be enough to usher in meaningful change. That will only come from grassroots organising.
I want the Overton window to shift so the opposition is a centerist party. I also don’t want a singular party state which often happens if you get an extreme left or extreme right - I actually prefer mixed member proportionality with a concentrated left leaning bias.
I personally don’t think that “extreme left” equals a single party state.
I think extreme left is abolishing private control of capital, not necessarily something like stalinism.
To me, socialism necessarily means democratic control of society by and for the workers and people. Authoritarian states (current and past), in my opinion, cannot be considered socialist because they are/were authoritarian and created a new ruling class - just based on party position rather than wealth.
I think the notion of people ever 100% agreeing is absurd, so there’ll always be different parties/factions/groups - provided you’re actually committed to democracy, which any true socialist is.
The “far left” quality of a party, under my worldview, is concerned with what you think about the control of capital, rather than what you think about how decisions should get made (through democracy or dictatorship).
Though, I will also admit that I am very biased, that I believe a truly democratic far right society is impossible, because of the influence of concentrations of money over politics.
I actually prefer mixed member proportionality with a concentrated left leaning bias.
I encourage people to think beyond tinkering with how we vote for our representatives, to notice that even with our representatives being elected, they’re only beholden to us ever 3/4 years (or 6 in the case of senators), and in the meantime they’re able to scratch backs and get sweet cushy jobs after they’re done, and/or a sweet parliamentary pension.
Community organisations mostly have a right of recall over their elected positions, based on varying thresholds depending on their org’s rules. It’s wild that we don’t have this ability at a federal or state level.
Though, I also agree we should still tinker with the voting system in the meantime. I would love lower house seats to be MMP as you suggest. My pet idea is to increase the number of lower house seats by 50%, and then send 3 members from 75 electorates (combine current electorates in 2s).
Retains the local nature of the candidates (and they should try spread themselves out across the electorate), while providing better representation in the lower house.
Thanks for engaging with me on this!
Sloan Zone (just before his current hiatus) touched on this topic and unsurprisingly, the Liberals have chosen to double-down on barreling towards irrelevancy as quickly as possible.
I almost thought someone posted an old article here as a joke
@tombruzzo
When reality is indistinguishable from satire … 🙄
@Valuy
#AusPol
