In the end it was a landslide, even if some people were too stupid to see it. And the particular flavour of stupid?
“Liberal values are very much Australia’s values, and I don’t think that Australia understands that anymore.” - Senator Jane Hume.
“I don’t always think the voters are right and in Kooyong I think they were profoundly wrong in voting out Josh Frydenberg. I think it is a huge national mistake.” Alexander Downer.
“As Barnaby said to me the other day, sometimes people like to change the curtains. They just like to change the curtains," - Scott Morrison.
That’s the kind of effusively wilful stupid that gets your arse buried in landslides. It’s a joy to read. I don’t know about you but I’ve got almost nothing done this week because I’ve been wallowing in terrible takes. Boneheaded denial wasn’t the only kind of stupid on offer, of course. But the other kind was a touch more forgivable, because the world is made anew and for now at least I’m in a forgiving mood.
With malice toward none and charity for all the cotton-headed-ninny-muggins on the media’s short bus, its not surprising that a key component of a failing system fails to see the system shitting itself to pieces around them. Here at the back end of the week with the Libs and Nats agreeably turning on each other in a zombie arseclown cannibal holocaust, while Deputy Marshal Penny ‘Tombstone’ Wong rides out for the Pacific territories to lay down the Law to those CCP varmints
… Everyone but the inmates of the locked ward on Sky News Aprés Noir has settled into a consensus that yes, okay, it was maybe sort of a moment of unexpectedly large psephological slippage, which is to say a motherfucking landslide.
It just didn’t look like one to the accredited landslide experts because when a gigatonne of electoral karma descends at high speed on government, not only does it bury them, it traditionally creates the new ground on which a successor emerges.
Same thing here, but different.
Lets start with the simple, immensely satisfying fact of Scott Morrison’s spectacular fail. The vote counting elves are still squeezing the last of the goodness out of a handful of seats but the outcome is set. This was the Liberals worst result since 1949 - pretty much since there’s been a Liberal Party. That’s what happens in a landslide. You get crushed.
So what didn’t happen this time? What was different?
People had a real choice, that’s all.
There were a bunch of reasons millions of voters kicked these grifters to the kerb, and not much effort needed to separate them out. All of the polls, and the ABC’s vote compass project which collected insane volumes of data, differentiated down to the molecular level, all said the same thing.
A majority of voters in all but two seats are now all in on climate change.
A majority of voters in a majority of seats are really fucking serious about cleaning up the processes of government at the federal level.
A majority of voters, both male and female, but especially female, have had enough of gender inequities.
And everyone, everywhere, was over Scott Morrison’s bullshit.
The difference this time was the surfeit of choices offered to voters to do something about, well, everything.
The landslide wasn’t Labor’s, except in WA.
The landslide, a sudden tectonic movement in millions and millions of votes, was a political phenomenon, not a party political one. People voted for solutions, not parties.
The solutions on offer were varied, ranging from the Greens’ super maximal policies on climate change, to the ALP’s less ambitious and frankly inadequate bids, via the even more nuanced and customised platforms of the teal independents.
The system worked exactly as designed.
People voted for whatever suited them, and what suited them in the end was to smash the Liberal-National coalition into actual pieces. The smarter Nats—and there are some—know that even they took a beating. They may not have lost seats, but they lost plenty of votes, with some of their safest turf now vulnerable to independent challenge.
The ALP might never again hold a regional seat in large parts of the country - but smart, well resourced, and genuinely local independents offering solutions could do to the National Party what the teals did to the Liberal’s so-called moderates. (And as the climate crisis worsens, the Greens could do the same to ALP if it keeps opening coal mines.)
We won’t know for a while whether this is a genuine realignment, and to a large extent it depends on whether Albanese succeeds or fucks up.
But if the Libs can’t get those seats back off the teals, they don’t have a credible path back into power. Not with Dutton in charge.
May 27, 2022·edited May 27, 2022Liked by John Birmingham
Kinda hilarious that these US-trained hard right NeoCons and religious nutbags think they stand for "liberal values".
You know what liberal values actually are? How about:
*liberal democracy not elections corrupted by money and propaganda;
*secularism, not PMs who preach about miracles and support extremists to descriminate against minorities;
*rule of law, not rampant corruption by elected officials;
*freedom of speech, not shouting down those who disagree with you through a proxy media empire, and suing those who whistleblow or tell truths you find inconvenient;
*freedom of the press, not media oligarchy and destruction of the public broadcaster.
And for more information on these people's plan for Australia, search "Be like Gough: 75 ideas to transform Australia".
And as for family/Christian values? How about supporting the poor and needy, uplifting and including the marginalised, and respecting the environment that supports us all and every living thing on this planet.
Go think about that on the Opposition benches you liars and hypocrites.
The poor old rabid right wing Liberals, they have never got over the fact that women are allowed in public houses. Another tacit subject that was dear to their core values, was to have compulsory Gay Conversion Therapy enshrined in the constitution.
Having a prime minister who openly commits Blasphemy, by belonging to a sect whose central tenet is that to be well off financially, means that God or Jesus, take your pick, has blessed you in your the pursuit of mammon. The wretched poor and powerless, those that have been selected to inherit the earth, whats left of it, by Jesus him or herself, are in their station in life by the irrefutable fact that Brian Houston, in his communication with God, has been told that they have low moral, spiritual, and ethical values and are unworthy of divine blessing.
Having just watched our Governor General, the one that the liar from the shire and the GG, David Hurley installing the faithful, he has endorsed the creation of the Australian Future Leaders Program, a political initiative that an apolitical representative of the Queen should not have touched with the proverbial barge pole. The line of prospective Young Liberals, sponsored by Sky After Dark, should stretch from Parrakeelia to Yarralumla.
A adroit move in the dying days of the reich, was to appoint a LABOR !! politician, the ex-member for Brand in WA, Gary Grey, as the Ambassador to Ireland. Grey should be charged in relation to the bugging of the East Timor's government offices, and being responsible in having witness K and Bernard Collaery charged under the Official Secrets Act. Diplomatic immunity comes in handy, in a lot of ways, especially to dodge being summoned to appear in the witness box, along with despicable Downer.
Packer Whackers have been installed in all the offices of senior members of Sky News and the OZ, should palpitations occur when the news of the latest Labor Party, looney left socialists, atrocities upon the fabric of the queens own country are announced.
I confess at the start of the evening when like 0.02% had come in and the ABC was reporting 12 seats to libs and 2 to ALP I was feeling pretty down and went to have a shower, make coffee and work out the order I was going to set fire to various media company's assets, when I came back it had changed to like 40 ALP, 20 LNP and my electorate was looking like tossing the LNP which it went on to do.
It was a very good night.
This week watching the LNP apparatchik try to explain what happened ...priceless. Also I see the Libs have selected Senator Jane Hume of "I don’t think that Australia understands that anymore" see above to conduct the enquiry into what happened. Thus ensuring the Libs will learn absolutely nothing.
Have to make another comment, and it is this: the two-party system is now heavily cracked and the dam is leaking like a seive. Despite the bleatings of the Murdopoly, there is no going back.
Demographically, the people who voted one party their whole lives are falling off the perch, replaced by a cohort of youth with no allegiance except to their shared future on this planet. As a citizenry, Australians have finally realised they don't have to vote red or blue, and we are now headed towards the plural democracy model that dominates in Europe, where Parliamentarians have to engage with each other to find consensus. Humans in leadership positions listening to each other to find a way forward - what a radical idea!? The fact this seems strange is a pox on the Westminster politcal system.
I have been hoping such an election would arrive since the shambles of infighting and factional bullshit that brought down the best PM we've seen in decades - Julia Gillard - and replaced her with a cruel ideologist who only wanted to destroy, Wrecker Abbott. What a relief it has finally arrived.
I've had chats with some older hardcore Labour supporters and staffers, and it's interesting to see how they passionately resent and misunderstand why people voted for the Teals and Greens.
People voted for what they considered important, it was a clear case of supply and demand. The People demanded and Labour weren't able to supply the demand.
The Greens wins are an interesting lesson labour needs to learn. Both major parties completely ignored young people, which is about 3 million votes, The Greens did well in the electorates with the highest number of young voters, that was no coincidence.
I voted Labour in my electorate because I support and have confidence in that particular member, but Labour as a party needs to pull its head out of its arse and stop sounding like the Liberal numpties you started your blog with.
Also " zombie arseclown cannibal holocaust" Thats is a f*cking instant classic and cannot be used enough.
In Arnhem land an Aboriginal youth gets busted smoking a joint, stealing food or alcohol or drunk in the street. Two white policemen put him in Gaol where a white custody officer searches him and watches him. Next day a white pilot with two white prison custody officers in a very white plane pick him up in from the white policemen that have kindly delivered the black boy to the airport. He's then flown to Prison where the white prison officers lock him up. He's fed by white cooks and then taken by the white transport custody officers to court where he's transferred to the white court custody officers. A white, overworked, legal aid lawyer, who he won't understand anyway, will convince him to plead guilty. The white prosecutors will convince the white judge that the boy deserves a custodial sentence. Bored yet? We are. Continue after release with white parole and rehab officers and you'll get the idea of how one destitute black man is the basis of a sick, greedy, dominant culture economy. And then despair that this expenditure of tax payers money is listed as " aboriginal wefare" in the government budget documents
It's great and I'm cheering too but, unless I'm reading it wrongly, the two party preferred is still fairly even. Therefore this country is as divided as ever. Now watch us waste the next 5 years on the statement from the heart. Read it, consider it and then explain to me how we can make a winnable referendum set of words to fit into a constitution that i bet 90% of people haven't read and don't understand anyway. Our nations remote, uneducated, poverty stricken kids are filling up gaols and being sacrificed to middle class privilege and the great satan of social services every day. Kids on country. Not in Prison
OF COURSE Dutton is the right person to lead the Libs out of the weeds. I mean he loves puppies right... And sure...that may well be because they're small enuf for him to unhinge his jaw and swallow them whole... But still....
Yes, it was a landslide, something was happening and we just knew it was weird. The fear that PHON and UAP might matter was horrifying.
I can't believe that people and also still-serving politicians who think they are 'conservative' know so little about history and political theory and the rule of law, about the so-called "enlightenment values" they claim to hold so dear ...while actively trashing them!
Scomo and people still in parliament were actively working to undermine the separation of church and state! God help us? Nope. We helped ourselves, good on us!
Scomo was poisonous. No other politician has ever made me angry in the way he did . Not even Joh, not Campbell Newman and his pack of clowns. My anger began in early 2020 before COVID. I saw the deliberate contempt with which ministers treated ABC's women interviewers. (And most of them were screaming mediocrities, regular Beagle Boys.) Then, Scomo's sickening treatment of Anne Connolly when The Aged Care Royal Commission reported.
Peter Dutton: the lovely Baldermort, PC Plod. But, after the purging of decency and ethics and uppity females, he really IS the best they can scrape up! Oh the wilderness years...
NewsCorp's going the grovel from fear Albo might get "inclusive" with independents - delicious.
Kinda hilarious that these US-trained hard right NeoCons and religious nutbags think they stand for "liberal values".
You know what liberal values actually are? How about:
*liberal democracy not elections corrupted by money and propaganda;
*secularism, not PMs who preach about miracles and support extremists to descriminate against minorities;
*rule of law, not rampant corruption by elected officials;
*freedom of speech, not shouting down those who disagree with you through a proxy media empire, and suing those who whistleblow or tell truths you find inconvenient;
*freedom of the press, not media oligarchy and destruction of the public broadcaster.
And for more information on these people's plan for Australia, search "Be like Gough: 75 ideas to transform Australia".
And as for family/Christian values? How about supporting the poor and needy, uplifting and including the marginalised, and respecting the environment that supports us all and every living thing on this planet.
Go think about that on the Opposition benches you liars and hypocrites.
The poor old rabid right wing Liberals, they have never got over the fact that women are allowed in public houses. Another tacit subject that was dear to their core values, was to have compulsory Gay Conversion Therapy enshrined in the constitution.
Having a prime minister who openly commits Blasphemy, by belonging to a sect whose central tenet is that to be well off financially, means that God or Jesus, take your pick, has blessed you in your the pursuit of mammon. The wretched poor and powerless, those that have been selected to inherit the earth, whats left of it, by Jesus him or herself, are in their station in life by the irrefutable fact that Brian Houston, in his communication with God, has been told that they have low moral, spiritual, and ethical values and are unworthy of divine blessing.
Having just watched our Governor General, the one that the liar from the shire and the GG, David Hurley installing the faithful, he has endorsed the creation of the Australian Future Leaders Program, a political initiative that an apolitical representative of the Queen should not have touched with the proverbial barge pole. The line of prospective Young Liberals, sponsored by Sky After Dark, should stretch from Parrakeelia to Yarralumla.
A adroit move in the dying days of the reich, was to appoint a LABOR !! politician, the ex-member for Brand in WA, Gary Grey, as the Ambassador to Ireland. Grey should be charged in relation to the bugging of the East Timor's government offices, and being responsible in having witness K and Bernard Collaery charged under the Official Secrets Act. Diplomatic immunity comes in handy, in a lot of ways, especially to dodge being summoned to appear in the witness box, along with despicable Downer.
Packer Whackers have been installed in all the offices of senior members of Sky News and the OZ, should palpitations occur when the news of the latest Labor Party, looney left socialists, atrocities upon the fabric of the queens own country are announced.
So good to read your articles John, thank you.
I confess at the start of the evening when like 0.02% had come in and the ABC was reporting 12 seats to libs and 2 to ALP I was feeling pretty down and went to have a shower, make coffee and work out the order I was going to set fire to various media company's assets, when I came back it had changed to like 40 ALP, 20 LNP and my electorate was looking like tossing the LNP which it went on to do.
It was a very good night.
This week watching the LNP apparatchik try to explain what happened ...priceless. Also I see the Libs have selected Senator Jane Hume of "I don’t think that Australia understands that anymore" see above to conduct the enquiry into what happened. Thus ensuring the Libs will learn absolutely nothing.
Have to make another comment, and it is this: the two-party system is now heavily cracked and the dam is leaking like a seive. Despite the bleatings of the Murdopoly, there is no going back.
Demographically, the people who voted one party their whole lives are falling off the perch, replaced by a cohort of youth with no allegiance except to their shared future on this planet. As a citizenry, Australians have finally realised they don't have to vote red or blue, and we are now headed towards the plural democracy model that dominates in Europe, where Parliamentarians have to engage with each other to find consensus. Humans in leadership positions listening to each other to find a way forward - what a radical idea!? The fact this seems strange is a pox on the Westminster politcal system.
I have been hoping such an election would arrive since the shambles of infighting and factional bullshit that brought down the best PM we've seen in decades - Julia Gillard - and replaced her with a cruel ideologist who only wanted to destroy, Wrecker Abbott. What a relief it has finally arrived.
I've had chats with some older hardcore Labour supporters and staffers, and it's interesting to see how they passionately resent and misunderstand why people voted for the Teals and Greens.
People voted for what they considered important, it was a clear case of supply and demand. The People demanded and Labour weren't able to supply the demand.
The Greens wins are an interesting lesson labour needs to learn. Both major parties completely ignored young people, which is about 3 million votes, The Greens did well in the electorates with the highest number of young voters, that was no coincidence.
I voted Labour in my electorate because I support and have confidence in that particular member, but Labour as a party needs to pull its head out of its arse and stop sounding like the Liberal numpties you started your blog with.
Also " zombie arseclown cannibal holocaust" Thats is a f*cking instant classic and cannot be used enough.
In Arnhem land an Aboriginal youth gets busted smoking a joint, stealing food or alcohol or drunk in the street. Two white policemen put him in Gaol where a white custody officer searches him and watches him. Next day a white pilot with two white prison custody officers in a very white plane pick him up in from the white policemen that have kindly delivered the black boy to the airport. He's then flown to Prison where the white prison officers lock him up. He's fed by white cooks and then taken by the white transport custody officers to court where he's transferred to the white court custody officers. A white, overworked, legal aid lawyer, who he won't understand anyway, will convince him to plead guilty. The white prosecutors will convince the white judge that the boy deserves a custodial sentence. Bored yet? We are. Continue after release with white parole and rehab officers and you'll get the idea of how one destitute black man is the basis of a sick, greedy, dominant culture economy. And then despair that this expenditure of tax payers money is listed as " aboriginal wefare" in the government budget documents
It's great and I'm cheering too but, unless I'm reading it wrongly, the two party preferred is still fairly even. Therefore this country is as divided as ever. Now watch us waste the next 5 years on the statement from the heart. Read it, consider it and then explain to me how we can make a winnable referendum set of words to fit into a constitution that i bet 90% of people haven't read and don't understand anyway. Our nations remote, uneducated, poverty stricken kids are filling up gaols and being sacrificed to middle class privilege and the great satan of social services every day. Kids on country. Not in Prison
OF COURSE Dutton is the right person to lead the Libs out of the weeds. I mean he loves puppies right... And sure...that may well be because they're small enuf for him to unhinge his jaw and swallow them whole... But still....
Yes, it was a landslide, something was happening and we just knew it was weird. The fear that PHON and UAP might matter was horrifying.
I can't believe that people and also still-serving politicians who think they are 'conservative' know so little about history and political theory and the rule of law, about the so-called "enlightenment values" they claim to hold so dear ...while actively trashing them!
Scomo and people still in parliament were actively working to undermine the separation of church and state! God help us? Nope. We helped ourselves, good on us!
Scomo was poisonous. No other politician has ever made me angry in the way he did . Not even Joh, not Campbell Newman and his pack of clowns. My anger began in early 2020 before COVID. I saw the deliberate contempt with which ministers treated ABC's women interviewers. (And most of them were screaming mediocrities, regular Beagle Boys.) Then, Scomo's sickening treatment of Anne Connolly when The Aged Care Royal Commission reported.
Peter Dutton: the lovely Baldermort, PC Plod. But, after the purging of decency and ethics and uppity females, he really IS the best they can scrape up! Oh the wilderness years...
NewsCorp's going the grovel from fear Albo might get "inclusive" with independents - delicious.
Spot on. Love the Elf reference.