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I'm so sorry: Australia is having an election and it's going to be very dumb

Arwon

stop being water
Joined
Oct 5, 2006
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The Prime Minister Scott Morrison just called the Australian federal election for May 18, roughly as late as possible, and something we've known is coming for months. It's a Westminster system with no fixed term legislation so that's the PM's prerogative. Early voting starts April 29

It's widely expected that the incumbent Liberal government (really a Liberal-National coalition but the Nationals are a niche country party and don't really do much) will lose, based on the polling. Here's the Two-Party Preferred polling since 2016 (from Kevin Bonham's poll aggregation):

upload_2019-4-11_10-10-5.png


Two Party Preferred is just a reflection of which of the major parties each voter puts higher on their lower house preferential ballot. In the Lower House we use a form of what Americans call "instant runoff voting" and the British call "alternative vote" where you have to number every box for a valid vote. That means we get an exhaustive picture of who voters prefer out of the two major parties, as shown above (though in practice a bunch of seats end up with different Two Candidate Preferred counts).

A 52% TPP is nearly always enough to form government, though this is a national vote count and what matters is who wins each individual seat. So there's always the possible that votes will be distributed in a way where they don't win enough seats, such as in 1998 when John Howard's Liberal party won enough seats with 49% of the TPP vote.

There's also the Senate, which is elected pretty much like Ireland's parliament. Each state has 12 Senators, half are up for election. The Single Transferrable Vote/Hare Clark system is a proportional representation method that counts individual candidates and involves preferences, but in practice because of "above the line" party voting, in the Senate it's virtually identical to actual prop-rep in how it functions. The quota is about 14% due to 6 candidates being elected.

We should see some of the bigger ratbags from the current Senate, like the nazi egg guy, voted out because they don't actually have any popular support having left the parties who got them elected. The Senate is unlikely to see the governing party win a majority either way, so it'll continue to serve as a blocking and reviewing chamber whatever its composition ends up being.

The overall balance should not shift much because the broadly defined left is defending 4 of 6 seats in Tasmania and the right is defending 4 of 6 in NSW, and both should probably go 3-3. I'd expect Labor + Greens + Centre Alliance (South Australian small-l liberal types) + maybe Derryn Hinch (just a guy who used to be on TV who hates pedophiles) to have a voting majority in the Senate after the election.

HERE'S SOME MAPS via Tally Room

upload_2019-4-11_10-20-58.png


Sydney:
upload_2019-4-11_10-21-31.png


Melbourne:
upload_2019-4-11_10-21-57.png


Brisbane:

upload_2019-4-11_10-36-2.png


In Melbourne the rich blue bits in the east dumped the Liberals en masse last year in the state election and might do so again federally. In Sydney most of the blue bits will probably stay about the same. In Brisbane and Queensland more generally, a lot of the blue bits are already close and might flip to Labor.

The most inland blue and light green bits in New South Wales on the national map just dumped the Nationals for independents and the minor Shooters Farmers and Fishers party in the state election, and might do the same federally but might not. The issue there is the river is stuffed and water politics are big.

In South Australia I think the Liberals are expecting to lose a bunch of seats but it's a small state and only has like 11 to begin with. In Western Australia the Labor share of the vote was so low it will probably rebound.

You'll notice I'm not talking about issues. That's because this is Australia, and things are very dumb. The government are genuinely trying to make "electric cars bad" an issue, by attacking a Labor aspirational target of 50% of new car sales in 2030 being electric (this is probably below market expectaitons given Toyota expects to be all electric by then). They're calling it, like, a tax or a ban on petrol cars or a War on the Weekend. It's happening in spite of existing government support for electric vehicles. It's... dumb even for Australia. There will presumably also be an escalation of racist scaremongering because there always is because yelling about BOATS AND BOAT PEOPLE worked once a while ago.

If Labor wins they'll keep the refugee prisons, they will probably change how minimum wages are determined but maybe won't do a lot about punitive welfare policies, they might do something modest about climate change, they might do something about the tax rort that favours speculative investment in housing? I dunno.

Things happen so much and mean so little and I'm so tired.
 
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What are the chances of the next Australian government invading New Zealand out of boredom?
 
I think at this stage most Australians would welcome New Zealand taking over and ousting the government here tbh
 
This is Australia, where things are all backwards, so the Liberals are the Republican party and Labour are the Democrats
Let the (even more) crazyness begin
 
This is Australia, where things are all backwards, so the Liberals are the Republican party and Labour are the Democrats
Let the (even more) crazyness begin

Labor, no U. This is the result of one guy in the 1910s who was really into modernising spelling reform.
 
I thought that Australia was upside down, not backwards.
 
1. Australia is not stupid.
2. The Australian Senate frequently provides just excellent entertainment value.
I mean... there's genuine badassery going on.
3. I totally displaced this whole thing. Some time went like "huh?!" followed by "ok, new rule: 'Stralia has to keep their PMs for longer at a time" followed by "ok, maybe i shouldn't say that, seeing how i'm a citizen of my country" followed by "mental note: i have to find out about this business".
4. Needless to say i lost that mental note. :)
 
This is Australia, where things are all backwards, so the Liberals are the Republican party and Labour are the Democrats
Let the (even more) crazyness begin

America's the odd one out, not Australia. Even Canada follows roughly the same pattern. :P
 
America's the odd one out, not Australia. Even Canada follows roughly the same pattern. :p

The Liberals in Australia being an actual full-on conservative party rather than being more just pro-business centrists is still quite unusual globally. Thirty years ago you could describe the Liberals here as being partly in a European liberal or Canadian Liberal tradition, but that tendency has been nearly completely purged by the conservatives now.

Internationally, the Liberal Party of Australia are part of the IDU, a forum of centre right parties, whose Canadian and British members are the Conservatives and NZ member is the Nationals and German member is the Christian Democrats.

They're not part of the Liberal International, which features the UK Lib Dems and NI Alliance, and the Canadian Liberals, and the German FDP.

This isn't unique, the also conservative Japanese Liberal Democratic Party is in the IDU too, but they're about the only almost fully conservative Liberal parties.
 
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I'm sure she can run stuff here too
 
But she has to breast-feed!

(or is it the wrong female leader? I might be contaminated by having just closed a tab on metatron's latest anti-feminist thread. Anyway, subscription post)
 
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The Australian right continues to amaze with just how cartoonishly evil it is. Honestly some of those folks make Trump look like a great dude.
 
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