I hope the Australian public is better than to fall for this. Though I fear we collectively are no better than the USA… somehow Abbot and Morrison were both elected after all.
I think it’s important to remember how/why our most recent leaders (before Albo) were elected.
Abbott was only (just) elected because the voters got the shits with the Labor Party’s Rudd-Gillard-Rudd circle jerk before - surprise, surprise - the Libs started also started doing their own Brutus-to-Caesar act.
That fuckwittery ended up giving us Morrison’s first term (winning the multiple spill-wank that ultimately ousted Turnbull), whose actual elected second term was when he ran against Bill Shorten. Arguably, any train station meth-head could have beaten Shorten just by having - y’know - a policy. Man was invisible.
My point is, up until we got Rudd, most of our PMs played the long game, regardless of what it meant for their own careers. For example, Howard managed to get both sides to vote in favour of gun reform after Port Arthur, even though that meant some senators were committing political suicide by supporting it. That was in '96, at the very beginning of Howard’s near-12 year stint in the top job. Proof that we all used to value long-term vision over short-term politics.
We haven’t had a single leader (either in office or opposition) with the same long-term vision ever since. It’s all about the next election, and the fastest way to win it is to appeal to the populist base. Which brings us to the current head-kicking potato the Libs have in charge.
I definitely agree regarding your fears on the majority’s views on Trumpist bullshit. Something about wankers like Dutton speaking inside thoughts out loud is helping people feel they have license to do the same. I really do hope we’re better than that here…
If mainstream acceptance of progressive ideas collapses, Dutton will sweep in in a landslide not seen since Howard. And anecdotally it looks like it’s happening: the broad popular rejection of the Aboriginal recognition referendum suggests that there’s a mood of having had a gutful of progressive ideas. Which may be an illusion caused by Murdoch/Rinehart’s command of the media, but Albo having conceded on the issue and playing small-target I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-LNP politics isn’t helping.
Another thing to watch for: Greens support collapsing outside of the core, with them losing seats.
broad popular rejection of the Aboriginal recognition referendum suggests that there’s a mood of having had a gutful of progressive ideas.
I wouldn’t use that as an indicator. From the outside it’s progression and it’s certainly textbook but we are fucking weird about indigenous rights. We’d vote in a puce-haired enby and pat ourselves on the back for being enlightened before even considering an Aboriginal PM
I don’t think peoole are against progressive ideas necessarily. In times of financial hardship their tolerance is just very low for policies and objectives that aren’t targeted at addressing serious problems like the price of groceries, fuel, housing, etc. Progressive economic policy focused on these areas is popular, but left-wing politics has a bad habit of not reading the room and loudly advancing social minority causes when they should be focusing the public’s attention on everything else they’re doing.
I wonder whether the October 7 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians, and the connection between Aboriginal and Palestinian causes, did quantifiable damage to the referendum results. Polls have shown that, outside of the inner-city left, Australians side more with Israel than Palestine, perhaps because both Australia and Israel are perceived as Western/vaguely American in a similar way. If so, the left’s rhetoric on Palestine may have doomed it, in the sense that “decolonisation” is associated with the black paragliders of Hamas and massacres of ravers at a doof.
I wonder whether the October 7 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians, and the connection between Aboriginal and Palestinian causes, did quantifiable damage to the referendum results.
I don’t think the crazy in Israel and Palestine had any bearing at all. In 2023, it was just more of the same back-and-forth the region has been under since the 1940s. Things escalated this year, but that’s a different story.
The polls were pretty clearly pointing to a “No” vote well before October 2023. No surprises happened on the day.
I think most of the voters educated enough to have made that connection would have voted Yes anyway. Regardless, I don’t think the left was anywhere near as organised and loud about the situation in the Middle East as it has been this year. The referendum went down due to homegrown issues.
With worldwide inflation post COVID it’s been a shitty time for incumbent governments world wide. There’s been a change of power in every single western election this year.
And the simple question the opposition can ask is: are you better off today than 4 years ago?
People eat that shit up.
“the Australian public” is 23 27 million people from different backgrounds, in different environments, facing different stresses.
There is no cohesive identity, just human drives. We are animals, often very gentle and nice animals, but we are animals. We carry the heritage of our ancestors. Fear and doubt, fear of the other, selfishness these are all drives we have and they are easy to play into. Of course it will work, trump isn’t a wizard, the rise of fascism is a systematic problem.
The question is will someone else use a more effective political strategy? Neoliberal politics largely hasn’t been able to because it is neoliberal ideologies which have lead to this world where people are noticing life get harder each year and the upper rungs of society become increasingly unattainable.
“be happy with what you have peasant, at least we won’t do purges” is just… deeply uninspiring.
Can Dutton waffle incoherently for long enough to slot those slogans in without people noticing or understanding them? I’m sceptical. He might be an evil potato monster hell bent on setting up a potato based junta with him as the potato bake supreme, but I don’t think his brain has enough mash to achieve a true trumpian waffle.
