This is not a direct answer but you might be interested in the ABC series ‘Swingers’, released in the lead up to the most recent federal election. It has quite a bit of history about Australia’s political system and the attitudes of Australian voters.
We’re also less religious. Women have a greater chance of becoming president than open atheists.
Bold of you to assume they didn’t just angrily reply to the title.
I wish there was more high quality commentary related to The Greens’ results, I find their dilemma to be a lot more subtle, and therefore more interesting, than the Coalition’s.
She also doesn’t understand that Australia is far less conservative than America, and that over a third of estimated eligible Americans don’t vote.
No, this is bad for The Greens if their ambition is to win lower house seats. It’s Teal independents (AKA moderate Liberals) who will find it easier, The Greens are too far to the left to benefit from an increase in first preferences or preference flow. It’s also not a great thing for the health of the country to have more extremists on the right. How quickly we all forget the hatred and violence the opposition was able to generate during the Voice referendum or on the issue of Gaza.
That’s correct, you can read about the process here. The AEC takes submissions from the public into account when making these changes, and it’s worth noting that The Greens did appear to support some of the changes that were made (moving parts of Brunswick and Fitzroy from Melbourne to Wills) although their suggestion to move Kensington and Flemington into Melbourne wasn’t acted on. Perhaps The Greens saw the boundary changes as potential to gain another seat, which is why they supported shifting some of their voters out of Melbourne and into Wills. I don’t think anyone went into this election thinking Bandt was under threat, the general vibe was that The Greens would continue to make gains based on the decline of the major parties.
Have you tried installing those torrents in a sandbox environment first?
It seems kinda misleading, if not malicious to the purpose the greens aim to serve in politics
What purpose do you think they serve?
Of course the remaining people in the moderate faction think they need to be more vocal. It doesn’t change the fact that they are really struggling right now and that the people in leadership positions seem to be more interested in listening to Gina Rinehart and Sky After Dark, who are still arguing that the reason the Liberals are losing voters is because they haven’t moved far enough to the right and still don’t spend enough time on culture wars.
From what I understand, the only people contesting it are Angus Taylor (from the right faction) and Sussan Ley (whose positioning seems debatable). Neither seem like particularly great options, though. The moderate faction seems to have been decimated, even at the membership level. From Crikey:
One moderate contacted Crikey the morning after the election, describing the faction as a “critically endangered species”. They were plainly upset at what they saw to be a shift to the right supported by the party’s membership base.
“As long as you have a cooked membership, we’re going to continue to have cooker candidates,” they said.
The concerns echo a piece in the Australian Financial Review by Phil Coorey, who said the Liberal Party had “no soul to search” after many future leaders of the party lost their seats or saw their margins decimated. Coorey noted many of those were moderates, and “the broad church is no more”.
It doesn’t sound like they actually have many options left if they want to lead the party back towards the centre in the short-term, and getting wiped out of major cities isn’t going to help that either.
The “you’re not saying anything Tony” clip gets me every time, surely the weirdest moment in my voting life to date. It’s incredible that someone who struggled with the media so badly became prime minister.
A lot of that was eaten into by boundary changes. As I understand, Bandt lost the hipster suburbs of Fitzroy and Brunswick which are major Greens areas (reflected in the Greens great performance in Wills, which absorbed those areas) and his electorate gained some southern Labor booths. Combined with a smaller swing against him everywhere else, he was in trouble.
Labor might not be left enough for you personally, but each time the libs are defeated they need to move to the left to be viable, and Labor will have to move further left to differentiate themselves.
I’m not sure that’s actually how it works in Australian politics, though. Because the major parties are campaigning for the votes of politically disinterested people, they don’t need to be ideologically distinct from one another. A campaign where they essentially buy votes through micro-targeted policies suits both of them.
That is to say, the spectrum of acceptable opinions is moving to the left in an observable manner, right now.
I don’t necessarily think that’s accurate either, at least not based on what the major parties are doing. Generationally it might be true (millennials aren’t moving right as quickly as previous generations), but so far the Coalition has made no attempt to move back towards the centre (and might not even do it after this election) so Labor is under very little pressure in that sense.
Is Acestream still a thing for football?
footybite(dot)to is generally pretty good as an alternative.
I think even some Greens voters dislike her, although maybe she plays better with younger voters now. I would like to see if her approach changes as leader, though.
Yes, as a long-term Greens voter I completely agree that the shift happened under Di Natale, not Bandt. He (Bandt) is getting dumped on because, until now, no one other than long-term Greens voters were even aware that these issues existed. The media mostly ignores The Greens, and when they have reported on them it has generally been under the context of consistent growth. A single election where that growth appears to have stalled and suddenly everyone acts like it is a crisis for the party that must be related to Bandt’s recent leadership.
Hanson-Young as replacement? Maybe I’m biased cause she’s from SA, but she has also represented the party at the federal level for by far the longest period (even longer than Bandt).
Seems only fair, considering one of the biggest excuses people give for not voting Greens is “they don’t have the experience”. No fucking shit, you only get that from being consistently voted in lol
The Greens are much more popular than The Nationals. ~12% of nationwide first preferences at this election vs 4%.