 |
| Keep dreaming, Tony. We've all seen you in those speedos... |
At last. Seventeen days after the Australian people went to the polls we finally have ourselves a new government. Hooray!
Personally, I'm thrilled with the result ... but not surprised. I think most of us predicted before the election that Labor would just scrape a victory. It was clear they would lose a lot of seats and a lot of support, but we also knew that a lot of those turning away from Labor were not running to the Coalition. Instead, they were turning to the Greens, and through the preference deals those people were still backing Labor. So it's no great surprise that they managed to hold onto power. But that said, I don't think any of us expected it to come right down to the wire like this. Who would have thought that the fate of our country would be in the hands of three independents? And who would have thought that two country conservatives would ever throw themselves behind the left-wing ALP? My mind boggles.
So what does the twittersphere think of it? Well, I've trawled the popular #ausvotes and #auswaits hashtags (that's a lie, I actually skipped uni to spend all day following them) and collected a sample of tweets:
"I especially liked the bit where Tony Abbott didn't become prime minister; that was my favourite bit."
"Now at least when the aliens come and ask us to take them to our leader, we won't look like complete idiots."
"It's been an exhausting week, but at least the Evil Empire has been thwarted, and Oz has its first (sort of) elected female PM!"
"Julia Gillard is not my prime minister, and Labor is not my government. Fuck despotic, lying, deceitful Labor. VIOLENT OVERTHROW."
"It's hilarious watching the conservatives devolve into sweary, bitter, incoherent messes after about an hour of relative peace."
"I do love the idea of a minority govt — hope it acts as a precedent so we can see more indy MPs and shift away from the two majors"
Surprisingly, the response is mostly positive. From what I've seen, there are a lot more politically-active conservatives than liberals on twitter, so it's odd that everyone has taken the result so well. I guess those Young Liberals aren't as ferocious as everyone makes them out to be.
I think the last poster has a good point too. There's a lot to be said for the European style of proportional representation, where a number of smaller parties form complex coalitions that cater to a wide variety of interests. Here, the Greens polled about 12% of the primary vote but won only one seat. How is that representative of the public opinion? I'm glad that the Greens will be working with Labor over the next three years, but it would be far better if they had a more active role.
So yes, as you can probably tell, I voted Greens. I would have voted for the Sex Party if they'd had a candidate running in my electorate, but the best I could do was preference them first (followed by the Secular Party and the Greens) on the Senate ballot. So the Greens were the best bet in order to help send a strong message. They're the only party who actually understand social issues like marriage equality and refugee rights. There's just no place in today's society for social conservatism and it frustrates me that neither of the major parties are willing to take any action on gay marriage, especially considering that around 70% of Australians support it. The ALP has also shifted significantly to the right on immigration, catering to the racist bogan vote. I hate that greedy people smugglers are able to profit by sneaking people into the country in leaky old boats, but the idea that these people are 'illegal' and must be turned back is even more disgusting. Just look at where Labor have shifted to on the political spectrum this election:
 |
| Graph from www.politicalcompass.org |
The two major parties have been stealing policies from each other and the line between them is becoming blurred. It's no wonder that people are becoming disillusioned. There's just so much to hate and I haven't even touched on economic issues yet. It all comes down to the lesser of two evils and, fortunately, I think Australia has done a good job of choosing the right one this time. But we've also made it perfectly clear that we weren't happy with how things were (not) progressing before. If our delightful red-headed overlord expects to win another election, there are a lot of issues she'll need to take a stand on. I just hope that this precarious minority government situation will force them all to think things through and genuinely work in the country's best interests.
Australia has spoken, Julia. Do us proud.
(there will be more on this when it isn't 2 in the morning)
0 comments:
Post a Comment