Australia 2022 Election

[Tintrlvr]

I hate when this forum "Americanizes"--you know, overstating the "totalitarianism" of lockdowns.

If you think opposition to totalitarian lockdowns is a purely American phenonenon, it might be you who has an America-centric worldview.

If you genuinely think Australia's lockdowns were totalitarian you're listening to too much Ted Cruz and not enough of us who actually went through them.

Speak for yourself.  Being confined to a 5 kilometre radius for 3 months at a time, repeatedly, under the threat of thousands of dollars of fines, is not an experience that I care to repeat.

It is not an experience I care to repeat either, but it was one that I felt was necessary at the time (along with many health experts).

The Issue is not so much the past lockdown but a consistent push by a loud minority to normalize some aspects of the lockdown permanently, minimize how invasive it was to fundamental rights and perhaps some remnants who want to re-adopt a zero covid approach.

Look at how people have been complaning about the scrapping of vaccine pass systems(despite almost all evidence indicating that they were useless at actualy preventing spread outside of encouraging vaccination) and how some people want to make mask wearing a permenant part of life(treating it as no different from another piece of clothing).

Your post is an example of how those outside Australia totally misunderstand its policies. I can tell you definitively that mask wearing is barely required in any normal setting anymore here; hospitals and public transport (and it is not now, nor was it ever, enforced on public transport). Some of you seem to have this picture of Australia as a police state when we have been living fairly normally and lockdown-free for about 6 months now.

I understand quite well what the situation was like in australia and how defacto for much of the population life was pretty normal and is now everywhere pretty normal. My comment is about the long-term political effects and why people are still concerned about them.

Yeah, but what kinds of "people"?  I see the word "people" being used as a false-universalizing weasel word by those who seek to universalize their imagined anti-elite bugaboos all the time: "people don't like modern art", as opposed to "some people", or even "a lot of people".

The fact is, "totalitarian lockdowns" is for the most part a dead horse fixation except among a devoted minor-party fringe.  It only *seems* to loom larger if you spend an excessive amount of your time within a political-Twitter and social media realm where libertarians and freedom types hog the oxygen, and you have your real-world perspective skewed by that fact...

I think on the modern art point you'll find the answer is "a large majority of people", but that's neither here nor there...

[Tintrlvr]

In the UK just about all of those urban “remain” types who care about climate change vote Labour.

They certainly do not, except as a tactical choice on occasion. In fact both the question and the answer is exactly the same as 'why do people in Richmond never vote Labour when they're cross with the Conservatives?'

Yes, but Labour wins some pretty upscale seats like Islington etc...The thing that surprises me is that the Coalition is even still competitive in upscale inner city electorates like Wentworth. Seats like that in Canada are now totally unwinnable for the Tories and in the US professional urban voters have completely turned their backs on the GOP. And its not as if the Liberals in Australia have done anything to make themselves more palatable to urban quasi progressives - they are led by a fundamentalist Christian, they are totally xenophobic and into complete climate change denial.

The corrrect British analogy for Wentworth is surely a seat like Kensington or maybe even Chelsea and Fulham, except Wentworth is a bit more suburban than either. I agree that such a seat would be unwinnable for the Republicans in the United States, and maybe for the Tories in Canada,* but it's clearly still very winnable for the Tories in the UK at least, and Labour is as irrelevant in Chelsea and Fulham as Labor is in Wentworth.

*I think the way Toronto is cut up doesn't create any great analogies, but neighborhoods like Rosedale, Forest Hill and/or Bridle Path if united into a single riding would be a good analogy - and that seat probably would be winnable for the Tories.