Australian Federal Election 18th of May 2019

[Filuwaúrdjan]

1. The ALP should have learned long ago that 'cultural' politics is a net vote and seat loser for them. The nature of the Australian culture war is such that they can't disengage totally, but they should avoid allowing it to dominate. This isn't a matter of 'Left' or 'Right', of course (not that any Australians here will need that note, but people from elsewhere might).

2. Relating to the above, attempts to expand the map for the ALP - to move into rich Liberal territory where the electorate is leery of Liberal positioning on 'cultural matters' - basically don't work. What tends to happen is that they fall between two stools - the party is just too disliked by enough people in such places to stand much chance of actually breaking through federally, while the policy and rhetorical maneuvering required loses votes and seats elsewhere. Better to let other forces exploit Liberal vulnerabilities: Labor's primary vote is often low enough in those areas that this is what happens anyway.

3. A brutal observation but this is a brutal result so: the politics of the environment are too important to be Political and there's an urgent need to find a way out of what has already been a very costly (mostly for the environment!) trap; this is not an Australia-specific comment, it applies everywhere. It is possible to persuade Country People and people in resource-dependent regions and localities to support measures that will improve the environment (or at least reduce damage), but only when approached on their terms. This is going to be particularly difficult in Australia for various reasons, but things are too serious to not at least try.

4. It's not possible to overlook Shorten's personal unpopularity, of course. Particularly given the electoral system: compulsory voting and single-member seats with preferencing greatly increase the impact of leaders on electoral outcomes.

5. The conduct of certain people in this thread has been an absolute disgrace. If you cannot behave then please kindly f**k off back to reddit or another hellhole platform where goonish barbarianism is the order of the day.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

If polls are wrong, it is in no small part thanks to changes in electoral sociology, living arrangements, methods of communication and media consumption habits which make it much harder to pollsters to get it right by using their traditional models.

We live more individually and less collectively than we used to. Opinion polling is based to a huge extent on the assumption that voter behaviour is driven primarily by the latter...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Think you need to log off, kid. Come back later (or not) when you've cooled down. Right now you're wrecking this thread for everyone.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Perhaps they learnt the wrong lesson from the last Victorian election where the Liberals led a very culturally focused campaign (Safe Schools, black African gangs etc) and utterly flopped when compared with Dan Andrews' obsessive focus on infrastructure and development (apparently removing railway crossings is the electoral equivalent of crack in Victoria).

Yes, I think so. They let that, actually very singular, win go to their heads.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The critique that Shorten erred by falling into a soft left policy-wonk comfort zone is legitimate; the backlash in the outer suburbs was pretty clearly linked to this. Combine this with the foolish attempt to use culture war rhetoric to expand the electoral map (which, just as the last time Labor tried this,* actually contracted the map) and we have a pretty clear explanation for what just happened.

Suggesting that the answer to the above is 'move towards Third Way politics' is strange though. Firstly, what does Third Way even mean in an Australian context? The ALP has an unusual history and made its move towards using market mechanisms to achieve socialist aims much earlier than the norm. So, does it mean move back towards Hawke-Keating era policies? Except this makes no sense, as that's more or less exactly what Shorten just ran on (and the result certainly had a few echoes to the eventual electoral end of the Hawke-Keating era as well). Of course it's possible that this is not recognised as 'Third Way' now even if it was one of the main inspirations for such politics. So, does 'Third Way' in this context mean just notching a few points further to the right on economic and social policy while retaining the culture war positioning? How, exactly, is that going to help win over outer suburban and regional swing voters? I don't see it. Probably the backlash in the outer suburbs wouldn't have been so bad, but the required positive swing? Where would that have come from?

_{*Which raises an interesting question: will Shorten, too, end up as a senior member of a far right party in fifteen years?}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The idea - the dream, the delusion; call it what you will - is that cultural politics can be used to expand the map for Labor, so that the route to power isn't dependent on fickle and self-interested voters in the outer suburbs and on surly voters in regional seats. But it just doesn't work; it won't ever work.