Australia General Discussion 2.0

[IceAgeComing]

[urlhttp://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/apr/04/kevin-andrews-is-prepared-to-challenge-turnbull-for-prime-ministership]apparently there might be a challenge against Turnbull soon[/url] - Andrews would probably lose but I can't imagine that's what the government want floating around a month before they call a Double Dissolution

[IceAgeComing]

There's not a majority in the Senate to pass a referendum - Labour,  the Greens and the NXT Senators oppose it because they don't think that a referendum is needed or wanted; and I also think that some oppose it from the right as well.  Unless the Libs have a change in heart it looks like it might have to wait until the ALP get into government sadly

[IceAgeComing]

Katter has just withdrawn confidence and supply; which strikes me as something that seems more important than it actually is - makes the situation that much harder for the government in a tight vote if (when is probably more sensible) Joyce has to leave parliament but they should be able to keep something together for a time since you'd have to think that a Nationals by-election victory is the likely outcome.

It all really is rather silly that dual nationals can't be elected to parliament - especially a place like Australia with a large migrant population...

[IceAgeComing]

This strikes me as being an election that's hard to poll: as is usually the case when you have insurgent parties rising from almost nowhere.  Add in the fact that their infrastructure will be worse than the majors and how rigid Australia's two-party system is and you get to a point where I think that Xenophon will dissapoint: he'll get seats but not that many.  Although with an unpopular Liberal federal government and an ALP government that's been there for years and which has lost the TPP vote to the Liberals in the last two elections; this is the time where a third party should do well if one is ever going to do well.

A 30/30/30 election will prove ungovernable long term though; the lower house will be... odd and the Upper House; when you add in the seats that the Greens, the Shooters and (possibly) One Nation will win and considering that it uses PR that will just be a total mess and whoever is in government will need some kind of formal arrangement with someone.  That's the issue that Xenophon has: their party hasn't got the firm base that the LNP or the ALP have: which means that if they lean towards one side they'll annoy the other - especially if they end up being the junior partner since global trends suggest that Junior partners in coalitions or other arrangements tend to explode and lose significant support in the election after - look at the Lib Dems in the UK since 2010, or the PvdA in the Netherlands recently - and the two of them are established parties and not new populist forces with odd coalitions.

[IceAgeComing]

If their private polling is anything like that you'd have to think that it will.  Although finding a full slate of candidates (including for the LC where they'll need to stand a full slate to avoid getting more votes than they have candidates standing) while avoiding bad or... dodgy candidates for a new party is always incredibly hard and they don't want to be embarrassed.

[IceAgeComing]

The infrastructure needed for a party that's primarily contesting Legislative Council or Senate seats is very different from that for a party that's going to try and contest every seat available in order to try and win and form a government.  While they have grown recently its really been very quick and speedy - four years ago they only contested the Legislative Council and even then only elected one member of the eleven and even two years ago they were clearly a third party even though they did very well - and you don't want any growing pains to impact you right before you need to start campaigning.  Add in the fact that they need to recruit candidates for every seat for both houses and that because this is such a different election they can't assume that certain seats are unwinnable and therefore just stand paper candidates there and that can be an issue, especially if after nomination day you discover that some of your candidates are either terrible or have... dodgy histories.

I mean its not a firm barrier and there are obviously examples of parties rising from nowhere to do incredibly well to the point where the above weren't issues because people were inspired to vote for them enough to balance that stuff out - to use anglosphere examples, look at the NDP federally in Quebec in 2011 and the provincially in Alberta in 2016 but even then that's not entirely comparable since its a party that's established elsewhere in a country suddenly jumping up and winning in places where no one ever thought that they would.  The issue also is that personality parties (and that's what Xenophon is; its not based on anything other than the leader) tend to be very unstable in that they could have lots of splits and fragment very quickly, especially if anything happens to Xenophon.  I'm not saying that they haven't a shot because that'd be silly to say about any party in their position but its an uphill battle and they need to work incredibly hard over the next few months to have a shot at being the lead partner of any government in the state, and there's still an big chance of a 1998 Queensland style situation or even worse where they're on the edge of a large breakthrough but they don't quite get enough first preference votes to be in contention in the vast majority of seats. 

Also, you do realise that you can link articles?  Its not hard to link something that you find interesting if you want to talk about it; and it makes it a lot more likely that people will read it and talk about it.

[IceAgeComing]

I didn't expect quite that level of change but there being a swing towards the ALP is not at all surprising.  Instability like this isn't a good thing of course especially since you had two spill votes in three days which just makes the party look like a total mess; but also Turnbull was still surprisingly popular as a leader, and so pushing him out and replacing him with someone significantly less popular will really hurt the party.  That's the big difference between this spill and the other recent ones: when Turnbull pushed out Abbott, or when Rudd and Gillard knifed each other at all times you had a more popular potential leader replacing a not very popular person while in this case it was a leader polling miles ahead of his party being pushed out.

The question is quite where this all stabilises out: normally you'd expect a new leader to get a honeymoon period but I doubt that is going to happen here.  Theoretically if the party does end up getting vaguely united they might go up a little bit but I don't see that happening considering the closeness of the spill vote and the fact that the party instantly is back down at near Abbott levels.  Indeed this might even be worse than that: Morrison starting at 33%, six points behind Shorten, is very bad considering that the general trend is that he'll probably fall from there.  Certainly nothing good here for the LNP...