Australia General Discussion 4.0: It ain’t easy under Albanese

[AustralianSwingVoter]

This is the most ScoMo thing imaginable. Only he would be so paranoid of his own ministers to give himself secret powers to override them. GG obviously shouldn't have gone along with the secrecy, Hurley may be forced out soon.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

And Karen Andrews is calling on ScoMo to resign!

[AustralianSwingVoter]

It's not as if he invaded Ukraine.

Low-news day.

Well there was always that old joke about Jeff Kennett invading South Australia...

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Given that none of the ministers who were sharing posts with him at the time actually appear to have been aware that they were doing so, it’s difficult to believe that this decision had any significant impact… at all.

If it had no impact then he's a paranoid madman who broke constitutional norms and basic expectations of transparency all to feed his irrational need for control.

But we know for a fact it had impact as he used his position as Resources Minister to overrule approval of PEP-11 gas exploration by the (Nats) Minister Keith Pitt. The PEP-11 project, by the way, was off the coast of Sydney and incredibly unpopular in coastal suburbs including ScoMo's very own seat of Cook.
The Energy company that was to get the license is now suing btw, alleging ScoMo “predetermined the application and the purported decision was infected by actual bias such that there was a denial of procedural fairness”.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

John Howard says Scott Morrison should remain in parliament to avoid a by-election

[AustralianSwingVoter]

NT Labor has narrowly held Fannie Bay in a by-election triggered by ex-Chief Minister Gunner's resignation with a 7% swing against it.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Albanese has apparently been filmed chugging down a few beers - so far at least, this doesn't seem to have caused the fuss that Sanna Marin enjoying herself has.

Our politicians have history on this and I think we’re likely to be a bit less uptight than the Finns. Leaving aside that Marin is an attractive young woman which doesn’t do her any favours for this kind of stuff either.

He did it at the Gang of Youths gig I was at the other night. Everyone went wild but overlooked that it was a third of a plastic cup at best. Weak IMO.

It's also a tradition here. Remember, Bob Hawke once sculled a yard of ale at Oxford in 11 seconds.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Haven't been following this, why on earth have the ALP persisted with said tax cuts anyway?

Still haunted by There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.

But it's important to note that any price they'd pay in political capital looks like it'd be minimal - a poll from the Australia Institute[/url] (admittedly a left-leaning thinktank) found that of those who had an opinion (so a minority), a majority favoured scrapping the cuts.

When Gillard back flipped on the carbon tax internal polling wasn’t showing too much damage. While people might be okay with a backflip now how will they feel after three years of Liberals hammering home Labor Lies? Stuff like Albanese lied about Tax Cuts. How do we know he isn’t lying about the Death Tax?. It writes itself.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

So the NSW coalition is seeing frontbenchers retiring left right and centre. We're now up to 8 current or former cabinet ministers retiring, and the Speaker too. There's also a few very nasty preselections brewing thanks to the redistribution transforming some branches. But Perrottet assures us that nothing is wrong, please disperse, nothing to see here.
Of course this being NSW everyone still half expects the Sussex Street brain trust to somehow blow the election. Chris Minns does hold his seat on a literal 0.1% margin after all.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

So the NSW coalition is seeing frontbenchers retiring left right and centre. We're now up to 8 current or former cabinet ministers retiring, and the Speaker too. There's also a few very nasty preselections brewing thanks to the redistribution transforming some branches. But Perrottet assures us that nothing is wrong, please disperse, nothing to see here.
Of course this being NSW everyone still half expects the Sussex Street brain trust to somehow blow the election. Chris Minns does hold his seat on a literal 0.1% margin after all.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-30/nsw-liberal-preselections-delayed-by-factional-battles-analysis/101588692

A decent ABC article going into the current state of play. The NSW Liberal tradition of bloody pre-selections continues.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Not surprised if comes from Jack Houghton. He’s taken Andrew Bolt’s torch of trying to be the conservative response to scary big bad Paul Barry. His face is as punchable as you’d expect (with Potter glasses to boot!).

[AustralianSwingVoter]

With the passing of the father of psephology David Butler it’s a great time to look back on his 70s essays on Australian politics and government.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

God I love South Pacific diplomacy.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Nationals member for Calare Andrew Gee has resigned from the party to sit as an Independent over the opposition to the indigenous voice. Looks very unlikely he’d return to the party, he’s got a solid chance of locking down the seat as an Independent for a decade plus.

Nationals try to not self-destructively enable independents challenge (literally impossible)

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Just what exactly is an ‘indigenous voice to parliament’? Everything I’ve read about it seems to be incredibly sketchy on details.

Akin to the Waitangi Process in New Zealand, it’s about achieving limited self-determination as a recognition of colonisation and continued inequality.

All sounds very confusing and buzzwordy I know. Basically it’s just a body representing the Aboriginal community to government. Importantly it’s neither binding nor justiceable, just advisory. And it’s what the Aboriginal community decided they wanted for themselves as part of the Uluru process, rather than having the Parliament decide what was best for recognition (such as a preamble).

[AustralianSwingVoter]

The coalition really shouldn't have won in 1969.

Not unlike the (equally undeserved) 1992 Tory win in the UK in many respects.

The counterpoint is always that Whitlam’s ALP wasn’t ready for government yet. If Gorton wasn’t so scatterbrained, erratic and hyper confrontational he wouldn’t have come close to the 7% swing against them.

Whitlam’s first grand failure was his inability to capitalise in those dreary three final years. McMahon was a hateable creature but managed to hold onto far too many votes. So Whitlam would enter government on 52.7% with a radical agenda but a narrow parliamentary margin for error.
(History repeated itself in 2007. Rudd was at ~58% through most of the term, right up to the writs dropping. But the underwhelming campaign helped Howard narrow it back to 52.7%. Spooky. That then set up for a weak, 6 year stint.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Looking back further to the 1966 election, the ALP hopeful for PM then was a 70 year old left winger - sound familiar? - but unlike Corbyn in 2019 he had lost not one but two previous elections.

Sounds pretty inexplicable even at a time when leaders losing was more tolerated than it is now.

Was it mainly down to factionalism?

he remained, reasoning that Evatt had been given three opportunities to win, and that he should be allowed a third try
Very much a "left-winger" of his time, though.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

And Albanese is from the Left, while Shorten is Right. Do these factions even matter beyond "this is what i vaguely believed when i joined the party in uni or from the union, now it's just my mates"?

They absolutely matter (and have clear ideological divides) it’s just that to become leader involves a great deal of extremely conspicuous compromise with the other faction and falling out with your own faction in the process. And the formulation of policy is (somehow?) still very independent from leadership scuffles.

Additionally after the history of split after split the ALP is a little paranoid about public disunity over policy. They much prefer to work it out in smoke filled rooms and Chinese restaurants, then have a public battle over the leadership.
(The NSW Liberals incidentally do the complete reverse. Leadership and Preselection scuffles are extremely secretive, but we’ve got no qualms to splash the front pages with ideological disputes about literally everything)

[AustralianSwingVoter]

What has happened to Latham is genuinely extraordinary.

Did bitterness and resentment over not becoming PM simply drive him mad?

Most famously, two years before taking the leadership he crashtackled a cab driver.

It was two and a half years ago that Mark Latham, on the night of Gough Whitlam's 85th birthday, crash-tackled a Sydney taxi driver in a dispute over a fare.

The cabbie, Bachir Mustapha, 35, said yesterday: "I don't bear him any grudge . . . He looks a family man, a sport man, and he may produce a good government; the only payback I can take is not to vote for Labor. I vote Labor in state, I vote Liberal in federal."

According to Mr Mustapha's version of events, he picked up Mr Latham in the city, invited him to share his cab with another passenger to Balmain and negotiated a tip to take him home after that drop-off.

Mr Latham, with alcohol on his breath, had fallen asleep and woke to accuse the cabbie of taking a long route. Mr Mustapha ordered him out and, when he did not get his fare, ran after the MP and snatched his satchel. Mr Latham then tackled him.

In hindsight, Mr Mustapha says, the satchel probably contained valuables, if not money, and concedes his actions may have been provocative. Nevertheless, he says, he was only defending his livelihood. "If he was a nasty man he would have punched me on the ground. He didn't."

He added: "It's over. I'm happy for him, happy for Labor."

His wife, Jovana, is less forgiving. She says her husband, whose arm was broken, has not worked a day since. "God will forgive him," she says of Mr Latham.

Mr Latham did not flinch when asked about the case in his news conference yesterday. "Every now and then there is a bit of strife as you get home. My property was stolen. I recovered it."

[AustralianSwingVoter]

What has happened to Latham is genuinely extraordinary.

Did bitterness and resentment over not becoming PM simply drive him mad?

Would be genuinely interested in any of our Australian (or otherwise knowledgeable) posters explaining the Latham journey, because from the outside it’s just looks utterly bizarre.

I'm a hater. Part of the tribalness of politics is to really dislike the other side with intensity. And the more I see of them the more I hate them. I hate their negativity. I hate their narrowness. I hate the way, for instance, John Howard tries to appeal to suburban values when I know that he hasn't got any real answers to the problems and challenges we face. I hate the phoniness of that.

Start with this mentality to politics. Then apply it to the people who knifed you after you lost an election.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

(He did actually lose his left testicle to cancer the year he lost the leadership)

[AustralianSwingVoter]

A useful few paragraphs from an old Monthly essay:

The thread holding Latham to the left was always thin. In his maiden speech to federal parliament in 1994, Latham explained his understanding of his party. “Ultimately, Labor’s hopes for a more equal and just society rely on a certain judgement about human values: the belief that whilst people will always defend their own interests they also care enough about the society in which they live to advance the interests of others.”

It is easy to miss what is most interesting about this statement, because it so obviously echoes the sentiments of other Labor politicians in its commitment to equality and justice. But it is not a plain statement of belief. It is an analysis, one that is conditional: Labor believes X because it has made a judgement that Y is true.

After the 2004 election, Latham decided he had been wrong about Y. He puts this clearly in The Latham Diaries: “ had assumed that as [working people] climbed the economic ladder, they would still care about the community in which they lived, and take heed of the interests of others, especially the poor and disadvantaged. This was my misjudgement of modern society.”

Think, then, of the several devastations of that election loss. Personally, it would have been humiliating: Labor had not just lost an election that had once seemed in reach, it had gone backwards. In order to make himself electable, or acceptable to his party, or to keep his party together, Latham had suppressed some of his clearest beliefs. Finally, the basis of his belief in progressive politics had been shattered. A year later, broadcaster Andrew Denton said to Latham in an interview, “You’ve given people a lot of reason to feel cynical. You haven’t offered any way forward.” Latham answered, “No, well, I couldn’t find any …”

The surprise, after all of this, is that Latham did not immediately leave the ALP. To Denton, he said, “I still belong to the Labor Party and wouldn’t ever join any other organisation.” In 2013 he wrote a Quarterly Essay, offering Labor advice. He continued, he says, to help Labor at the local, state and federal level.

Going over this history, I can’t help but feel sad about what is coming. I think of something Michael Duffy wrote. At 15, Latham penned an article for his school magazine, attacking waste like the “lavish distribution of stencils and paper”. Soon after, he attacked the school again, but with the caveat that it was “truly a fine school”. Duffy’s assessment: “he was already revealing himself as a critic who at heart loved the institutions he attacked”.

He tells me it was crushing when Labor Party activists worked to get him disinvited from the fundraiser for a local MP in early 2017, particularly the fact that it happened in Western Sydney, “where I’ve lived for 55 years now, and for me it’s been my life, my politics, my existence …” When I thank him for his honesty on this, he says, “Well that’s how it felt. How would you think I’d feel? … Demoralising. Terrible. I still feel bad about it.”

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Now that is genuinely interesting. And of course he's not the only one from the left - and sometimes the hard left - to make this sort of political journey for those sorts of reasons.

Indeed, a very large share of One Nation voters have followed a similar path. Old fashioned (white male) Labourites in regional towns and working outer suburbs put off by a changing party and a different style of government (first with Keating, then with Rudd/Gillard/Rudd). Just look Pauline's hometown of Ipswich!

[AustralianSwingVoter]

The actual *white* Australian working class doesn't support the centre-left today. Let alone, 19th century socialism. The *white* working class here in Oz *really* hate 20+ years of being told by the Australian left about how they are racists and xenophobes for not supporting unauthorised immigration by boat.

Even though most of the white working class's grandparents came here on a boat in the 50s but that's apparently neither here nor there for you.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

The actual *white* Australian working class doesn't support the centre-left today. Let alone, 19th century socialism. The *white* working class here in Oz *really* hate 20+ years of being told by the Australian left about how they are racists and xenophobes for not supporting unauthorised immigration by boat.

Even though most of the white working class's grandparents came here on a boat in the 50s but that's apparently neither here nor there for you.

They didn't - they were migrants taken from Displaced Persons camps, not refugees.

No? The large plurality were Ten Pound Poms arriving on converted liners.