Australia 2022 Election
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Ebowed
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« Reply #325 on: May 10, 2022, 07:42:08 PM »

Sportsbet have Labor shortening to $1.37 and now Liberals are $3.10.

https://www.sportsbet.com.au/betting/politics/australian-federal-politics/47th-parliament-of-australia-4664855

Sportsbet would have the best research in the market as their money is on the line. They have an impressive research process with sports, and if that translates to politics, Albanese has a new house in Canberra to live in.

You don't lose from $1.37 unless you are named Hillary Clinton.

You may want to get your memory checked.

Quote
Sportsbet to lose at least $5.2 million thanks to election bungle
By Anthony Colangelo
May 19, 2019 — 5.12pm

Sportsbet will lose at least $5.2 million thanks to its decision to pay out early on Bill Shorten winning Saturday's federal election as large bookmakers again had to admit they had misread the political landscape.

The betting company paid out on Mr Shorten becoming prime minister two days before Australians went to the polls, where voters surprisingly chose to re-elect Scott Morrison's Coalition government. Sportsbet said on Thursday Mr Shorten was at Winx-like odds of $1.16 to win.
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Ebowed
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« Reply #326 on: May 10, 2022, 07:48:05 PM »

Who are you supporting Ebowed if you support someone/plan on ranking the main two parties? I remember you supported Labor before the pandemic but I'm not sure who you are supporting?

I've supported the Greens and Labor in every previous election.  I'd number them this way this time

[1] Liberal Democrats
[2] Liberals
[3] United Australia Party
[4] Greens
[5] Labor
[6] One Nation
Protest voting against Labor?

Well, I've always despised Albanese, ever since I met him when I lived in his electorate ten years ago.  He was handing out pamphlets at the Marrickville train station and I turned up with a couple of my housemates, hungover, reeking of booze and cigarettes, wearing pajamas, and he said to us; "Thank God youse guys are here, I couldn't understand what any of these people are saying!" as we had been waiting in line after a large group of Vietnamise-Australians.  Those are his loyal constituents that he was making fun of to a few whiteys he mistook as bogans.  Oops.

The more pertinent reason that I'm backing the Liberals over Labor is that Scott Morrison is a better Prime Minister than Anthony Albanese could ever hope to be.  They have identical policies on most issues, but Morrison is placing less emphasis on nationalism, insularity, and xenophobia - ergo, Labor is no longer a viable choice for somebody badly affected by prolonged border closures and punitive lockdowns.  I don't like Morrison, and I don't like the Liberals, but they are easily the lesser of two evils at this election.
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Ebowed
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« Reply #327 on: May 10, 2022, 07:52:18 PM »

Anyone with the Liberal Democrats as their primary is not a serious person.

I can live with that.
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Vosem
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« Reply #328 on: May 10, 2022, 07:56:33 PM »

Who are you supporting Ebowed if you support someone/plan on ranking the main two parties? I remember you supported Labor before the pandemic but I'm not sure who you are supporting?

I've supported the Greens and Labor in every previous election.  I'd number them this way this time

[1] Liberal Democrats
[2] Liberals
[3] United Australia Party
[4] Greens
[5] Labor
[6] One Nation
Protest voting against Labor?

Well, I've always despised Albanese, ever since I met him when I lived in his electorate ten years ago.  He was handing out pamphlets at the Marrickville train station and I turned up with a couple of my housemates, hungover, reeking of booze and cigarettes, wearing pajamas, and he said to us; "Thank God youse guys are here, I couldn't understand what any of these people are saying!" as we had been waiting in line after a large group of Vietnamise-Australians.  Those are his loyal constituents that he was making fun of to a few whiteys he mistook as bogans.  Oops.

The more pertinent reason that I'm backing the Liberals over Labor is that Scott Morrison is a better Prime Minister than Anthony Albanese could ever hope to be.  They have identical policies on most issues, but Morrison is placing less emphasis on nationalism, insularity, and xenophobia - ergo, Labor is no longer a viable choice for somebody badly affected by prolonged border closures and punitive lockdowns.  I don't like Morrison, and I don't like the Liberals, but they are easily the lesser of two evils at this election.

I don't live in Australia (obviously), but I'd vaguely been rooting for an ALP victory at this election to punish Morrison and the Liberals for instituting the strict lockdowns and the restrictions on exiting the country. Are Albanese and the ALP really so much more hardline that it makes sense for single-issue "the lockdowns were wrong" voters to preference the Coalition over them? (Would be extremely bleak if true).
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Ebowed
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« Reply #329 on: May 10, 2022, 08:13:29 PM »
« Edited: May 10, 2022, 08:45:26 PM by Ebowed »

The more pertinent reason that I'm backing the Liberals over Labor is that Scott Morrison is a better Prime Minister than Anthony Albanese could ever hope to be.  They have identical policies on most issues, but Morrison is placing less emphasis on nationalism, insularity, and xenophobia - ergo, Labor is no longer a viable choice for somebody badly affected by prolonged border closures and punitive lockdowns.  I don't like Morrison, and I don't like the Liberals, but they are easily the lesser of two evils at this election.

I don't live in Australia (obviously), but I'd vaguely been rooting for an ALP victory at this election to punish Morrison and the Liberals for instituting the strict lockdowns and the restrictions on exiting the country. Are Albanese and the ALP really so much more hardline that it makes sense for single-issue "the lockdowns were wrong" voters to preference the Coalition over them? (Would be extremely bleak if true).

Great question, and an understandable perspective to hold from an international perspective: Australia handled covid in a very punitive way, and Scott Morrison could easily end up in a list of nasties along with Ardern and Trudeau for that, but the reality on the ground is that Morrison acted as a handbrake on the worst impulses of Australians throughout the pandemic.  On most issues, he had to be dragged kicking and screaming.  It is difficult for me to describe the relief now that the international border closure has already been lifted: I really do not believe that Albanese would lift it if it were still in place right now and he won the election.  How could he?  Australia has one of the highest, if not the highest, per-capita case rates in the world right now.  If ever we were going to have restrictions, it would be now: but Morrison did the politically unpalatable thing of removing them at a federal level already, and Albanese isn't going to ignite a political storm by re-instating them.

(You may be wondering how that makes sense: basically, the average person is under the impression that any restrictions that remain are based on "science" / "health advice", so they tend to oppose removing them if they are already in place, but the political and popular will to bring back new ones no longer exists.)

Throughout the last two years, the Labor party has demanded going "further" and has never then said that such things are no longer necessary: they banged on and on about the need to establish on-shore quarantine centers, which would doubtlessly transition to being detention centers for visa holders in a matter of absolutely no time at all, proposing to waste billions on the construction of camps where travelers would spend two weeks, presumably entrenching the ridiculous "border controls" that they had been demanding the whole time.

The reason for this is very simple; Labor wants to position itself as the party of health care.  While they have wisely chosen not to emphasise this for the federal election campaign, do not be under any illusions about their continued status as being entirely beholden to nursing unions and medical lobbies.  (Ironically, some of the worst ambulance ramping, indicative of overfilled emergency departments, is in Labor-run states such as Victoria and Western Australia.)

All of this being said, this federal election is certainly not about covid, or lockdowns, or border closures.  Really this is a cost-of-living election, and that's why Albanese needs to run an insular and xenophobic campaign, which is advantageous in the Australian electorate (particularly outside of NSW and Victoria).  The more that people pay attention to the global context, the more they see that Australia's economic position is comparatively enviable, aside from the ever-present risk of the housing bubble popping.  If Albanese can convince people to keep looking inwards (very likely), then people might buy the idea that high petrol and grocery prices are exclusively Scott Morrison's fault.
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Pulaski
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« Reply #330 on: May 10, 2022, 08:33:45 PM »

Let’s not get into Covid restrictions again.
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adma
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« Reply #331 on: May 10, 2022, 09:47:28 PM »

Let’s not get into Covid restrictions again.

Yeah, when we start to get into "list of nasties" labels inclusive of Trudeau and Ardern, I'm left thinking of the kind of person whom, if ranked choice balloting existed in Canada, would put PPC first...
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Pericles
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« Reply #332 on: May 10, 2022, 10:11:01 PM »

Let’s not get into Covid restrictions again.

Yeah, when we start to get into "list of nasties" labels inclusive of Trudeau and Ardern, I'm left thinking of the kind of person whom, if ranked choice balloting existed in Canada, would put PPC first...

Given the context and the amazingly low death tolls in our countries (the point of restrictions and why 2022 is different), that sounds like a 'list of heroes' to me. I think the more interesting verdicts on Covid responses will be the elections of state governments that actually made the decisions. It should cause the pro-Covid crowd to go nuts if Dan Andrews wins comfortably later this year. He's not on my list of heroes though because he could have been more competent in 2020 and stopped the outbreak (and therefore the lockdown) earlier.
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Vosem
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« Reply #333 on: May 10, 2022, 11:39:45 PM »

Thank you for the summary, Ebowed Smiley
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Pulaski
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« Reply #334 on: May 10, 2022, 11:50:22 PM »

Let’s not get into Covid restrictions again.

Yeah, when we start to get into "list of nasties" labels inclusive of Trudeau and Ardern, I'm left thinking of the kind of person whom, if ranked choice balloting existed in Canada, would put PPC first...

Given the context and the amazingly low death tolls in our countries (the point of restrictions and why 2022 is different), that sounds like a 'list of heroes' to me. I think the more interesting verdicts on Covid responses will be the elections of state governments that actually made the decisions. It should cause the pro-Covid crowd to go nuts if Dan Andrews wins comfortably later this year. He's not on my list of heroes though because he could have been more competent in 2020 and stopped the outbreak (and therefore the lockdown) earlier.

The "pro-Covid" crowd? You mean like those Voluntary Human Extinction guys? Tongue

Moving on, YouGov is publishing a seat-by-seat projection based on polls using "multi-level regression with post-stratification," words I recognise from statistics classes but don't understand from not paying attention during those classes. Apparently this method did well at predicting a hung parliament in the UK in 2017 but underestimated the Tories in 2019, so make of it what you will. At the moment it only has projections for seats where independents/crossbenchers are genuinely competing, and it's predicting:

- Kooyong for the Independent (please God yes!!!)
- Goldstein for the Independent
- All incumbent crossbenchers to retain
- The rest (Wentworth, North Sydney, Mackellar, Hughes) for the Liberals.

A little surprised that so many are predicted to stay with the Libs, particularly Wentworth, but if Frydenberg loses his seat I'm happy.

The article I linked to also mentions that apparently Liberal polling has them down in Bennelong, Reid, Robertson and also in Labor seats of Gilmore and Parramatta that they hope to win.

If Frydenberg loses and Constance doesn't get in I'm at a loss to think who'd compete with Dutton for the Liberal leadership (if Dutton retains Dickson, which isn't a certainty either). Alex Hawke maybe?
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« Reply #335 on: May 11, 2022, 01:47:50 AM »

IMO:

The Coal-ition has had 9 years to fix the country, and they've screwed up. Emissions are up along with the deficit, despite ScroMo saying it was going down. And of course Dutton threw a bunch of refugees into Manus even though they only had to flee because Pyney's Weapons Store is giving sh**t to the Saudis.

The Australian Right is probably one of the few western right-wings I'd pick the left over.
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TheTide
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« Reply #336 on: May 11, 2022, 02:16:05 AM »
« Edited: May 11, 2022, 02:23:50 AM by TheTide »

Let’s not get into Covid restrictions again.

Yeah, when we start to get into "list of nasties" labels inclusive of Trudeau and Ardern, I'm left thinking of the kind of person whom, if ranked choice balloting existed in Canada, would put PPC first...

Given the context and the amazingly low death tolls in our countries (the point of restrictions and why 2022 is different), that sounds like a 'list of heroes' to me. I think the more interesting verdicts on Covid responses will be the elections of state governments that actually made the decisions. It should cause the pro-Covid crowd to go nuts if Dan Andrews wins comfortably later this year. He's not on my list of heroes though because he could have been more competent in 2020 and stopped the outbreak (and therefore the lockdown) earlier.

The leaders seen to have done badly in other countries would have likely done a lot better if they had been in countries with strong and enforceable internal borders and/or geographically isolated. Similarly the leaders of the latter kind of countries would have done worse in the former kind. Nothing to do with Ardern, Morrison et al having some inate skill at this kind of thing.

And it's completely possible to see this even if you take a hard-line view on Covid, so I'm not trying to start a spat about justifications.
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Pulaski
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« Reply #337 on: May 11, 2022, 02:50:40 AM »

Let’s not get into Covid restrictions again.
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President Punxsutawney Phil
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« Reply #338 on: May 11, 2022, 04:20:14 AM »

What happens with the Liberal leadership if both Dutton and Frydenburg lose their seats?
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morgieb
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« Reply #339 on: May 11, 2022, 04:35:24 AM »

What happens with the Liberal leadership if both Dutton and Frydenburg lose their seats?
Clusterf**k.

The next most senior people in the Liberal party are Greg Hunt and Simon Birmingham....the former is retiring, the latter is a Senator and lacks an obvious Lower House seat to run in after the election. Alan Tudge is basically done for having been found out for having an affair and (allegedly) paying $500k worth of hush money, amongst other allegations - plus he's also been MIA throughout the campaign. Angus Taylor has his fans but there's enough innuendo about him that an ICAC would almost certainly sink him. Paul Fletcher is probably too boring and too moderate. Sussan Ley also has a corruption query (IIRC) and could struggle for traction given she represents a rural electorate (and is also over 60). Michaella Cash is also a Senator and would basically be the equivalent of Carly Fiorina leading the Republican party - that is to say under her the party would get smashed.

So you're down to people like Dan Tehan, Karen Andrews and Stuart Robert. Who all seem like complete non-entities and would probably be the least inspiring leaders of all-time. I guess Alex Hawke could have a shot and he seems to be playing the game the right way but would he have the popular appeal?
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President Punxsutawney Phil
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« Reply #340 on: May 11, 2022, 05:25:32 AM »

https://www.themandarin.com.au/188810-election-2022-almost-700-million-kicked-in-for-a-defence-reno/
Quote
The federal government has announced yet another renovation and expansion to a defence facility, with the promise of $694.4 million for the General John Baker Complex, which is home to the joint operations command for the Australian Defence Force here and overseas.

Quote
Defence minister Peter Dutton has made yet another spending promise in his portfolio, with $30 million towards the renovation and expansion of army reserve and cadet facilities in Tasmania.

That investment is a portion of a $1 billion that has been set aside to renovate army reserve and cadet facilities around the country.

Quote
A re-elected Coalition government would put in place a technology skills passport that will assist with getting Australians work ready.

It seems the Coalition is seeking to present itself as having lots of meat to its defense policy.
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« Reply #341 on: May 11, 2022, 06:19:55 AM »

https://www.themandarin.com.au/188810-election-2022-almost-700-million-kicked-in-for-a-defence-reno/
Quote
The federal government has announced yet another renovation and expansion to a defence facility, with the promise of $694.4 million for the General John Baker Complex, which is home to the joint operations command for the Australian Defence Force here and overseas.

Quote
Defence minister Peter Dutton has made yet another spending promise in his portfolio, with $30 million towards the renovation and expansion of army reserve and cadet facilities in Tasmania.

That investment is a portion of a $1 billion that has been set aside to renovate army reserve and cadet facilities around the country.

Quote
A re-elected Coalition government would put in place a technology skills passport that will assist with getting Australians work ready.

It seems the Coalition is seeking to present itself as having lots of meat to its defense policy.
Frankly I find it impossible to distinguish the foreign and military policy of the ALP and Coalition.
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Pulaski
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« Reply #342 on: May 11, 2022, 06:44:53 AM »

https://www.themandarin.com.au/188810-election-2022-almost-700-million-kicked-in-for-a-defence-reno/
Quote
The federal government has announced yet another renovation and expansion to a defence facility, with the promise of $694.4 million for the General John Baker Complex, which is home to the joint operations command for the Australian Defence Force here and overseas.

Quote
Defence minister Peter Dutton has made yet another spending promise in his portfolio, with $30 million towards the renovation and expansion of army reserve and cadet facilities in Tasmania.

That investment is a portion of a $1 billion that has been set aside to renovate army reserve and cadet facilities around the country.

Quote
A re-elected Coalition government would put in place a technology skills passport that will assist with getting Australians work ready.

It seems the Coalition is seeking to present itself as having lots of meat to its defense policy.
Frankly I find it impossible to distinguish the foreign and military policy of the ALP and Coalition.


There isn't a difference.
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« Reply #343 on: May 11, 2022, 08:03:28 AM »

Is immigration/refugee policy an issue at all during this election ?
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Talleyrand
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« Reply #344 on: May 11, 2022, 08:13:36 AM »

Who are you supporting Ebowed if you support someone/plan on ranking the main two parties? I remember you supported Labor before the pandemic but I'm not sure who you are supporting?

I've supported the Greens and Labor in every previous election.  I'd number them this way this time

[1] Liberal Democrats
[2] Liberals
[3] United Australia Party
[4] Greens
[5] Labor
[6] One Nation
Protest voting against Labor?

Well, I've always despised Albanese, ever since I met him when I lived in his electorate ten years ago.  He was handing out pamphlets at the Marrickville train station and I turned up with a couple of my housemates, hungover, reeking of booze and cigarettes, wearing pajamas, and he said to us; "Thank God youse guys are here, I couldn't understand what any of these people are saying!" as we had been waiting in line after a large group of Vietnamise-Australians.  Those are his loyal constituents that he was making fun of to a few whiteys he mistook as bogans.  Oops.

The more pertinent reason that I'm backing the Liberals over Labor is that Scott Morrison is a better Prime Minister than Anthony Albanese could ever hope to be.  They have identical policies on most issues, but Morrison is placing less emphasis on nationalism, insularity, and xenophobia - ergo, Labor is no longer a viable choice for somebody badly affected by prolonged border closures and punitive lockdowns.  I don't like Morrison, and I don't like the Liberals, but they are easily the lesser of two evils at this election.

Do you think you'd be voting differently with Shorten as ALP leader?
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« Reply #345 on: May 11, 2022, 05:13:58 PM »

https://www.themandarin.com.au/188810-election-2022-almost-700-million-kicked-in-for-a-defence-reno/
Quote
The federal government has announced yet another renovation and expansion to a defence facility, with the promise of $694.4 million for the General John Baker Complex, which is home to the joint operations command for the Australian Defence Force here and overseas.

Quote
Defence minister Peter Dutton has made yet another spending promise in his portfolio, with $30 million towards the renovation and expansion of army reserve and cadet facilities in Tasmania.

That investment is a portion of a $1 billion that has been set aside to renovate army reserve and cadet facilities around the country.

Quote
A re-elected Coalition government would put in place a technology skills passport that will assist with getting Australians work ready.

It seems the Coalition is seeking to present itself as having lots of meat to its defense policy.

They always fearmonger over defense/immigration issues in the final days of the election.
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Meclazine for Israel
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« Reply #346 on: May 11, 2022, 05:20:27 PM »
« Edited: May 11, 2022, 06:04:14 PM by Meclazine »

Is immigration/refugee policy an issue at all during this election ?

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/apr/19/factcheck-is-labors-policy-on-asylum-seekers-and-refugees-any-different-to-the-coalitions

"The shadow home affairs minister, Kristina Keneally, confirmed on Tuesday that Labor “completely supports Operation Sovereign Borders – offshore processing, regional resettlement and boat turnbacks where safe to do so”.

“No one who has attempted to come by boat since the operation of Sovereign Borders will be allowed to settle in Australia.”


Offshore detention is an issue. But Labor is pretty quiet despite a lot of members on the left wanting to remove it.

Why the silence?

It's because all of the people in detention currently were put there by Labor.

At the end of the day, offshore detention works. It work's really well combined with a policy stating that you will never settle in Australia if you come here illegally. Once Australia introduced offshore detention ~2013, the number of boats and illegal refugees dropped to.....zero. Absolute zero. We have not had one since.

Labor are not necessarily pushing offshore detention, and they helped implement it, but they know the alternative will lead to an influx of boat people and their children drowning on their way from Indonesia to Australia.

So for example, boat owners in southern Indonesia are currently watching the election, and if Labor wins, they will wait to see if offshore detention gets scrapped. Then, the very next day, they will take $50k from Sri Lankans, Iranians and Afghnistanis currently living in Indonesia and start the journey over the sea to Australia.

England are considering offshore detention now with the English Channel because it works in Australia.

And children overboard and people drowning is a political disaster. More people in detention. Drama. So Labor are walking a tight rope.

Australia needs skilled migration to supplement the workforce. The analysis of refugees and other immigrants from Africa over the last decade shows a high proportion of people going onto long term social security and staying on the long term unemployment queue.

Australian's are not really keen on importing people with low language skills and social integration abilities, low work ethic and wanting to sit on social security and then bring over 5 relatives to simply mooch on social security.

So there has been a big push over the last decade to bring in skilled migrants from India and England.

In particular, we are short on Accountants, Doctors and Nurses.

We certainly have no shortage of lawyers.
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« Reply #347 on: May 11, 2022, 06:01:41 PM »

The more pertinent reason that I'm backing the Liberals over Labor is that Scott Morrison is a better Prime Minister than Anthony Albanese could ever hope to be.  They have identical policies on most issues, but Morrison is placing less emphasis on nationalism, insularity, and xenophobia - ergo, Labor is no longer a viable choice for somebody badly affected by prolonged border closures and punitive lockdowns.  I don't like Morrison, and I don't like the Liberals, but they are easily the lesser of two evils at this election.

I don't live in Australia (obviously), but I'd vaguely been rooting for an ALP victory at this election to punish Morrison and the Liberals for instituting the strict lockdowns and the restrictions on exiting the country. Are Albanese and the ALP really so much more hardline that it makes sense for single-issue "the lockdowns were wrong" voters to preference the Coalition over them? (Would be extremely bleak if true).

Great question, and an understandable perspective to hold from an international perspective: Australia handled covid in a very punitive way, and Scott Morrison could easily end up in a list of nasties along with Ardern and Trudeau for that, but the reality on the ground is that Morrison acted as a handbrake on the worst impulses of Australians throughout the pandemic.  On most issues, he had to be dragged kicking and screaming.  It is difficult for me to describe the relief now that the international border closure has already been lifted: I really do not believe that Albanese would lift it if it were still in place right now and he won the election.  How could he?  Australia has one of the highest, if not the highest, per-capita case rates in the world right now.  If ever we were going to have restrictions, it would be now: but Morrison did the politically unpalatable thing of removing them at a federal level already, and Albanese isn't going to ignite a political storm by re-instating them.

(You may be wondering how that makes sense: basically, the average person is under the impression that any restrictions that remain are based on "science" / "health advice", so they tend to oppose removing them if they are already in place, but the political and popular will to bring back new ones no longer exists.)

Throughout the last two years, the Labor party has demanded going "further" and has never then said that such things are no longer necessary: they banged on and on about the need to establish on-shore quarantine centers, which would doubtlessly transition to being detention centers for visa holders in a matter of absolutely no time at all, proposing to waste billions on the construction of camps where travelers would spend two weeks, presumably entrenching the ridiculous "border controls" that they had been demanding the whole time.

The reason for this is very simple; Labor wants to position itself as the party of health care.  While they have wisely chosen not to emphasise this for the federal election campaign, do not be under any illusions about their continued status as being entirely beholden to nursing unions and medical lobbies.  (Ironically, some of the worst ambulance ramping, indicative of overfilled emergency departments, is in Labor-run states such as Victoria and Western Australia.)

All of this being said, this federal election is certainly not about covid, or lockdowns, or border closures.  Really this is a cost-of-living election, and that's why Albanese needs to run an insular and xenophobic campaign, which is advantageous in the Australian electorate (particularly outside of NSW and Victoria).  The more that people pay attention to the global context, the more they see that Australia's economic position is comparatively enviable, aside from the ever-present risk of the housing bubble popping.  If Albanese can convince people to keep looking inwards (very likely), then people might buy the idea that high petrol and grocery prices are exclusively Scott Morrison's fault.

We are.literally ranked lowest in the OECD
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« Reply #348 on: May 11, 2022, 06:25:02 PM »

https://www.themandarin.com.au/188810-election-2022-almost-700-million-kicked-in-for-a-defence-reno/
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The federal government has announced yet another renovation and expansion to a defence facility, with the promise of $694.4 million for the General John Baker Complex, which is home to the joint operations command for the Australian Defence Force here and overseas.

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Defence minister Peter Dutton has made yet another spending promise in his portfolio, with $30 million towards the renovation and expansion of army reserve and cadet facilities in Tasmania.

That investment is a portion of a $1 billion that has been set aside to renovate army reserve and cadet facilities around the country.

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A re-elected Coalition government would put in place a technology skills passport that will assist with getting Australians work ready.

It seems the Coalition is seeking to present itself as having lots of meat to its defense policy.

They always fearmonger over defense/immigration issues in the final days of the election.
I guess you can say it's their home turf.
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Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom
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« Reply #349 on: May 11, 2022, 06:48:23 PM »

The more pertinent reason that I'm backing the Liberals over Labor is that Scott Morrison is a better Prime Minister than Anthony Albanese could ever hope to be.  They have identical policies on most issues, but Morrison is placing less emphasis on nationalism, insularity, and xenophobia - ergo, Labor is no longer a viable choice for somebody badly affected by prolonged border closures and punitive lockdowns.  I don't like Morrison, and I don't like the Liberals, but they are easily the lesser of two evils at this election.

I don't live in Australia (obviously), but I'd vaguely been rooting for an ALP victory at this election to punish Morrison and the Liberals for instituting the strict lockdowns and the restrictions on exiting the country. Are Albanese and the ALP really so much more hardline that it makes sense for single-issue "the lockdowns were wrong" voters to preference the Coalition over them? (Would be extremely bleak if true).

Great question, and an understandable perspective to hold from an international perspective: Australia handled covid in a very punitive way, and Scott Morrison could easily end up in a list of nasties along with Ardern and Trudeau for that, but the reality on the ground is that Morrison acted as a handbrake on the worst impulses of Australians throughout the pandemic.  On most issues, he had to be dragged kicking and screaming.  It is difficult for me to describe the relief now that the international border closure has already been lifted: I really do not believe that Albanese would lift it if it were still in place right now and he won the election.  How could he?  Australia has one of the highest, if not the highest, per-capita case rates in the world right now.  If ever we were going to have restrictions, it would be now: but Morrison did the politically unpalatable thing of removing them at a federal level already, and Albanese isn't going to ignite a political storm by re-instating them.

(You may be wondering how that makes sense: basically, the average person is under the impression that any restrictions that remain are based on "science" / "health advice", so they tend to oppose removing them if they are already in place, but the political and popular will to bring back new ones no longer exists.)

Throughout the last two years, the Labor party has demanded going "further" and has never then said that such things are no longer necessary: they banged on and on about the need to establish on-shore quarantine centers, which would doubtlessly transition to being detention centers for visa holders in a matter of absolutely no time at all, proposing to waste billions on the construction of camps where travelers would spend two weeks, presumably entrenching the ridiculous "border controls" that they had been demanding the whole time.

The reason for this is very simple; Labor wants to position itself as the party of health care.  While they have wisely chosen not to emphasise this for the federal election campaign, do not be under any illusions about their continued status as being entirely beholden to nursing unions and medical lobbies.  (Ironically, some of the worst ambulance ramping, indicative of overfilled emergency departments, is in Labor-run states such as Victoria and Western Australia.)

All of this being said, this federal election is certainly not about covid, or lockdowns, or border closures.  Really this is a cost-of-living election, and that's why Albanese needs to run an insular and xenophobic campaign, which is advantageous in the Australian electorate (particularly outside of NSW and Victoria).  The more that people pay attention to the global context, the more they see that Australia's economic position is comparatively enviable, aside from the ever-present risk of the housing bubble popping.  If Albanese can convince people to keep looking inwards (very likely), then people might buy the idea that high petrol and grocery prices are exclusively Scott Morrison's fault.

We are.literally ranked lowest in the OECD

Worse then us? I thought we were at the bottom of like every single OECD Category/
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