Australia 2022 Election

[Хahar 🤔]

Next time you want to call me a sicko, or servile, or that I thought anything about the past few years was neat, I really encourage you to come and say it to my face, in this room. I promise you that you won't walk out like you walked in.

I don't think that implied threats of violence are appropriate for this board. They also do an awfully poor job of convincing anyone to agree with you.

[Хahar 🤔]

Something else that's moved Libs away from preferencing the Greens is their expansion away from purely being an environmentalist party and having a broader policy agenda (which of course is made up of standard left-wing stuff). I think the "Tree Tory" voter phenomenon is very much alive but these voters are much more likely to bolt towards a teal independent that cleverly keeps a narrow focus than ever vote for or preference a Greens candidate that they see as some kind of pseudo-Marxist.

Is there actually room in Australian politics for a conservative enviormentla policy ? I remember hearing something about some science party. I guess Sustaniable Australia is a bit like that with their stance on cutting economic immigration, but they haven't had much mainstream succses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Australia

The issue there is that this party's thing is "Labor but ecofascist-adjacent", which is probably not the majority view in any of these rich historically Liberal electorates. There's clearly room for a party exactly like Liberals for Forests, which would be conservative in the opposite way, but it's more suited to the self-perception of voters in these electorates as being politically sophisticated for all the candidates who might contest elections under such a banner to be independents instead.

[Хahar 🤔]

Why does the National Party still exist? Why don't they just merge with the Liberals given that they are de facto the same party

It seems fairly clear at this point that the answer is tradition. The success of the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party in NSW suggests that the National Party there is not adequately fulfilling its stated purpose of representing non-metropolitan interests, and at this point most states/territories have merged their Country/National organization with their Liberal organization or else never had one to begin with. NSW and Victoria are exceptions with their maintenance of the traditional coalition.

In Australian political history has there ever been a moment where the coalition between the Liberals and Nationals was anything less than a foregone conclusion?

Have the Nationals ever flirted with making a deal with Labour instead?

have the Liberals ever won a majority on their own and not needed to include the Nationals?

has there ever been any major issues that has caused a genuine rift between the two parties?

The answer to all of these questions is yes, albeit mostly at the state level and mostly long ago. The National Party organizations in SA and WA are much more willing to work with Labor, but they have a much more ambiguous relationship to the central National organization (and, in the case of SA, the National Party there is a new organization anyway).

[Хahar 🤔]

A lot of this comes down to economic change: what local economic activity exists in remote areas is much less labor-intensive than it used to be, which means that the Labor base in those places no longer exists, the workers having been replaced by machines. Particularly in Western Australia, much of what work still exists is now performed by workers who live in the capital and fly out in shifts, and those workers vote in Perth rather than in their places of employment. Non-metropolitan malapportionment (which has finally now been abolished all across Australia) also tended to magnify the remote Labor vote by giving small outlying towns their own underpopulated constituencies: consider, for instance, the seat of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, which was safe Labor for as long as it was based around the town of Kalgoorlie but fell to the Liberals when electoral reform led to its being significantly expanded.

Note that I have referred here to remote seats rather than to rural seats. In what we would think of as rural areas (that is to say, settled areas without large population centers), Labor has never done well, as one would expect. Consider the electorate of Gippsland, which was created at Federation and in the 120 years since has never returned a Labor MP.

[Хahar 🤔]

A lot of this comes down to economic change: what local economic activity exists in remote areas is much less labor-intensive than it used to be, which means that the Labor base in those places no longer exists, the workers having been replaced by machines. Particularly in Western Australia, much of what work still exists is now performed by workers who live in the capital and fly out in shifts, and those workers vote in Perth rather than in their places of employment. Non-metropolitan malapportionment (which has finally now been abolished all across Australia) also tended to magnify the remote Labor vote by giving small outlying towns their own underpopulated constituencies: consider, for instance, the seat of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, which was safe Labor for as long as it was based around the town of Kalgoorlie but fell to the Liberals when electoral reform led to its being significantly expanded.

Note that I have referred here to remote seats rather than to rural seats. In what we would think of as rural areas (that is to say, settled areas without large population centers), Labor has never done well, as one would expect. Consider the electorate of Gippsland, which was created at Federation and in the 120 years since has never returned a Labor MP.

Awww I just learned Kalgoorlie no longer exists. It was awesome for its massive size.

Durack is huge too of course but not THAT big. Kalgoorlie was like the size of Western Europe minus Scandinavia.

Oh, I should clarify that I actually meant the state constituency of Kalgoorlie (which is much smaller than the old federal constituency, even though it's much bigger than it used to be when it was based around Kalgoorlie proper), but yes, it's unfortunate that there's no longer a single constituency taking up 30% of Australia.

[Хahar 🤔]

I have already voted, and this woman is not in my electorate, but her CV is super impressive.

https://www.katechaney.com.au/

We need to clone this woman 100 times and unleash her thinking into society.

Will be super keen to see how she goes. Just incredible to fit that career into her CV plus 3 kids.

Where was this woman when I was a young man dating?

I notice that the how-to-vote card on her website is really not a how-to-vote card at all; it says to place her first and then makes no recommendation about the remaining spots. Is this the norm for independent liberal candidates?

[Хahar 🤔]

Has there ever been any talk of all these so-called “teal independents” (why are they called teal btw?) creating a new national political party?

When you put blue and green together you get teal.

[Хahar 🤔]

I forgot about this due to our convention. Good to see!

BTW I was pleased to see the Sydney Opera House is in a Labour seat because if I ever visited Australia I'd be trying to stay out of Liberal seats.

Well, actually, it's in a Labor seat.

[Хahar 🤔]

Since the Liberal Party leader must come from Sydney, there's a limited list of options now. At the moment Labor is ahead in Bennelong, which leaves Banks, Berowra, Bradfield (currently in danger from an independent), Cook, Hughes, Lindsay, and Mitchell. MPs for those seats: David Coleman, Julian Leeser, Paul Fletcher (might lose), Scott Morrison (obviously not going to be a candidate), Jenny Ware, Melissa McIntosh, and Alex Hawke. Aside from Morrison, Fletcher and Hawke are the only frontbenchers of the bunch. It's not an exciting group.

In all seriousness, it really is quite something to see Higgins falling to Labour. Even though it high on their target list, it was the seat held by Harold Holt, John Gorton, and Peter Costello.

Again, the name of the party is the Labor Party.

[Хahar 🤔]

I think the distribution of the Liberal vote here creates issues for future leadership. Historically in Australia party leaders hold very safe seats (this is different than, say, Canada) and they also hold metropolitan seats. My memory isn't perfect, but the last leader of either of the two major parties I can recall who didn't represent a city constituency was Joseph Lyons almost a century ago.

The issue now is what constitutes a safe Liberal constituency, the sort of place where a Liberal who was seen as future leadership material could win preselection. (Given the lack of female Liberal talent in the lower house, the Liberals would probably like to get some promising women in here.) Most of the constituencies that fit that bill in the past aren't Liberal anymore: Abbott's seat is gone, Turnbull's seat is gone, Frydenberg's seat is gone, etc. The ultra-safe seats that exist now are not necessarily the type to take so kindly to a candidate who is parachuted in the way Brendan Nelson was in his Sydney constituency.

If Peter Dutton is the next leader, he'll be a historical anomaly in his marginal seat. He wouldn't be the first party leader to be in danger of losing his seat (we all remember 2007), but it wouldn't be a comfortable place to be in.

[Хahar 🤔]

I don't know much about the selection process in Fowler, but it's curious that Labor tried to parachute KKK there specifically. Was there no other safe seat in Sydney available or was representing that particular constituency going to be helpful to her as immigration minister?

[Хahar 🤔]

Of the 19 most educated seats in Australia (based on those where 55% or more, compared to 47% nationwide, have a 'Certificate III' plus skilled worker qualification), the Liberals won 11 in 2019 and just 2 this time. Labor gained two from the Coalition while losing Griffith, all the Green gains and all the Independent gains except for Mackellar happened in this group. It's a pretty dramatic shift to see and Australia really is in line with the rest of the world with higher educated voters now being unfriendly to the right. The two seats left are Berowra and Bradfield, which they held on 60% and 54% respectively. Bradfield did have a teal challenge but must not have been targeted much. Berowra wouldn't be safe either, since seats like Curtin that were 64% Liberal in 2019 were lost. This small group of seats is nearly half of the Liberals losses. The Liberals probably can eventually win without them, but that would be pretty difficult for them in the next election.

I don't see how they can win a majority without them, unless they break into a labour stronghold.

I'm wondering if the Labour will get their own group of indy challengers next time, given the results in Fowler some safe labour seats might be vunerable to them.

Can you explain which Labor seats exactly would be vulnerable based on the results in Fowler and why?