Hello all!
Sep. 8th, 2013 03:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ristinHello all. I was travelling over the weekend to visit family and attend a wedding. There will be another in the near future and I am wondering if all my younger relatives getting married before me might help my extended family realise I have "the gay". My travel being the reason I wasn't blogging the election blow by blow on Facebook and Livejournal.
About the election, "meh". The ALP's problems are years old and primarily relate to all their achievements not getting communicated to the public, due largely to the media's fixation on their leadership squabbles. The ALP can't really blame anyone else for that. They lost the election, Tony Abbott and the coalition didn't 'win' the election they were merely the other choice.
The rise of a set of religious-intolerance based parties such as Family First, Christian Democrats, One Nation and Rise Up Austalia (and to a lesser extent Katter's party) should be a worry, and not just for the usually targets of such people but all the non-hater christians who will lumped in together with the extremists.
The end result is that the composition of the senate will determine how the coming term goes. At this stage it looks like if the Greens win power they'll be a good force to moderate Tony Abbott's social conservative (lead social regressive) policies, conversely if the religious-intolerance parties hold the balance of power in the senate they'll likely accelerate and exacerbate Tony Abbott's policies and policy focus.
So ironically this could be promising. Now they aren't the opposition, the coalition will need to become competent politicians and advance some feasible and thought-out (and costed) policies. If Australia returns to a stable and moderating balance of power in the senate that will help stop the extreme swings which we've been enduring since the tail end of the Howard years.
Paws crossed.
About the election, "meh". The ALP's problems are years old and primarily relate to all their achievements not getting communicated to the public, due largely to the media's fixation on their leadership squabbles. The ALP can't really blame anyone else for that. They lost the election, Tony Abbott and the coalition didn't 'win' the election they were merely the other choice.
The rise of a set of religious-intolerance based parties such as Family First, Christian Democrats, One Nation and Rise Up Austalia (and to a lesser extent Katter's party) should be a worry, and not just for the usually targets of such people but all the non-hater christians who will lumped in together with the extremists.
The end result is that the composition of the senate will determine how the coming term goes. At this stage it looks like if the Greens win power they'll be a good force to moderate Tony Abbott's social conservative (lead social regressive) policies, conversely if the religious-intolerance parties hold the balance of power in the senate they'll likely accelerate and exacerbate Tony Abbott's policies and policy focus.
So ironically this could be promising. Now they aren't the opposition, the coalition will need to become competent politicians and advance some feasible and thought-out (and costed) policies. If Australia returns to a stable and moderating balance of power in the senate that will help stop the extreme swings which we've been enduring since the tail end of the Howard years.
Paws crossed.
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no subject
Date: 2013-09-08 07:58 pm (UTC)I suppose no system can eliminate such "party we dislike the least" outcomes. In the UK, the 2010 outcome was similarly less of a swing toward Con or LibDem (though they were looking promising), than away from Labour, given their record of leading the UK into Iraq and Afghanistan, and rolling with the bankers just as enthusiastically as in the US. Of course, the result has been to see all that multiplied. =:P But as the FPTP system severely maginalises any parties without strong concentrations of popularity, we're left with three parties that don't really have a heck of a lot to distinguish themselves - they're all for any war the US wants, all for "austerity", and all despise the poor and unemployed. You at least have some degree of real choice, particularly with the Greens in play, and the nascent Wikileaks Party.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-08 09:29 pm (UTC)