6 - # of Straya threads or # of times we've changed Prime Minister in a decade?

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Axver

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Maybe both. We're at five changes of PM right now with a year left on the clock and an election on 2 July.

Hell, even if Turnbull survives the election, a rather reduced majority may embolden the "bring back Tone" lunatic fringe.

Welcome to the revolving door of modern Australian politics.

Welcome, also, to the land where you can be suspended from work for having a negative opinion on the flag, where Wayne Carey is allowed to commentate on primetime TV, where Queensland exists, where Tasmania is somehow still a state rather than a shire of Victoria, where the Great Barrier Reef is definitely absolutely certainly not under any kind of threat we promise we're not covering anything up, and where everybody is called Bruce (I don't know anybody called Bruce).
 
I wonder if Tasmania is the sort of place NZers would feel at home at, size/weather wise.
 
I wonder if Tasmania is the sort of place NZers would feel at home at, size/weather wise.

Kinda sorta?

Cobbler's right that it feels like a different country. I think the comparisons to NZ can be a bit overdone - rather than being like New Zealand, it's more like an amalgam of Australia and New Zealand. The forests are closer to what you get in NZ than you do on the Australian mainland but still aren't the same. And there's actually no city in Tasmania that matches an NZ counterpart as well as some other Australian cities do: Sydney-Auckland, Melbourne-Wellington, and Adelaide-Christchurch are comparisons that hold up well. The best you can do is Hobart-Dunedin and that really doesn't work the more you unpack it (Dunedin, by virtue of its Scottishness, has no good analogue in Australia). It's more just a case of they're both nice cities to drink whisky in, somewhat left behind by the passage of time.
 
Yay, it's a new thread.

If Malcolm Turnbull wins the election - far from a certainty - it will be relatively narrowly and I'd expect wild weather to set in more or less immediately. With friends like the IPA, who needs enemies?
 
I'm settling in for the long haul. A good close election season suits me. Actually a thumping Green victory romping to power on an unexpected swing is what would really suit me. But take what you can get, etc.

I love how many seats are suddenly looking marginal on latest polling. But the ALP really, really needs everything to go right here. And if Xenophon picks up a lower house seat or two, to whom will he give confidence and supply? I can't see him giving any more than that to either party. (Though the question remains whether he will have meaningful party discipline or if his members will go the way of Palmer's.)
 
I love Tassie.. Went there for Falls a few years ago and for a road trip for work last year. Only scary thing is how the roads seem to suddenly jump from 40 to 110 (and that the roads probably aren't fit for travelling 110!)

Hobart and Launceston feel like larger versions of Geelong and Bendigo respectively.


Sent from a barge floating through the docks of Dublin
 
Not sure how Hobart feels like Geelong in the slightest? They strike me as very, very different cities, from culture to geography to climate to economy.
 
It's that party lead by that crackpot who seemingly learned nothing from being on Go Back To Where You Came From.
 
The logo kills me. This actually looks more like a parody than most parodies.
 
It's not even a party, really. Just a vehicle for a bigoted woman who thinks she has some sort of pull for being awful in a TV show once.
 
I think this would make a much better logo for the party:

Midnight_Oil-Redneck_Wonderland-Frontal.jpg
 
[engage Peter Garrett's elaborate facial expressions and posing in the Redneck Wonderland video]

 
In the opposite order, yeah. That Hanson was allowed on Dancing With The 'Stars' in the first place was insane, and that she finished runner up was a massive indictment on Australian society.

I know reality shows shouldn't be taken with more than a grain of salt, but that was staggering.
 
Not sure how Hobart feels like Geelong in the slightest? They strike me as very, very different cities, from culture to geography to climate to economy.


More so the streets and slopes within the business district, the distribution of buildings etc.

Geelong could learn a lot from Hobart in maximising the potential of it's waterside location.

North Hobart Oval is an absolutely gorgeous little footy ground. A proper terrace and a series of different grandstands that are all very different in character. Was privileged to coincide with a "State of Origin" amateurs tournament when I last visited,


Sent from a barge floating through the docks of Dublin
 
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Rate of 18-year-olds enrolled to vote jumps by 20 per cent - Hack - triple j

I gotta tell ya, I am really looking forward to the day when the Greens' primary vote gains momentum. I don't think they're perfect, and I don't like many of my peers' blind love for them (like Vlad, I just think party membership feels a bit disgusting), but it is going to lead to some amazingly panicky and very condescending Chris Kenny/Andrew Bolt/Miranda Devine/Steve Price/etc columns, and I can't wait to read them.

"I used to love democracy but we now have to many naive people voting we need a dictatorship"

aka

 
Rate of 18-year-olds enrolled to vote jumps by 20 per cent - Hack - triple j

I gotta tell ya, I am really looking forward to the day when the Greens' primary vote gains momentum. I don't think they're perfect, and I don't like many of my peers' blind love for them (like Vlad, I just think party membership feels a bit disgusting), but it is going to lead to some amazingly panicky and very condescending Chris Kenny/Andrew Bolt/Miranda Devine/Steve Price/etc columns, and I can't wait to read them.

"I used to love democracy but we now have to many naive people voting we need a dictatorship"

aka




This is the first election where I have actively been involved on some level.
It's a difficult one as I certainly don't bleed green like many that I have met. I don't think I could ever be a party member. I'm also principally against "door knocking" as a means of engaging with voters so I refuse to participate in that, but campaign managers are such advocates for it.

Maybe I'm getting lost in the hype, but I really think that the Green primary vote will rise significantly in metropolitan Melbourne. Labor feels as stale and irrelevant as ever.


Sent from a barge floating through the docks of Dublin
 
I'm starting to think Batman will go Green, in no small part thanks to Feeney's personal blunders, and Bandt ought to hold Melbourne. I'm very curious to see how close it gets in Wills. Not sure anywhere else could fall. Grayndler will be interesting but I think the Greens should've chosen a stronger candidate, especially to knock off a well-liked member of the ALP Left. If that seat was held by some Right stooge, yeah sure I could see it falling, but the swing Green/ALP voter is more likely to stick with Albo I reckon.

Oh, though I think there are mutterings that the Greens like their chances in whatever the Byron Bay seat of NSW is...
 
If I was Labor I'd be very worried about the future; that 35% primary vote looks like it's about as good as it gets in the new normal.

What makes it worrisome is that there's no, none, zero, prospect of a long-term coalition of the Liberal/National variety.
 
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I think the main obstacle to a coalition is that the Greens would expect a certain measure of seats, which would require the ALP relinquishing some. The Country Party, on the other hand, were the strongest party in parts of multiple states and (until recently) expected at least 12 federal seats. And even now, with their primary vote roughly a quarter to a third of the Greens', they can still win more seats because of their regional base of power.

Now, maybe in 10 years the Greens will have locked down enough inner city electorates (and, maybe, a couple of rural seats?) that they will have the same bargaining power with the ALP. But not yet.
 
I think the main obstacle to a coalition is that the Greens would expect a certain measure of seats, which would require the ALP relinquishing some. The Country Party, on the other hand, were the strongest party in parts of multiple states and (until recently) expected at least 12 federal seats. And even now, with their primary vote roughly a quarter to a third of the Greens', they can still win more seats because of their regional base of power.

Now, maybe in 10 years the Greens will have locked down enough inner city electorates (and, maybe, a couple of rural seats?) that they will have the same bargaining power with the ALP. But not yet.


Yeah, as you say, right now expectations rather outweigh bargaining power.
 
It's quite ridiculous too, because the ALP/Green primary vote is larger than the Lib/Nat primary vote.

Sort your shit out, people.
 
That's what I'm saying! The Lib-Nat/LNP/whatever-we're-calling-it primary vote looks a little more imposing at 40-something per cent, but that is an illusion created by centre-left acrimony. As if there isn't acrimony inside the Coalition too, but they usually manage to smile for the cameras.
 
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