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They don't seem to have any forward momentum at all, and it's hard to really get a read on where they're going - as opposed to standing on the spot and fighting themselves. That said, they'll still have my vote for as long as there isn't a strong leftist alternative, but I don't have any sense of inspiration or enthusiasm for them.

There is no real way out of this mess, unfortunately - I don't think there's that same capacity for the Liberals to implode in the same way the Tories have (yes, they're still the ruling party, but they themselves are essentially banished into opposition funnily enough), the best we can hope for is the further splintering of internal factions.
 
Well, all that said, Labor is probably more likely than not to form the next government. A relatively unexciting Labor to be sure, but I think our overall situation is both more fortunate, and more blinkered (or parochial), than say the US (although the US is parochial par excellance, what the fuck am I talking about) or UK or France or whatever.

Now, said Labor is hardly a strong leftist alternative, but I don't know where that comes from in this country until the weakass leftist alternative holds government and holds it, preferably, for more than just a couple of years. We need decades, at this point. Forty years should do it. Long enough for two generations to grow up.

The Greens... I'm hardly an expert on them, but I suspect that becalmed state is hiding a civil war. A very polite dustup to be sure, but they aren't a happy camp. For one thing, it's by no means clear that they are, or should be, or wholly see themselves as a leftist alternative. You've seen how skeevy the current leadership can be, on that. And as I've said before, in one of this thread's ancestors, the Greens could easily morph into a small-c conservative party, as times change.
 
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There's definitely a civil war within the Greens between Lee Rhiannon's sub-faction of the NSW faction (plus her interstate admirers) and those more aligned with Di Natale, et al. It will seriously harm the party if this blows up any more than it already has, especially because Rhiannon, for all her positive qualities, is remarkably good at scoring own goals.

The Greens, in my view, have built up a pretty solid base - but the problem is they no longer attract much of the otherwise unaligned protest vote. That has floated all over the place. It's gone to Palmer and One Nation. In SA it goes to Xenophon. The last time the Green vote contained a large portion of the protest vote was 2010. I think they are making inroads, and in the future they could win socially liberal seats held by the Coalition, seats where there is an ingrained suspicion of the ALP and unions but an openness to at least the social and environmental component of left-wing politics. Work that openness properly and they may start accepting the economic message too.

There is no Corbyn here, no. But should there be? We don't need our own Corbyn, or our own Sanders - they are distinctive products of their local systems. We need a distinctively Australian left-wing leader who can court great popularity. Surely the tragedy of our times is that when the public was ready to embrace such a figure, they got a Rudd and only realised who he was after they'd held him too close.
 
Axver said:
There is no Corbyn here, no. But should there be? We don't need our own Corbyn, or our own Sanders - they are distinctive products of their local systems. We need a distinctively Australian left-wing leader who can court great popularity. Surely the tragedy of our times is that when the public was ready to embrace such a figure, they got a Rudd and only realised who he was after they'd held him too close.
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I'd certainly agree that our local circumstances are very different. One glaring thing that sets us apart is of course cough*compulsoryvoting*cough. So thank god - electoral registration for the first-timers aside - 'getting out the vote' isn't a huge part of our election campaigns.

And of course the other thing is that Labor hasn't gone into freefall the way some equivalents in other countries have done. So there is little scope for a wholesale assault on the status quo. Again, a notable difference to the UK where Labour was palpably moribund by 2015, and the US where the Democrats are in a shockingly weak position, it's crazy to finally pay closer attention and realise they've only cared about the presidency for the last decade or more, and losing that means losing nearly any reason to exist.

But, as to a leader in local conditions, Rudd must be the tragedy of the decade. There are others who've come and gone where you maybe wonder 'what if' (mostly people who walked out in disgust around the time of the second Rudd/Gillard mess).

Honesty, in any potential political messiah, would be a good start. It won't guarantee popularity, but just talking to people like they're fucking adults, and talking honestly about what is at stake at this period in local and global history, would go a long way to fostering real respect.
 
What I don't get is how, in a country where voting is compulsory, we do not have a system of automatic registration.

The whole Rudd thing... god, how did we miss it? I remember being 19 in 2006 and me and my flatmate were so excited about Rudd. He came across well! We had no idea he would become who he did. The signs perhaps were there, but were two 19 year olds sitting around in their lounge watching SBS before the footy going to pick those clues? We were stoked when Rudd rolled Beazley. To be able to have that again... sigh. Beazley would have won and been a much more stable PM.
 
Have to agree, even as an 11/12 year old I could easily feel the excitement of Rudd - that excitement wasn't particularly hard to find. By the time he unseated Gillard I don't think anyone could possibly stand the sight of him. What a disaster.
 
Rudd was the coming man. He was going to serve as long, or longer, than Howard. He was charming, charismatic, had all the burns of the Liberals, and he seemed legit.

Hahahaha. Sigh.
 
My abiding image of him was that oh-so-casual shot where he's sitting on the goddamn floor at the 2020 Summit, aka Cate And Friends Talk Shop.

I think he had some good points, but the 'I'm a renaissance man leader/manager and we can have a workshop about 1001 pet issues' tendency was one I recognise more than a little in some mayoral offices. Particular ones whose new incumbents come fresh from business.

Beazley... the great unknown. He might well still be in office now if he'd got a shot at 2007. Stable is definitely a good word for him, and most of Australia's longer serving leaders are nothing if not steady and stable (Hawke aside, but he had a lot of talent to carry him).
 
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Rudd was like dating. Exciting, different, a little bit crazy. But then it turned out it was the wrong kind of crazy and a lot more than there should have been but you only learn this once you've met the family and they know where you live.
 
I like Albo a lot, but Shorten is safe as houses unfortunately. Penny Wong would be good, she's pretty leftie, but I have always had the impression that she's happy to acquiesce. I admire Tanya Plibersek and think she's a really strong performer but she's a bit right for my liking. I like Ed Husic too but he's a bit of a way behind the other names in terms of recognition.

I also like Sam Dastyari, but he's just done a good job promoting himself; I didn't realise he was in the right faction.

The Greens seem to have stagnated a little bit, which is disappointing. You'd have thought they'd have made a huge song and dance following the Corbyn result, but they haven't. In fact I've seen a lot of people around my age espousing the ALP and even signing up as members; abhorrent, if you ask me, given the party doesn't remotely stand for what Corbyn does. I really, really like Richard Di Natale but I think he needs to keep upping his visibility. Get more angry, more passionate. I know he's been a good moderate in making the Greens seem like a responsible party, but he's been boring me of late, and I don't like my Greens boring.
 
I think the ALP will win next election too, I think votes will break down something like ALP 50%, Lib/Nat 45% Grn 3% ON 2% nationwide. Very rough, but Pauline Cuntson is definitely going to get a big upswing in votes. Hopefully the Greens can pants her though.

coolian2 said:
Rudd was like dating. Exciting, different, a little bit crazy. But then it turned out it was the wrong kind of crazy and a lot more than there should have been but you only learn this once you've met the family and they know where you live.
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Ha.

I've always liked Rudd but that's because I was too young to be cynical. He's obviously been the biggest saboteur in Australian politics.

Axver said:
I think they are making inroads, and in the future they could win socially liberal seats held by the Coalition, seats where there is an ingrained suspicion of the ALP and unions but an openness to at least the social and environmental component of left-wing politics. Work that openness properly and they may start accepting the economic message too.
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I think they're a really good chance of winning some of the inner south-east seats here if they run a strong campaign. There's no love for the ALP in them. Half the population are ingrained Liberals with money who are only used to seeing fellow whites at the shops, and the other half are lefties who will vote Green. Jason Ball for example could win, but he'd have to run an incredible campaign given Kelly O'Dwyer is one the Lib's most leftie people.
 
What the hell, Cobbler? You really think the Green vote will collapse to 3%? They haven't had a vote that bad in about three decades. 10% will be a par score. Not a chance either the ALP or Coalition will break 45%, let alone both.

And the main reason Penny Wong isn't in leadership contention is that she's a senator. We haven't had a party leader in the upper house for decades upon decades. (By which I mean ALP, Libs, Nats, i.e. parties of government. The Greens and minor parties of course have.)
 
I wouldn't dare make predictions about the next Federal election at a detailed level, but I'm unconvinced that Pauline Hanson will benefit greatly from it. This image of One Nation as some kind of unstoppable Front National style juggernaut just doesn't square with the reality of the omnishambles on the ground (and in the senate).
 
Kieran McConville said:
I wouldn't dare make predictions about the next Federal election at a detailed level, but I'm unconvinced that Pauline Hanson will benefit greatly from it. This image of One Nation as some kind of unstoppable Front National style juggernaut just doesn't square with the reality of the omnishambles on the ground (and in the senate).
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I agree, but there is a really quite large contingent of people who live outside our bubbles who are going to vote for her, and I think she will poll comfortably fourth in 18/19. The last Essential poll had her fourth at 8%, and a number of polls this year have had her as high as 11% and polling third ahead of the Greens.

gareth brown said:
234 Collins
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shit, i'm at 470!
 
I guess, you could look at the One Nation vote as sort of the peak halal/islam/terra panic constituency. Bubbles aside, I'm well aware that constituency exists. It serves that purpose at least. If it were genuinely economically populist, if Hanson said word one about the sort of things Bob Katter has banged on about over the years (he's no better, a complete gutless wonder), she might be a really serious electoral force.
 
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It will be interesting how the scandals surrounding Hanson play out. They ought to kill her career - hell, commercial news, especially Channel 7, are complicit in reviving a career that had already died for good reason.

If Hanson had a proper degree of political skill, she would leverage it in the time-worn style of so many right-populists: "look at these mainstream shills trying to silence the majority I represent". I don't think she can do it effectively, and suspect 2016 was her peak, but of course she might pull it off. At least her blithering idiot mate Malcolm-Ieuan: Roberts, the Living Soul, will lose his seat in 2019 (he only got one of the three-year Senate terms after the double dissolution).

The protest vote is rootless at the moment. Who will get it in 2019? We might not know until two months out from the election.
 
She has a seemingly magical ability to fritter away that increasingly careworn image of being the little Aussie battler (not true for twenty years, if then), and kill sympathy left right and centre with some of her outbursts.

I have no idea who will get the protest vote because I can't work out, right now in this country at least, what the protest vote might be drawn to. Clive Palmer had his five minutes, Pauline's had hers.
 
Yep. I'd say the protest vote will be drawn to some blather about refugees and asylum seekers, but then I would've said that in 2013 and Palmer actually took a fairly moderate tone on the topic by the reprehensible standards of Australian politics.

I doubt it will be Cory Bernardi though! Does anybody give a single shit about his two-bit "Conservative" party of far-right ideologues, reactionaries, and fearmongers?
 
It will not be Cory.

Cory is a peculiarly European kind of far-right obsessive, in the Santamaria mould (well, sort of, he wouldn't have a bar of the latter's economics). He's dead on arrival, politically.

And it won't be Xenophon either. What a fucking phony. A nobody outside of his little SA retail-political fiefdom.

And it won't be Katter either. It would have been long ago if it was going to be.
 
No. Pisspoor decision by Bernardi, what a fucking moron. He had a good platform and now he's irrelevant. Good.

I think you're both underestimate Pauline a bit. She's definitely not more "sophisticated" or whatever bullshit pandering Lib MPs claimed, but I think she's pretty savvy. I think she does do that mainstream shills thing. "I represent real Australians forgotten by all sides of politics". And I think she has a lot of support, not just from Aussie pride march fuckwits, but people in the regions/margins who feel left behind. What I don't have a handle on is whether her standing is being made out to be a lot bigger than it actual is, thanks to the support she gets in the media.
 
cobl04 said:
No. Pisspoor decision by Bernardi, what a fucking moron. He had a good platform and now he's irrelevant. Good.

I think you're both underestimate Pauline a bit. She's definitely not more "sophisticated" or whatever bullshit pandering Lib MPs claimed, but I think she's pretty savvy. I think she does do that mainstream shills thing. "I represent real Australians forgotten by all sides of politics". And I think she has a lot of support, not just from Aussie pride march fuckwits, but people in the regions/margins who feel left behind. What I don't have a handle on is whether her standing is being made out to be a lot bigger than it actual is, thanks to the support she gets in the media.
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I think that her standing is being made out to be a lot bigger than it actually is, thanks to the support she gets in the media. And even the 'support' she gets in the media who ostensibly don't support her. After Trump last year in America, I find it impossible to overestimate the degree of sheer cynicism in the mass media, the degree to which it really is entertainment. Trump has been fantastic for the big media in America, and so would Pauline if she ever got up a real head of steam. Just fucking fantastic copy.

So no, she's not nothing, but at some point that whole 'I'm for mainstream straya' routine has to offer up some substance. Otherwise it's going the way of The New Guard, Joh For PM and One Nation 1.0.

Does she have anything, anything at all, to say about the economic concerns of those mainstream Strayans she loves to wrap herself in? Dot-points on a webpage don't count.
 
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Pauline could take a huge beating over some of the scandals circling around her - especially the plane fiasco, which could even lead to her being disqualified from parliament. She actually probably has a point that the major parties target her, but she makes it so bloody easy for them and the mud generally sticks. She is a definite threat to some of the Coalition's vote, and a threat to drag politics further to the right and wedge the ALP. They both have more of an interest in quietening her than they do some fringe ratbag like Bernardi.

I do, however, suspect the protest vote in 2019 will splatter around a bit. Here's my prediction based on the current state of play: One Nation, if they survive that long, will poll reasonably well but not as well as 2016; a small bit of the protest vote will go back to the Greens; the rest will sprinkle all over the place, sometimes in state-specific ways to small-minded local populists (Xenophon, Katter, you know the type).
 
The Greens need to sort out their shit. When your bums on seats are at a premium in both houses, internal bickering is not a good look. It has the capacity to taint all parliamentary representatives, not just a handful as it may in the larger parties.

I've never found Rhiannon particularly endearing. We'd probably agree on most things, but her persona comes across as a negative-leftist, rather than a future-embracing optimist. I much like our Victorian contingent of Di Natale, Bandt, Sandell and, unofficially but prominent publically, Ball.
 
Yep, ideologically I'd probably be closer to Lee Rhiannon than most of the Greens, but she has become an electoral liability. Her failure to recognise how dysfunctonal and toxic the NSW branch of the Greens are just makes it worse - they were by far the guiltiest for the Greens not advancing their vote further in 2016.

There have been threats that Rhiannon and her supporters, if push came to shove, would leave and start their own party. Good, I say. It will contest one election, get very few votes, and vanish into the night, with the Greens able to continue just fine without them. My only concern is this could remove an important leftist check on policy development, but at this point I see Rhiannon and her faction bringing little of value to the party.
 
Vlad, I do wonder what news organisations you like, since you usually preface a link with a comment about not liking the organisation. :lol:

One thing in that article that stood out to me was the stats about university attendance and the unwillingness (as opposed to the failure, as it's often depicted) of Aboriginal individuals to go there. In my six years of teaching at university level, I've taught people from a lot of different backgrounds but I have not knowingly taught a single Aboriginal person - it's possible I have had some who can present as white and choose not to mention their Aboriginality, but never anybody who either presented as Aboriginal or openly identified as such. Of course, Melbourne University is a historic bastion of elite privilege, so I can't say I'm shocked by this.

Universities like to trumpet their intake rates of Aboriginal people, which have generally been increasing. But initial enrolments are practically meaningless. The important metrics are progression and completion rates, which can be much less flattering and highlight institution(-alised) failures that are harder to rectify. And the take-away from that article is that providing academic and financial pathways is one thing, but overcoming the expectations of discrimination and bullying is quite another, and until university campuses have a reputation as welcoming and rewarding places, we can't really expect disadvantaged groups to see them as institutions they would like to attend.
 
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