Straya thread part 4 - culling the chazzwazzers population

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In fact hahaha the Big Axe is just down the road from where my mum lives. I've probably driven past it, maybe even seen it!
 
You know, the Big Pineapple is actually quite small. I drove past it by accident about a year ago.

Any truth to the rumours that the Sunshine Coast's getting a 'Big Clive Palmer', outfitted in full Napoleonic general's attire, ten storeys high and luminous?
 
Fucking incredible speech.

Given the coverage he's got, it's safe to say the attendance in the chamber didn't matter. That was clearly a speech for the country, not the cleaners, and by god did he nail it.
 
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'age of entitlement' coming from somebody who inherited her wealth lmao
 
I swear to god that this year has just been one bafflingly out-of-touch or brazenly idiotic statement after another from either the government or its backers.
 
No, well, but there it is. You'd hope this will be a one-termer thing. They're pissing off basically everybody.

Then again...
 
I honestly don't know how the ALP's meant to win back enough seats to regain government. A twenty seat swing is not easy. I fear they'll come close and fall just short, much like Beazley did in 1998, and thus the Libs will sneak into a second term by the skin of their teeth. We'll have to hope that in 2019 there isn't another Tampa or 11 September to terrify everyone just before the election and thereby keep the Tories in power.
 
It's hard to see what might happen at this point. Now if we were talking Queensland... I know there is a general view of how Queenslanders are, but let me assure you the Newman government is incredibly discredited right now... their majority is such as to guarantee multiple terms. Federally, hard to say. Bill Shorten is a placeholder.

So then, where do the incumbents go? Do we get six years of a weak leader (and that is what Abbott is, a very weak leader) indulging the Tea Party tendencies of his coalition or do we get a palace coup? After the Howard years, I'm not optimistic of that.

I guess I'm not that optimistic, actually, all around. But also, keep calm and keep perspective.
 
Next Queensland election is going to be interesting to see just how many seats the LNP loses. It would be so funny if Newman became a one-term premier, but like you say multiple terms are guaranteed unless the LNP is suddenly exposed as a neo-Nazi front or child trafficking organisation or something. I expect plenty of LNP candidates will try to distance themselves as much as feasible from Newman and run on a campaign of local popularity.

I really thought Bill Shorten would do better at improving the federal ALP's fortunes than he has. Not that I think Albanese would've done any better. Who can the ALP really turn to? Now's the time when they need a really charismatic, popular leader to get the big swing required, but nobody really sticks out. Lots of very competent, likeable people who could probably win an election with half the margin at present, but none who can get the full twenty seats.
 
Newman himself could easily be a oncer. But the party will retain ample seats. Queensland is different, but not simply in the caricatured way southerners assume. It tends toward long periods of one-party rule.

It's early days yet for Shorten or Albanese. Actually I'm not even going to damn Shorten; now's the time when they need a workman (or woman, should it be so). And he is that. It's a long way to the next election.

One thing about our Bush administration; they have to front up to parliament.
 
Would you say Queensland tends towards one-party rule more than many other states (or even the federal parliament)? I'd say that's been a general tendency of Australian politics since WWII. Just look at Victoria, where the current Liberal government is likely to be a oncer, the first since 1955. NSW also seems to be pretty solid on the long governments, and of course South Australia had Playford.

Rob Borbidge must be gutted that he managed to be a rare oncer in Queensland though. :lol:
 
Would you say Queensland tends towards one-party rule more than many other states (or even the federal parliament)? I'd say that's been a general tendency of Australian politics since WWII. Just look at Victoria, where the current Liberal government is likely to be a oncer, the first since 1955. NSW also seems to be pretty solid on the long governments, and of course South Australia had Playford.

Rob Borbidge must be gutted that he managed to be a rare oncer in Queensland though. :lol:


Well I would say that, though I'm maybe neglecting South Australia's earlier history (and maybe Victoria to an extent).

Consider Queensland:

Almost unbroken Labor Party rule between World War I and 1957.

Unbroken Country/National party rule between 1957 and 1989

Labor again (with the brief Borbidge interregnum) from 1989 to 2012. There's a trend there (for one thing the spans are getting shorter; maybe we are assimilating after all). Maybe it's not that Queenslanders love one party rule, maybe it's just that the swings swing big and are helped by electoral boundary arrangements (though I suspect that is less of a factor in recent years).
 
You make a good case. It seems most of the other states (and federal parliament) tend to go for your pattern of nine years of one party, ten years of the other, back to the first party for two or three terms, etc., which are pretty long terms in themselves compared to how wildly governments and ministries would fluctuate in the nineteenth century but nothing compared to your Queensland examples.

Just looking at South Australia and they had reasonable fluctuation between Labour/liberalism and conservatism/Liberal Party until the Playford era, although the former seemed to have the upper hand. But then:

1933-65: Liberal, of which most was Playford
1965-93: almost unbroken ALP, with only five years of Liberal

Very Queenslandesque.
 
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