A hard right, evangelical, MAGA worshipping climate skeptic wins Australian politics in a shock result that caught the Polls off guard.
I think there are a couple of things to examine.
The rise of the far right in Queensland brought in a huge number of preferences for the Liberals which asks hard questions of the continued polarisation of far right politics, how the martyring of Israel Folau activated Pacific Island and religious voters and the wider issue of the Left losing the ability to inspire.
This matters to us in NZ for two reasons. The first is that the same culture war dynamics are playing out here so we should learn from them, and the second is that with the climate crisis burning Australia into inhabitability, NZ is likely to face an enormous immigration stampede from fleeing Australians.
NZ has 4.75million citizens, Australia has 24.5million. Bugger freaking out about Asian immigration, what happens when we are over run with Australian climate crisis refugees?
Electing a Prime Minister who once entered Parliament proudly holding up coal forces us in NZ to reconsider the open immigration policy we have with Australia before the climate crisis shit really hits the fan.
The shockwave on Twitter at the Australian election result is a reminder that only a tiny fraction use Twitter and while we alienate the larger electorate from our smug woke echo chambers, the Left continues to fail at winning recruits in the wider debate.
I’ve come to the conclusion that social media will be the undoing of the Left. Sartre said ‘Hell is other people’, I think ‘Hell is other people’s social media feeds”.
Before social media, our interaction with each other politically as citizens was filtered through gatekeeper corporate media or in person at protests. The freedom social media has given us combined with algorithmically fuelled outrage olympics is the People’s Front of Judea on meth…
…increasingly I see how we argue is more important than what or why we are arguing. Social media kills nuance & promotes micro aggression policing pile on’s while pure temple politics erodes broad church solidarity.
Woke Middle Class Identity Politics destroys class based solidarity and culturally alienates the average voter.
The ‘quiet Australians’ were frightened by the snarling pure temple Left who branded everyone who didn’t think like them as racist homophobic hicks.
The Right seek recruits, the Left hunt for traitors.
There are two possible solutions for this culture war backlash in NZ politics.
The first is the activist base of the Left step back and reflect on how ‘all-men-are-rapists, anyone- supporting-free-speech-is-a-Nazi, white-cis-men-need-to-delete-themselves, free-speech-is-white-privilege. I-demand-a-trigger-free-safe-space and you-are-transphobic-for-not-agreeing-with-everything-I have-to-say’ messaging is alienating the very working class they are trying to win over while our Politicians focus on articulating vision that gives people real hope.
The second possible solution is a radicalised political response by the class left to win an MMP king maker role and force through an uncompromising agenda of economic, public service and environmental reform.
My thoughts are the first can’t happen.
Well like New Zealand’s National Party, The Australian Labour Party is polling above 40% while at the same time the Australian public will have 3 years to figure out how many Liberal leaders it takes to change a lightbulb. And I kind of fancy Tania Plinerseks chances of having a crack at the Leadership. Personally she reminds me of a bit of a Paul Keating, at least in the debating chamber.
Bill Shorten and the Austrailan Labour Party lost a sitter. By all accounts they should have won so fundamentally I don’t think they prepared the system of the nation for the changes Shorten wanted. Where as in New Zealand my gut says enough people are ready for change. So it’s all a bit like passing ships.
Tania has ruled herself out.
Probably be Senator Albanese then.
Nonsense, it is the economy, and jobs, and people fearing insecurity, change, and drops in living standards, that is what we face.
Changing from fossil fuels to alternative energy is a massive task, and costly, and it will create jobs, but also destroy many jobs and some industries.
You would have to be naive to consider only semantics and such stuff.
Here is what happened in Queensland, where mining is rather important:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-19/election-results-how-labor-lost-queensland/11122998
Kiwis are no different, they just have slightly different dependencies, e.g. dairy farming, other farming, horticulture, mass tourism and so forth, and Kiwis LOVE their cars, most of course fossil fuel driven.
Yeah. The scare monger get worked. And our cleverness, well, didn’t. It’d be really disappointing how ever that the gains Labor has made over the past 6 years in the polls since what ever Julia Jillard was up to are squandered.
So its cheaper to become extinct?
I see they are still a bit backward in Aus and they need to clean up their far right shit we don’t want these people coming here we already have those hobson choice idiots who run around saying ‘we are one people ‘ when we have white flight in our public schools and people sending their kids to schools out of there school zone. Bloody hypocrites that hobsons lot
You think we can really keep them out? They have an extensive military. If they get desperate we are buggered.
When the shit hits the fan it is the elites who will retreat into there gated communities with security and comforts denied to everyone else and leave the rest to fend for themselves. Don’t forget that.
I agree the ‘woke’ left is destroying the country, and the media are pushing this message far more strongly than most working class people are happy with. I voted Labour this time, and Greens before that, but I do not like identity politics and am extremely unlikely to try to vote this lot back in. The concept of this lot leading a ‘hate speech’ discussion alone will probably ensure a change of government from the workers who are beginning to feel alienated by the focus on minority rights and beneficiaries. Yes beneficiaries, homeless etc need to be looked after, but when the worker class has any impression of being incentivised to stop working, the Left has failed its primary purpose.
I am in provincial NZ, and again I see this as becoming increasingly a massive issue, as the ‘woke’ approach is becoming a very urbanised culture with little support or understanding elsewhere. For example, some of us who have spent 40+ years determining animal gender based on their genitals find the modern gender concepts hard to follow.
I am totally out of step with modern reality though, I still think of times when the Left was the ‘workers and farmers’ party! These days as a Left-voting farmer I’m hated by both sides of the political debate.
I agree with most of what you say. Will we be shocked in 2020 when National has a surprise win that goes against the polls?. Or should we wake up to the realities that the majority of voters in this country believe all this woke, PC, triggering bullshit is simply that. We are our own worst enemies.
Currently I’m seeing a lot of anti-National feeling too. I would not be surprised if ACT and the New Conservatives have a significant voice next time around.
Regarding being shocked, I’ve got a friend in San Diego. He’s gay, friendly, open and tolerant, member of a New Age Hindu-based religion, looks your perfect stereotypical southern Californian Democrat. But he voted Trump, took me totally by surprise. When we discussed it, it turns out the immigrants in his part of San Diego are so non-integrated that he feels it is dangerous to venture into their areas. A big 6 foot+ 50 year old bald dude too scared to walk down the street 2 blocks from his home. Trump took a strong line of immigration, and at that time for him that was the major issue for the US. The Trump phenomena was widespread all across the States, people voted Trump because the vocal ‘woke’ agenda did not sit well with them. The NZ ‘woke’ brigade are likely to turn a large number of NZers to more conservative politics. I don’t think this should be seen as a move to the right at all (and certainly not ‘far right extremism’ as the woke describe anyone who has views different to their own), but simply that the ‘woke’ are trying to move further socially than the rest of the country is currently comfortable with. My $.02.
Such a wonderful irony that ScoMo once worked in NZ tourism and dreamed up the “100% pure” label
Shorten was always pretty lacking in charisma. In the end it didn’t take too much of a Liberal to beat him. No real surprise to anyone excepting those in the Labor Party higher echelons one suspects.
Albanese will be no better. Penny Wong should stop backing him and go for the job herself.
The Australian economy as it currently exists cannot function without coal -about 60% of electricity is obtained from coal burning.
And exporting coal provides funds for imports to the tune of tens of billions a year.
Given the choice between collapse now and collapse later, the vast majority of the public will vote for collapse later, and all politicians will vote for collapse later.
“The second possible solution is a radicalised political response by the class left to win an MMP king maker role and force through an uncompromising agenda of economic, public service and environmental reform.”
Problem is, once you get the existing, mostly aged ‘left wing brigade’ excited, they all come and want to embrace such a political party or ‘response’, and their bad breath will kill all true intentions and potential for real reforms, by bringing in their baggage, like a weedkiller kills off any weed and even crops.
I just think of the all embracing free immigration supporters such as Mike Treen, other internationalists, who rather stand in solidarity with the workers in other places, and in some cases here, who actually are instrumentalised in undermining the rights and wages of our workers.
You cannot show too much solidarity with Indian, Chinese and other immigrant workers from middle class backgrounds, sent here on borrowed money, owing thousands or tens of thousands to their parents and other lenders, who only come here to ‘improve’ themselves and replace local workers, struggling to compete on low wages and conditions.
Those immigrants will do all to get PR, and to get a chance to ‘climb the ladder’, for themselves, they have NO solidarity in their hearts for downtrodden Maori, Pasifika and Pakeha workers here.
I can tell you this in absolute confidence, having met and spoken to many immigrants.
Once they get a ‘good job’ they will cast their eye on a management role also, and then become part of the ‘ruling elite’, so to say.
Screw that, I say, but those holy temple leftists and internationalists will never understand that they are part of the problem, besides of the identity politics fans.
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