What did we learn?
What did we learn Malcolm? We learned that the policies from Abbott’s 2014 budget have been comprehensively rejected by Australia. You chose to tinker round the edges by putting lipstick on the pig, but you didn’t actually change anything. Continuity of Abbott’s policies with a change of leader. Australians aren’t stupid. Voters saw through your say-nothing, waffle-spin, no-plan, tax-cut-for-rich-mates, vision-devoid flaff. Voters felt disappointed in your spineless-lack-of-leadership, letting the extreme-far-right-dinosaurs run your government rather than standing up for positions you used to hold. We learned that your ambition to be Prime Minister drove you to the top job, but once there, you shrunk into slogans, fear campaigns and Abbott-like-pettiness-and-dysfunction; that you’re just not as smart as you think you are. From the looks of things, you and your colleagues are desperate not to learn these lessons, and will blame everyone and everything rather than yourselves for the position you are in now. We’ve learned you are incapable of self-reflection. We’ve learned you don’t have the capacity for leadership which Australia craves. You might be a good merchant banker so maybe it’s time to go back to that. We learned to Australians are tired of hopeless and voted for hope instead.
What did we learn Bill? We learned Labor in opposition can unite. We saw how this unity lifted you and grew your confidence and mobilised your supporters. We saw how hard you and your colleagues worked every minute of the eight week election campaign. We learned that Labor can reform from opposition; you put sustainable investment in health and education front and centre of the national agenda and shattered the Liberal’s trickle-down-tax-cuts-create-jobs narrative in a campaign Clinton’s team will no doubt have paid close attention to. You were told over and over and over again that Labor will never win enough seats to get close to the Turnbull government and this seemed to spur you on. The bottomless-pit-of-Liberal-campaign-funding was no match for a united Labor with a positive story to tell. You’ve taken this election right up to the Turnbull government, you’ve blown their majority out of the water and are still in with a chance of victory. We’ve learned you will be a great Labor Prime Minister. Against all the odds, this is a Labor result for the true believers.
What did we learn Rupert? We learned that the media, all of you, chattering on about what might happen in the election for eight weeks and ignoring the policies which actually mean something to voters is the quickest way to make yourselves completely irrelevant. We learned that when you said Brexit would play into the hands of Turnbull and give him an easy victory, you were completely wrong and clearly unqualified to offer comment. We learned how out-of-touch you are with reality when you forgot to even notice the death of the neoliberal ideological argument about six months ago, or if you did notice it you were incapable of reporting it as fact. We learned your so-called-journalists would prefer to interview other so-called-journalists and ex-political-staffers than speak to policy experts or, heavens forbid, voters out on the streets to find out what is really going on outside of your ivory-tower-bubble-of-irrelevancy. We learned that your fun-and-games-search-for-gotcha-moments and dedication to debt-and-deficit scare campaigns means nothing to your audience and has got so boring people are clearly turned off. We learned your hatred and fear of independent and social media has pushed you further and quicker into irrelevancy, when you get a handful of shares from a shrinking pool of readers, and innovators like this guy get a million views in a handful of hours. We’ve learned that your influence and power is running down the sinkhole and you don’t have a plug.
We have learned a lot in the last couple of months. There is no result yet, but we’ve already learned Malcolm and Rupert are losers and Bill a clear winner. And as it turns out, we’re also learned Malcolm was right about just one thing. There really has never been a more exciting time to be an Australian.
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Alan Baird
Return to home pageThe Senate results are a kick in the guts to the PC left.
The official reason for the Liberal failure is apparently all the Labor lies about Medicare. Anyone needing medical care in the next little while is going to notice the increased fees. I don’t understand why the Liberals seem to believe their own propaganda, even when it is clearly incorrect
According to Abetz the failure in Tasmania was because of Turnbull’s super policy. Yeah right, making the wealthy skim less off the taxpayer cost the Liberals the support of ordinary Tasmanians. Just how out of touch are the far right Liberals.
This is probably also the first move in setting up to oust Turnbull.
Say what you like about this result or that, Dallas, overall as Lenore Taylor said, even if Turnbull wins, he loses; even if Shorten loses, he wins.
Saw one of the journos asked how many seats the LNP would win,Kerry Ann Walsh it was,she replied with supreme confidence and authority at least 81, maybe more,and all the other journos gave similiar predictions. So out of touch””””””””
If you look at the Labor to Liberal results then Labor walked all over the Libs, but allied with the National (Country) Party the Libs are very hard to beat. Labor should have done the same and joined forces with the Greens and then would have been easy winners… though then of course they would have to be a more progressive party, which they seem to be resisting.
Oh well.
What did both sides (Lab/Lib) learn? Probably absolutely nothing at all.
Miriam English”
” Labor should have done the same and joined forces with the Greens and then would have been easy winners”
NO, they wouldn’t. nothing would change other than Bandt being stuck on like a tail on a dog.
First, you have to win seats as the Libs and National (Country) Party did
Havent been here in a while but thought id pop in to see the reaction to another massive labor loss and the eventual knifing of shorten. I see nothing has changed. Living in denial. If a campaign based on a lie gets you your second lowest primary vote ever – theres only one party thats been rejected by australia. Thats labor.
From Paul Bongiorno:
But what now for Bill Shorten? In a strange twist, his future as Labor leader seemed to play more on the minds of commentators and Liberal panellists than Malcolm Turnbull’s fate.
Easy answer to that one. The msm want to avoid the inevitable, a discussion of The Incredible Mess That Malcolm Made and who his successor might be – Morrison is my bet.
I ever we needed proof of the sociopathic nature of the senior Libs (MSM), one has only to look and listen to them in the past 48/72 hours
Our lie about Medicare is the truth, their truth is a lie.
Morrison went on with it on ABC last night and it went unchallenged
And again on insiders this morning, when a rebuttal was offered it was cut short
Chopper you amuse with your vitriolic rant. You talk about a campaign based on lies. How amusing. Did you possibly see any advertising on polling booth fences that was presented by the coalition ?
Possibly not. But perhaps you should learn from Neil of sydney and not comment on a stunning win by a robust, confident and strong Labor Party. Solidarity for ever comrade.
Enjoyed article thanks.
Chopper
You seem to be divorced from reality just like your Leader and most of the LNP
Who knows Andrew Bolt may nominate for a safe LNP seat and knock Turnbull off, he’s so pissed off
Guess he’d need to get in line behind Morrison, Abbott, Bishop………..
Geez I enjoy watching the LNP implode
IMO, there are no winners in this election and we have not learned much, we still conservative, we still allowing that one party with less than 4% of the votes can have 20 or more seats in the HoR and other party with more than double of votes have only one.
If is something positive in this election is that the ALP presented their program well in advance with clear numbers showing a deficit for the first 4 years in exchange for investment and protection of health care and education and the electorate accepted it.
We have learned that the electorate prefer candidates with extreme and divisional ideologies in the case of One Nation and the LDP before progressive candidates.
We have learned that people in the New England still prefer a party that will not provide NBN , is prepared to poison the water tables with the gas mining and is not prepared to support the farmers that are loosing their land and in same cases their life.
It is a sad reality and we should not look for excuses.
Congratulations to Bill Shorten and Labor for turning the tide of neo-conservatism in Australia – a good campaign.
Labor can build upon this and return to a progressive political platform, while Turnbull is turned upon by his own.
Labor can also learn that they do not have to have a formal coalition like the LNP, but to do better in future they do need to learn to cooperate with other progressives, maybe then, in 2019 Australia will have a truly innovative and progressive government strong enough to take us into a future that will continue to be challenging; the far-right will continue to lie to itself while action on climate change has yet to become a reality.
“What did both sides (Lab/Lib) learn? Probably absolutely nothing at all.”
I don’t think they have learned anything either, Miriam. Neither is acknowledging that the huge swing to NXT in SA is because so many people are over both of them.
The best news is that the ALP is hopefully on a path of healing. For two decades it was white-anted from within by venial, grubby, self-seeking mediocre would-be politicians and party hacks. Hopefully it is now getting a positive social direction – one which reaches out to help,not the faction ridden politicians, but the people who need good government support
One thing we have learned is that the ABC, MSM and the God of Psephology Antony Green are clearly using the wrong model in trying to be the first to predict the outcome!
What part of losing makes it a win for labor? I repeat – the denial is gobsmacking.
Chopper, I’m surprised to find myself agreeing with you.
How is this a win for anybody? The LNP failed miserably to gain the clear majority they needed, and Labor failed terribly to get the clear majority they needed. They both lost. And Australia loses while the two big parties of deluded “true believers” crow constantly that they won. Neither acknowledges that the Australian people are, to a surprising degree disgusted by them. And they’ll continue as they were. No self-examination. No understanding of mistakes made.
I didn’t think anything could repel me more than the two main parties acting like children shrieking “It’s mine!”, but I was wrong. The Australian people giving so many votes to Pauline Hanson and Fred Nile makes my skin crawl and the bile come to the back of my mouth. What the hell is wrong with Australia??
The ” Labor failed terribly”?, not in my book.
No many people expected that the ALP will do this good.
Now the ALP managed to rebuild inside and will be ready for the next election and in a better position now to not allow the Coalition to put in place bad laws.
Yes, there are not winners but the ALP have done very well indeed.
Sally McManus
@sallymcmanus
In the 22 key union targeted seats the average swing to ALP is 5.5%
ALP began with Unions and need to stay there and build the base further
Posters here wondering who wins and who loses are not remembering where Labor came from in the last few months.
When Turnbull ousted Abbott the feeling among Labor voters was that this was the end for Labor. Even on this site there were those who bad-mouthed Shorten as a dud and a lame duck. There were some wishing that Albanese was the Labor leader.
The Coalition were ecstatic about Turnbull’s lead as preferred PM, even when polling went to 50/50 and even 49/51 for Labor. How could the Coalition lose with such smooth-talking, witty, intelligent leader?
What we realised was that Turnbull became more and more uncertain as his policies were scrutinised. On the hustings he did not seem to linger long, but seemed to be looking to move on. Whereas Shorten seemed to be enjoying himself. He was able to talk at length about policies.
And notice the way Shorten acknowledged the efforts of the Labor team in detail in the post-voting speech. Turnbull had little to say about any of his team; he criticised Labor and tried to spruik the very policies the voters had clearly rejected. The audience was already cheesed off because he had kept them waiting.
Turnbull’s display was another example of bad judgement
Hmmm. What did we learn? Maybe, Mr Lord is right. People are angry. Angry at being treated as fools. Angry at their aspirations being nothing other than casual references in an election campaign, designed to enhance one of two party’s’. Maybe, they are angry at a dismissive media, as Mr Moylan suggests. A media more concerned with it’s own importance, than it’s readership.
Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.
It is not about the political party’s. It is not about the media. It is not about the ‘charisma’ of the leaders. It’s about life, IMO. It’s about aspiration. It’s about hope. It’s about a desire that tomorrow will be better than today, for us, our parents and our children.
Maybe, just maybe, people are angry that neither of the ‘two party’s’, or the media, have any idea how angry we are at their impotent incompetence.
Maybe, just maybe, our parliamentarians will have to vote on what they think is best for Australia, or their constituents, in a hung parliament.
Maybe, just maybe, both the major ‘party’s’ and the media have become irrelevant.
Maybe, just maybe, they don’t know it yet.
The decision for this election is yet to be made. Frankly, I don’t give a damn. As long as the major political players and the media get the message. We are not here to serve them. It is their privilege to serve us.
Maybe, just maybe, these gits will get the message. However many times you hear this, it will never become true. The tail will never wag the dog. Thank you Ms Rollison (and commenters). Take care
Fizza’s fizza – everybody else’s fault – the Liberal way
I’ll tell you what we learned Malcolm: we learned him not to accept the leadership when the terms of the “leadership” stipulated that he had to follow (the loony Right) but not lead. That’ll learn ya. Next time read the fine print: “I understand if I am not completely satisfied I’ve been had.” You have.