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Where to now for a defeated and chaotic rabble?

With the election now over, all that remains is the tidying up of the final count to see if Labor will win in its own right or require the assistance of a few crossbench members.

As the winners, Anthony Albanese and the Labor government are already spruiking change and a better way of doing government, including a rejuvenated Question Time.

After a decade of shouty chaos, this will be a welcome relief to an electorate worn out by the intensity of ineffectual leadership and pure political bastardry. The Coalition was nothing more than a rabble led by two authoritarian Prime Ministers and one hypocrite, with a collection of lying, corrupt, self-indulgent, educated shysters who achieved nothing in nearly ten years.

Abbott was a pugnacious street fighter eventually put down by our first female Prime Minister. Malcolm Turnbull had a formidable mind but belonged to the wrong party. Morrison’s politics often contradicted his Christianity.

Of course, the first thing both conservative parties must do is elect their respective party’s leaders. For the Liberals, there wasn’t a choice. Peter Dutton is their new leader because he was the only one standing. The new leader is a person detested everywhere (except in his own state). Why? Well, mainly because of an inflexible inhumane attitude towards refugees and deeply conservative views that are out of touch with a modern pluralistic society.

Rachel Withers writing for The Monthly predicts that:

“The electorate won’t forget who Peter Dutton is, no matter how much the Liberal Party tries to rebrand him.”

And rightly so.

You might also recall that the medical profession voted him the worst Health Minister in over 35 years during his time in that portfolio. His public image will be difficult to erase.

Any gains in his rise up the political ladder have been made through a dark force of character. It is said that his private persona is very different to the one he shows through the medium of television. However, as I have said many times, life is about perception. Not what it is, but what we perceive it to be.

He comes across as a very intimidating former copper who you wouldn’t want to meet up with in an alley on a dark night. With Dutton as the leader, the Liberals will remain in opposition for at least two terms, given that Labor performs well.

The WA Premier McGowan said this of Dutton:

 

 

Most of us would agree with that assessment!

As for the National Party, leadership it has to decide whether to stay with a yesterday’s man in Barnaby Joyce or look to the future and elect a person more in touch with today’s world. They also need to represent their traditional constituents instead of just being additional votes for the Liberals.

That a party founded by Menzies would deal with a person of such ill repute and ratbaggery as Joyce is incomprehensible.

Both parties – the Liberals and the Nationals – might decide to go their way until they find an identity that differentiates them from Labor and, at the same time, philosophically marries them together.

Already there is a call for the party to go further to the right. A mistake because the world has now had a glimpse of where far-right or left politics leads. For ten long years, like rust, the insidious hand of neoliberalism spread itself through every dimension of our society.

Neoliberalism is an often-used term, but what does it mean? Most people, I think, use it to:

“… describe what they see as the new right – the extreme of conservatism. The Liberal party needs to return to its roots of true Liberalism, and the Nationals need to drop that name and return to being a country party.”

It will be embarrassing to have so many ladies of the right sitting in the Parliament, so their dismissive contempt for feminism has to be addressed: A problem that conservatism won’t fix in five minutes.

 

Where to now? (Photo by Alex Ellighausen, The Sydney Morning Herald)

 

Neoliberalism is an often-used term that describes the new right – the extremes of Liberalism or conservatism.

They must now admit that they have lost the climate war and surrender to the public will.

In this election, we have made a seismic shift in the make-up of our new government. I feel that a great weight has been lifted off Australia’s shoulders with this shake-up ideology. The Coalition needs to decide what it stands for. A rethinking of what constitutes, the common good.

The most objectionable feature of a conservative attitude is its propensity to reject well-substantiated new knowledge, science, in other words.

We can even rejoice in the public rejection of Murdoch media’s attempts to hijack the election using the Trump-Fox saturation of its mastheads, social media and television.

This doesn’t mean that we should congratulate the public for their decision to dump Morrison and his government. On the contrary, it took almost a decade for them to realise that Labor and a “chorus line” cast of women were a better proposition than a few crooks and liars.

Alan Tudge, when he returned from hibernation, said on ABC TV that a critical reason the LNP was defeated was that Labor badly damaged the Scott Morrison brand…

I think that is correct.

My thought for the day

We all incur a cost for the upkeep of our health. Why then should we not be liable for the price of a healthy planet?

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19 comments

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  1. Terence Mills

    Trouble is, they still don’t get it, they think that voters don’t understand the preferential voting system and that’s why they lost.

    Liberal Senator Jane Hume said this :

    “Liberal values are very much Australia’s values, and I don’t think that Australia understands that anymore.”

    According to her, it’s the electorate who are the problem. She and others fail to understand that the values her party were presenting were not Liberal values. In fact the party is sailing under false colours, it is not a party of liberal values and needs to change its name to more correctly identify with its right-wing leanings.

    Or they could just roll up their tent and move on : just stop telling us that we are out of line !

  2. Keith

    I made up a list of matters that led to the Liberals being decimated to use as a datum point for the future, they are not in any particular order:

    1 Sportsrorts
    2 Land Deals/airport Sydney
    3 Women issues/ not dealing adequately with abuse within Parliament. Women not being treated as equals.
    4 Climate Change, totally inadequate “policy”
    5 Trying to white wash Auditor General Reports
    6 Aged Care administered in uncaring fashion during Covid-19 outbreak
    7 Carpark rorts at train stations
    8 Poorly administered Job Keeper scheme
    9 Lack of support for victims of Bushfires and Floods
    10 Lack of listening to voters
    11Morrison said to be a liar by a number of leaders
    12 No tendering for projects
    13 Lack of respect for Labor Opposition members.
    14 Broken promises … ICAC and Religious Freedom Bill.
    15 No sense of duty of care for young people.
    16 Claiming kudos for work done by Premiers during pandemic.
    17 Lobbyists have too much clout.
    18 No understanding of the plight of homeless people or those on low incomes.
    19 Suggesting fuel prices would go up if Labor elected at a time when prices were going up while they were in government.
    20 Nationals had too much influence over Liberals
    21 Insecure leadership, 3 Prime Ministers since 2013.
    22 Policy driven by ideology, rather than for pragmatic reason.
    23 Continually pushing Economic ability of Coalition when citizens were struggling, good employment stats abstract for too many people, underemployment a major matter
    24 Secrecy, though trying to scare people during election campaign with Chinese vessel off Western Australia
    25 Suspicion of the the amount of influence donations were having on decision making.
    26 Trying to buy election with short term reduction of petrol excise.
    27 Creation of a huge deficit without investing in future
    28 Reporting a refugee boat being apprehended on election day.
    29 Expert advice dismissed, eg climate change
    30 Some shonky dealings by politicians claiming resources for private business
    31 Robodebt
    32 No support for lowest paid workers in Australia, they were the ones holding Australia together during the pandemic
    33 Divide and conquer a strategic stance by Liberals
    34 Lack of compassion
    35 Neglect of Pacific Nations

    The Coalition will in all likelihood blame Labor in the future for the terrible situation Australia has been left in after 9 years of poor governance.

  3. Josephus

    Blaming the embarrassing Morrison is a bit disingenuous . The party should have kicked the clueless imposter out long ago. That Dutton is probably to be selected shows that that amoral crowd have learnt nothing. The Coalition has insulted women, First Nations, Pacific Islanders, the non mainstream sexually orientated, the young and educated professionals for too long. It is as though only the others were worthy of respect.
    While Labor has aligned itself with some dreadful policies, one hopes that they will negotiate in good faith with those who question and challenge. No one with half a brain will miss that populist buffoon.

  4. Lawriejay

    What Australia needed at this most defining of defining moments in our history was identified by Mr.Morrison, “A loose unit”, it took 9 years for the electorate to realise that was precisely what we need.
    He also reminded us of what Malcolm Fraser told us forty years ago – ‘Life wasn’t meant to be easy”.

  5. Phil Pryor

    To replace a dribble of dung in Morrison with a dollop of dogshit in Duckwit-Futton is laughable, useless. Dutton is slow, regressive, primitive, anti-intellectual, unscientific, fumbling and loudmouthed, offensive, repulsive. Australia’s changed vote and its patterns indicate that an old world of Biggies in Oil, Gas, Coal, Finance, Suiperannuation, Investment, consumption, retail, media and advertising are doomed to failure if they do not change at least in an evolution, involving sense, decency, planning, some sacrifice, funding, rethinking. A new world is about overtake the old ways. Australia has been low, slow, dull.

  6. wam

    Nice warming giggle today, lord, loved your thought. How does it fit with a billion whites getting rich on burning coal and oil and now wanting to stop the billions of non-whites from getting rich? The big thrust must be developing cheap renewables to replace coal and oil so the world can get a rich as us?
    The scientists of the CSIRO should be the starting point, albo
    ps
    it will make us richer??

  7. Geoff Andrews

    That’s loonie talk wam and “Greensland” is not nearly as clever as “bandit” or “loonie”.

  8. Jack sprat

    Where to now for the defeated rabble? Straight to the boards of multi national fossil fuel companies that pay no tax .

  9. Harry Lime

    Well,Jack sprat,if Albo and his crew get their shit together,those tax evading/avoiding fuckers had better prepare to pony up,and the defeated rabble might have to look elsewhere for a REAL job.The rabble have been rumbled.
    Keith,your list just points up how much repair work the incoming government have on their plate…nine years of destruction with the culmination of the biggest fake ever to bullshit his way into our lives.

  10. leefe

    I know a few very deep holes that would accommodate all of them.
    Yeah, I know, but it’s a pleasant dream …

  11. wam

    You’re, like kaycor, mr andrews, too smart for me. Perhaps your greensland fits the nth qld national who said brisbane talks coal but votes green.
    Sadly, I find nobody agrees with me that white christian nations should be replacing their coal and oil power with cheaper renewables. To allow the nonwhite nonxstian nations to have cheaper renewable power sources or stop putting their values on poor countries and let them grow.

  12. Matthew McPherson

    They could not adapt to the changing of voting ideals, Voters were sucked into their lies with Abbott (who was a great opposition leader and attack dog), and when they get into power they had no real policies or ideas on how to run a country, they spent 6 years saying no to everything (their attack dog policy of Abbott). And when they got into power expecting the other side to vote for everything they want to do.
    And when other parties starting saying no to them, they threw there toys out of the cot and had massive tantrums.

    Then we find a non elected wet nurse was telling Abbott how to lead and run a country the way she thought it was meant to be run, hence why the party outed him with his shocking ideas, anyone remember his knighthoods?

    I agree that Turnball should have been a labor leader, but then we get to Morrison.

    So many toxic views and policies, alienating our partners and blaming constantly blaming everyone else for their mistakes and never once accepting responsibility for anything or making excuses that he did not know or understand.

    The USA has had their Trump, and now we have gotten rid of our version.

    I hope the country can learn from this horrible lost decade and we can recover.

  13. Jack sprat

    Oops forgot they can also go on and become weapon manufacturers lobbyist like Christopher Pyne and continue to beat the drums of war

  14. Terence Mills

    As of today (Sunday) it seems that Labor have seventy five seats in the lower house and four seats remain outstanding : with 76 seats they would have a majority in the 150 seat House.

    The interesting thing will be who is nominated as Speaker as this person could have a significant and potentially transformative impact on the operation of our parliament ; even to the extent of ruling out Dorothy Dix questions which the former government took to ridiculous and nauseating extremes.

    Whilst the party forming majority government has the right to nominate the Speaker it doesn’t have to be one of their own. It has, for instance, been suggested that a reformative Speaker could be somebody like Andrew Wilkie who, as an independent has shown himself to be a man of principle.

    Whoever they choose it has to be someone who is prepared to introduce and enforce the rules.

  15. Bert

    Terence Mills,
    Andrew Wilkie has already ruled out taking the speakers position.

  16. Albos Elbow

    Just leave the pre-historic retards be.

    No doubt they will fuck up anything they touch and just dig themselves a deeper grave, with Scummo, Barnaby’s Coal Gang, Commander Potato Head and the Minister for Burning Fossil Fuels still on their team.

  17. Geoff Andrews

    wam, let’s hope that Labor adopts your unique solution to carbon reduction (with the assistance of the Greens, of course!)
    I need to know what “kaycor” is so that I can decide if I’ve been insulted or damned with faint praise. Dr Google was equally ignorant.

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