State of confusion: day three

Another open thread for general post-election discussion.

A thread for general discussion of the political environment as the nation hangs on late counting, the intricacies of which may be discussed in the post above this one.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

1,823 comments on “State of confusion: day three”

Comments Page 37 of 37
1 … 36 37

  1. millennial @ #1796 Wednesday, July 6, 2016 at 10:48 pm

    c@tmomma @ #1793 Wednesday, July 6, 2016 at 10:43 pm

    poroti @ #1788 Wednesday, July 6, 2016 at 10:31 pm

    C@tmomma
    Dr Dutton ?

    Worst Health Minister eva! : )

    Even worse than Abbott?

    Oh yes! Abbott at least introduced the dental care as a result of a pre-existing medical condition scheme. Which helped a lot of people.

    Dutton was the author (with Abbott, admittedly) of the Medicare Co=Pay and the massive Health cuts in the 2014 Budget.

    Which Labor thanks them for. : )

  2. Time to turn into a pumpkin. : )

    Last thing I’ll say is that I hope Labor end up with a number of seats by the end with a ‘7’ in front of it. Makes them seem that much closer to the Coalition.

  3. confessions @ #1712 Wednesday, July 6, 2016 at 8:49 pm

    Guytaur:
    Yes our media is bad, but still I believe that Labor didn’t pull enough seats to unseat the govt because voters are extremely reluctant to unseat a first term govt. The good news for LAbor is that there are now so many marginal LNP seats that, coupled with the instability we’re about to see with minority govt and hostile Senate, makes electoral victory that much more achievable for Labor in 2019.

    Labor unseated the Abbott/Hockey Government. It created the conditions for the collapse of the Turnbot/Morrison Government. To defeat two Tory Governments in 3 years should be regarded as a very great achievement. To do it in less than one year is almost difficult to comprehend.

    Last year, Labor campaigned from scratch against the full weight and the full budget of the Liberal Party in Canning and brought about the conditions for the disposal of Tony Abbott, the worst PM this country has ever had. We have now done the same thing on a national scale. We are on the cusp of bringing down the Tory house. There is not one person in Labor that does not understand the great achievement this represents.

  5. Not sure if this has been posted yet. Anne Aly interview.
    I loved this quote;

    ‘I get criticism from everywhere … I get it from the extreme right wing, who question, “Why aren’t you covering your face and head?”‘ she says.

    ‘I’m like, “Well, why don’t you go and have a picnic with the conservative right-wing Muslims? Because you all think the same way.”

    It reminds me of an American kid I met in Jordan about 10 years ago. He was writing a post grad thesis on how similar the basic views of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Christian Right in the States were.
    http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/religionandethicsreport/anne-aly-campaign-to-be-australian-parliaments-female-muslim-mp/7573550

  6. daretotread @ #1780 Wednesday, July 6, 2016 at 10:16 pm

    Bemused
    Please just TRY not to be antagonistic.
    Here in Brisbane, limited money meant that choices were made for phoning rather than leaflets or mailouts. There were not many street stalls and posters and core flutes were in short supply. This meant that there was generally low visibility. The WAS quite a bit of door knocking but not the sort of mass door knocking we saw in the Kate Jones campaign.
    My question I guess is “Do you need BOTH person to person contact AND high visibility”.

    People on the ground campaigning, corflutes, leaflets, phone banks are not expensive.
    Our candidate and his campaign committee raised enough to fund all our activities.
    Some on the phone bank, like me, brought our own notebook computers and mobile phones – a campaign donation in kind I suppose – so that kept the cost down.
    Doing mail outs of material IS expensive – $1.00 per letter on postage alone. We did very little of that.
    We also ran the usual postal vote campaign targeted at people we knew had previously voted postal.

  10. First dog contemplates tiddles guvmint outcomes at the graun, I’m rooting for the
    ‘coalition of bogong moths and fire ants’ 1000 year reign of glorious insectocracy…

  11. Re Barney @11:08PM: It reminds me of an American kid I met in Jordan about 10 years ago. He was writing a post grad thesis on how similar the basic views of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Christian Right in the States were.

    I recall a view being expressed that fanatics are basically all the same – the only difference is what they’re fanatical about. Same goes for right wing authoritarians. So in East Germany, former Nazis had no trouble becoming dedicated Communists.

  13. S777

    Same goes for right wing authoritarians. So in East Germany, former Nazis had no trouble becoming dedicated Communists.

    Austria also in the decade after WWII and still going off and then on.

  14. S777

    I recall a view being expressed that fanatics are basically all the same

    It’s amazing how closely certain Labor propagandists here resemble the Greens propagandists they loathe.

  15. briefly @ #1773 Wednesday, July 6, 2016 at 10:04 pm

    Further postal votes were counted for Cowan this evening. After these votes are added to the count, the margin between Aly and Simpkins will be just over 700 votes in favour of Ali. There are a lot of absent votes to come in, but these are expected slightly favour Labor. On the trends shown at the last election, absent votes should widen the margin between Aly and Simpkins by at least 360. There will be about 1,600 more postals to count. Simpkins would need to poll around 1070 more of these than Aly in order to break even, or a split of 1335/265 (83%/17% split). So far he has received just under 54% of the postals counted.
    Aly will win. She will win quite comfortably in the end, by a clear 1,000 votes or so.

    Great to hear. Thanks Briefly.

  16. Boerwar, Poroti

    In a nutshell, the reason is the Treaty of Waitangi.

    That ensured that the indigenous were at least officially seen as citizens from the get go, amongst other things.

  18. Bemused,
    I’m intrigued by the contrast in outcomes between the neighbouring electorates of Bruce and Chisholm. Both had new candidates succeeding highly-regarded MPs. My (second-hand) knowledge of the Chisholm campaign suggests that it was conducted in a similar manner to what you have described in Bruce. If anything, Bruce had a more formidable Liberal candidate. My speculation is that Chisholm is more middle-class and probably becoming more so. Yet -2.57% (Chisholm) compared to +2.36% (Bruce) is surprising. Your thoughts?

  20. Nicholas,
    Your account of the failure of the Gillard Government to carry through restrictions on poker machines does not accord with my memory. El Guapo’s reference to Gillard’s having lost the politics is correct but needs some further elaboration. NSW Caucus members were hostile, either because they sided with the Clubs or were spooked by the intensity of their campaign. Crucially Tony Windsor, and I think Rob Oakeshott declined to support the proposals. So even if she had been able to force through a majority in the Labor Party room, minority status meant that a vote in the House would have been lost.

  22. peter fuller @ #1818 Thursday, July 7, 2016 at 12:35 am

    Bemused,
    I’m intrigued by the contrast in outcomes between the neighbouring electorates of Bruce and Chisholm. Both had new candidates succeeding highly-regarded MPs. My (second-hand) knowledge of the Chisholm campaign suggests that it was conducted in a similar manner to what you have described in Bruce. If anything, Bruce had a more formidable Liberal candidate. My speculation is that Chisholm is more middle-class and probably becoming more so. Yet -2.57% (Chisholm) compared to +2.36% (Bruce) is surprising. Your thoughts?

    I don’t have any first hand observation of the Chisholm campaign so I can’t say if they campaigned as hard and effectively as we did in Bruce. Julian Hill had an amazing network he was able to tap into, he was a successful fund raiser, and very hard working.

    Kroger formidable? Only in terms of the support she was able to get from Lib HO. Never saw her on the ground.

    Your thoughts on the demographics are probably more on the mark and Anna Burke has said publicly that she expected to lose it last time.

  23. Chilcot
    Best explanation I heard was that it was a Freudian Invasion, George W Bush finishing off his fathers war. George Snr. was smart enough to listen to his advisers.

Comments Page 37 of 37
1 … 36 37

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *