I’m afraid in depth analysis of the result will have to wait until I’ve slept for just about the first time in 48 hours. I’ll just observe that that BludgerTrack thing on the sidebar isn’t looking too flash right now, to which the best defence I can offer is that aggregators gonna aggregate. Basically every poll at the end of the campaign showed Labor with a lead of 51.5-48.5, and so therefore did BludgerTrack – whereas it looks like the final result will end up being more like the other way around. The much maligned seat polling actually wound up looking better than the national ones, though it was all too tempting at the time to relate their pecularities to a past record of leaning in favour of the Coalition. However, even the seat polls likely overstated Labor’s position, though the number crunching required to measure how much by will have to wait for later.
Probably the sharpest piece of polling analysis to emerge before the event was provided by Mark the Ballot, who offered a prescient look at the all too obvious fact that the polling industry was guilty of herding – and, in this case, it was herding to the wrong place. In this the result carries echoes of the 2015 election in Britain, when polling spoke in one voice of an even money bet between the Conservatives and Labour, when the latter’s vote share on the day proved to be fully 6% higher. This resulted in a period of soul-searching in the British polling industry that will hopefully be reflected in Australia, where pollsters are far too secretive about their methods and provide none of the breakdowns and weighting information that are standard for the more respected pollsters internationally. More on that at a later time.
swamprat @ #1694 Sunday, May 19th, 2019 – 10:40 pm
I just think is a good working guide. Appealing to higher values is a dead end.
Mogotrone
My late 30s niece told me she voted “Green, Hemp,…. Liberal, Labor”, that is she gave her vote to the Liberals. lol
I tried to explain to her that she was undermining her Green vote.
Swamprat- Why is that? I am simply pointing to the bleeding obvious, that Labor is at the crossroads as a party and so is the left as a movement.
If you really are left (and I don’t think you are you are really a progressive liberal) how can you have a left that is not a proletarian based mass movement?
Without a working class foundation the left is a joke a hollowed out void of nothingness really just late 19th century progressive liberalism.
At the moment mine workers and workers in allied industries are peeling off to fascists like Hanson and Palmer because the right has had some success managing to brand the left as snobbish and anti worker, the whole adani climate issue has been manna from heaven for them.
Sure the tories have lost a bit of bark along the way in the leafy suburbs, but not much in the way of seats, we are the net losers.Unless we can reconnect with workers the left is doomed and best we can hope for is some pale imitation of the piss weak useless American Democrats.
“And you apparently think deceit is the way to go.
You would be right at home in the LNP.”
Tell me the last time a party in Australia got into government telling the truth? It’s awful, but there you go.
Puffy
If all Australians are arseholes then maybe Labor should choose arseholes to represent them. 🙂
Onlooker @ #1692 Sunday, May 19th, 2019 – 11:09 pm
You have to fight fire with fire.
Labor shouldn’t be the first to go negative. They shouldn’t be the first to make shit up about their opponents. But when the other side starts flinging mud, falsehoods, and over-the-top hyperbole nonstop, Labor has every right to respond in kind. And they should, if they want to win.
Clean hands are worth nothing in politics if you lose.
Australians are not only ‘first come, first served’ to the lifeboats, treading over and on fallen infants on the way, they are ‘This is my fucken lifeboat and none of you bastards are getting in with me.”
People saying that Labor need to deal with the Greens have absolutely no fffing idea!!!!!!!!!!! Labor need to win over all those working class voters who consistently vote against their self interest by supporting ON and UAP et al. these are the people killing Labor, out in suburbs of marginal seats all over Australia.
swamprat @ #1703 Sunday, May 19th, 2019 – 10:54 pm
It is a plan worth considering. They seem to like leaders in their own image.
clem attlee
says:
Sunday, May 19, 2019 at 11:29 pm
People saying that Labor need to deal with the Greens have absolutely no fffing idea!!!!!!!!!!! Labor need to win over all those working class voters who consistently vote against their self interest by supporting ON and UAP et al. these are the people killing Labor, out in suburbs of marginal seats all over Australia.
_________________________
I’d suggest forgetting about people who vote ON and UAP and just try to get some people who voted Liberal to vote ALP. Much easier.
Hugo @10:30 “* And finally, what to make of the next term of government is anyone’s guess. The Coalition put forward nothing in terms of a policy agenda, and they will only have a precarious hold on the numbers in Parliament. It could be that we are in the three years of inaction across a range of issues. Not what the country needs, to be sure, but it appears that’s what they voted for.”
Like Tony Abbott in 2013, Morrison has no mandate to do anything. Whatever nasties Morrison hasn’t told us about, Labor and the Greens should oppose rigorously and try to bring enough cross-benchers along. Do what the Coalition would have done in Opposition had the numbers been different.
nath @ #1708 Sunday, May 19th, 2019 – 11:03 pm
The only way to do that is to offer them money. It is their only motivation.
lefty e says Sunday, May 19, 2019 at 8:20 pm
I saw these too. The “poster” was claiming the so called death tax would take 40% of their home. Anyone who was politically engaged would know it was rubbish. For those that aren’t, well maybe it worked.
poroti says Sunday, May 19, 2019 at 6:38 pm
Which is pretty much true. There are plenty of jobs out there rolling out renewables.
There are four major cost inputs in manufacturing: energy, labour, materials and capital. Widespread renewables potentially means almost free energy. We have resources to spare. Automation and a skilled workforce (for high value merchandise) will mean labour costs become less important. So, renewables potentially gives us a competitive advantage.
Based on yesterday’s events I think we can conclude that climate change will not be a vote changer (in the same way economic security is) until people see their own backyards on fire, or permanently underwater. A background concern yes, but those starving polar bears and vanishing glaciers are a long way away, and the issue can be neatly dealt with via glib statements like “we are meeting our targets” etc.
Interestingly, many people in Warringah did witness their backyards falling into the sea barely 3 years ago – a contributing factor in the hiding Abbott received? His subsequent moronic statement about the beach at Manly looking the same as it did 70 years ago based on a photo simply did not gel with the lived experience of the electors in his now former seat.
Hugoaugogo says:
Sunday, May 19, 2019 at 10:30 pm
Hugo – thanks for this thoughtful piece. I was glad to read it amongst the shouting and fingerprinting. The stuff about Trump and Brexit interests me although I am not 100% sure they are voting against their economic interests. Would the ALP climate policies have cost them their jobs or future job opportunities? – its a fair question as many are actively trying to shut down that industry with a vague promise of future jobs in the renewable energy sector. Would you believe those promises?.
As to all the lies and scare campaign etc. I agree, but the antidote to that is to have the trust of the people and not be seen as one and the same. This is the historical position of the ALP after all.
Obviously the next election should be small target. I reckon trust in government should be the policy work e.g.. Federal ICAC, truth in advertising, donor laws. A term of that to build the requisite trust to implement a reform agenda. With the advantage of incumbency to explain it to people. If trust in government can be improved then in my opinion the public are far more likely to support a social democratic reform agenda. At the moment, Labor just don’t have enough trust from the people and scare campaigns are too easy.
Perhaps if someone can prove that they changed their vote from Lib to ALP, we can set up a Go Fund Me page for them, and give them a tax holiday for the life of the government. That would shift a lot of Liberal votes where a climate Armageddon won’t. (sarc)
Lucky Creed says:
Sunday, May 19, 2019 at 11:20 pm
“At the moment mine workers and workers in allied industries are peeling off to fascists like Hanson and Palmer because the right has had some success managing to brand the left as snobbish and anti worker, the whole adani climate issue has been manna from heaven for them.”
Agree 100%
Since Federation, in terms of the amount of time served in parliament, those who were Conservative Governments have occupied those benches 55% of the time and Labor 45% of the time until this month.
Since WW2, however, Coalition governments have been in government for 48 out of those 74 years, which is 65%, nearly a 2:1 ratio.
The modern ALP seems incapable or unwilling to consistently sense what the electorate is prepared to accept in terms of the broad policy settings of the economy, taxation, the size of government and how much it desires government intervention for social policies.
Also, for all the talk of ‘Chaos and cuts’, seriously, have a look at the leaders and the terms of service from leaders from ALP leaders. Hawke stands alone on the ALP side as one who was able to consistently win elections. No one has ever done more than a decade… the Coalition has managed this twice.
Whitlam crashed and burned in spectacular fashion with a big taxing, big spending social engineering agenda and was spat out in rather inglorious fashion. It scared the electorate for, literally, decades.
Shorten had the same basic agenda. Australians know what happened last time they gave the government a blank cheque and were right to be rather shy. If the ALP had some kind of form with recent financial management and decent tax policy, there may have been a modicum of trust from the electorate… but there just isn’t. Keating and Hawke earned that trust through prudence and a keen sense of what the electorate would and wouldn’t let them do with their money. Superannuation was an exceptional idea and well received.
So now, a day after Shorten lost the unloseable election, despite some, like myself, that suggested that the marginal seats couldn’t be won with this man AND this agenda, conversations in here just focus on leadership and internal issues. Almost to a T, those seats fell where I suggested they would. More navel gazing from the ALP and blaming the electorate.
Stop trying to change people who don’t want to be changed. LISTEN to what they want in a government. The Coalition has been shocking at this for some time now, but over the history of the nation have done a damn sight better than you guys.
Queensland wins at about the same rate in State of Origin football, despite a far smaller pool to draw talent from. The analogy is applicable here. If you were a ‘better team’ you would win more. In the game of democracy, you ‘win’ by listening to the people. Not just hearing what you want to hear.
Win the trust of the people? Why? When you can just buy the greedy feckers.
Reflecting a bit on the “retiree tax” issue, it strikes me that the brains trust behind Labor’s campaign seems to have had a very limited understanding of the constituencies affected by its proposed policies, or of the ways in which those policies would affect them.
Of course the most glaring instance of this was when Shorten demonstrated that he had either forgotten or had never been properly briefed about Labor’s policies to escalate the changes to superannuation introduced by Turnbull in 2017: that is, lowering the point at which the 30 per cent tax rate on super cuts in from $250k to $200k pa (remembering that the $200k includes the value of employer contributions, so that the policy could affect people earning $180k pa or less) and the reduction on after-tax contributions from $100k pa to $75 pa.
There is a sizeable constituency that were adversely-affected by Turnbull’s changes and would have copped a further hit from Labor’s policies. These include people like: tradies and other skilled professionals who might earn $200k or more in some years (including many mine workers in Queensland and elsewhere) and public servants, school principals, academics and other white collar workers who might also be earning $200k pa, typically in the latter years of their working lives. These people might not be expecting to earn these high incomes for very long, and are therefore keen to save a substantial part of their earnings to fund their retirement..
I won’t go into all the complex details, but the combined impact of Turnbull’s 2017 changes and Labor’s proposed policies was to drive these people either towards more risky savings vehicles (eg, rental housing or the stock market which, in any case, Labor was also proposing to make less tax effective as retirement savings vehicles ) or else towards long-term deposits and bonds, where any returns they made would be taxed at the top marginal rate (which Labor also proposed to increase by 2 per cent).
These people desperately want to save, but they can no longer save as much as they want as quickly as they want through superannuation, and Labor’s changes would have made their situation even worse. Many of them would be lifelong union members and Labor voters, and the group would also include a substantial number of women who entered or re-entered the workforce comparatively late in life and who have relatively low levels of retirement income..
I do not recall any Labor politician at any point in the campaign showing even a modicum of awareness of the circumstances of these types of people or concern about how they would be adversely affected by its tax package. Instead, any complaints by these people – and by their older counterparts who benefit from imputation credits – were sneered at as special pleading from the “big end of town.”
Add to this Labor’s demonstrable lack of awareness as to how many people were actually going to be affected by their dividend imputation changes. and their very confused messaging on the removal of negative gearing. (It won’t reduce house prices by more than a smidgeon, but it will also somehow make it possible for more young people to afford to buy houses. And it’s a dreadful rort, but not so dreadful that we actually propose to take it away from anyone who already has it: indeed, anyone who wants to invest in a new dwelling will still get it. But not the next person to whom they sell that dwelling. )
As the article in the Fairfax press tonight points out, the hundreds of thousands of people who felt that they would be adversely affected by these changes also have many more hundreds of thousands of relatives and friends who would be sharing their pain. And Labor did a really, really bad job at explaining to them why it was absolutely necessary for this pain to be inflicted on them: in fact, for the most part, Labor didn’t really even try to explain it. And, in a telling moment, Bowen told people who were upset at the changes that they might wish to vote Liberal.
The take away message from all this is that taxation changes are complex things that should only be attempted by political parties when they are in government and have a bit of a mandate to implement them, and also have access to detailed advice and briefing from officials. I don’t think any Labor politician has demonstrated a complete understanding of their proposed package changes: certainly not Bowen or Shorten. And Tanya Plib was still getting some of it wrong this morning.
Working on the Ockham’s Razor principle, when you think about the possibility that a million or more people were either directly affected by these proposals or had close family or friends who would be, I think you have possibly the entire explanation for Labor’s loss.
Lincoln says:
Sunday, May 19, 2019 at 11:42 pm
Fair enough (as a disappointed Labor supporter).
It is time for the ALP to get ruthless. With the Lib/Nats, with the media, and with the voters.
And the next time there is a GFC or similar, the ALP should sit it out. Run dead, let the Coalition deal with it, let Australians suffer it. Let them really experience an austerity. Let if crash. Out of the debris, maybe we can build a decent country with decent people in it.
Because I do not like what we have become, and I am ashamed of it.
“Stop trying to change people who don’t want to be changed. LISTEN to what they want in a government”
And once you’re in, slowly start changing things.
Nath – disagree it’s easier to get an LNP voter to switch to the ALP. ALP = unions for many of them, which is a step too far.
For all those criticising their fellow Australians, this election was actually pretty close. Almost half of the electorate preferred Labor. Look at the likely Senate numbers, half of them are likely to have gone to Labor or the Greens.
Not all Australians are the same. People vote different ways for different reasons. Some of them I might agree with, some of them I don’t.
Yet somehow the ALP managed to win 21 seats in Vic, the Coalition 14, 1 green and 1 ind. So don’t blame Victoria. We are Progressives.
Puffy – ease up old Bean. This isn’t the first electoral setback for the ALP.
No point blaming the electorate- that is not the road back to government.
The Libs were down and dirty and in it with bare knuckles this time. Turnbull was much softer due to his own hubris and left the door open. The ALP needs to wise up and lift its game – it was too soft this time, perhaps due to its own hubris.
We need to fight like it is an existential battle for survival but blaming the people we seek to represent won’t help.
If this was 1993 all over then lets make 2022 like 1996. Just need to find the right leader…
Blobbit
says:
Sunday, May 19, 2019 at 11:49 pm
“Stop trying to change people who don’t want to be changed. LISTEN to what they want in a government”
And once you’re in, slowly start changing things.
Nath – disagree it’s easier to get an LNP voter to switch to the ALP. ALP = unions for many of them, which is a step too far.
_______________________
You just need a couple percent. Most likely the same people have voted for the ALP in the past.
” I think you have possibly the entire explanation for Labor’s loss.”
I’d agree, except that doesn’t explain the complete smashing in the mining areas.
It was definitely a cause though, much to my chagrin. Never get between an Aussie and a handout or a pile of cash.
Pretty much the only thing left is bracket creep. Even something like the mining tax helped smash the ALP vote when it was tried, and that affected no one directly.
Mr Atlee – You know that, I know that,Blobbit knows it, but it seems most on here still think winning Higgins and Kooyong (which will never happen unless we advocate to abolish income tax) is the path to victory, and if this site is in any way reflective of the broader Australian left then I despair for our future.
The right has branded us as a bunch of elitist snobs, it’s ironic talking about class war, they have been waging their own version of it with some degree of success.
Unless we can cast off that image the fascist vote will just keep getting bigger and more disciplined in it’s preference flows back to the tories and making it nigh on impossible for us to win short of an economic meltdown.
PHON are the modern version of the DLP, except unlike the DLP they are really neo liberals there just good at hiding it.
I have long enough and seen enough to know that in Australia there are a lot of good people, who often end up crushed.
There are a lot of greedy, fascist, sexist, homophobic, animal-hurting aresholes. They usually win out in life.
The usual trend is that the good end up poor and the bastards end up rich; in money, power , reward, and share of this country’s resources. I know of good wealthy people and mongrel poor people. But, in the total scheme of things, good does not win out.
nath says:
Sunday, May 19, 2019 at 11:52 pm
Yet somehow the ALP managed to win 21 seats in Vic, the Coalition 14, 1 green and 1 ind. So don’t blame Victoria. We are Progressives.
Yes Nath but there are no low hanging fruit left in Victoria – The seats that are easy, have fallen. No point campaigning hard for the Victorian vote. For every seat gained there you will lose 3 elsewhere (i.e. qld). Lesson from Barnaby about what happens when you take an inner city progressive world view and try and apply that to rural Qld. Not pretty.
Just Quietly
“No point blaming the electorate- that is not the road back to government.
The Libs were down and dirty and in it with bare knuckles this time. Turnbull was much softer due to his own hubris and left the door open. The ALP needs to wise up and lift its game – it was too soft this time, perhaps due to its own hubris.”
———
It has always mysterfied and disappointed me as to why, at almost every election, the ALP has always needed to “lift its game”?
In what century do you think the ALP’s game will be finally lifted?
“lets make 2022 like” 2007.
A lib lite leader, with some warm fuzzy policies. No policies that cost anyone anything. Climate policy restricted to following whatever treaties the LNP still have is signed up for + free panels and batteries.
Only thing the ALP should talk about is jobs. Nothing about increasing pay, or better conditions. Just vote ALP if you want a steady job.
Christ, 2022 feels a long way away.
bc @ #1725 Sunday, May 19th, 2019 – 11:20 pm
Australia voted back in this cruel people-killing government, therefore Australians in the majority are greedy, racist, fascist, cowardly aresoles.
On matters of controversial tax changes, wasn’t Bowen the one responsible for Labor’s proposed changes to salary packaging and Fringe Benefits Tax in 2013? While a no doubt very prudent decision fiscally, politically it went down like a lead balloon.
I’m starting to think any future Labor leader might best be advised to find a different portfolio for Mr Bowen.
Further to my long post above, I am seeing a lot of confused rhetoric from some of the more disgruntled people on here tonight.
Is your beef that a lot of people in marginal seats voted for the Coalition on the basis of their own self-interest? Or are you suggesting that they were for some reason voting against their own self-interest? It’s really got to be one or the other.
The fact is, a lot of blue collar workers – be they wage-earners or contractors or (as it not uncommon) both at different times – are these days earning pretty high incomes, at least in some years. Even the totally unskilled workers who were recently fighting to stop Street’s ice cream production being moved to Asia were said to take home an average of over $100k per annum each once rostered overtime was taken into consideration.
These people might well be looking for alternatives to Labor not because they are racist or climate change deniers, but simply because Labor’s policies don’t do much for them or, indeed, might even be against their self-interest.
I reckon a very high proportion of the people living on Newstart voted Labor yesterday. But there aren’t enough of these people to carry an election. If Labor wants to win back government, it has to find a way of appealing to large numbers of people who have five figure annual incomes or, at least, aspire to earn that much.
Australia is one of the wealthiest countries on earth. Depending on how you define it, the term “big end of town” could almost apply to a majority of the population.
Swamprat.
I can’t answer that. But what else do you do beside focus on what you are doing? It is much easier to change yourself than change everyone else.
If you don’t take responsibility for what you can control you are just a whinger and, most likely, a loser.
If you don’t learn from your mistakes you will repeat them.
The other alternative is the for ALP to concede winning any seats in QLD. Try to get the Tassie 5 or 4, and put all efforts into getting a big swing in NSW and SA. That’s the only other route apart from trying to win a decent share in QLD. It might work too.
“If all Australians are arseholes then maybe Labor should choose arseholes to represent them. ”
Well that didn’t work either.
PuffyTMD says Sunday, May 19, 2019 at 11:58 pm
I consider myself Australian and yet I didn’t vote for this “this cruel people-killing government”. I’m also sure there some people who did vote the Coalition for whom your above adjectives don’t apply.
Maybe Labor’s only chance is to turn into “Liberals” but without the racism and religious right crap.
When that happens I’ll vote Green.
Salk
Have you heard of facetiousness?
“Bowen”
Seems to believe people truly want rational, equitable solutions. He needs to be moved out of any treasury position.
I wouldn’t have been saying that a couple of days ago, but I’m broken.
I’m still waiting, btw, for anyone to give me an example of an opposition winning government in Australia on the back of a wife ranging reform program. Whitlam probably but that didn’t end well.
Any others? Not Rudd, not Hawke, not Howard, not Abbott.
Blobbit: “that doesn’t explain the complete smashing in the mining areas.”
Actually, it could explain a fair bit of it. Mining workers are among the constituency of people who might quite often earn over $200k per annum and who would be adversely affected by Labor’s tax changes. I have been told that a large number of the negatively-geared properties found along the coastlines of Australia belong to mining workers.
bc @ #1736 Sunday, May 19th, 2019 – 9:58 pm
Party Room Latrine Maintenance And Hygiene perhaps?
nath says:
Monday, May 20, 2019 at 12:01 am
The other alternative is the for ALP to concede winning any seats in QLD. Try to get the Tassie 5 or 4, and put all efforts into getting a big swing in NSW and SA. That’s the only other route apart from trying to win a decent share in QLD. It might work too.
In honour of Bob Hawke I would disagree the answer to electoral success for the ALP lies in “bringing Australians together”. There is a lot in that.
“The other alternative is the for ALP to concede winning any seats in QLD. Try to get the Tassie 5 or 4, and put all efforts into getting a big swing in NSW and SA. That’s the only other route apart from trying to win a decent share in QLD. It might work too.”
Can only see that working by bribing them. Otherwise there’s to many similarities between those places. Particularly WA, TAS and QLD. Not sure there are enough seats in SA and NSW alone.
swamprat: “It has always mysterfied and disappointed me as to why, at almost every election, the ALP has always needed to “lift its game”? In what century do you think the ALP’s game will be finally lifted?”
In the 20th century, for about a decade from 1983. Best government this country has ever had.: not just politically but – massively and magnificently – in terms of policy.
“bringing Australians together”
What’s that mean in terms of actual policies?
Handouts for everyone. (It’s only welfare when it’s for the poor)