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.
NB: Retweets do not imply endorsements.
Goll, @ 9:51
That is an inordinately eloquent post, particularly your extended metaphor that Morrison’s “holding a deck of totally worthless American trading cards of less value than the gum they were attached to.” Bewdy!
We need your rights at work campaign and where the fuck are the unions?
Onlooker @ #294 Sunday, May 19th, 2019 – 9:51 am
The failure in Queensland was the failure of Bowen and Shorten to sell the assurance of work and security in new industries.
That’s now a job for Palaszczuk to do which will then aid the federal ALP opposition at the next election.
Karvelas says Chalmers has been encouraged to run, but he is currently thinking on it.
Morning
As an example of the failure to prosecute policy details against a tsunami of lies, MOH, who is pretty well informed, as recently as Thursday still thought that the CGT changes were immediate. It took me showing him the Labor Party website to convince him that existing arrangements were grandfathered, and the change only applied to investments beyond Jan 2020.
lizzie @ #300 Sunday, May 19th, 2019 – 9:57 am
Cassidy is not the ALP, nor even its leader.
Cassidy did not accuse him of blatant lying.
Cassidy was too weak.
Rex Douglas @ #305 Sunday, May 19th, 2019 – 9:59 am
Fabulous!
Thank you Rex for proving my point far better than I could have.
Haven’t really thought about this but it just popped into my consciousness.
Perhaps the way to deal with the ALP-Greens “problem” is to actually form a formal coalition, hammer out a joint platform, have a joint election launch. Both parties can still run in the same electorates as each other as the Libs and Nats used to do, exchanging preferences.
The fact that the Coalition keep hammering on about the ALP-Greens coalition is that they actually fear such an eventuality.
It would give people who wanted to vote Greens comfort that their concerns would be argued for within the government and similarly to the more traditional ALP people.
This election resolves nothing, all said. The Lib-Libs have been sustained in office on the promise they will do nothing much at all. Labor proved unable to defeat all their many foes all at the same time. The issues that have simmered away for so long will continue to simmer. The Parliament is Rightist but is also divided, dysfunctional and ineffectual. It is dominated by anachronisms, by reactionaries. It will fail just as the last one failed.
Nothing much has changed.
William, hope that you’ve had sufficient rest and recovery. Muchas gracias for your “transfixingly” lucid and sound running commentaries and analyses last night.
This election was about the second class passengers on the Titanic scrambling for seats on the lifeboats.
While Scomo and his mates cheer on the plucky survivors from the deck of the Carpathia with glasses of Bolly in hand.
The third class passengers are of course going down with the ship.
I’ve had it, life is too short to be waiting around for the next Labor government.
Australia, you’re on your own from here on in.
WB,
Appreciate your work, but is it really so bad that we are quoting Leonard Cohen lyrics!?
Surely some shoegaze is more appropriate for today?
*Reaches for the stack of Ride CDs*
It does look like Labor’s objections to the Senate changes – which were masked by the lower quotas required by a DD – were correct. Above the line voting has effectively eliminated minor parties.
briefly @ #311 Sunday, May 19th, 2019 – 10:05 am
Correct, I suspect.
When the indies start demanding action on climate change and the Libs and Nats can’t or won’t deliver, what will happen? The indies can’t really back off without consigning themselves to oblivion at the next election. Will we see some defections from the coalition of the limited number who do actually realise the need for action on climate change? Will the lure of personal financial benefits keep the coalition solid (enough)?
So many questions. We’re not finished with instability yet.
Albo would make a great Oppo leader, he is a great fan of the live music scene and community radio stations like RRR and also is a great fan of the Community Cup, one of the highlights of Melbournes sporting clalender
“Well done you Greens idiots! Great outcome for you!”
Yeah, totes. It was the Greens wot lost it.
Nothing at all to do with Labor’s plastic and inauthentic leader, dire advertising strategy, bizarrely specific policies favouring some groups over others, unwillingness to challenge the Coalition’s claim to be ‘better economic managers’, constant feeding of the Coalition’s narrative that the Greens are ‘extremists’ and thereby by implication presenting themselves as ‘extremists-lite’, complete disconnection from working people including a lack of any significant diversity in candidates outside of private school lawyers and career politicians, and complacency in the face of being ‘just enough ahead’ in the opinion polls.
No. Definitely, if not for the Greens the ALP would have won in a landslide.
‘I’ve had it, life is too short to be waiting around for the next Labor government.
Australia, you’re on your own from here on in.’
Got it in one.
Grow up ALP.
Find some passion.
Some rage.
Stop being so fcking precious.
FIND A DECENT LEADER.
Or de-register yourselves and open a sandwich shop.
AngoraFish @ #317 Sunday, May 19th, 2019 – 10:11 am
At last.
I’m certainly not one who buys the talk of Greens as extremists. They are Libs in all but name. They despise Labor. They practice to destroy Labor. They will be rejoicing today. They perpetrate a hoax on their supporters.
Any hope for a fair and just Australia died last night. Poor fella my country
YBob @ #316 Sunday, May 19th, 2019 – 10:11 am
Here we go again.
I always disliked the Sammy J Coach “humour”. It seemed to favour the Coal.
Zoomster,
Chris Uhlmann late last evening gleefully went full blast that Palmer having pissed all those millions up a wall yet didn’t come within cooee of winning a seat. Julie Bishop and Ed Husic then put the boot into Palmer as well.
AngoraFish @ #318 Sunday, May 19th, 2019 – 10:11 am
Classic Lib tactic.
Take a comment about one specific event in one specific state, turn it into a straw man by generalising it, and then destroy your straw man.
The comment about that convoy of clowns and its effect in Qld remains valid.
Having the Morrison Govt returned is a big blow for progressives. However, the vote is close and a win in future election is on the cards. Lessons to be learned about candidate selection and policy explanation. Labor and Greens need to be much sharper on economic policy issues and spend the effort to test explanations that ordinary people understand. Basic economic issues drove a lot of the angst in N Queensland which Labor failed to benefit from. And I think Greens should wear the criticism that sending the Adani convoy into regional Queensland in the heat of an election campaign was a bonus to the LNP.
I think Labor negative gearing policy was generally understood but supporting new home buyers only goes so far. Policies to support people renting are important and not just subsidies.
The franking issue was not well understood. Why this inequity was allowed to survive and blow out without challenge over quite a few years is also a mystery.
The Senate result will be crucial. Of the 3 uncertain seats (2 in Qld between ON, Labor and LNP, 1 in Vic between Liberal, Labor and possibly but very unlikely ON) it is vital that Labor win 1 – that can provide a blocking group of 38 for Labor, Greens and Centre Alliance. If ON, LNP win all 3 which is possible then LNP only need ON and Bernardi for majority control of Senate. Lot more counting to go here.
Palmer UAP no seats is a plus. And not true that Palmer took protest votes and returned them to LNP – UAP preferences not that strong to LNP. LNP having to live with their cosying up to ON and UAP will cause issues.
I’ve never seen or heard of Sammy J until now.
Being from Queensland, I am sure all policies will be reviewed after the disappointment loss by Labor. There is no doubt the scare campaign on franking credits, negative gearing and taxes worked against Labor.
Another sobering thought is that the current Labor two party preferred vote in Queensland is the worst since 1975.
Stop talking about where Labor lost the election, what went wrong, who to blame.
There is only one place to place the blame. That is on the conscience of the Australian voters. Anyone who did not vote Labor yesterday is guilty of mass murder of people, species, and the environment.
They put a price on human life, animal life, this planet. That price was whatever few coins they were afraid of losing.
It is that stark, that confronting, that terrible.
Humans, life and the environment are dying right now, it is broadcast on our screens where we entertain ourselves to death.
If you are reading this and you did not vote for the ALP yesterday, you are a murderer.
Maude Lynne @ #280 Sunday, May 19th, 2019 – 9:34 am
Just a reminder that I predicted 50.9 as the final margin.
Unfortunately I got the party wrong.
Still, I never really believed Labor had done enough to counter the lies as you all know.
“briefly says:
Sunday, May 19, 2019 at 10:05 am
This election resolves nothing, all said. The Lib-Libs have been sustained in office on the promise they will do nothing much at all. Labor proved unable to defeat all their many foes all at the same time. The issues that have simmered away for so long will continue to simmer. The Parliament is Rightist but is also divided, dysfunctional and ineffectual. It is dominated by anachronisms, by reactionaries. It will fail just as the last one failed.
Nothing much has changed.”
———
Nothing much has changed.
Yes, sadly including this silly characterisation as the Libs as “Lib-libs” and the Greens as “Lib-kins”. The Greens are a separate party, but they are not in existence to elect a LNP government.
Being to the keft of Labor on a number of issues, they sometimes characterise Labor os “Liberal-light”.
Both are stupid terms. Petty language and pretty silly on both sides.
Realise who the real enemy is and you won’t waste energy that might have been better used elsewhere. Perhaps could have made a difference on May 18.
Robert Lee at 9.10 am: one of the best comments written on here.
To those a few pages back who were comparing Adani with the Franklin, a reminder that Tasmania swung savagely against Labor in 1983 – they won zero seats there, as they had in 1975, 1977 and 1980. It’s just that there are only 5 seats in Tasmania, and there are 30 seats in Queensland.
“Before you go. What do you think of Tony Burke. I’ve found him one of the best performers in the House, sharp wit and quick mind.
I also think that when you are up against someone like Morrison you need an attack dog. No more Mr. Nice Guy
What am I missing”
Hi.
I know and like Tony Burke. In fact his one of two labor guys who I’ve l own since before I decided to join the ALP. The other being Morris Iemma. I did my law degree with Morris as a fellow class mate, along with another Labor figure, Mark Bannano (who would later become mayor of Ashfield Council). At the time I met them, both were running for political office for the first time and I ended up campaigning for both. The year was 1991 and I put in my membership papers the day after Keating announced his first leadership challenge in June that year.
I met Tony Burke at University Debating Intervaristy that same year. He was already an ALP activist and moved in the same circles as Iemma and Burke. Tony has always been nakedly ambitious and that polarised most people, to the extent that even his closed friends would refer to him at TCTB (that c*#t Tony Burke). Personally I didn’t have a problem with ambition, and thought it normal for young activists to be ambitious. So we have always rubbed along pretty well.
Tony has baggage. It may not be a problem because I think everybody who has been in politics for long enough and has lived a life has baggage. I won’t go into all the details but I note that Tony used the Catholic Antioch club to stack numbers in an attempt to force Leo MCLeay into early retirement. No problem with that, but it did bring Tony into the sphere of the SDA and various SDA astroturfing social policy campaigns, most notably ‘Euthanasia No’.
In recent years Tony has shifted ground very significantly on social issues and has effectively abandoned the Catholic doctrinaire position on most social policy issues following the bust up of his first marriage and remarriage.
I think Tony also carries a lot of baggage from the RGR wars: he was the first NSW Right frontbencher to split from the existing leadership in both the Beasley v Rudd contest and the first Gillard v Rudd coup.
However I think Tony’s biggest problem as a potential leader is that he’s not really relatable to those that Labor needs to connect with: he’s still that Head Boy at St Pats College.
Chalmers on the other hand seems whip smart and also relatable.
The role of progressives is to lead.
The role of centrists is to support progressives.
The role of progressives is to lead.
The role of centrists is to support progressives.
Centrists need to write that out a few thousand times and put it into practice.
Centrists cause all manner of problems when they think it is their job to think, decide, and have ideas of their own.
They would be much more useful if they deferred to progressives from now on.
lizzie @ #323 Sunday, May 19th, 2019 – 10:18 am
ditto
This is NOT about who leads this ALP.
This is about the ALP having lost the battle of ideas. The fact that the ALP has allowed a bunch of untruths to persist for years and in fact generations. Why do you think the Libs hammered “Labor are bad with money”. Because its generally accepted as fact. Why? Because of a generations worth of lies. Lies that go uncontested. We’re not just talking Murdoch here, though he’s a big part of it.
Between campaigns Labor sits on its arse and pretends that the good guys should win because they are the good guys. What the Labor organisation just does not get is that there is a lot of ignorance and stupidity in the electorate. A lot of “low information voters” to use that euphemism.
For instance, Turnbull should never have gotten away with pissing tens of billions up against the wall on a temporary network. But he did. He did because Labor didn’t campaign steadily in all these years to educate people that anything but fibre is wasted money. And that’s just one little thing.
Its the battle of big ideas guys. And Labor needs to fight that day in, day out.
Shorten had the right policies (almost). Yeah, believe it or not. Yes, I’m left of Labor but I also appreciate that there are many things that Labor should be advocating, but can’t, because they would “frighten the horses”. Why? Because, big ideas. Because the electorate is ignorant of so many things.
Its NOT about who leads. Its not about charisma. Its not about having a Mesiah. For fuck sake guys, Morrison is a total invention. He’s a fake. He’s an ignorant, arrogant asshole. Yet he won. Why? Because, big ideas. Because the voters are ignorant.
Fix THAT.
If the Lib-Libs can sustain themselves in power, they will effectively dismantle the progressive basis of income taxation. The least well paid will be taxed at the same rate as the best paid, and because of the incidence of consumption tax and various direct fees and charges, will pay a higher share of their income in taxes than the wealthy. At the same time, the safety net will be shredded. Lib-topia is coming.
Bert you’re a xavier!
WoW Queenslanders not just dumber than your average potplant, but way way dumber, take a bow your morons and enjoy the reef dying, and your climate killing you.
Nice tributes to Bob Hawke from the panel.
One hopes the ALP gets the message and does some massive reform across every aspect of Labor.
But we are likely to get every form of excuse, and blame being layed on everything, including saying Australians are no good bogans.
The Libs were there, a rotting carcass ready to be cut down, do you understand just how far apart Labor are from Australians when they prefer an inept discredited govt??.
Labor and the faithful won’t learn, they will tell themselves Morrison will fail..blah..blah..and the next election..
Wrong Morrison has now been set up to succeed, regardless of the Australian economy, which will be casualty of global economics.
The winds of change have been blowing since 2007, and the pendulum is swinging strongly …
I believe I’ve earned a right to be here now.
So, I’m staying for a while to see how things go.
Expat Follower
says:
My personal kudos to Nath. Copped a sustained bollocking from the intelligentsia here but stuck to his guns. Vindication is yours.
____________________________
Thanks Expat. I certainly did cop a lot of abuse but I always knew that the people did not trust Shorten. I predicted a hung Parliament and now stand astride the political domain like a Colossus. The oracle of PB. The man who knew. Can anyone add any other superlatives?
Well said.
The arrogant, hyper-partisan, opinion-stated-as-objective-fact attitudes of the Brieflys and Rex Douglases of the world are exactly the sort of the thing that turns disengaged voters off of political parties and politics in general, and ultimately acts against the parties and movements they claim to support.
Now, the amount of people Briefly managed to turn away from the Labor party was probably blunted by the fact that, unless you’ve had several years on Poll Bludger to become acquainted with Briefly-ese, you would be unlikely to understand a fucking word that he is saying. But I can’t imagine the sight of someone at a polling booth, clad in a Labor t-shirt, ranting away about Lib-kin and agent provocateurs and the bourgeois is exactly the image Labor wants to present to the swing voters.
Puff
Don’t worry dear. Melissa Price has got their backs.
The results of the election will be quite encouraging for the Hard Right of the Liberal Party. Only Tony Abbott was defeated, and his electorate is a quite progressive one. The rest all got re-elected, with some getting swings towards then, Dutton in Dickson and a huge one to George Christensen in Dawson. I am expecting a very hard right, but pragmatic when necessary Morrison government.
Anyway, I am with Steve Keen that an economic crisis is coming to Australia soon. The housing market will burst, which will lead to a banking collapse. A Morrison government is going to naturally bail out the banks and impose very harsh austerity to pay for it. I get a feeling a lot of Australians are very complacent, honestly it will need to take something like this to snap out of this complacency.
And Lo…look the losers are lashing out at those dumb voters…like alcoholics in denial. The problem is within..
Andrew I love Tony Burke. He’s my model of a clever, decent, nice politician.
But as you can see now, just being nice and just having good policies is not good enough.
Having an electorate that fully understands that what grows economies is not tax cuts but investment in health, education and infrastructure. That’s one big idea. Having an electorate that fully understands that they are being lied to about the NBN. Having an electorate that can make an informed choice. That’s what we need first of all. No amount of Tony Burks is going to change that if the voters are so stupid that their “vibe” comes from the hail of Clive Palmer ads.