I had a paywalled piece in Crikey yesterday giving my immediate post-result impressions, which offered observations such as the following:
Unexpected as all this was, the underlying dynamic is not new, and should be especially familiar to those whose memories extend to Mark Latham’s defeat at the hands of John Howard in 2004. Then as now, the northern Tasmanian seats of Bass and Braddon flipped from Labor to Liberal, with forestry policy providing the catalyst on that occasion, and Labor performed poorly in the outer suburbs, reflected in yesterday’s defeat in Lindsay and its failure to win crucial seats on the fringes of the four largest cities. There were also swings to Labor against the trend in wealthy city seats, attributed in 2004 to the non-economic issues of the Iraq war and asylum seekers, and touted at the time as the “doctors’ wives” effect.
So far as this blog is concerned though, other engagements have prevented me giving the post-election aftermath the full attention it deserves. I will endeavour to rectify that later today, so stay tuned. In the meantime, here is a thread for discussion of the situation. Note also the post below this one, dedicated to updates and discussion on progress in the late count.
“CC….the prior problem is that voters do not listen to political parties or politicians, who are generally deeply reviled.”
Then Labor needs to learn how to communicate with voters on the street. It has to. Just coming up with good policies is not enough and I’ve been saying this here for years.
Briefly, I hereby authorise you to conduct a hard-target listening tour of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse in Western Australia. Report back in 3 years with your findings.
Surely the real problem with the ALP’s campaign was that it trusted internal and external polling to guide it. For the same reasons that Sportsbet paid out early, Shorten and his team had good reason to believe they were on solid ground with their package of tax, super and franking credit reform. The Liberals dumped their leaders twice because of poor polling, so they too were fooled by the polls. Unfortunately, by the time the ALP found out what swinging voters really thought, it was too late to change tack.
Confessions @ #1233 Monday, May 20th, 2019 – 9:49 pm
Someone should remind him what happened in 2015 then.
Daisi says:
Monday, May 20, 2019 at 9:42 pm
I know this is unpalatable for some, or many from the ALP, but what about a formal preference deal with the Greens? OK- hear me out.
If the ALP do this, the Greens can do all the running on Climate Change, and the ALP can distance itself and concentrate on other things. A preference deal might therefore keep the leftier folks in line and the ALP can run a line like ‘ we don’t agree with them on everything, but on some things we do.’
The unexpurgated truth is the Gs are not “left”. They are imposters. They work at all times to defeat the only authentic left voice, Labor. No deal is possible between Labor and the Gs, who have to be disowned in every sense.
Martin B – funny that; that’s 100% my experience too…. but you’ll upset some of the zealots here if you inject reality into the conversation. One thing many of them are really good at is hating though….so if that’s representative of their party it’s no surprise it’s going nowhere fast.
Chalmers intimately linked to current Labor large target policies that failed the politics this election.
Albanese has to be the choice.
#Nathwasright
coming up on qanda shortly.
Millennial….Jones has a point. It would be very unwise to suppose that voters who have just rejected Labor will soon regret it and shower their affections on us.
I recall many a Coalition supporter doing a pre-emptive victory lap about 2007 in the aftermath of 2004, claiming Labor was locked out of majority of the country and it’s going to take a long time before they’re competitive again. And that was when they won 87 seats in the House and majority in the Senate.
Salk, how about accepting that a lot of voters are actually ill-educated and wrongheaded about a great many small facts.
Its not arrogance to state this. Its stupidity to ignore or accept this.
Many voters are simply wrong about a lot of things that really do matter.
For instance, would Queenslanders have voted differently if they actually comprehended that there are more jobs in renewables than coal? I mean actually know that fact?
How would voters respond if they knew that fibre is the only viable long term technology and that the Liberals have spent tens of billions on a network that has to be scrapped?
How about the whole “grow the economy” thing. Yes, lots of voters do swallow the lie that making the rich happy will grow the economy. The reality is that investing in people, education and infrastructure is a far better investment. Lots of acts of government spending grows the economy. Why do the average voter accept otherwise? Why shouldn’t a sensible Labor government attempt to educate them of facts like this?
Listening to what voters want is a great thing. If it comes up with hidden gems and good ideas. But just pandering to ignorance, or worse, exploiting it like Turnbull did over the NBN, is not the way to run a modern country.
I mean, the ALP has shown itself to be flexible, pragmatic, Realpolitik-al (whatever you want to call it) in the past, no reason it couldn’t have ditched some ballast at some point, if it had known how damaging the policies were. But no, everything seemed like it was running along nicely, so no need.
“Millennial….Jones has a point. It would be very unwise to suppose that voters who have just rejected Labor will soon regret it and shower their affections on us.”
Exactly, briefly. Labor has to win the battle of ideas.. and simple facts.
This means accepting the fact that lots of voters believe things that are plain wrong.
Chalmers has probably blown deputy on the strength of this qanda performance!
Did he really throw up his hands and say “this is what we are up against”. Not ready for prime time.
“But no, everything seemed like it was running along nicely, so no need.”
Labor could have fine tuned its policies. For instance it could have set a cap on franking credits. Much easier to understand and much less damaging. But I don’t believe any policy mods would change the fact that Labor should have been out there selling its benefits to people years earlier rather than waiting to the campaign.
Indeed their biggest problem was that they released their tax policy years earlier (a good thing) but then didn’t at the same time release their spending policies so people could come to terms with what it meant o them personally.
By the time we got to the campaign the game was over. Disengaged, ill informed voters had already made their minds up.
“Please post more often”
I’d love too, but I have seen over many many years this place can be very intimidating, and often there are long standing in jokes that make little sense. All cool, definitely a great read, but also very intimidating. (Longman here)
It will be an interesting challenge finding a bunch of compareable economies to Australia that are doing so little on tackling climate change … anything in the EU zone – nope theyve been on the game for almost 2 decades, uk- nope coal free power is actually a reality , how about china – nope theyre instaling the equivalent of our entire electricty generation capacity in renewables every year and they experimenting with ets , maybe canada , doh no they got serious 2 years ago , but wait if we exclude california and several other states we could maybe use the usa … oh oh no the usa emissions have been dropping too thanks to a perverse reliance on fracking gas ….. Australia is pretty much at the arse end of action on climate change and we manipluated the system via kyoto credits to begin with ………Struth silk are you sure that nots just another myth perpetuated to protect the assets of entitled incumbents for anoter few years ….
The Libs and their clones ran Red-scare campaigns right through the 50s, 60s and into the 70s. They worked and helped keep Labor out of power for a generation. They will run Tax-scare campaigns again and again in order to defeat Labor. They obviously work. We have to premise our conduct on the knowledge that the Libs will lie about us and the Lib-kin will try to wedge us.
Oh please how can anybody take Alan Jones’ comments seriously. I have just heard him on the ABC saying, just before the election, that Abbott would be returned with about the same majority as in the previous election…. Oh dear…
briefly the scare campaigns stop working when ordinary voters get to know how labor will help them personally. most of what labor talked about was one or two steps removed from what mattered to people personally and I’m surprised that Shorten given his background wasn’t talking jobs.. jobs.. jobs.. His policies were all about jobs, but again, Labor should have been at this for years
Monday, May 20, 2019 at 8:58 pm
. Or the blue collar workers from Queensland who don’t realise that there are more jobs in windmills than there are in coal mines.
Rubbish. Some work in transport and installation, but most of the structures are imported. Keppel Prince do a bit in Victoria but jobs are very insecure.
See what I mean? Have you seen how much automation there is in coal mines these days? Do you realise that solar farms and windmills do actually require maintenance? That these things will be many times the present size in the next decade? Rubbish yourself.
On these pages I keep seeing the argument that Australia’s CO2 contribution is tiny so why should we bother? Madness to sacrifice ourselves etc. This is exactly Alan Jones’ argument,and Andrew Bolt’s. It is the argument of a five year old child at the beach refusing to pick up his rubbish because there’s rubbish everywhere and he wants to go fo a swim.
Australia’s CO2 contribution is about 1.5% of the human contribution. When we mitigate those emissions we’ll be solving 1.5% of the problem. No more, no less. No one else is going to do it for us. We have to accept the freaking responsibility like educated grown-ups.
There are 200 countries on this planet, most of them with a tiny precentage of the total emissions. We need the top emitting 90 to do their bit pretty quick smart or we are f@#$ed. We need to push them to do so through diplomacy and global forums. But of course we have zero credibility to do so if we are standing back and doing nothing. Zero clout, zero kudos.
Last I checked there were about 20 countries with emissions at 1.5% of the global total. So if those 20 countries take reponsibility and act, that’s 30% of the problem mitigated.
Cud Chewer @ #1265 Monday, May 20th, 2019 – 10:29 pm
More self-delusion. The vast majority of punters aren’t interested in politics or policy details. A policy which can be distilled down to 3 words is a potential winner. Labor’s tax policy should have been: Stop the rorts. Stop the franking credit rorts. Stop the superannuation rorts. Stop the tax avoidance rorts. Stop the franking credit rorts. Details don’t matter to people if they get the gist. Would have been effective counter to retiree tax label.
Sgi @ #1266 Monday, May 20th, 2019 – 10:30 pm
Well there’s at least another 2 Longman bludgers here.
“This means accepting the fact that lots of voters believe things that are plain wrong.”….
That’s not a major issue, actually. There is only one thing that has proven crucial, especially in Qld, at the last 2 federal elections: People just worry about their job, their income. Reassure them on that front and they will vote for you. Campbell Newman went hard against the common voters’ financial interests and he was trashed after just one term and in spite of sitting on a massive advantage.
Cud Chewer @ #1263 Monday, May 20th, 2019 – 10:26 pm
Oh, trust me, I am fully aware of that.
Which is why I’m going to spend the next 3 years disabusing the shit out of as many of notions out of as many voters’ heads as I possibly can.
Next election, the next MP from Capricornia will be a Labor MP.
Im sorry Its Time but you don’t get it.
There’s people who care about rorts. Then there are people who know that they are rorts and don’t care. Why? Because they don’t believe it affects them personally. So long as they’ve got a ute and a good job why does it matter if rich bitches get some perks? I’m not sayign that Labor’s tax policies couldn’t have been explained better. I’m saying that there are lot more ordinary every day things where Labor’s policies would have helped them in their ordinary lives that were never explained.
Nor for that matter was it explained to people that Labor’s policies grow the economy better than tax cuts. In the battle for big ideas that’s the big one and it CANNOT be argued for in a few weeks.
Well me too. But its not going to help a lot without the Labor organisation seeing this as its prime mission.
I’m out there every day trying to explain to people that fibre is inevitable. That that is where the rest of the world is going and all the billions we are spending on FTTN is wasted. But it doesn’t help that Labor won’t even talk to people like me and help unify and organise this.
Crispy
‘On these pages I keep seeing the argument that Australia’s CO2 contribution is tiny so why should we bother?’
No, you don’t. Must be thinking of another blog.
Lars Von Trier @ #1263 Monday, May 20th, 2019 – 10:28 pm
Fap off fop!
It’s time,
I’m pretty sure Cud agrees with you. I do too.
And a +100 to everyone encouraging the PB lurkers and past participants to get back on board. E.g. Mex, great to see you back (I might have changed pseudonym since you were last here, used to be L Unionist).
Our ABC. Giving Alan Jones a platform to spruik lies and misinformation about the scientific reality of AGW.
Alan has half a point. Maybe a quarter.
The uniform swing required to deliver majority government at the 2022 election will actually be quite large, considering the number of seats required is so small.
Of course any Redistributions will change that.
Where Alan is wrong is that he is assumes only uniform swings exist, that labor can’t get a massive swing, and that labor are as bad as the coalition at negotiating and therefore need a majority government to pass legislation.
Chalmers looks like a steady pair of hands.
As deputy, would he be a good foil to Albo?
He’d show Bowen up.
Hmmmm…..
I think Labor should recruit Ming Wong to the leadership.
She has been a star tonight.
Confessions @ #1242 Monday, May 20th, 2019 – 10:05 pm
Apparently that means he should pack his bags and go home, according to nath’s sock puppet, Lars Von Tryhard.
@crispy I agree. But I am not a coal miner. Do you think we can convince them? Stop telling them the risks – they think they have to sacrifice something, like targeted taxes, they say “why me?”
We need to convince them that we’re all in this – and it isn’t just them that have to sacrifice.
Cud Chewer @ #1278 Monday, May 20th, 2019 – 10:43 pm
No CC, you don’t get it. People are not interested in politics or policy details unless it directly affects them. That’s why a policy which affects someone’s job will get their attention but not the other 99.99% of voters. And vague references to the economy will get no one’s attention. Better explanations won’t work as no one will bother listening. If it can’t be distilled down to a simple sentence then it will be lost through everyone’s short attention span.
zoomster @ #1280 Monday, May 20th, 2019 – 10:45 pm
A couple of posters have pushed that line from time to time. A new poster was doing it just yesterday.
It’s Time is correct, Cud. Most voters don’t engage with the policies of the major parties until a couple of weeks before an election. And that’s the conscientious ones.
TJones still trying to talk over Chalmers.
“People just worry about their job, their income. Reassure them on that front and they will vote for you”
Pretty much. It may not be right for the long term, but you need to reassure people on that short term issue.
That’s why the convoy was such a bad look. It pretty much was a big FU to all those people.
(Electorate: Perth)
C@tmomma @ #1287 Monday, May 20th, 2019 – 8:51 pm
I have zero f*cks to give about those commenters. Sorry.
“No CC, you don’t get it. People are not interested in politics or policy details unless it directly affects them. ”
That’s my freakin point dude. Labor should have been on the street communicating to ordinary people the benefits of their policies and how they personally affect them all day, every day for years. Not wait till the campaign.
Confessions @ #1291 Monday, May 20th, 2019 – 10:55 pm
Thank you for expressing my own opinion so eloquently. 🙂
“It’s Time is correct, Cud. Most voters don’t engage with the policies of the major parties until a couple of weeks before an election. And that’s the conscientious ones.”
C@t its about making them engage. Literally standing in shopping malls and talking to them.
Clever social media. Actually arguing the shit out of journalists off air. Etc.
The basic facts and ideas count and they CANNOT be argued during a campaign.
You know this world is in a holding pattern until Rupert Murdoch shuffles off this mortal coil or ends up in a dementia ward. When the joyous day comes that that evil p.o.s. has no control any more, maybe we can start repairing this world. We can only hope AGW is not too far
gone.
While I would not wish death on anyone there are some for whom I will not mourn, and for some of them I will actively dance a jig and toast the clean air.
C@tmomma
says:
Apparently that means he should pack his bags and go home, according to nath’s sock puppet, Lars Von Tryhard.
_____________________
I’m not Lars. He is his own man. Here’s a tip: you are so often wrong that perhaps a radical experiment is in order. I suggest the George Costanza ‘opposite’ method. If an idea comes into your head, do the opposite of that idea. You wan’t a ham sandwich? Make a chicken sandwich. Like George you might end up in a wonderful new world.
‘Bombshell’ News for Joe Biden From Australia
Particularly because Labor “scrutineers,” in the phrase of the Australian Web site news.com.au, reckon that “older voters have punished the party for its higher-taxing agenda.” The wire reports that “states where the economy is not thriving” have backed the more conservative party’s agenda, which is “focused on the economy and jobs.”
Plus, too, according to the Wall Street Journal’s report, the conservatives gained their victory “after voters in resource-rich districts turned against center-left opponents who had put climate change at the heart of their campaign.” It noted that Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s coalition appealed to voters in battleground states, “struggling at the end of a long mining boom.”
“It Was Supposed To Be Australia’s Climate Change Election,” is the way the headline writers in the New York Times put it. “What happened?” The Times answers that Australians “shrugged off the warming seas killing the Great Barrier Reef and the extreme drought punishing farmers” to elect a conservative who has “long resisted plans to sharply cut down on carbon emissions and coal.”
https://www.nysun.com/editorials/australias-bombshell-news-for-joe-biden/90692/