Some random scraps of reading to keep the ball rolling until normal service resumes:
• Casey Briggs at the ABC has a very nifty bit of data visualisation recording how seats moved between Labor, Coalition and – most tellingly “others” at the signpost elections of 1995, 2004, 2022 and 2025, which you can observe by moving the scroll bar from about a third to half way down. Sticking the change from 2022 to 2025, it can be noted that seats either moved leftwards from Coalition to Labor or upwards from either to “others”.
• Samantha Maiden of news.com.au reports on the post-election reckoning following the Coalition’s evidently over-optimistic internal polling, a neat analogue to a similar failure in the Labor camp in 2019, both failures to some extent reflecting the errors in the published polling.
• I took part in a weekly Crikey debate feature on Friday, arguing to a brief in defending our electoral system. Kevin Bonham has a piece in The Guardian responding to those who have responded to a displeasing result by taking aim at preferential voting, which would have been a helpful thing for me to link to if the chronology had been right.
It’s intriguing how a rural /regional seat like Calare was still behind their man who took a stand on the voice that otherwise broke 60/40 nationally. Mrs brawler is from Mudgee and her late grandmother used to tell me about the Labor MP they had who fell in 1996. Also last year a Labor councillor was elected in Mudgee for the first time in decades. Perhaps something is going on
According to the omniscient Wikipedia, the LNP is a division of the Liberal Party of Australia and an affiliate of the National Party of Australia. Not quite sure exactly what that means.
Presumably the LNP Government in Qld will carry on as normal, but I’m not sure how the split would work for Qld members at Federal level. Is the LNP still in Coalition with the Liberals? Or does it have to de-merge? Or is it on the cross-bench? Or does it get to / have to choose which side it’s on?
Steve if this stunt stands for longer than a month I’m sure it will resemble WA with an official, unofficial coalition
leftieBrawler at 11.52 pm
You may have forgotten it, but spunk has a primary meaning of “courage, spirit and determination, particularly in the face of adversity”. Perhaps Ms Ley will demonstrate such character.
Whereas under Dutton the Libs were flying blind, particularly in his seat, because of his dopey outer suburbs preoccupation, under Ley they have a pilot who may know her destination, although it will be hard to get there.
The WA alliance was more out of necessity – after the 2021 crushing, the Libs literally didn’t have enough MPs to form a shadow cabinet, let alone have a backbench. Even after the slightly more normal 2025 election they’re stretched pretty tight. Federally they’ve got enough people, even if some of them end up being random lower-order senators nobody’s ever heard of.
bcsays:
Tuesday, May 20, 2025 at 8:52 pm
Natasha Stott Despoja was 26 when appointed to the Senate. She’s now 55, which is making me feel old.
Wyatt Roy was 20 when elected to Parliament.
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The youngest *candidates* I can find for this election are two who were 19*:
>>Wil Roche, taking the thankless task of standing as a Liberal in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Canberra. He did okay, I guess (Lib PV dropped 3.6%, not much more than the national drop). Will probably get parachuted into a winnable seat if he stays in politics after he graduates high school oops I mean International Relations at ANU.
>>Owen FitzGerald, the Greens candidate who got Section 44’ed out of Franklin too late to be replaced. Still drew 10.5% of the vote…might be competitive one day.
*Well they claim to be 19, but they both look 15 to me. Getting old, waaaaahhh 🙁
New thread.
What is the possibility of our political system becoming a 4 cornered constest:
Nationals representing the conservative right (absorbing more of the populist one nation/katter types)
Liberals the centre right (current liberal mods and teals)
Labor the centre left
Greens the socialist left
the liberals path to government in this scenario is to win back the cities, become the largest party and then govern in minority by either negotiating with nationals or labor to support legislation. In many regards the liberal moderates (turnbull etc) and the teals have more in common with labor than the hard right canavan/antic/abetz types but just represent the interests of wealthier people.
It just seems the only way back for the liberals is to become a truly liberal party again of competent, highly educated administrators who act in the national interest and are not beholden to special interest groups (big business or unions)