Despite appointing a shadow minister for government efficiency, Dutton also kept Adelaide Liberal MP James Stevens in his role as the shadow assistant minister for government waste reduction.
Despite appointing a shadow minister for government efficiency, Dutton also kept Adelaide Liberal MP James Stevens in his role as the shadow assistant minister for government waste reduction.
He’s going to get in. I kept telling myself that Trump will never win. Common sense will surely prevail. Twice!
This time, even in Australia with compulsory voting, he’s going to win. He’s going to lie and obfuscate and shriek like a banshee about some confected emotional issues, over and over again. All backed by mainstream media 🤮
For what it’s worth, dont fall into any resignation that we mirror the US. Yes, we do in far too many ways, but take Clive Palmer as a simple counter example. Dutton doesnt have the (for lack of the correct word) presense and charisma of Trump either.
Furthermore, parties outside of the Coalition and Labor are on a sharp rise. We don’t have the US FPTP system where the only viable choices of president are (frankly) another two bad candidates, evidenced by the lower US voter turnout for both parties. Here, the crossbench is a real option, growing year on year.
My point being, our material and legal circumstances are different. Education can actually make enough of a difference to at least move forward, even if it’s another shit Labor reign.
Your point about the independents is a good one; I was incredibly heartened by their emergence last election.
I would dearly love to see more of them (in fact I’ve seen placard wavers in my neck of the, previously independent-free, woods) and hope they have the resources to combat the incoming LNP bullshit!
With our thoughts, we make the world
Don’t bend over until forced.
Quite possibly.
OTOH, compulsory voting and preferential voting does blunt a significant tactic of the oligarchical right: using adtech data to identify large numbers of individual voters in key electorates and then microtargeting them with tailored advertising/promoted content to encourage them to turn out (if they’re leaning right-wing) or stay home (if they’re progressive). Telling lefties to write “FREE GAZA” on their ballots instead of voting would have a much higher barrier to uptake than telling them not to vote, if that were legal, and those disgusted with Albo’s centrism can put any number of hard-left protest parties in front of him, as long as they put Labor before the Tories.
I would be interested to know if there are groups more vulnerable to this, and how to reach them. I naïvely hope that people who care about the ongoing genocide or even just progressivism in general would have learned that there are pro-Palestine parties and independents on most ballots.