Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Switchboard >

Oz Federal Election

02:25 / 10.11.01

Have just returned from voting: 1. Greens 2. Democrats 3. Labour.

Long boozey night ahead. Keep your fingers crossed, folks, that the Liberal & National Party Coalition isn't returned to power. As Phillip Adams said in The Weekend Australian, 'to re-elect Howard for a third term would be a "sort of death".'

05:19 / 10.11.01

where you based, cavatina?

did you do the 52-box-tick senate vote, or the party ticket?

i've been invited to an election party, on the strength of my ability to yell at televisions, apparently.

m.

Disco is My Class War

06:01 / 10.11.01

I surprised myself by simply not voting. Aside from sleeping almost half the day and not turning up to two other engagements I should have been at.

Never mind, never mind. As a friend just said, 'I'm not disenfrachising myself. I'm engaged in enfranchisment right here, baby.' (He was posting something to Indymedia at the time.)

11:48 / 10.11.01

come weep with me. don't wanna believe it.

15:46 / 10.11.01

Originally posted by Catavina:

Keep your fingers crossed, folks, that the Liberal & National Party Coalition isn't returned to power.

As Phillip Adams said in The Weekend Australian, 'to re-elect Howard for a third term would be a "sort of death".'

Oh, well. Sort of death it is then....

Mainly for asylum seekers just before they enter Australian waters, if this week is anything to go by....

00:18 / 11.11.01

What would Howard have done without Afghans?
He must totally love them!

04:58 / 11.11.01

To the extremely limited extent I think parliamentary politics can achieve anything sunstantial or worthwhile, I'm glad Howard was re-elected.

A Labour victory would have been an endorsement of their utterly conservative, racist, reactionary and in every other way Liberal-identical platform; a mandate to finally and definitively abandon any pretensions to progressive politics. Hopefully, this result will remind them that they cannot win office without the support of progressive, unionists and immigrant constituencies, and they can't count on that support if they're going to be liberal-lookalikes.

The positive stances they did take - which were basically minor contributions to improving health and education systems they began crippling last time they were in office - a) did nothing to offset such literally murderous policies as unqualified support for the world's most regressive refugee policies and war on Afghanistan, and b)would probably have been ditched in a month's time after the announcement that the Liberals' fucked up the economy worse than they thought and there was no money for them (somehow forgetting to mention that corporate subsidies would continue unabated).

The Return Of Rothkoid

20:28 / 11.11.01

And Beazley's resigned, yes?

Cav: similar preferences there; I got to do my bit on Thursday, though. Surprisingly quick: I expected Australia House to be fucking packed.

What's the aftermath like down there today? I only just learned the results now, to be perfectly honest.

20:20 / 12.11.01

Hi Matsya. I'm in the electorate of Boothby and filled in a 26 box ticket for the Senate.

Roth: Beazley has said he'll retire to the back bench.

It was ominous that Howard was quoted in bold on the front page of yesterday's Australian as saying:

'When you go to the people and win ... an emphatic two-party preferred portion of the vote, you plainly have a mandate to implement policies and approaches that are consistent with your philosophy.'

No doubt, among other things, this means that the Libs will now push to do away completely with enterprise bargaining and implement their Australian Workplace Agreements policy i.e. private contracts in the workplace. Working people will be fucked over at the whim of employers.

There's a lot of just criticism being made of the way the Howard govt. used racism and division in their election campaign to win the election. For example, close to Sat. there were govt. newspaper ads featuring Howard's election speech quotation, 'We decide who comes to this country.' Talk about pandering to the Hansonites! Howard has undermined the success of multiculturalism in this country.

Mind you, Labor's support, in broad terms, of the govt's policy on refugees has also been shameful.

However, Crunchy, while it's true that Labor has failed to differentiate its policies sufficiently from those of the Coalition, especially in the lead up to the election, I would prefer Beazley to Howard any day. For a start, he's got a much better grasp of history, multiculturalism, the stolen generation, reconciliation issues and international relations. Take Howard's recent pompous and reckless behaviour in relation to Indonesia, for just one example. The politics of parliamentary democracy are not as monolithic as you represent them.

09:04 / 13.11.01

I'm not at all convinced - what's the basis for saying Beazley has a better grasp on history or ir than Howard? I don't see much evidence. And it isn't 'broad' support for refugee policy; it's consistent support without exception (except for one piece of legislation drafted in a couple of hours over the Tampa). Just before the election he was lamely 'vowing' not to back down from a hardline stance on refugees.

I think we have divergent understandings of multiculturalism. As an official policy of the Labour Party, it's hardly surprising Howard had a go at it, but he's basically left its official organs in tact. He has to - at this point, there's no viable alternative for managing migrant workforces. (What, assimilation?) Sure, he's used racist sentiment to advance his interests, as have Labour governments throughout history. Most of us still live in multi-ethnic communities, though, and will for the foreseeable future no matter who gets elected.

Apart from promising a (largely meaningless, I think) apology, I'm not aware of Beazley taking any particular stance on indigenous issues. Would be glad to be corrected on that point, but even if he has, I would expect him to rapidly abandon them if elected.

It's hardly surprising Howard claims to have a mandate - the winners always do. It's meaningless. Sure, he'll use it to smash unions - oh, so unlike the ALP who'd never do anything of the kind. (Pilot strike? What pilot strike?)

If Howard treating Indonesia badly is the example of why we should have elected the ALP, I have to say I'm unimpressed.

Disco is My Class War

09:04 / 13.11.01

I beg politely to disagree. Labor is responsible for some of the worst political decisions of the past twenty years: letting the invasion of East Timor happen; the native Title Act which most indigenous activists will tell you wa alays going to take away from Land Rights legislation which had been passed earlier; economic rationalism; etc etc etc.

Labor looks better and sounds better on the tongue. They have some kind of long-lost, history/mythology which is supposed to make them more politically acceptable. It's cosmetics. Really, it is. The Greens aren't, but that doesn't mean the system works on any scale at all. The only reaon I have any suport for the Greens is their connections with grass-roots, direct action networks, which they are working on constantly whether there's an election or not. As an electoral party, i think they're always going to be ineffective.

The Return Of Rothkoid

10:42 / 13.11.01

quote:Originally posted by Rosa d'Ruckus:
Labor looks better and sounds better on the tongue. They have some kind of long-lost, history/mythology which is supposed to make them more politically acceptable. It's cosmetics. Really, it is.I've always had that feeling about Labour, too. It's meant to be the "working bloke's party", isn't it? A friend of mine is involved with the ALP - has been since school - and he seems to rely heavily on the ghost of Ben Chifley when describing his passion about the party. IS there too much of a reliance on this kind of mythologising on the part of lots of voters, or what? IT certainly seems something that the ALP are unlikely to want to dispel, but will it be effective in years to come, given that people's knowledge of former PMs and their achievements (if mine, as opposed to my father's, is anything to go by) decreases through generations?

A

04:39 / 22.11.01

i think that a large part of the reason Labour lost was that the Liberal Party seems to be very good at advertising, and negative campaigning especially. Labour, on the other hand, seem to be pretty crap at this. Maybe they need to hire better PR people.

When the libs beat Paul Keating a few years back, i think it was largely to do with repeating the word "arrogant" about him over and over again like a mantra until it stuck in people's heads.

Also, notice how often Liberal ads feature "embarrassing" photos of Labour politicians dancing, or grimacing, or whatever.

It's my plan that next election i will do some fake campaigning for the Evil Party (Liberal) and the Stupid Party (Labour), with "how to vote Evil" and "how to vote Stupid" cards, and badges and stickers saying "I'm voting Evil" and "I'm voting Stupid" etc.

I would very much like to see the names Stupid and Evil catch on.

Is anyone with me?