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Morning after the election.
We rejected Trumpism and Americanism, as represented by the conservative party and their leader, the 'Temu Trump'. THANKYOULORD.
The conservative party leader lost his seat.
That is, he didn't get re-elected into parliament. Just as in the UK, a party leader still has to hold their seat in order to lead the party (and so lead the Government or the Opposition). I have no idea if we've ever had a party that got into power but the leader lost their seat. I don't think so, because otherwise I'd have heard of it.
Anyway, Mister Dutto:
AM I EVER GONNA SEE YOUR FACE AGAIN??
[waits for some 15 million voices to rise with the response – the other 13 million being too young to remember the song, or oblivious to the relevant answer]
--
Not only did the 'centrist' party stay in power, they gained seats. So now they don't just have a majority government (as compared to having to make a deal with independents outside their parties and other small parties to form a minority government) they have a HUGE MAJORITY government.
This is not a great thing for things like collaboration and broad inclusion of ideas, but it's not a terrible bad awful thing either. The re-elected PM is a decent guy, who may be a politician, but also came from a humble background and does remember it. He's not 'working class' anymore, but he wasn't born elite, and sometimes that makes a difference in how they approach things.
His concession speech was a hopeful one – Acknowledgement of Country, talking about Australia as a land with its own idea of itself and not wanting to import it from 'anywhere else', about the inclusion of people from all places and spaces and walks of life, about a few concepts and ideas that are 'Aussie as' and which his party claimed to be pushing.
He even silenced some people who cheered when he mentioned the opposition leader was no longer going to be in parliament – said that's not how we are in Australia, he told them. We behave like decent folk, not assholes.
There are good outcomes which are possible from this, the question is how it all fall out going forward.
–
My candidate didn't make it.
We stayed with the conservative incumbent, although his margin is now a mere 1.7% making our electorate marginal for the first time in some 60+ years. We are not quite the only conservative electorate in Sydney's north – our neighbour to the south-west is still conservative, although our neighbour to the east is also marginal – albeit between a conservative and an independent.
My candidate got third place, but the swing was primarily between the centrists (red) and the conservatives (blue). In an electorate boundary redistribution, we inherited a lot of conservative electorate from the conservative electorate to the east (which has swung independent and is on an absolute knife edge as they try to work out who's won), and a lot of centrist electorate from the centrist eleectorate to the south (which went even 'further' centrist – it's now labelled a 'safe seat' for the centrists).
We pushed that voting for the conservative candidate (our present member of parliament) was the way to keep Peter Dutton out of power, but it seems that the winner of that warning was the centrist candidate (a twenty-something guy who probably thought this was a perfectly good seat to run in without having to worry that he might actually find himself in parliament...only to have the prefereeces swing his way very firmly to the point where it looked like he might actually win the seat on a knife-edge). LOL.
The local branch of the party had their 'election night party' downstairs at the same place that we had ours, and...well, they were jubilant when it looked like their man was up in the polls.
We were disappointed, of course, although a mighty cheer went up in our room when it was declared that the centrists had won, and another cheer went up when it turned out Dutton lost his seat. But the energy in the room was great – we had been defeated, maybe, but we'd changed the game!
It looks like the 'don't risk Dutton' message was effective, but either the current centrist government was strong and comforting enough that most people felt okay preferencing them above the Liberals or people weren't as aware of the candidate's existence (or her policies) and so didn't put her down as a possible vote.
The candidate was struggling a bit at first, but after a little bit everyone buoyed her up and she was feeling much better after a drink.
I've met so many fantastic people while volunteering for this candidate – as someone joked on the chat the other day – we've trauma-bonded through the fires of being an active force in an electorate that was considered immoveable until this electorate. And I think a bunch of the volunteers are going to keep in touch. A few of the young ones are going to look at an independent candidate for a state electorate and start working there.
A bunch of people said how much they appreciated my energy and my problem-solving skills, a few were surprised that this was my first campaign (I guess it's the first one I've actively participated in, instead of watching it happen from the sidelines), and a couple of the younger people liked the way I could 'translate' for the older generation since the younger workers were more logistics and the retirees and mature-age workers were more ground-pounding. The middle-range – the 30-50 age group was mostly missing, in part because it takes up time and energy and only a handful of people have that when they're in the middle of child-rearing and child-raising.
By and large, it was wonderful to work with these volunteers, to chat and share and commisserate, to discuss politics and what we thought about this and that, to make the jokes that you can make with people who feel the same way about the variou politics and political candidates, and to, yes, 'trauma-bond'.
So, it seems I have another social circle...
-
This morning I woke up at 6am as my body alarm roused me. I lay in bed for a while and scrolled social media. I got out of bed, drank some coffee and thought about going somewhere, and instead kind of...frittered the day away until hockey.
Hockey was fun, although we were playing against a team who dropped from A-grade. They were good and cunning, but we were young(ish) and energetic. They beat us 3-1, but our goal was a lovely one.
I had a great run down the side – one handed, with a former coach yelling 'both hands, Sel, both hands on the stick” in my head – and got it into the circle, but couldn't get it fast enough across to the woman in front of the goal. DARN.
Nevertheless, a few people clearly thought I did a decent job. I actually had some marks down on the MVP sheet.
I skipped church. So tired.
And now (at last!) I'm going to bed.
My last act for this campaign – at some point when I wake up in the middle of the night - will be to take down the corflutes we stuck all over the area. Unfortunately, it means the smug bastard MP's face will remain everywhere after we take my candidates posters down. UGH.
Still, it's gotta be done.
–
Finally, I'm grumpy at a friend who commented (generally, on his FB, not aimed specifically at me) about the corflutes still being up.
There are two hundred of us, only fifty of us were really active on the campaign, and I'm FUCKING EXHAUSTED, Fraser. I think 'by the end of the weekend' is not too much to ask!
I love him, but frankly, he can be an asshole.
We rejected Trumpism and Americanism, as represented by the conservative party and their leader, the 'Temu Trump'. THANKYOULORD.
The conservative party leader lost his seat.
That is, he didn't get re-elected into parliament. Just as in the UK, a party leader still has to hold their seat in order to lead the party (and so lead the Government or the Opposition). I have no idea if we've ever had a party that got into power but the leader lost their seat. I don't think so, because otherwise I'd have heard of it.
Anyway, Mister Dutto:
AM I EVER GONNA SEE YOUR FACE AGAIN??
[waits for some 15 million voices to rise with the response – the other 13 million being too young to remember the song, or oblivious to the relevant answer]
--
Not only did the 'centrist' party stay in power, they gained seats. So now they don't just have a majority government (as compared to having to make a deal with independents outside their parties and other small parties to form a minority government) they have a HUGE MAJORITY government.
This is not a great thing for things like collaboration and broad inclusion of ideas, but it's not a terrible bad awful thing either. The re-elected PM is a decent guy, who may be a politician, but also came from a humble background and does remember it. He's not 'working class' anymore, but he wasn't born elite, and sometimes that makes a difference in how they approach things.
His concession speech was a hopeful one – Acknowledgement of Country, talking about Australia as a land with its own idea of itself and not wanting to import it from 'anywhere else', about the inclusion of people from all places and spaces and walks of life, about a few concepts and ideas that are 'Aussie as' and which his party claimed to be pushing.
He even silenced some people who cheered when he mentioned the opposition leader was no longer going to be in parliament – said that's not how we are in Australia, he told them. We behave like decent folk, not assholes.
There are good outcomes which are possible from this, the question is how it all fall out going forward.
–
My candidate didn't make it.
We stayed with the conservative incumbent, although his margin is now a mere 1.7% making our electorate marginal for the first time in some 60+ years. We are not quite the only conservative electorate in Sydney's north – our neighbour to the south-west is still conservative, although our neighbour to the east is also marginal – albeit between a conservative and an independent.
My candidate got third place, but the swing was primarily between the centrists (red) and the conservatives (blue). In an electorate boundary redistribution, we inherited a lot of conservative electorate from the conservative electorate to the east (which has swung independent and is on an absolute knife edge as they try to work out who's won), and a lot of centrist electorate from the centrist eleectorate to the south (which went even 'further' centrist – it's now labelled a 'safe seat' for the centrists).
We pushed that voting for the conservative candidate (our present member of parliament) was the way to keep Peter Dutton out of power, but it seems that the winner of that warning was the centrist candidate (a twenty-something guy who probably thought this was a perfectly good seat to run in without having to worry that he might actually find himself in parliament...only to have the prefereeces swing his way very firmly to the point where it looked like he might actually win the seat on a knife-edge). LOL.
The local branch of the party had their 'election night party' downstairs at the same place that we had ours, and...well, they were jubilant when it looked like their man was up in the polls.
We were disappointed, of course, although a mighty cheer went up in our room when it was declared that the centrists had won, and another cheer went up when it turned out Dutton lost his seat. But the energy in the room was great – we had been defeated, maybe, but we'd changed the game!
It looks like the 'don't risk Dutton' message was effective, but either the current centrist government was strong and comforting enough that most people felt okay preferencing them above the Liberals or people weren't as aware of the candidate's existence (or her policies) and so didn't put her down as a possible vote.
The candidate was struggling a bit at first, but after a little bit everyone buoyed her up and she was feeling much better after a drink.
I've met so many fantastic people while volunteering for this candidate – as someone joked on the chat the other day – we've trauma-bonded through the fires of being an active force in an electorate that was considered immoveable until this electorate. And I think a bunch of the volunteers are going to keep in touch. A few of the young ones are going to look at an independent candidate for a state electorate and start working there.
A bunch of people said how much they appreciated my energy and my problem-solving skills, a few were surprised that this was my first campaign (I guess it's the first one I've actively participated in, instead of watching it happen from the sidelines), and a couple of the younger people liked the way I could 'translate' for the older generation since the younger workers were more logistics and the retirees and mature-age workers were more ground-pounding. The middle-range – the 30-50 age group was mostly missing, in part because it takes up time and energy and only a handful of people have that when they're in the middle of child-rearing and child-raising.
By and large, it was wonderful to work with these volunteers, to chat and share and commisserate, to discuss politics and what we thought about this and that, to make the jokes that you can make with people who feel the same way about the variou politics and political candidates, and to, yes, 'trauma-bond'.
So, it seems I have another social circle...
-
This morning I woke up at 6am as my body alarm roused me. I lay in bed for a while and scrolled social media. I got out of bed, drank some coffee and thought about going somewhere, and instead kind of...frittered the day away until hockey.
Hockey was fun, although we were playing against a team who dropped from A-grade. They were good and cunning, but we were young(ish) and energetic. They beat us 3-1, but our goal was a lovely one.
I had a great run down the side – one handed, with a former coach yelling 'both hands, Sel, both hands on the stick” in my head – and got it into the circle, but couldn't get it fast enough across to the woman in front of the goal. DARN.
Nevertheless, a few people clearly thought I did a decent job. I actually had some marks down on the MVP sheet.
I skipped church. So tired.
And now (at last!) I'm going to bed.
My last act for this campaign – at some point when I wake up in the middle of the night - will be to take down the corflutes we stuck all over the area. Unfortunately, it means the smug bastard MP's face will remain everywhere after we take my candidates posters down. UGH.
Still, it's gotta be done.
–
Finally, I'm grumpy at a friend who commented (generally, on his FB, not aimed specifically at me) about the corflutes still being up.
There are two hundred of us, only fifty of us were really active on the campaign, and I'm FUCKING EXHAUSTED, Fraser. I think 'by the end of the weekend' is not too much to ask!
I love him, but frankly, he can be an asshole.
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You may also hear it called "the LNP" or "the L/NP" or "the Coalition" because it votes with/forms government with the National party (also right wing, but rural) so much that many people consider them to be effectively the one party.
The LNP ran on a platform of "instead of cheap safe solar power today, lets have very expensive unsafe nuclear power tomorrow" and "cheap petrol" and "the cost of living is too expensive."
The LNP running on cost of living is laughable, as the LNP have always been the party of the rich making things harder for the poor/working class.
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I'm glad you didn't elect SudoTrump.
Thank you for explaining.
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"My gal" didn't.
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"HUGS"
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(Much less than Labor used to have back in the days of Gough Whitlam,
5 December 1972 – 11 November 1975. The Liberal party has been dragging Australian politics steadily to the right pretty much since 1975, and Labor has been following them a few steps behind.)
Labor want to kind-of sort-of do something about climate change, and invest in renewables; but aren't willing to close down existing coal mines.
Labor also want to invest more money into free public healthcare and affordable public healthcare.
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On the plus side, at least now they'll have to work for this electorate or they might just throw us out the door as a loss. Who knows?
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I think if the election is on Saturday 3 May, it is reasonable for the last day that people are taking down corflutes to be Sunday ***11 May***
People have lives and jobs and children and volunteering and corflutes being up for 7 days post election doesn't hurt anyone!
As long as they're taken down before the plastic starts disintegrating and leaving plastic fragments/plastic dust everywhere, it's okay!
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But I did remove my candidate's corflutes, and there's apparently a local guy who's trying some building stuff with them so...that's kind of promising on the recycling front.
It would be so nice if there was a limit on corflutes. And I say that as someone who had to run around putting them up.
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*hugs*
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