Goodness, there seems to be something in the air in today’s newspapers. The Fairfax press, anyway.
The Age editorial: X marks the spot on the post-election Senate map and an article: How the fight for the Senate will unfold.
SMH today: Leader dreaming of a Green Senate and Brown sets out his stall with focus on energy, education.
It’s tempting to wonder whether GetUp!’s Save Our Senate campaign, now formally allied with Labor, the Dems and the Greens has something to do with it.
Yesterday’s SMH: Trio gang up to beat Senate majority and The Age: Three parties unite to ‘save our Senate’. Today’s Age has a short profile of GetUp!s campaigns for this election: Online activists more than a mere mouse click. With the Green/Lab/Dem alliance for this upcoming election, and opening an office in Eastwood to target Bennelong voters especially, the group is starting to give some answers to those who questioned how much influence they could have:
Apart from returning the balance of power to the Senate, Get Up! has identified the environment, industrial relations and Iraq as election issues. It is focusing efforts on undecided voters in Bennelong and the bellwether NSW seat of Eden-Monaro. A companion site, howshouldivote.com.au, will soon be launched, matching undecided voters to candidates in their area using an issues-based quiz. Members are also being urged to “adopt a booth” and hand out candidates’ ratings on election day.
This last article even quotes Mark from a post here about GetUp! written over two years ago:
“The appeal of Get Up! represents a failure of internal democracy, and belief in the viability of change, through political parties. But it also represents a constituency — progressive educated urbanites — who … are often unwilling to identify with the ALP as the main vehicle of opposition to Howard.”
Interesting times.
Addendum: One question, why doesn’t this ad seem to be up on YouTube? Surely it should be on the YouTube channels at least of the politicians who appeared in it, and why doesn’t GetUp! appear to have their own YouTube channel to disseminate this stuff?
Moderate liberals, having crawled out of the wreckage of the Liberals and the Democrats, are starting to get organised. At this election
they(oh, who am I kidding?) we will back Labor but no doubt the left will do something that pisses us off, and some other vehicle will be necessary. You gotta start somewhere, and this looks like a start to me.GetUp! are hopeless: glib where LP is deep; sloganeering where “Quadrant” publishes detailed articles, or Philip Adams conducts lengthy interviews.
I’ll give you one example: after the Switkowski report on feasibility of nuclear power came out some months ago, GetUp! emailed its members, referring to Dr Switkowski as “the PM’s mate”. That he may well be, but considering that he also has
i) PhD in nuclear physics
ii) experience in running a large public enterprise
iii) knowledge of modern techniques in finance, management, forecasting, etc,
I thought he was IDEALLY suited to the role he took on. GetUp! played the man. Weak. But not untypical of their generally crude presentation. (I hesitate to call them “thought processes”). By all means criticise the report for narrow terms of reference, factual errors (if any), forecasting errors (if any), presentatrion of competing power sources, etc etc. Just leave Ziggy out of it.
Ambigulous:
Just on Switkowski: GetUp! may be simply reflecting a fairly common dislike for him among the general public [the PCCW affair, completely unnecessary retrenchments and the like] though you don’t seem to like their style of expressing it.
Andrew E:
Here in Queensland, where the Liberal Party has turned alienating and infuriating its suppporters into an real art form over three decades and more, there is no need for moderate Liberals to remain homeless …. The Greens and Australian Democrats have made a preference deal so there is plenty room in there for voters seeking effective representation for a change.
This is 2007; soon it will be 2008 …. and Sir Robert Menzies is still dead.
Is the SMH heading to the right? A front/back cover advertorial on the Singapore airlines A380 landing in Sydney and an editorial promoting performance pay for teachers. I thought I was reading the Australian.
Andrew E: I concur. I regard myself a small l liberal (having swung from the right, to far left and now back towards the centre) and the closest thing I can find to a party that speaks for me is the Dems, but I don’t think they’re going to be an option after this election.
I see this as a possibility: The Libs will implode and basically split into wets and dries. The Nats will bolt, as they will be big enough comparitively to not need to be bullied around by the Libs. The lack of the opposition will cause the factions in Labor to arc up, as they won’t need the solidarity to hold power, so expect a Labor split between the left and the centrists. In the meantime, Family First will get the growing happy clapper vote and the Greens will gain a little strength, which will be all they’ll need to be competitive against the other parties. So we could see:
Family First
Liberal Dry
Liberal Wet
Labor Centre
Labor Left
Greens
To be honest, I don’t think it’s that likely, it’s just a dream of mine. Oh to live in a healthy democracy with six parties fighting it out for power. Real coalition governments! No party being elected with a “mandate” to do whatever the fuck they like! More honesty in parliament as coalition partners hold each other to promises! Criticise the “do nothingness” of parliaments with many parties, but perhaps that’s not a bad thing. Things that are really un/popular with the public will be treated as such by parties MID-TERM as they remain mindful of just how precarious their hold on power is! I’m yet to see any evidence that more than two parties produces ineffective governments (having lived in Denmark and Germany) in any first world nation. Except Italy, (who I’d argue is not first world, especially the south), but there is as much a difference between having two and six parties, and having two and 130 odd like they do in Italy.
The electoral system exerts a strong polarising influence. The most likely result is for the Liberals to continue to exist, and any suggestion that Labor might fall asunder is just crazy – they’re going to really enjoy being in government! As with NZ, if you want to change the two party system, you really need to change the electoral system.
Might be interesting to see if the Nats decide it’s better for them to go alone in opposition, though.
The Liberals are quite close to being able to govern in their own right without the need for the Nationals. If the Libs were in a stronger position this election (i.e. facing Beazley or Crean) they would be able to edge up over 75 seats. Given that there are only a handful of Nationals Senators (due to concentrated rural support rather than broad nation wide support), the Libs could ditch joint tickets and perhaps win on their own.
Of course, this would require that they booted out Howard and the arch-cons and tried to reinvigorate the wet wing of the party. In short, it’ll never happen.
Well they could have in 96, Sam, but even if (God forfend!) they scraped back in this time the seats the Coalition will lose are more likely to be Liberal than National. There’s almost always an advantage for the Libs in having the Nats inside the tent, but you could make a pretty good argument that it’s a major downside for the Nats most of the time. Interesting to see some of the new HoR Nats running around the Wombat trail saying they lerve Barnaby so much and just can’t wait to cross the floor.
They could’ve governed but the Nats wouldn’t have taken kindly to being denied the spoils of victory. I can’t imagine anything getting past that Senate with hostile Nationals. Still, it would’ve given the Nats an opportunity to flex their atrophied political muscles and stand up for their supporters rather than going along with Lib policy.