Captain GetUp is Coming for Your Democracy Sausage

He's Ready

https://www.dropbox.com/s/q9tul2f6er3z6sk/getup.png?raw=1

Unprepared for the depths of stupidity this country will be plumbing over the next 37 days.

Still, I hope we get to hear a bit about Queensland for once. And Western Sydney, too.

important points of reference to give our international audience context:

• the current government is total fucking shit
• they will probably win because australians are stupid

As an outer-south-western-Sydney-resident-doing-stupid-daily-work-commutes dickhead, watching the CUBs elect a generational, never lived in the electorate Liberal as their local member in the recent state election has made me a bit fearful. Save us, southern states!

xp - US citizen here. hmmmm. sounds familiar.

I mean, I hope the LNP doesn't have a video of Shorten saying something racist, but

A pic I made of Tim Wilson a little while ago, but always evergreen:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DzHTdomVYAAidt9.jpg

that is magical! nice job

Haha. Nice thread title. Certainly screamed "Strayan content" when casually glancing at the app. I shall quietly monitor the hot takes!

I cede that the thread title is an improvement on my "Engadine McDonald's 1997"-related suggestion.

(For those who don't get the reference, I highly recommend googling it. Please.)

Haha, I had heard references to this without understanding what it was about. Excellent.

This most excellent set of google results deserve preserving.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/coqgli8q35aay6j/engadine.png?raw=1

Sadly no one appears to have done anyone boneheaded so far in the campaign which must be a record and remarkable given the weekend. That said they did manage to call the election at the exact moment that allowed them to approve Adani but not have to answer any questions about it in estimates.

the electric cars own goal was pretty boneheaded

Tone’s wide-eyed discovery that Warringah had invented street libraries was pretty boney, but dude was already 84% bone, 6% brain, 10% extremely thinly-stretched skin already

I think Electric cars have been replace by Brussel sprouts and ice cream.

Captain getup or getup or someone is currently robocalling me with a teleconference town hall.

not looking forward to the next 36 days (and will be away for nearly half of it), but we’ve already been invited to a commiseration night with cheese and wine and tears and hugs

the last five years have gutted me, i feel just completely hollow

On the radio this morning - two Queensland famers called bruce arguing about the Adani coal mine.

dutton has attacked a wheelchair user

day 2 of 37

I'm refusing to look up this story and will just assume the sentence concludes "with his teeth"

I love how inscrutable this thread title is, Ed you have settled into Aus nicely!

This is right out of the same book as Tony Abbott attacking a man dying of mesothelioma .

In tony abbot news; tony abbot was a prick today. I had resolve to give some money to zalli stegal every time tony abbot was a prick but I’m not that rich.

the great news is that we will end up with a modern progressive labor governme--

The election has been called #auspol #politas #AustraliaVotes pic.twitter.com/AgDrDkbX1m

— Helen Polley (@polley_helen) April 11, 2019

annyong

Ah the perils of the campaign street walk. Scott Morrison says “ni hao” to an Asian voter in Strathfield plaza, she responds: “I’m Korean.” #ausvotes

— Michael Koziol (@michaelkoziol) April 13, 2019

Dead Cat strategy is alive and well with the coalition.

Hahahahahaha
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-15/nsw-election-results-david-leyonhjelm-misses-out-on-seat/11002814

fucking back of the net

Dead Cat strategy is alive and well with the coalition.

dead set you are more australian than a lot of australians

Lynton Crosby brought that one to the UK so I’m learning from the very worst.

Unfortunately I don’t have a photo but the Palmer United billboard in Nortcote was comprehensively vandalised. My only response to that is what took so bloody long. It seems to be socialists below separation street and anarchists to the north. Bloody socialists probably needed to form a committee to decide to spray red paint over Palmerston smug bastard face.

https://i.imgur.com/SmHM2RP.jpg

lol marrickville (last year)

I didn't expect that Captain GetUp was a creepy misogynistic fuck, just didn't see it coming.

who’d have thought tony abbott would be behind an overblown self-righteous fuckwit who campaigns entirely on negatives and treats women like shit

did you hear the one about the blue-coloured political party that gave a lawn bowls club a giant novelty cheque valued at $1.5 million in front of cameras and much applause and yelling “DELIVERED!” on facebook, and then sent them a letter saying “don’t spend the money, it hasn’t been approved, also this letter is confidential so keep it quiet”

Still, I can't get enough of Downer Family Humiliations - that one's going straight to the pool room.

This one was DIFFERENT from the Downer bullshit.

Really? If it was anyone but the Libs, I'd be surprised.

Yup, still the Coalition, just this time they gave the giant novelty cheque, but also secretly wrote to them saying you haven't actually been committed the money yet, and also you can't tell anyone about this letter.

No surprise but the LNP has a 4channer on their Queensland senate list.

if they weren’t all stuffy old anti-tech fucken cockwits they’d all be 4channers

I guess if fraudy mcwobblebottom has a couple of posters in Northcote then $30m must be carpeting the rest of the country. One argument for First past the post is that Palmer, Katter and the Ginger Troll would all cancel each other out, instead we get the wheel of senate preference flows where it stops nobody knows; but there's a fair chance we'll be denied sensible climate policy by a tub of lard/ginger troll alliance.

There's a huge Palmer billboard near me in suburban Adelaide.

One minor advantage to living in SA is that we have no real One Nation, Lib Dem, Palmer Vanity or Bullshit Nazi support here. Even the religious dipshit vote seems to have collapsed since Cory Bernardi swallowed up Family First.

Queensland needs to fucking sort itself out.

Breaking news!

They can't help it though, their brains are cooked.

Has the Xenophon phenomenon faded then? What's the go with the Centre Alliance? (genuine q)

I’m sitting in the Alice springs qantas club and Palmer is on every sky news break - “zero emissions with nuclear power and 50% cheaper”

I promise I’m not going to liveblog every Palmer commercial but he is good a a magical thinking - he’s going to set iron ore prices a $100 an tonne.

Has the Xenophon phenomenon faded then?

James may know more of his local activities, but yes, when he failed to be elected to the South Australian lower house after quitting the Federal Senate, his national political influence was definitely reduced, and he quit his new SA party last year

Yup. CA is running Senate candidates in SA, maybe one or two will get in, and Rebekah Sharkie will surely trounce useless Georgina Downer again. xenophon's gone back to lawyering.

Thanks!

Why does John howard perpetually look like he is about to burst into tears.

congrats! you can now enjoy tracking down two decades (1987-2007) of T. Martin doing Howard voices that sound like they’re on the verge of bursting into tears, too

I'll never forget his Jeff Kennett tbh.

"mines the car with the flag on the bonnet!"

The 2019 election will boast the highest enrolment rate in Australian history (96.8%) and a record enrolment rate for young Australians (88.8%), in figures released on Tuesday.

9.7% of enrolled voters are now between 18 and 24. fuck 'em up, millennials

can’t wait for this to bite them on the fucking arse.

fourth best thing about not being in the country was missing all this dumb election shit. i do not want to see a Young Liberal on the street. i can and might lose my shit.

only been back in melbourne three days and already can’t help yelling “FUCK OFF” at liberal party corflutes. people might think i’m unwell but i don’t care

i just can’t believe any actual human would put their face to that unbelievably shit party

Up here in Collins it is almost like there is no election. The only evidence of the coalition are these fun stickers clowning everybody’s favourite Queensland ex cop

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ddddcnbgm3cavze/IMG_3484.JPG?raw=1

Nice!

Oh, is this thing still on?

anyway the post-christian left are at it again

the truth is out there pic.twitter.com/hqDdGWr42L

— Nick Schadegg (@nickschadegg) May 3, 2019

Meanwhile in my home electorate

Today I have appointed Leela the underemployed Millennial with a PhD as the Greens campaign for Grayndler’s spokesperson for Pinatas. https://t.co/NCG3pj0j5F

— Jim Casey (@JimCaseyGreens) May 7, 2019

I have done the pre-poll - it was quick and easy with was able to fully enjoy under the line of voting (yes, Anning's Nazis were marked dead last), albeit sausage-less.

I've pre-polled in the past and gone to get a sausage on the day without queuing, good stuff

Guys, you can cook food at home.

I had completely missed out on the naked nazi until today.

which liberal party member was naked? i’m not keeping up

This guy (one nation candidate in wa)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tkgcrpxp4i9567t/File%209-5-19%2C%2020%2030%2035.jpeg?raw=1

Liberals are busy saying rapists are the real victims.

In general all parties seem to have been picking some fucking ghouls to stand as candidates.

AgkwDKhZqVaEbWfSlvX-u-Gm-f6Vl3xgb8U26wpH0sdSYop9XVeQuocE3MdEQloScva3yypZ76lcLohzs10amwEORJ-UKUkm2ebW5HgolpMWiQ/file# ?

oh hey, that image shows in Zing!

My area is all Greens signs, all the time (obv). Bit tiresome tbrh.

a million times better than the batshit tory posters saturating my area

Learned that in my electorate we have NO Nazis standing, aside from the Liberal stooge, and despite being in SA, not even a Bernardi shitbag candidate. Even the one independent seems sane and decent. Weird.

Cooper seems to have gone back to being a safe seat after the green by-election debacle last year. Our shitbags are limited to UAP and Liberals with a possible shitbag independent who doesn't seem to have registered her 'Voter's Right Party' in time for the election.

It seems like months since I voted. Though the AEC dude probed more deeply than usual re eligibility for pre-poll voting. Had a little laminated checklist of criteria, something I've not seen whipped out in the past.

With about a quarter of a million votes submitted on each of the last few days, I do wonder how many would bother to queue up on election day proper if we didn't have to (pretend to) have a reason for voting early.

Pre-polling is growing, but more than anything, it's easy for people to remember to vote on voting day. Also, Australia's high-ish proportion of swing voters mean that ppl are paying attention during the campaign and making their decisions up until election day.

My electorate (Australia's smallest!) is as solidly rusted-on Labor as it gets thanks to DJ Ablo, so there's room for a range of kooks: this time we have a Liberal candidate who's a rugby-playing Federal cop and gym instructor, likely to come third behind the Greens firefighter; a Palmer candidate whose previous political experience is running the P&C at this school; a lawyer from the fruit-loops-with-lots-of-good-policies-actually Science Party*; and the Nile mob are running a Chinese pastor who lives in and campaigned in John Howard's electorate as recently as the December 2017 byelection. CDP got 1.2% last time, which I wouldn't expect to increase.



* since the last election, the previous Science Party candidate has spent months in court battles with the State government over implanting a travelcard chip in his hand, and thus not being able to produce the physical card to ticket inspectors.

I hadn't given most of my lower house minor candidates (Palmer; Rise Up Aust; Animal Justice) a lot of thought before voting, to be honest. Redistribution has actually made the seat ever so faintly marginal, which is novel. But the Lib candidate was one of those disendorsed racists, such that the incumbent, a certain former attorney-general, will be surely be returned. (My $2.75 of electoral funding went to the Greens; they'll not get much over 10% here, but I can't bring myself to give the incumbent first preference.)

there's room for a range of kooks:

Although only six candidates total this time, vs 11 in 2016. Folks caught double dissolution fever!

Good reference for the microparties in the Senate: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/may/10/australian-election-2019-full-list-of-micro-parties-standing-in-the-senate

Word on the street is that Lab/LNP will now seek to reduce the pre-poll period somewhat urgently.

As of COB Friday approximately 1.93m people had cast their vote at an early voting centre for the 2019 federal election. Around 286k voted yesterday. #ausvotes #auspol

— AEC (@AusElectoralCom) May 10, 2019

This compares to almost 1.1m prepolled at the same stage of the 2016 federal election #ausvotes #auspol

— AEC (@AusElectoralCom) May 10, 2019

What street? (I’m genuinely curious for a supposed rationale behind such a move - to stop ppl from voting for racist nutbags before the press manages to get them disqualified?)

Just comments in all sorts of places--I claim no inside knowledge. :) I think it's mostly that the larger parties have traditionally ramped things up to some big announcements (or dirt-bombs) in the final days of the campaign. When, as you said above, a greater number of people are traditionally paying attention. They get way less bang for their buck when 30? 40? percent of the electorate have already voted weeks earlier. They're already dragging official campaign launches forward with this in mind. And I seem to recall a joint committee recommended reducing the window from three to two weeks after previous elections.

Well, that's handy. Seems Bernard Keane addressed this at some length last week:

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/comment-swing-towards-voting-early-has-left-the-governing-elite-fuming/ar-AAAMHhy?li=AAgfLCP&%252525252525253Bocid=SL5MDHP

Australians demonstrate their disengagement and alienation from the system in other ways, too. The level of support for minor parties and independents, as everyone knows, has hit record highs, with nearly a quarter of voters opting to support someone other than a major party candidate in 2016.

surely the latter is evidence against the former assertion, not for

Innit. He also seems to contradict himself by suggesting early voters are both (i) disengaged AND (ii) "daring to demonstrate agency, rather than act as passive recipients of manipulation." Oh well.

The whole commentariat seems hard-wired to view a drop in enthusiasm for The Labor Vs Coalition Show as an actual problem for democracy, rather than for those parties alone. The ongoing use of phrases like "both sides of politics" and the readiness to characterise support for other candidates as mere "protest vote" are further symptoms, methinks.

i’ve been totally incapable of engaging at all in this election campaign, apart from screaming “FUCK THE FUCK OFF” at every blue poster (and there are A LOT of blue posters jesus christ)

i did wonder how thy would campaign after six years of total fucking misery, the answer seems to be “blatantly and copiously lying”

the Liberal party campaigning in a federal election by.......... lying?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikinews/en/thumb/d/d9/Childrenoverboardboat.jpg/350px-Childrenoverboardboat.jpg

idk i have a memory of them rolling out a through line of “we will do this” or “we have done this”, but this year every single thing they’re saying is a lie, including but not limited to “labor’s retiree tax” and “we have already restored the budget to surplus next year”

“We passed a $100 million environmental protection bill just last week. You wouldn’t know it, it goes to a different Hansard”

in the same imaginary parallel universe as their environment minister

Are you... actually screaming fuck off at inanimate objects in the street? That kind of thing can get the attention of a CAT team if yr not careful ;P

irl very much in character with posts

yes

trayce: tbh i think people agree with me

my ballot arrived and I am hyperstoked

Apparently pre-poll votes have now passed 20% of total enrolled voters. (Yes, I am apparently obsessed with this matter.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bleyX4oMCgM

I'm actually pleased cos now maybe voting on satdee will be quick!

(it usually is anyway tbh you just have to time it right - not first thing or lunchtime, elevenses usually does it)

we have 31 senate parties in macnamara

parties

31

I made it to 29 out of 105 below the line in the Senate before it turned into nothing but anti-vaxxers, close-our-borders, and Tax Other People Not Me fringe parties. Still I had to push on, as Fred & Elaine Nile's daughter is running, and I've put a Nile last on every Senate ballot they've run on in the last quarter-century.

yeah i did the test ballot today and it was properly a tornado of fuckheads with innocuous names. at least 14 of the 31 are batshit insane.

incredible that hawke’s death news hadn’t been out there half an hour when tony abbott reminded the country what a total fucking shit sandwich he is. i really hope that grips the news cycle tomorrow because that fucking clown needs to go down and take the entire party with him.

people loved Hawkey (be it for the good bloke he was or reminder of simpler times, etc.) so I wouldn’t be surprised if a) the non-Murdoch media really runs with it and b) it pisses people off

anyway looking forward to seeing Toney look/act totally weird when he loses his seat

The grunt at the end really says it all

"Tony, we know exactly what you're going through ... they did the same to Jesus." - talkback caller Heather to former PM Tony Abbott on 2GB this morning 😳#mustlisten #auspol pic.twitter.com/i5GPNyCdXs

— Roje Adaimy (@rojeadaimy) May 16, 2019

I happily let my senate ballot exhaust under the amended rules, so just ignore the nutjobs altogether.

Anyway, the day is here and I'm a bit excited. (It's possible I enjoy elections a bit too much, given the typical outcomes.)

Good luck aus

Hopefully my last election without a ballot, although scomo and Dutton have done their level best to wreck the department of immigration, so citizenship processing times are crazy long right now.

If I were to get a vote first preference would go to the Victorian socialists as the only party really trying in Cooper, plus they seem to be out their trying to organise call centre workers so they deserve $2.75 for that.

Getup messaged me this morning recommending I voted Hinch, Greens or Labour in the Senate. I keep looking for the major flaws in Hynch, but his lefty populism seems quite genuine and it if means you don’t have to preference a ghoul, a fash or a loon then so much the better.

Eh.. hes too much of a vigilante mob justice person.

I was in and out in under 10 mins at my local skool, there were more people trying to buy vegan democracy sausgaes (lol brunswick) than voting by a wide margin, but thats why I went at elevenses.

dinner and wine lined up with some good friends and i’ll be honest i’m a bit scared

like ed, i can’t vote but hopefully will be able to next time (have a very long wait in the immi queue to go yet) and i’m feeling quite nervous but hopeful. i still feel guaranteed glee whenever i recall john howard losing his seat and am really hoping zali steggall will win today and double that banked joy.

We have fancy dinner in Carlton to celebrate being together for 12 years. We may have something like a result by the time that is over.

congratulations! have a lovely dinner and i hope we do

the best thing about absentee voting was getting to unfold the entire Senate ballot flat to work on it

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D6uD91iUcAA6EAL.jpg

good luck Australia

The Alan Partridge of politics #AusVotes pic.twitter.com/bFlhXUQiRX

— Scott John (@Scott_John) May 18, 2019

actually feeling sick

fuck you, queensland, you giant cyst of thick, selfish bigots

FUCKING QUEENSLAND FUCK QUEENSLAND

This fucking country

not taking this well at all

i actually feel stateless right now, because there is no fucking way i am any part of this country

antony green has called it for the neonaizs and i do not want to be a part of this country any more

Well this is shit.

sausage democracy

I really felt Labor did an above average job of actually looking progressive this time. More appealing than they've been for ages. But appealing to someone like me is not how one wins elections in 'straya.

The shy fascist vote comes through again, everywhere, but especially in Queensland.

labor is one party. The other half have to gather the scraps. How is that fair.

Looks like the senate might also become a little more friendly to a coalition government. Bugger.

Ed otm

the australian commentariat is falling over itself asking “what happened?” – what happened is australia returned a corrupt, racist, homophobic, inept, legitimately sociopathic government that hates them. that is what happened.

this is a wake-up call to a lot of australians, not that we got the national mood wrong, not that we’re ignoring a “silent majority”, but that the level of corruption and collusion in australian politics and media is now absolute.

Well that certainly happened, but how do you see it as evidence of corruption and collusion with the media? The News Ltd papers spouting their usual anti-Labor cant? It's been that way forever. My take is that Shorten, for all his good qualities, was fundamentally unelectable for reasons I don't really get. I think we will see Penny Wong MP in the Reps within 5 years and taking the leadership.

Yeah, I've never really heard anyone articulate the reasons for Shorten's personal unpopularity. I mean, if Abbott and Morrison are electable...

Possibly the saddest thing: having run and lost with a vaguely progressive agenda this time, Labor's mostly modest, no-brainer reform proposals will be poison for several parliamentary terms. Labor's right factions hardly need further encouragement.

how do you see it as evidence of corruption and collusion with the media?

in that this government has been objectively worse than gillard/rudd at every single thing, but the press have given them a free pass at every turn. news corp obviously, but also whatever-fairfax-is-called-now flipped hard-right the second nine bought the company, and even the abc has been gentle on them out of fear that they’ll be punished even further. they’ve had a dream run where labor got massacred on a daily basis.

Yeah, I've never really heard anyone articulate the reasons for Shorten's personal unpopularity. I mean, if Abbott and Morrison are electable...

Shorten was never bad or poisonous; he was nothing. Voters respond to personal charisma generally, and it's also an extremely effective way of selling policies.

(Albo is a better communicator and campaigner than Shorten, but I think has been wise to not seek to do so on a national scale before. Plibersek would make a great leader and campaigner, but I'm afraid the eradication of a neutral news media is gonna make it hard-to-impossible for any woman to last a term in opposition.)

yeah i do think albo is the best choice, at least right now. he could sit nicely in the long shadow of hawke.

i see your point about shorten, but given the hideous alternative we were faced with (and got) (again), labor should have romped this in. country’s fucked.

Shorten was widely acknowledged to be less popular than the party he led, as preferred PM he trailed the last three Lib leaders consistently while the ALP were ahead by decent margins.
Consensus today seems to be that Queensland went hard for the Libs because the left wing southerners were touring the place telling them not to do the Adani deal, which didn't go over well. That, and a constantly shifting message from the ALP while Morrison was able to scare the electorate that if the franking credits were on the chopping block, who knows what other radical changes were coming. And sticking to the myth that the Coalition "manages the economy" (ha fucking ha) better than Labor.

the labor message did seem to move around a lot

basically a) everyone is fucking stupid/greedy and b) bledge sharmep is unlikeable

Tanya is probably the best bet now for the ALP, I reckon a highly competent female leader will be a great counterpoint to the shitshow that will be the next three years of government.

but she’s a woooooommmmmaaaaaannnnnn, the conservative tears will elevate sea levels

The problem with compulsory voting is you have, lets face it, the bulk of people voting on cult of personality and nothing else.

I'm here to tell you right now thats why Labor lost. Even Charlie Pickering was shitting on Shorten on his show last week for being a boring useless turd.

What someone's like as a person should have absolutely nothing to do with how anyone votes for a political party. But when you make the unwashed masses who actually dont care all have a say, they'll just fire off the easiest thing they think of, sorry.

I have to say I dont agree on the corruption comment though, not re the media? Geez all the polls coming in had labor in front and Hawke was venerated even in the Herald Snu.

Consensus today seems to be that Queensland went hard for the Libs because the left wing southerners were touring the place telling them not to do the Adani deal

This is also unsurprising to be blunt and fatalist. The focus on Adani so heavily really baffled me, esp coming from down here. I agree with an anti coal stance but now was not the time to make that the forefront argument if you want to win over the bulk of regional and northern aus. Jobs, infrastructure, taxes schools and health is all we should have been banging on about. People like my dad hear "adani" or "climate change" and immediately shut down.

always thought that if the US had compulsory voting the Republicans would never ever ever win again, maybe wrong though, I don't trust any assumption anymore

Making people who dont give a shit about politics vote is fraught. And they just dont teach civics in Aus schools in any meaningful way unless you actively take modern history classes (at least they didnt when I was in school, dunno what its like now)

there have been a whole load of hot takes since saturday night (i mean in the general discourse, not anyone here), but the one theme that’s emerging today is that labor appealed to the generous, considerate side of australians, but most australians are selfish bigots who don’t give a single fuck about empathy

sounds familiar to me

Adani, the death/retiree tax scare and the right wing slant of the media all played a role. But I don't think that lets Labor totally off the hook, Labor MPs put in Shorten as a factional play, even though rank and file members had gone for Albo and even though it was already obvious that he didn't play well with the general public.

it’s bizarre all this focus on shorten being unpopular/unelectable when the coalition has been fielding toxic fuckheads for >20 years

always thought that if the US had compulsory voting the Republicans would never ever ever win again, maybe wrong though, I don't trust any assumption anymore

fwiw it’s compulsory turning-up-to-vote, you can do what you like with the ballot papers

Really enjoying the endless "you shouldn't blame Queenslanders, they were scared and misinformed" takes, as though being a stupid fuckwit makes you less culpable for torching everything.

otm

As usual when Labor lose "unloseable" elections it's down to hubris and the smugness of the messaging - conservative middle-of-the-road Australians see schoolchildren taking the afternoon off school to hold up "Stop Adani" signs as a supposed grassroots movement, when let's be honest most kids would never have heard of Adani if it hadn't been a carefully orchestrated message, plays into the reactionary mindset. Messaging about the "top end of town" and smug right-on Instagrammable movements spell "POLITICAL CORRECTNESS" to your average rural Tasmanian or north Queenslander, who thinks "right, screw you guys" and votes for the familiar bunch of accountants and lawyers representing resistance to change and a desire to keep my money rather than give it to the pinkos and the dole bludgers. Idealism, especially choreographed self-righteous idealism, is poison at the ballot box.

absolutely do blame queenslanders, they are wanton dickheads glorying in their ignorance and insularity and bigotry and sticking it to the “lefty’s”

the idea of idealism being poison at the ballot box is depressing

Compulsory voting is a bad idea because it violates freedom of expression, it doesn’t matter what other effects it has.

compulsory enrolment in no way violates your freedom to draw a dick on your ballot, or to not bother turning up on the day, or from numbering 105 boxes in the order you want to

(also, what freedom of expression?)

even working at a federal election and having to explain to belligerent 18-yo tradies why they’re “supposed” to vote while their 17-yo gfs apologise over the top of them has not turned me off popular enrolment

matthewk: not that i disagree with you in principle at all, but i think the more hostile bigots will vote for bigotry whether kids are holding “STOP ADANI” placards or not. entitled fucks will always find an excuse to be entitled fucks, and it will always be someone else’s fault that they’re entitled fucks. remember all the “gays are wearing rainbow shoelaces IN MY TOWN and that’s why i will vote against their marriage rights” rhetoric from a couple of years back.

QLD really is a bit of another country compared to evrywhere else.

But people also forget regional NSW. Where I grew up is an exception (I guess eden monaro has canberra to boost it a bit to the left?) but everywhere west and south of the blue mountains people seem to forget about, and its all fairly centrist/slightly right in my experience. Not rabidly pro-mining/anti-reffoes/anti gay exactly but just... really whitebread?

I just always assume that people who don’t show up to vote are uin favor of more liberal politicians/policies . At least it seems that way in the United States

the idea of idealism being poison at the ballot box is depressing

Compulsory voting and preferential voting are good not bad
Australians are bad not good

This is heartening at least. I have plenty more to say but work to do right now.

Our statement on secure jobs and a safe climate. pic.twitter.com/O7budJqSob

— NUW (@NatUnionWorkers) May 20, 2019

AA I agree with you but I think the notions of social justice / humane treatment of refugees / indigenous recognition / sexual and gender diversity / climate action / anything not resembling the 1950s can be very conveniently wrapped up in the "political correctness" bundle for those who dislike even a couple of those notions. Bigotry is a bad look but if you're against "more bloody political correctness" you're a dead set Aussie legend, have another snag. The smug and self-righteous way that the ALP, Greens and supporters delivered their messages basically facilitated the bundling and made it easy to justify rejecting it at the ballot box. Don't get me wrong, I fall on the left side of all of those issues and vote accordingly, but I wince when I see how they are presented to middle Australia. For all his faults Kevin Rudd understood this. As did Kim Beazley.

(as did Bob Hawke, of course)

I'm in agreeance with Matt tbh.

Look at Dan Andrews. He's Labor/left but hes playing the middle and Getting Shit Done, he wont get into slagging matches about the other side, he doesnt press ht button issues, he just rolls up his sleeves.

(sorry for my very disjointed replies i rly should be working lol)

just saw on wechat that a friend campaigned for frydenberg. fucking hell. couldn’t delete him fast enough.

matthewk: right there you’ve hit on the enormous gulf between what australians think they are and what they actually are

I think it's a bit of a cop-out to just say the Liberals won because Australians are racist bigots. I mean they are, but no more so than they were when they were voting in Labor governments, which has happened recently even in Queensland. A Labor victory was possible - Labor couldn't control what the Libs or the right-wing media did, but could control their own message and presentation of it. They got some of that strategy wrong.

not much of it, really. the eradication of Fairfax, and the massive rise in proportional Facebook use amongst geriatrics, are probably huuuge factors in this election and the surprise re: polling beforehand

SHE'S NOT RUNNING

albo

Penny 2025

now you can't tell me this isn't inspirational from a prospective leader pic.twitter.com/6Z6mEwcvph

— jeremy poxon (@JeremyPoxon) May 20, 2019

When are they going to finish counting the votes?

After mine arrives.

Stephen Conroy: Australian's sent the message. They're not prepared to suffer further increases in electricity prices without a practical path forward. Labor has to step back from the @Greens and @GetUp led demonisation of coal.

MORE: https://t.co/ZDLxzYd6Cq #amagenda pic.twitter.com/mNXHbeOJcO

— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) May 21, 2019

This makes me so mad. Coal is a fucking furphy. The major driver for the increase in costs of electricity over the last 10 years has been the costs of the transmission and distribution networks which were either privatised or shined up to be privatises. Every dollar of capital that gets put into these networks gets a guaranteed return; so guess what, these networks have been over built and over capitalised. We have some of the highest network tariffs in the world whilst our wholesale prices for energy are middling, although even these are gamed by the oligopolistic gentailers (I know I used to work for one). Electricity retail competition is a sham, if labour wants to take a position on this they should advocate for nationalising the networks and consumer energy retail, move to wards a state owned version of the California model, or fuck it allow then to vertically integrate and regulate the hell out of them.

Coal is dead, it is more expensive than solar, more expensive than wind and it's not even reliable - watch what happens to the energy market when one of AGLs MacGen or LoyYang generators trips out ad compare it to what happens when the wind doesn't blow in a a small part of this very very big country.

That said labour really fucked up the whole Adani thing. Fisrt off they had quite a lot of room to manoeuvre because the Greens were nothing in this election. They could have left that flank unattended because the greens were going after liberal seats in Melbourne not Labour ones. Secondly they should have pushed the 'Green new Deal' angle and made it about mining - Put Matt Fucking Canavan on the back foot by establishing a Renewable materials infrastructure fund (or something) Invite the world to come and get their Cobalt and Graphite and Lithium and Silicon right here in Australia. Say to those miners in Queensland and the Hunter yes coal is ending but mining isn't - you and your children and your children's children will have a bright future because everything needed for the green revolution is under the ground in Australia.

Green Jobs should have been front and centre of a jobs and wages agenda.

It's really galling because their was some important stuff on the slate, restoring penalty rates to hops workers who got rorted. The Cancer care things was good, not least because there is a collection going on in my local cafe for someone who is has a lymphoma and is now getting hit with all these random medical bills she can ill afford. But that is not enough - we need to have a serious talk about medicare and the insurances system because guess what, it's fucked. I had surgery earlier in the year and I'm still getting random bills - it's like the surgeon just invited all his mates into the theatre whilst I was knocked out and told them to set they meters running. I'm all right but for many people there seems to be less and less service through medicare, insurance doesn't even let you cover everything - if you can afford it, and out of pocket costs can be crippling.

Basically Labour should go big or go home a lurch to the right isn't going to help, but it does need to build a big tent. It also needs a vision that inspires a ground game - Gould piece in the graun about Zali Stegals effort - labour needs that level of passion everywhere.

I like this post but as a non-Australian this is a lot to contemplate

a boomer, Ed - such great insight

A rhetorical shift to the right for Labor is pretty inevitable right now but it doesn't necessarily mean an awful lot with the election 3 years away. They're not going to be wheeling out any big policies now or in fact at any time I imagine given what happened in the election. They're just going to wait for things to go wrong for Morrison, which they almost certainly will.

It’s go big or go home. Any kind of nuance will get twisted on social media. By all account people were going to the polls with death taxes and shorten as a granny mugger thanks to Facebook so the messages has to be loud clear and unambiguous.

incrementalism and nuance just don’t work. Fixing Medicare for cancer suffers doesn’t work as a message - you have to go out and say ScoMo wants to make you pay every time you go to the doctor labour will make sure you never have. Labor get fucked every time on costsings and nuance and the coalition get to lie through their teeth and I think vision is the only way to override that.

You're right. But sadly I doubt many in Labor see it that way. They tried the rolling policy strategy and lost, so next time they'll try to eke out a win playing the small target game and leave the vision thing to the Greens...

Maybe it's because of where I live but the greens never even turned up to this election. Their strategy seems to have been to keep quiet and assume aa certain proportion of labor voters will preference them first in the Senate.

Its what I did, I only votd Lab with greens 2nd prefs and nothing else at all. They were all a festering pile of nope.

OTM re the Medicare business. To be honest, that Medicare-for-cancer stuff hardly grabbed my attention at all. And I'd had recurrent cancer since 2004! LOL. I don't doubt some people receive big bills somehow (probably weird gaps in the system that could apply equally to other patient types?) but as far as I knew, cancer patients pay virtually nothing under Medicare as it is. If I was underwhelmed then it's hard to imagine those with no particular interest in that one condition being swayed.

To be fair to the Greens, they have relatively few media opportunities. They're lucky if they get on something like Q&A much more than half-a-dozen times a year. (They'll be dissed every week though, of course, by the obligatory Labor and coalition representatives.) Whatever they did seemed to work. Their vote held up well. Significant increase in Queensland, even, last I saw.

Medicare infuriates me. I earn enough that I have to get insurance, I'd rather just pay more tax but fair enough. I recently snapped a tendon in my leg. I went to my GP because I thought it was just a bad sprain, my GP doesn't bulk bill but hiss surgery its in a convenient location, I like him and I do n't go that often but that was charge number 1. He said I should get an MRI, this isn't covered by medicare for out patients so charge number 2. GO back to the GP (charge Number 3) he says I need to see an orthopaedic surgeon, why not try the one with consulting rooms down the hall. I check he's on my medicare Gap cover list with my insurer and then go an see him (charge number 4).

Surgeon says I need surgery and quickly because the tendon is retreating up my leg and he has a slot in a few days.. He says he doesn't do surgery for the gap cover rate only, I look pained and nearly faint as he describes the surgery - this is apparently a good negotiating technique because he says he'll do it for $500 over the gap cover rate (charge number 5). He sends me for a moon boot (charge number 6).

Next Monday I get to the hospital for admission, they hit me up for the insurance excess (7) and a pre buy on my drugs (8). Admission nurse looks at my coverage and says oh, Australian unity they are notorious for not paying and making you go and sue someone to recover the costs (given I did the initial injury in Japan, I really don't want to do this. ) After surgery I start to lose count of chargers for drugs, anaesthetists, anaesthetists assistants, casts, follow up consults.

It's a good job I already owned a pair of crutches.

Conceivably this would have tuned out differently if I'd gone to the ER of a public hospital or had a mythical bulk billing GP; but by the time I got to the GP I was in a lot of pain and wanted it fixed. I wasn't going to shop around surgeons for the best deal. As it is the insurer still hasn't paid the hospital and who knows if they will. I'm lucky enough that I could eat the cost if it came to it but it would be a pretty significant chunk of change.

As it is its cost close on aa couple of thousand dollars to get this fixed, I'm just lucky I work some billable hours lying on the sofa to keep the money rolling in.

All in all I would rather pay more tax and get a medicare system that actually covered everything for every body and a long way in second preference have a medical insurance system that was in some way comprehensive. Although having lived in the States and had some gold plated insurance paid for by my employer, you can see, very easily how a private health system goes into a cost spiral.

a great post Ed

I get the feeling it's when you get private health insurance that it all goes wrong and it starts costing a fortune. I don't have private insurance and my GP bulk-bills and I've paid for very little down the years. I spent a night in a sleep lab and paid only $80 of the $900 fee, I've had free physio, free colonoscopy. I'm resigned to the fact that one day I'll need some elective surgery and won't want to wait 2 years to have it done in the public system but it will be cheaper just to pay for it as a one-off than pay years of insurance. My brother is an oncologist and he doesn't have insurance! He tells me if you ever have anything seriously wrong with you, just front up to ER or get referred to a public teaching hospital because not only will it be free but you'll get much better care than in a private hospital. Of course the current govt will try to force everyone to go private...

Why wasn't medicare an issue. This was the government that tried to put a tax on going to the doctor. This is the government that has frozen medicare rebates to GPs and almost everything else for years. Doctors (presumably with massive HECS debt) have to choose between get $36 a time in rural Queensland treating ordinary people or $90 a time for treating Ed's stupidity in Melbourne (if some one offers you a go on an aircraft escape slide - don't do it). No-one was even talking about access to medical services in the bush or the outer suburbs. No one is talking about how the coalition is dismantling the public health system bye systematically underfunding it an providing doctors with every incentive to work in a private system that the broken insurance system can't even cover properly.

Xpost

ZZ I have definitely learnt my lesson. I will front up to St Vinnies or the Royal Melbourne from now on.

Any chance this was a posterior tibial tendon?

Non-life-threatening musculo-skeletal conditions might be the least well-covered by Medicare, methinks. Even you do dash to a public ER department in the hope of being referred internally they'll often be tempted to refer you back to your GP for further scans, etc. If you're not spilling blood or having a seizure, ER doctors' investigations can sometimes be kinda cursory.

Tibialis anterior tendon

I do get the impression to that musculoskeletal injurers are regarded as having happened on the job or through stupidity and therefore workcover takes care of it or it is one’s own fault.

Sorry to hear you had that experience (and injury!) Ed.

Ive leaned heavily on the "fully public system" approach due to permanent emoty pockets and I have to say, I havent had a bad experience so far. Waiting lists have been reasonable, and the procedures all completely free.

(MRIs are def a different story - I need one for my shitty knees and its not covered under medicare unless I wrangle a sneaky referal from a sports (!!?!) medicine specialist ugh).

TBF my all-free procedures have been internal health related (scans, bla-scopies, etc) rather than "My hip has disintegrated and I'll be on the waiitng list for 2 years".

sorry to leapfrog so many people, just want to respond to zelda:

They're just going to wait for things to go wrong for Morrison, which they almost certainly will.

they already have done a whole load of times, and our compliant media just clear the way for him. so yes, in theory labor could take advantage of his daily fuckups, but they won’t get oxygen through all the loud and sloppy morrison gobjobs.

on sunday i read somewhere that morrison could kick a baby in the face and the press would ask what the baby could have done differently. this is the landscape now.

good news Chips Bowie is running for the ALP leadership, just the personality they need now

googles "Chips Bowie"

he's got my vote tbh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp7m8hMxPA0

chip thievery *is* socialism

eight hours after majority government confirmed, ScoNo's sole campaign plank has been withdrawn

who could have guessed they were making it up as they went along