Captain GetUp is Coming for Your Democracy Sausage

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.

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