Captain GetUp is Coming for Your Democracy Sausage

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