This thread has been a really good example of polite, reasoned discussion. Parroting lines from the Australian about the ABC being too left wing and the liberal party not conservative enough isn’t really advancing the discussion at all, so if you don’t mind I’m going to change it.
For those who missed them, there have been a few big elections recently.
The Liberals retained power in Tasmania, which was to be expected. Tasmanians seem to be somewhat nervous about returning to a Labor/Greens coalition, which was wildly unpopular. This was the first time the Greens found themselves in government in Australia.
The Liberals won the SA state election. This was kind of complicated. Labor had held power there for 16 years, most recently in a minority government. They actually did better at this election (and the liberals worse) than they did at the last; however, SA has a rule about electoral borders that require them to be redrawn after each election, such that the party that would have won the election if it were a state-wide 2-party preferred would win an election with the same results. The electoral borders at the last election actually favoured Labor, even though the liberals got more voters. At this election, it favoured the liberals.
This is actually really sensible, and is a policy that had it roots in the so-called Playmander. The Playmander was a gerrymander (redrawing of electoral boundaries in a way that makes it an unfair election) that basically required the opposition to win in excess of 60% of the vote statewide before they could win the election. Unsurprisingly, Thomas Playford actually holds the record for the longest time in office of any leader of a Westminster government (28 years). In that period he should have lost the election four times.
Finally, Labor managed to retain the seat of Batman, effecting a fairly large swing against the Greens. This was probably an inevitability. Even though batman is becoming more and more progressive, and much more likely to share the Greens’ policy convictions, Ged Kearney was a fantastic progressive candidate who had plenty of runs on the board for progressive politics. On the other hand, Alex Bhatal was dogged by allegations of bullying and the kind of background behaviour synonymous with Labor politics, not the kind and fluffy politics of the Greens.
Interestingly, Richard Di Natale made a last minute push to shore up the pensioners’ vote by saying the Greens would oppose Labor policy to end cash refund on imputation dividends (basically good for poor, bad for rich). This isn’t a good look for the Greens, and serves to highlight that, despite their purported progressive bona fides, they are still fundamentally a party of the wealthy.
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