Civic Duty and Sausages Too(An Australian Election Thread)

[Dazchan]

Whichever party that might win and doesn't have Peter Dutton's obsession with deporting people who have basically never been in NZ to NZ.

Stop sending us your crooks Australia.

We should become a state and then they can't get deported!

According to the preamble of our constitution, you already are

[Australian rePublic]

Whichever party that might win and doesn't have Peter Dutton's obsession with deporting people who have basically never been in NZ to NZ.

Stop sending us your crooks Australia.

We should become a state and then they can't get deported!

Good idea...

Hey everyone let's introduce interstate deportations...

[Forsher]

Whichever party that might win and doesn't have Peter Dutton's obsession with deporting people who have basically never been in NZ to NZ.

Stop sending us your crooks Australia.

We should become a state and then they can't get deported!

But then we won't be able to feel morally superior because we just free ride off Australia's... enthusiastic... policing of undocumented immigration instead of doing the same things ourselves!

Wait, what am I saying. I'm very keen on moral consistency/honesty.

I think you've cracked it Costa! Truly the solution to all our problems!

[Forsher]

We should become a state and then they can't get deported!

Good idea...

Hey everyone let's introduce interstate deportations...

It'll be like the good old days when all the really bad crooks went to the islands named after something Dutch!

[Risottia]

Australia, not Austria.

what is the difference s

When you see something round and brown in Austria, it could be a Sachertorte. Or cow poo.
When you see something round and brown in Australia, it could be a deadly spider about to kill you. Or kangaroo poo.

[Cetacea]

Whichever party that might win and doesn't have Peter Dutton's obsession with deporting people who have basically never been in NZ to NZ.

Stop sending us your crooks Australia.

Hmmm we will stop when y’all do.

nah, those are your crooks

they were sweet innocent children when we had them:)

[Woodfiredpizzas]

Hmmm we will stop when y’all do.

nah, those are your crooks

they were sweet innocent children when we had them:)

Oh man do I have a banworthy joke for this.

[Australian rePublic]

Australia, not Austria.

what is the difference s

Austria- Europe, landlocked, cold
Australia- Island, Ocean, hot
Austria- Hitler, black eagle, Haspburgs
Australia- Sarah Hanson-Young, Kangaroos, Boomerangs
Austria- German, Cars on right, European Union
Australia- English, Cars on Left, Commonwealth
Austria- Euro, Red & White, Red & White Flag
Australia- Dollar, Green & Yellow, Union Jack

Need I go on?

[Memeosan]

Australia ain't gonna cop it

Australia ain't gonna cop it!

Clive Palmer, calm down with the ads.

[Slavakino]

I'm tired of Liberals bullshit. The only problem I have with Labor is that they are weak on borders.

[Cedoria]

He says while writing it behind the flag of Indigenous Australia

My flag was deleted because it wasn't "namby pamby" enough for this website. People were supposedly too offended. I'm awfully upset about it. It wasn't no swastika flag. This is the same website that allows ISIS flags as a "non-offensive" alternative, apparently. Maybe it was because it showed Pepe the Frog with a Wojak in a headlock, and not because of the overall political message.

In any case, I endorse the One Nation party for Australia because it is the one party within their politics that will do as I want Australia to be doing.

I cannot say I am at all surprised to find you in the ranks of One Nation backers.

I'll give you credit, you are at least honest enough to openly admit to being what most One Nation supporters deny.

[Cedoria]

Australia ain't gonna cop it

Australia ain't gonna cop it!

Clive Palmer, calm down with the ads.

Clive Palmer is a cane toad.

[Cedoria]

I'd say that Shorten is in an unloseable position, but Hewson showed us that there's no such thing. Hopefully he won't fuck it up like Daley did.

Also, since the last election was a double dissolution, we don't have any senators that have served a six-year term. How do they decide which senators get a half term, and does anyone know which ones they are?

Shorten ain't as dumb as Daley.

I know lots of people will disagree, but his big strength is that nobody thinks he's any good, so he consistently outperforms expectations.


As for the second question, I'm embarassed to admit I don't know but probably should. I'd have to look that one up.

[Greater Westralia]

Strangely enough, I'm confident of a Liberal victory, even though all the polls disagree with me and I'm probably just delusional and confusing reality with my own desires.

Nonetheless, I think Scott Morrison has a good change for the PM job. Better than Malcolm Turnbull that's for sure.

[Cedoria]

Strangely enough, I'm confident of a Liberal victory, even though all the polls disagree with me and I'm probably just delusional and confusing reality with my own desires.

Nonetheless, I think Scott Morrison has a good change for the PM job. Better than Malcolm Turnbull that's for sure.

The betting markets usually have better record then the polls on this.

They're all pretty much predicting ALP wiping out the Libs. Make of that what you will.

[Shrillland]

Strangely enough, I'm confident of a Liberal victory, even though all the polls disagree with me and I'm probably just delusional and confusing reality with my own desires.

Nonetheless, I think Scott Morrison has a good change for the PM job. Better than Malcolm Turnbull that's for sure.

The betting markets usually have better record then the polls on this.

They're all pretty much predicting ALP wiping out the Libs. Make of that what you will.

Yeah, that's what I think. Like I said, all the polls so far have had ALP winning their biggest victory since Hawke came in back in '83. And if all the bookies are standing behind that, I think we can safely say it'll happen.

[Greater Westralia]

The betting markets usually have better record then the polls on this.

They're all pretty much predicting ALP wiping out the Libs. Make of that what you will.

Ouch, that does make me more doubtful of a Liberal victory.

Ah well, a man can hope.

[Duhon]

It seems Hanson's putting a bunch of fucking shit on her captive audience's toasts, peddling in conspiracy theories and trying to ally with US gun lobby groups for extra moolah.

[Neu Leonstein]

We don't have a thread for this one yet, it seems, and the Aussie politics thread has been defunct for a long time. So here we go.

It is widely expected that the Australian government will call for a general election in the coming few days. That implies an election date some time in early May, which is the latest it can be anyway under the rules for a parliamentary term and has been expected for some time. The major parties have been in election mode for some time, and the federal budget and opposition reply from earlier this week were thinly veiled election programs.

The rules
Australia more or less uses a Westminster system of government. Head of state is the Queen through her representative, the Governor General. There are two houses of parliament. The lower house will consist of 151 MPs, one for each electorate or seat. Within each electorate, the member is elected via 'instant-runoff voting'. In that, voters rank their choices. If no candidate has more than half the first choice votes, the bottom candidate is eliminated and their second choice votes are added to those other candidates. That process continues until one candidate has more than half the votes. That system is why there's often talk in Australian politics about where parties will ask their voters to put their preferences, and it's also why in polls there's often a 'two-party preferred' count, which effectively forces respondents to pick one or the other of the major parties.

There's also an upper house of parliament, the Senate. There are 76 seats there, and because Australia is a federation of states, this is where each state gets to send a certain number of senators regardless of population. Almost - the six states (NSW, VIC, QLD, SA, WA and TAS) get 12 each, and the two territories (NT and ACT) get 2 each. For the senate, people vote under the 'Single Transferrable Vote' system. The idea is similar to the IRV from the lower house, and again it matters how you allocate your preferences for people who are not your actual first choice. 40 of the 76 seats are up for election.

Voting is compulsory, but there's usually a grilled sausage for your efforts.

The options

• Liberal Party - currently in government, but spent much of the term plagued by an internal civil war between small 'l' liberals represented by previous leader and PM Malcolm Turnbull and self-proclaimed conservatives rallied around also previous leader and PM Tony Abbott. That came to a head a few months back, when Turnbull was deposed and a conservative in Scott Morrison became PM. After getting their arses handed to them in the Victorian state election, they briefly dallied with the tried-and-true 'scary foreign boat people' tactic in order to shore up support in marginal seats, culminating in the $180 million reopening of the Christmas island detention centre a couple of weeks ago, which the federal budget confirms will now be closed again without a single inmate having been sent there. The tactic didn't seem to bite enough to turn around the polling, so the budget this time aimed hard at a 'tax cuts' narrative. The problem is that because the Libs aren't planning to match Labor on some of its money-raising initiatives, they just don't have the money to match Labor dollar for dollar while still sticking to a (however flimsy) headling budget surplus. They'll be hoping that no one brings up the question of energy policy and climate change, because that was a major internal battleground for the last few years (Tony Abbott being an open climate change denier), and the thin compromise that's emerged now doesn't really fly with the electorate.
• Labor Party - the ALP had a rough time a few years ago, when a nasty civil war saw one PM after the other axed. When voters go the chance to have their say, the party lost government. Since then, new leader Bill Shorten has actually been pretty successful in focusing the party leadership and introducing a degree of discipline that they'd been lacking for some time. They're ahead in the polls and have been for some time, and primarily need to stick to the script at this point. The script is fairly standard Labor: more spending on healthcare and services, while also matching the Libs on the tax cut front. The reason they can afford this is primarily that they're looking to attack some of the subsidies that have been going to older middle and upper middle class voters for the last decade or two: negative gearing (which is the right to claim any negative income on investment properties against your income tax bill) and capital gains tax offsets (which allow people to pay tax on only half the capital gain they made on investment properties if they hold them for more than a year).
• The Nationals - the Nationals are in a partnership with the Liberal Party. Basically, they are the party of rural interests, so they don't run in the cities, and the Liberals don't compete with them out in the sticks. The Nats are a bit more conservative obviously, but ultimately there's rarely something they can do on their own that affects their chances a great deal. The biggest worry for them is that if the Libs aren't able to put up a sufficiently xenophobic posture while campaigning in the cities, One Nation or other far right groups will take voters from them in some rural seats.
• Greens - the Greens have been struggling a little bit of late, in that they haven't made many headlines for good reasons. The VIC and NSW state election campaigns were a mess of internal squabbles and accusations of hostility towards women and minorities - certainly promoted and taken advantage of by the ALP, who are in no mood to lose young inner city seats to them.
• One Nation - founded quite a long time ago by a splinter group of anti-immigration Liberals, led by MP, then prisoner, then Senator Pauline Hanson. I don't think there's much point in delving too deeply into their program or policies, they'll get their share in the poll both on NSG and the real world regardless of those.

Polls
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_p ... l_election

Primary Vote: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... rimary.svg

Two-Party Preferred: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aust ... ferred.svg

My opinion/call
I'm a resident, but not a citizen of this country, so I don't get to vote. If I did, I'd likely go with the ALP this time around, unless I found myself in a seat where there's some value in voting Greens instead. I would have voted for a Malcolm Turnbull-style genuine liberal party, but that dream obviously died a couple of years ago. As far as my expected outcome for the election is concerned, I think the polls make it fairly clear. While they'll surely tighten up a bit over the course of the campaign, I'd expect the ALP to carry this one home, and Bill Shorten to be the next PM.

[Cerinda]

I've noticed there's been a lot of elections in 2019.

[Farnhamia]

I've noticed there's been a lot of elections in 2019.

I told the UN to declare a moratorium but no one listens to me.

[Duhon]

The Aussie leadership's a buncha xenophobes, yes --

[Cerinda]

I've noticed there's been a lot of elections in 2019.

I told the UN to declare a moratorium but no one listens to me.

The UN not listening, what a surprise.

[Cetacea]

I told the UN to declare a moratorium but no one listens to me.

The UN not listening, what a surprise.

Lets not derail the thread so early

Anyway with all the turmoil and revolving door leadership its a hard call to make on Australia, especially when you consider just how much it wants to suck up to the US now that Chinese investment has slowed down and the countries record on Climate Change, Immigration and Racism are starting to show it up a bit.

I'm tending to agree though that ALP has the best odds so far

[Shrillland]

We DO have one of these, thank you: https://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=461598

It's just been quiet since we've all been waiting for the date to be set.