Editorial: The changes have kept coming post-federal election
Many commentators expected significant change following Saturday’s federal election. What most certainly did not expect was the precise nature of that change. And ever since election night, the changes have kept coming.
Many commentators expected significant change following Saturday’s federal election. What most certainly did not expect was the precise nature of that change.
And ever since election night, the changes have kept coming.
“It was supposed to be Australia’s climate change election,” the New York Times asked in its summary. “What happened?”
Well, for a start, children are not allowed to vote in Australian elections. All of the pre-vote hype about the numbers attending school strikes for climate change was completely irrelevant to the election’s outcome.
Instead, adult Australians voted for jobs over taxes and for reason over hysteria.
This has left Labor reeling, to the point where frontbencher and brief leadership aspirant Chris Bowen on Wednesday sought to blame his party’s lamentable election performance on its perceived religious intolerance.
“I have noticed as I have been around during the election campaign and even in the days since ... how often it has been raised with me that people of faith no longer feel that progressive politics cares about them,” Bowen said in Sydney.
As a previous Labor luminary might have put it, well may we say God Save The Queen, because nothing will save the Labor Party.
Meanwhile, dramatic policy reconsiderations are now taking place throughout federal Labor and beyond.
Stephen Conroy, a former Labor senator and a minister in both the Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard governments, outlined Labor’s challenges during a Sky News appearance this week.
“The Australian people have clearly sent the message they’re not going to suffer further increases in electricity prices without a practical path forward,” ex-Senator Conroy said.
“Labor has to step back from the Greens-led, GetUp!-led demonisation of coal … this can’t go on. It’s not going to win you national government.”
Queensland’s Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk seems to have got the message.
Under sudden Labor pressure to push ahead with approvals for the Adani coal mine, Palaszczuk ordered her own Environment Department to meet with the proposed mine’s owners on Wednesday
Labor is now talking about sane power policies and regional employment. Done earlier, Labor would be in government.
UNITED BY THEIR DIFFERENCES
Sporting codes are much like languages. People are usually most at ease with the sports and the languages they first learned about and grew up with.
But that is not to say that a native English speaker may not admire the elegance of French or the operatic drama of Italian.
Nor is it to say that a peak proponent of rugby league may not be awed by AFL athleticism. Which brings us to Roosters star Latrell Mitchell and Sydney Swans hero Buddy Franklin.
The brilliant pair met on Wednesday for The Daily Telegraph.
Thus were two of our city’s great languages brought together.
LABOR’S RETRO RIVALRIES
Leadership feuds and personal battles did a great job of concealing the Coalition government’s considerable economic achievements.
Beneath those feuds, economic indicators were stable and strong. And they eventually worked powerfully in the Coalition’s favour on Saturday.
Likewise, Labor’s apparent stability — with no leadership changes for six years — masked another reality. In policy terms, Labor was simply not ready to govern. Their taxation and climate plans were ruinous, as many in the party now concede.
And it is also now clear that Labor’s stability was an illusion. Brawling over who will become Bill Shorten’s successor reveals a party that even in power may have quickly fractured.
There are even factions forming within factions.
The NSW Labor Right is split asunder, with senior members backing left-winger Anthony Albanese over their own Chris Bowen.
Bowen abandoned his leadership bid yesterday, but not before aiming some wounding lines at the likely next Labor leader Albanese.
Labor looks very 2010 again.
Op shop trend Aussies might need to rethink
There’s something about getting a bargain that’s exhilarating. But that’s getting harder and harder to do these days, writes Tom Bowden.
Why can’t Jo Haylen seem to learn her lesson?
Having a taxpayer-funded ministerial driver trek 446km to pick up Transport Minister Jo Haylen and her friends is bad enough. But what is utterly gobsmacking is that she can’t seem to learn her lesson, writes James O’Doherty.