So yeah. Glad you put this up. It means I have at least a few people who will be able to understand why I cry myself to sleep everytime I think about the upcoming election.
So, for anyone who doesn't follow Aussie politics normally, this is how it goes (ENGAGE WALL OF TEXT);
Our government is modelled on the British system, and our functional head of state is the Prime Minister (PM for short; note, our ACTUAL head of state is Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, but we don't really care much about her)
Julia Gillard. She of the flaming ginger, irritating accent, and two X chromosomes (the first PM we've had that managed to pull it off).
who got into power by deposing
Kevin Rudd, a short tempered control-freak who's fluent in Mandarin, an utter workaholic, and gained a huge boost prior to his election by getting caught going to a strip club. Go figure.
in a back room caucus, despite him having a rather high approval rating at the time (the reason was the aforementioned control-freak workaholicness). This had a couple of interesting effects; first and foremost, it lost Labor a LOT of points. Like, prior to this, Liberal (our conservative party; again, go figure) politicians were openly acknowledging they didn't have a chance at governent for the next 2 or so elections, and many journalists were thinking still longer; after, the next election was literally tied (ironically, the same year the AFL Grand Final was also drawn), and they only made power by allying with a whole host of independants and the minor Green's party. They've never really recovered.
Secondly, it made sure that for the rest of her time as PM, her worst enemy in terms of public opinion was in her own party. Australians are pretty much like everyone else, but we like to think we're especially big on mateship (basically, being a good friend through thick and thin), which means we take an especially poor view of backstabbers. So, subsequently, every time her polls dipped low, we have huge amounts of speculation on bringing back Rudd; he was still popular with the general public, and the whole delicious irony of him getting revenge on a treasonous former deputy was perfect for selling newspapers. The fact that he made sure to stay highly visible (rather than retiring into the background), and was rumoured to be the source for some rather embarrassing leaks over the past few years, suggest he agreed with the public.
Rudd wasn't stupid (and knew with the public support he had a chance of getting back in the big seat), so he tried to mount a challenge. Sadly, because the Australian electoral system elects the party, and not the person, the only people who would be able to put him in power were the same Labor ministers who suffered under his tyrannical former reign. He was thus humiliatingly defeated, and vowed not to step up again unless he had a clear mandate to lead; e.g. the majority of Labor ministers deliberately asking for his return...
...and if politicians weren't politicians, that's where it would have ended.
Unfortunately, they are.
Flash forward to last week. Gillard's poll figures are looking atrocious (31% of people would vote for her, and she has an approval rating of 38%), promising a landslide defeat in the next election. So, Rudd's supporters (and again, most likely the man himself) have being stirring up discontent in the ranks. Eventually one guy named Simon Crean (an annoying weasel of a man) called for a leadership spill. So Gillard nominates herself to lead the party, of course, and... no one challenges. Rudd didn't step up (keeping to his vow, or trying to save face when he knew he'd lose?), so we end up back at square one, but with the additional factors that;
a) the media has been solely focused on the internal divisions in labor for the past few weeks, giving the opposition a free ride.
b) a large block of Rudd supporters announced they won't be contesting their seats at the election (which happens to be disproportionately those MPs that had very safe seats; a bad thing going into what was already a bad election)
c) the Libs have a whole shitload of ammo to use in the upcoming campaign.
Now for the real tragedy. I didn't actually mind Gillard too much as a leader. For all her irritating language and mannerisms (seriously, watch her hands when she talks), she did get a few good things through. It isn't easy holding onto the government by as little as a single seat. Plus, as I lean rather left, the fact that the Green's managed to have a bit more clout during her election was to me a good thing; I liked the Carbon Tax. I'm young, and relatively unaffected by it, so caring for the environment makes more sense to me than trying to save $30 a year or whatever the stupid figure amounted to for the average Aussie. Gillard also continued to support the National Broadband Network brought in under Rudd, and our country survived the financial crisis unscathed.
She wasn't ideal, but she wasn't terrible either.
By contrast, the leader of the opposition,
is a conservative nutbag who thinks climate change is filthy lies, has a history of misogynistic and similarly disturbing comments, opposes the NBN, and whose primary political policy had been saying the opposite of whatever the government said for much of their term.
He's going to win, a lot of good progress is going to go out the window, and thanks to the Labor party being a bunch of vindictive children, there is nothing we can do about it
DISENGAGE
TL:DR? The political left is about to get reamed, we have a long, dark, conservative future, and it's all because all our pollies are arseholes.
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Topic: Reudh's Hilarious Australasian politics thread! (Read 227260 times)