Federal Election Night 2022

And It Finally Ended

Jeez. It took 9 years but this government of miscreants that started with the Idiot Abbott, is finally put out to pasture. Now that he is headed for the door, Scomo sure was a weird Prime Minister, as much as Malcolm Turnbull sandwiched in-between was redundant. It's hard to believe such a government went 3 terms, as clearly it was in turmoil as it had 3 Prime Ministers in 3 terms. That's weird too. 

The rise of the 'teal' candidacy is probably a historic inevitability given how far to the right the Liberals swung and left urbane ideas behind. A bunch of highly educated professional women with Liberal Party pedigrees running as independents in deeply entrenched inner city Liberal seats obviously did the trick. The Sydney North Shore, Northern Beaches together with the Eastern Suburbs has gone 'teal'. Gone are Trent Zimmerman, Jason Falinski, and David Sharma. All I can say is, what took them so long? The great mystery to me has been all these well-educated, well-heeled women toeing the party line against their own personal interests. It's about time they woke up and went their own way. They're not my political friends, but I applaud them for wanting out at long last. It's a divorce that's been a long time coming.

Losing these women also raises the question where the Liberal Party is going to go. Amazingly, you saw no urgency about this existential threat from the Coalition in the weeks leading up to the vote, and arguably Scomo didn't address any of it in his concession speech. Again, he's a weird guy - but more on that later. He and his cohorts in government had plenty off opportunities to do something, even if just symbols to address the grievances of women in general - but they chose to do nothing. They couldn't possibly wonder how this election resulted in them getting kicked out by people who were once close to them. For now, we can see that the Liberal Party has been deserted by its women-folk, and that's kind of interesting. 

Climate Change As A Priority Issue

Maybe - just maybe - Climate Change (read GLOBAL WARMING) can stop being treated like a back burner as a result of this election. I remember thinking that when Kevin Rudd won, but, no, that didn't work out quite that way. Tony Abbott came storming back on the climate-denial vote. That said if you look at the 11 cross benchers in the lower house, all of whom who ran on Climate as a leading issue, you would expect that perhaps Albo has a shot at getting something concrete done. It would be nice if once and for all if the Coalition could get up to speed and just accept that it's a bloody big issue instead of trying to bury it for political posturing purposes. 

The rise of teal candidates tell you one thing - all the carping from the Murdoch press could not dissuade these electorates from the need to vote out the Liberals and get some action happening on the Global Warming problem.  

Up to now, there's been this weird dynamic where you were often incredulous as to whether the Coalition acted against having any kind of serious climate policies because they just didn't believe it as fact; or didn't want to believe it because of profit motive; or whether they did in fact believe it but were told to act like they didn't to preserve a voting block. If it was the last, then it sure didn't work out for the Coalition at all. If it was the former, two they need to go get an education and get their heads on straight in the coming years because the electorate has pretty much rejected climate change denialism. 

Boutique Retail Politics

You heard the phrase "all politics is local" a lot in the coverage on the ABC. You get the feeling that politicians say this to themselves in order not address the elephant in the room like China's ambitions in the region or the impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Instead we're treated to a kind of car-salesman like pitch about costs of living. While costs of living is important, you'd want to vote on more than just that issue alone, and not acknowledging that point as a politician is kind of retrograde. Anybody can argue for self interest. It takes a better candidate to argue for the interest of the community, the area, the state and the nation. 

In light of that the fragmentation of the electorate is a little irksome. The teal candidates are to retail politics what custom made branded goods are to retail goods. There's a hint of neo-liberal personalisation of politics that seems to have happened in the era of social media, and we are given a stronger sense of proximity to our candidates. In turn, the successful candidates are photogenic or long on social-media-savvy. A quick glance at the teal candidates gives you the distinct sense that this is a very personalised kind of body politic expressing itself. 

Is this good? Who knows? Yet it does open the door to the massively populist, lowest common denominator politics. So we should ask in the same breath was, say Trump good? Is Boris Johnson any good? As per the Gillard minority government before it, the new ALP government has its work cut out for it. 

The Old Codgers Died

The other aspect of all this that springs to mind is that the old codgers who were stubbornly conservative passed away between 2019 and 2022. The rich suburbs got inherited by their children, and these children are a lot more worldly than their parochially conservative parents. I mean, it must hurt the pride of those educated and conservative that they had to toe the line that Climate Change wasn't happening, or that we needed to keep doing fossil fuels at the expense of the planet because money talks and bullshit walks, or  simply play dumb like climate change is a non-issue. And if the climate wasn't the only thing where they had to play dumb to be nice, then surely the corruption and pork barrelling was hard to justify and defend and most certainly trying to defend a government that had a total disregard for women's issue must have been galling. 

Given how Queensland went in 2019, it's a bit surprising that the inner city of Brisbane got eaten out by the Greens, and chances are, it wouldn't have happened if the old codgers were still around to vote for the Coalition. There's a message in there for Anastasia Paluszczuk (I have to look up that spelling every single fucking time!). Maybe she can be a bit more confident and tell Adani to fuck off with their coal mine.

The Weirdness of Scomo

Scomo, in his time as PM has shown himself to be an utterly mendacious, lazy, selfish partisan git. But just as how we might describe somebody having a mean streak, I would say Scomo had a weird streak of decency over his mendacious, lazy, selfish, partisan git-tish ways. He stood by the importance of democracy (in spite of undermining its institutions through under-funding them) and he talked a good game for Australia's prospects (which have not diminished, have grown in his time, but has also reduced Australia to a quarry).

He is also, Australia's first Generation-X Prime Minister and goes into his post-political career at the tender age of 54. He was an MP for a mere 12 years before becoming PM, 15 years total to date. It is a meteoric career in once sense, that also came with controversies and a certain obliviousness to the nuances of anything. He was a stick-in-the-mud middle class dufus from Sutherland Shire. He characterised himself as a bulldozer towards the end of this campaign, but he was more bull-in-a-china-shop. He moved fast and broke things much as the motto goes at Facebook/Meta - it is not a good motto. 

As we go back to a Babyboomer PM in Anthony Albanese, the sheer anomalousness of Scomo's time in the Lodge sticks out. One certainly wouldn't have expected the Coalition to move to a Gen-X leader faster than the progressives. At this stage the ALP front bench looks like deeper veterans than the outgoing Prime Minister. 

I guess the circumstances of his rise to the office was weird as well. The Liberals had the choice of Julie Bishop, Peter Dutton, and Scott Morrison. For some reason only known to the deepest darkest recesses of the sexist collective mind of the Liberal party room, Julie Bishop in spite of all her experience was rejected in favour of Peter Dutton and Scott Morrison. Having disposed of their one credible female leadership candidate, the Liberals decided Peter Dutton was a bit too gauche and rightwing, so they they picked Scomo as a compromise. That turn of events is so weird it is not likely to be duplicated in future. 

All this has led to the incoming Albo Government to look almost nondescript and plain vanilla. I guess when you consider the abject anti-intellectualism of Tony Abbott at the start of the 3 terms, maybe it is not surprising that it ends with this chaotic, mendacious, lazy, whimper.