Australia Turns Right
Tony Abbott will be the new Prime Minister of Australia, but that’s at the head of a coalition of conservative parties, with his party, the Liberal Party, the largest.
The Wiki on the Parliament of Australia is a place to start, but don’t expect to really understand it unless you live and vote in the country, after going through school there. They do things differently, borrowing from Britain, the US, and anyone else they thought had an interesting idea.
They have 150 members in their House of Representatives and 76 in their Senate.
It looks like Australia is in for ‘interesting times’. People apparently wanted a change, and I suspect they are going to get one.
Update: From Kryten in comments – the Guardian as a brief explanation of the Australian voting system.
5 comments
I’ve said it before…
People are stupid. *SIGH*
I posted a link in your ‘Busy’ thread that is a simpler explanation than the Wiki.
How does Australia’s voting system work?
I think that nobody here has a clue what they want and just said “f*ck it”! They sure as hell couldn’t be bothered to actually look at policies and listen to Abbott. *shrug*
The amazing thing is that even today I still hear people complaining about how bad Howard was! 😆 He was nothing compared to Abbott!
Well, people will find out that “Things really can get worse!”
Unfortunately, Labor did it to themselves. All the backstabbing etc meant nobody trusted them. And Gillard was bad.
Completely OT, Bryan, your “Paris” comment came through on my thread. Welcome back!
Looking at the numbers, the Liberals didn’t pick up a lot from Labor losses, the smaller parties did. People are looking for something different, but they obviously aren’t ranking the Liberals low enough.
Gillard lost ground when she called an election before she did anything, and then the intraparty sniping finished the job. She really didn’t have a base to work from when she took over. Rudd was never popular with the voters, so what did they expect? Maybe they’ll find someone who can actually lead, but I wouldn’t bet on it. All they have going for them is how bad Abbott is going to be for the country.
OT – I may have to stick to short responses, Steve.
A lot of the swing went to smaller parties and independents. But the biggest change was the “informal vote” (we call the Donkey vote). There is a misconception that we are “forced to vote by law”. That’s not entirely true. By law, we have to turn up at a polling place and have our name crossed off the list, or list an absentee vote (if you are at a polling place not in your electorate). Once your name is crossed off, you could simply drop an empty ballot or a ballot not correctly filled in if you don’t want to make any choice. This year, the informal vote is about 6% of the total votes! That’s a record. And another 6% swung to the Palmer United party! It seems the Greens picked up another Senate seat, and Assange’s WikiLeaks party did better than anyone expected. They picked up about 1.2% of the Primary vote! Not bad for a first election. 😉 🙂 If that trend continues, he may just get a seat next election.
And then it seems we will have billionaire mining magnate Clive Palmer elected to Parliament! I never thought I would see that in Aus, seriously! *shrug*
This was posted on The Guardian:
Oh dear indeed!! Sheesh.
And Abbott has stated he will repeal the Carbon Tax when the Coalition is sworn in as his first business. And who didn’t know that would happen.
Still, Labor could have done a lot worse. I think Rudd did well all things considered.
I’m not sure about how much power the Senate has in Australia, but I get a feeling that Abbott may not get everything his way, no matter what the House looks like.
I could be wrong, but the Senate seems to be selected based on the percentage of the total votes that a party gets in a state or territory, and then senators are pulled off a party list, the way elections are decided in Germany and many other parliamentary systems.
It looks like it will be a while before all of the results are known, as some races are going to depend on mail-in ballots.
It is certainly an interesting system.