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Aiming for the passionless imaginary center doesn’t work
Some big surprises from exit polls from the Australian election day, thanks to the Australian Institute of Progress (AIP). Non-Greens third party voters (code for Delcons – or Defiant conservatives) were more interested in “cultural issues like immigration, Islam, gay marriage, refugees, industry protection and political correctness”. Graham Young, Executive Director of the AIP calls these voters the “most influential in Australia, effectively choosing who will form the government.”
The next election will be won by the party that manages to reap more than its fair share of the non-Greens minor party voters. They are up for grabs for Liberal or Labor.
In the end, around 50% of the Delcons are prepared to put Labor above Liberal in preferences (the nuclear option) — showing how wrong Mark Textor’s theory is that the Liberal base “doesn’t matter” and the Liberals should aim for the centre and can afford to mistreat their base. Another theme I see is that parties need passion — when it’s missing from the base, it sure isn’t coming from the centre. As I said before Turnbull took over, “the passionate support base for the Liberal party will […]
The one thing Malcolm Turnbull has got right in the last year? Out with Greg Hunt, and in with Josh Frydenberg.
The new ministry has been announced, as predicted, without magnanimity, wisdom or grace. There is no role for Tony Abbott; Turnbull is still too afraid of him. But Greg Hunt has finally been moved out of the Environment portfolio which can only be a good thing. He has been a key proponent of passionate and pointless action on the weather, and was central to stopping a BOM audit and bringing in a carbon tax. Almost any other minister might actually try to get better science (see here and here), and solve real environmental problems instead of fake ones. Perhaps finally an environment minister may recognise that we need temperature data that can be independently replicated if we are ever going to understand the Australian climate?
The Dept of Environment has been merged with Energy which makes sense for carbon traders and the renewables industry, but perhaps not for the environment.
The new environment minister looks good
The Sydney Morning Herald has put together the praise for Josh Frydenberg:
Former Greens leader Bob Brown said Mr Frydenberg would […]
We knew it was going to happen sometime. Shorten has conceded defeat. Turnbull stays on as a weakened PM.
It’s a Delcon win
For Defcons / Delcons this outcome was close to as good as it gets. How could an unfunded, disorganized group vote for “not Turnbull” without handing the government to a Labor-Green group? Individual voters can’t vote for a “hung weak government”. For a whole glorious week Turnbull has been tortured with calls for his resignation with his faults laid out bare. Several Turnbull supporters were targeted and removed. The antithesis of the hard left (Pauline Hanson) has gained a voice. The Nationals grew stronger and the Liberals were punished.
All this, despite the mainstream media barely mentioning Delcons, and hardly ever interviewing minor party candidates (except for Greens). This result was achieved despite GetUP running a $3m dollar campaign* in exactly the opposite direction targeting Abbott supporters.
Sinclair Davidson (and many in the pro-Turnbull camp) are declaring that Abbott would have lost, but they use polls from a year ago, or polls about a man who didn’t campaign to be PM. And we all know how reliable polls are. Turnbull nearly lost the election because he wouldn’t […]
Journalists are still wondering what happened
“How did we get it wrong?” asks Matthew Knott.
The post election dissection is a study in how a fishbowl of left-leaning journalists totally missed what was important to most of Australia. Maybe the ABC or Fairfax might want to employ a conservative?
Journalists talked, and nobody cared
The journalists said the Coalition would win. They analyzed their movements seat-by-marginal-seat, mapping the flights, wallowed in hours of same-sex marriage debate, asked what happened to climate change, and debated whether the big-spending deficits had killed off Labor’s chances. Every nuance of the soapie called Turnbull-v-Abbott was discussed — did Turnbull snub him by listing former PM’s and not Abbott? Did Abbott grin, or grimace? Navel gazers opined that the Brexit shock would push even more people to the conservative side, it will be “a defining moment of the campaign” they said — as if UK trade agreements with Germany would a/ disappear, or b/ rank in the top sixty things Australia voters cared about. And Leigh Sales asked every candidate whether each leader would still be their leader next week. As if any politician would ever reply “no” the week before an election.
The media […]
It was no accident that Turnbull turned out to be a lousy campaigner. He stood for things the people didn’t want, so he couldn’t mention his “successes” nor point at Labor’s big failures.
Andrew Bolt wonders why Turnbull didn’t run the carbon tax scare, which worked so well for Tony Abbott:
If only Turnbull had followed another critical tip from the shrewd Hunt, to hit Labor with an attack on his planned electricity tax – a new carbon tax. As Labor’s Mediscare has proved, the electorate is highly sensitive to threats to the household budget after several years now of living standards not rising. An attack on Labor’s electricity tax could have been decisive, but that was one more piece of good advice Turnbull ignored.
It was not about good advice. Turnbull couldn’t run the carbon tax scare — because he and Greg Hunt had bought a carbon tax in themselves — the hypocrites would be exposed. Worse, it would remind the electorate of what they voted for so emphatically in 2013 — a mandate to get rid of a carbon tax.
The last time the Coalition could campaign on getting rid of that great big carbon tax […]
The Tally updates have just stopped for tonight, but things have shifted in the last hour. Welcome to holidayville-Australia, no one is going to count votes tomorrow. Bizarrely, they’re not even counting on Monday either — (that must be a misprint?)
Apparently we can pay double-triple-overtime for people to work til 2am on a Saturday, but then we all need two days off.
*UPDATE: The delay is probably due to waiting for postal votes to come in. Because of Australia’s preference system, preferences can’t be allocated until all the votes are in. h/t Analitik
Delcons mattered
Turnbull has taken a historic win in 2013 and converted it into a historic mash. Abbott knew what he stood for and carried a lot of people with him. Turnbull stood for nothing-much and communicated that exactly.
Everyone except Bill Shorten said Turnbull was likely to win, tracking to win, or has “won”. Andrew Bolt thought this win was likely to be so weak, so pathetic, even a minority-hobbled-government, that Turnbull should resign. But based on these newer numbers, it might be Shorten doing the minority government thing. Check it out: the magic number is 76 seats — and while 77 […]
It’s not Independence Day for Australia, just “Independent’s Day”. Anyone but the majors…
Election Tomorrow: How-to-vote suggestions for climate skeptics
CarbonSense have posted a list of dedicated skeptics in Australian politics
HOUSE
David Archibald, Australian Liberty Alliance candidate for Curtin in WA George Christensen, LNP Candidate for Dawson in Queensland Dr Dennis Jensen MP, Independent Candidate for Tangney, WA
SENATE
David Leyonhjelm, Liberal Democrats for NSW Bob Day, Family First for SA “No more windfarms” John Madigan, Manufacturing and Farming Party Malcolm Roberts, No 2 on ticket for Pauline Hanson in Queensland Dr Mark Imisides, Christian Democrats, WA.
Rafe Campion recommends the http://ConservativeRevolt.wix.com/HowToVote .
My method is to choose your local candidate carefully, based on individuals not parties. Know your candidates. I lean Delcon. Like John Stone who links to the list of Turncoats. There is no small government major party any more. Shorten would be more-terrible in the short run, but we might get a good opposition and a decent Senate. (Blessed are the Gridlocked, whose MP’s cannot pass laws.) In the long run Turnbull could stop us getting both good government and a good opposition. In the short run, the dire option of another Labor-Green government with some […]
This is such a change. It used to be that the best a skeptic could hope for was a politician who “believes the science” but spoke in a code about wanting more evidence. But here’s a candidate openly wooing skeptics — no pandering to political correctness. Imisides is equipped with a PhD in chemistry and he wants a debate: Look at me as a type of scientific Dirty Harry, he says. He explains why lawyer-politicians use the wrong reasoning and we need scientist politicians (like him, obviously). His points are not just about Australian politics but all Western governments. He skips the scientific details here (we all know them), but I can vouch that from his past emails he’s not only done the homework on aerosols, hotspots, ice cores, and different IPCC reports, he’s even familiar with the devastating Thompson’s case (skeptical farming family). This man is a serious skeptic. Well informed, and he understands how to reason. In a double dissolution election, he’s tackling a big vacant niche so he has a real chance (and with a lucky #1 spot on the ticket to boot). I wish there were more like him in every state — scientifically […]
Get ready. The legislation was done on the last day Parliament sat in December. The Coalition government knew it would be popular with the voters who all want “carbon action” so they… buried the news. No cheering. No speeches.
It apparently starts on July 1, and applies to 150 companies — about half our emissions. It’s a Cap N Trade system with “Caps” that can be screwed gently down as the climate warms to fill government coffers and raise electricity prices. The Direct Action plan auctions can be phased out and the SneakTax phased in. It could end up being the main game. A blank cheque.
It’s called “Safeguard” — it was safe for politicians and guards them against their failure to meet pointless, symbolic international agreements to slow storms. A Safeguard for politicians but a SneakTax for the people.
What does it mean? It’s time Australia got a new central political party.
Alan Kohler in The Australian
From July 1, coincidentally the day before the election, the Coalition’s “safeguard mechanism” within its Direct Action Plan will come into force.
One-hundred and fifty companies, representing about 50 per cent of Australia’s total carbon emissions, will be […]
There is a voting block in Australia that is ignored and disorganised, but ready to be galvanized. It’s part of a worldwide phenomenon. Readers who havent read the first post on the Delcons phenomenon ought start there.
An election is likely to be called any day. There are 15 million voters enrolled in Australia. If 4% of Liberal-Nat voters are Delcons, that’s about 2% of the total voter pool or 300,000 people who don’t matter. And that’s a conservative, pardon the pun, estimate. Another 10% of Liberal voters said they are “a little less likely” to vote for the Liberal Party at the next election. These voters are not lost from the leftie end of the Liberal Party fan club. Potentially there are another 750,000 who could be convinced to instead vote National, ALA, Lib Dem, Family First or some other option should it appear. All up, these 14% of Lib voters have a million votes and are the most passionate sixth of Liberal supporters.
What could possibly go wrong?
Picture 300,000 less Liberal donors, volunteers, scrutineers, and people to hand out how-to-vote cards at 7,000 polling booths on July 2nd. Imagine 300,000 fewer website commenters willing to defend […]
With an election likely for July 2nd, the hottest topic in Australian politics right now is how to vote. So put your best case forward here. Hammer this out. Will Turnbull promise anything to win back the Delcons — the angry conservatives? The time to ask is now, and if the Liberal base are not prepared to vote against him, they have nothing to negotiate.
“Better to have a real conservative opposition than a fake conservative government.”
The elephant in 2016 is the ferocious boiling anger among betrayed conservatives and small government libertarians, divided over whether they can bear to vote for Turnbull (a Liberal*) who has been called the best leader the Labor Party never had. Delcons was tossed at the so-called “Delusional” Conservatives. But they took up the badge. Defcons means the Defiant ones.
Right now, and since September, I’m a Delcon, like Tim Blair, Merv Bendle, and James Allan. Convince me otherwise. (We love you Miranda but you are wrong.)
“As long as Turnbull is in charge there will be no real alternative for conservative libertarians.”
The issue: Is it better to vote for the lesser of two evils and hope a Turnbull-led party can be reformed […]
A gift for Turnbull, who doesn’t deserve it.
Welcome to Election-2016 in Australia.
We’ve done this before: Bill Shorten has promised there will be “no carbon tax under Labor”. This almost exactly mirrors the promise made by Julia Gillard on her way to the most pathetic parliamentary win ever recorded in Australian history. Gillard’s barely-there-with-the-help-of-two-turncoats-success was based on this infamous deceit, which Mr Bill Shorten approved of and voted in. Channelling Gillard-2010
At least he is kinda upfront about saying there will be no tax apart from a lot of new taxes he calls trading schemes. What kind of trade are you forced by law to make? A tax…
“There will be no carbon tax under Labor, there will be no fixed price under Labor, what we are doing instead is we are working with the market to create an Emissions Trading Scheme,” Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said.
He is offering a kind of “Cap N Trade”, which is bound to suit all the Aussies who’ve been lining up at protests saying “No Carbon Tax. We want Cap N Trade”. Have you met one ? Me neither.
Let’s not forget the advantages of trading versus taxes: Markets […]
In Australia the latest (unpublished) opinion poll shows concern about tackling climate change has fallen from 55% in 2007 to 35%.
Groupthinking struggles to understand:
The aversion to talking about climate change during the election campaign reflects a wider problem: our concern for this issue has fallen even while it has become larger and more urgent, writes Mike Steketee.
Climate change dropped off the political radar — ABC Drum
It sure does reflect a wider problem: that democracies need real public debate, real choice, and we are not getting it. Skeptics want climate change to be a voter issue — bring on a plebiscite. Let the public decide how much they should spend to change the weather. But that’s exactly what the believer politicians fear. They know they have to hide the topic because it’s electoral death. Everyone wants to stop pollution and “save the planet” — it’s motherhood and apple pie, but no one wants to pay much to try to change the climate. Eighty percent might believe the climate changes, but only12% want to pay two dollars to offset their Jetstar flight (and it’s less for Qantas). Therein lies a diabolical dichotomy.
[…]
As with the US, Australian conservatives are fed up with the pandering to the pompous climate scare. Our PM might “believe” but many conservatives and libertarians don’t. There is growing unrest.
Here is the NSW state branch calling for real debate — trying to rein in Turnbull:
NSW Liberals call for national debates on climate change science
Fairfax Media understands the motion passed with support of more than 70 per cent of delegates at the state council meeting held on the Central Coast last weekend.
A motion passed at the party’s state council calls on the government to “arrange and hold public debates/discussions” between scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and “independent climate scientists”.
The motion says the events should cover “the global warming/climate change debate”; “the claims by the IPCC”; and the statement “is all the science settled”.
The motions – which were debated after Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had left the room following his speech – reveal the level of climate change scepticism among the Liberal base in NSW.
Sources say Mr Turnbull – known to strongly support action on climate change – was heckled by […]
The political bomb is ticking again. Despite being slayed twice at Australian elections the ETS monster – the emissions trading scheme – has popped back out of the box. This time around, Turnbull and co will not paint it as a big deal grand scheme, nor give it a proper name. It will be eased in under the radar as much as possible (as I predicted) being forced on only the worst “polluters” as a cheaper way to offset carbon emissions.
There’s a strange rush on in Australian politics to force Australian companies (and consumers) to send money to struggling bankers in Europe.
It’s only a few credits… Greg Hunt says overseas emissions credits will ‘probably’ be allowed
The environment minister talks flexibility in emissions targets as Coalition backbenchers mock international deal reached at Paris climate conference.
The Turnbull government will “probably” allow emission reduction permits to be bought from overseas, giving Australia flexibility to increase the targets it pledged at the Paris climate conference, Greg Hunt has predicted.
Right now, to avoid lighting the same fires that got Turnbull ousted in 2009, Turnbull and Hunt are pretending an ETS was a part of the Abbott […]
Australians keep voting against climate taxes, but in 2016 we’re having an election based on climate. (We get the choice of “Bad” or “Worse”. For the economy, it’s the TNT-plan or the Nuclear-bomb?)
The Liberals are offering the obscene cut of 26 – 28% from 2005 by 2030. As a nation dependent on fossil fuels, with no nuclear or no new hydro on offer, the target is ridiculous. With the most rapidly growing population in the West, and one of the most energy intensive export industries globally, it’s economically suicidal. The Labor Party have a fantasy that it should be 45%. (Why not 85%?)
As far as the election goes in 2016, our only hope is to elect minor party and independent Senators to stop our two main parties from hobbling the nation. Start planning now.
According to the opposition spokesman Mark Butler on the 7:30 Report last night, the 45% fantasy will all be fine, because energy use and economic development will be “decoupled” (for the first time in human history) and new technology will save us. We’ll have profoundly different cars he says.
Look at what the last 15 years have done for cars…
Imagine how different […]
Australians have voted against a carbon tax twice. Liberals threw out Turnbull over the introduction of an emissions trading scheme in 2009, yet here he is, barely leader for two weeks and already they are floating a timeframe for the introduction of emissions trading.
I did warn that the Turnbull agreement with the Nationals to keep Tony Abbott’s climate policies means almost nothing. It’s easy for him to keep the “target” and shift towards an Emissions Trading scheme (ETS) and he and Greg Hunt are suggesting that already.
Indeed, some of the fine print Turnbull probably wanted was already written in Abbott’s plan. Thanks to Al Gore and Clive Palmer, the possibility of emissions trading was left in the Direct Action legislation.Why else would Gore fly out here to stand next to a coal miner? And what did he offer Clive in return we wonder? Suddenly, Palmer demanded an ETS for his vote, but finally settled for a clause saying an ETS should be “reviewed” if our main trading partners brought one in. So Turnbull can technically keep the Abbott “plan” but entirely break the spirit of it. The Nationals (and 54 pro-Turnbull Liberals) will look like fools if they […]
It’s only been a week, and already the door is open to the emissions trading monster. The Nationals may have got Turnbull to agree in writing last Tuesday that he would not change the Abbott policies, but writing things on paper is not enough, apparently it needs to be carved in stone.
If the member for Goldman Sachs still wants the fake “free” market solution — the one he threw away his leadership for in 2009 — he can keep the current coalition plan but use foreign credits to meet the targets. The global carbon market is the $2 Trillion dollar scheme to enrich financial houses, crooks and bureaucrats. It’s a whole fiat currency, ready-to-corrupt. The vested interests in this are knocking at every door. They’d be mad not too. But what kind of world do we want to live in? We don’t have to reward the do-nothing unproductive sector and the corrupt.
A carbon tax is a pointless waste, and the worst kind of carbon tax is a global trading scheme.
If Australians don’t want to be sold out in Paris, they need to protest now. I suggest writing to The Nationals, Libs, Nick Xenophon and media outlets.
Six […]
Despite the resounding win a mere two years ago, and achieving his main promises, Abbott has been ousted in his first term. Politics is dirtier than ever.
He was elected with a big win, but lasted just two years in office. Gillard barely made a government, needing help from two turncoats, and her legacy legislation burnt her solemn promise — yet she held office even longer than Abbott did.
The anti Abbott, Abbott, Abbott campaign in the media has been relentless and successful.
Turnbull has said he will stick with Australia’s carbon emissions cuts (26% by 2030) but this means nothing. Firstly, the target is obscenely high, and secondly, there are so many possible ways to waste more money and give up more sovereign rights in Paris. He can sell us out to the financial houses that want carbon trading, and waste additional billions on renewable energy.
Labor, Liberal, what’s the difference?
Joy. Great news for climate bloggers in Australia. : – (
8.9 out of 10 based on 117 ratings
It’s a tax that’s “not a tax” and a “free market” that isn’t free.
Joy. An emission trading scheme (ETS) is on the agenda again in Australia. Here’s why the first priority is to clean up a crooked conversation. If we can just talk straight, the stupid will sort itself out.
The national debate is a straight faced parody — it could be a script from “Yes Minister”, except no one would believe it. Bill Shorten argues that the Labor Party can control the world’s weather with something that exactly fits the definition of a tax, yet he calls it a “free market” because apparently he has no idea what a free market really is. (What union rep would?) It’s like our opposition leader is a wannabe entrepreneur building a Kmart that controls the clouds. Look out Batman, Billman is coming. When is a forced market a free market? When you want to be PM.
The vandals are at the gates of both English and economics, and we can’t even have a straight conversation. The Labor Party is in flat out denial of dictionary definitions — is that because they can’t read dictionaries, or because they don’t want an honest […]
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