Is our 2 party system just a con?

[willedoo]

I think Labor reasoned that they had no hope of winning so by not running a candidate the Labor vote would go to the independent to help her beat One Nation. Only problem was a fair bit of it would have gone to One Nation. Regardless, the One Nation primary vote was too strong for the independent to have any hope of beating. Not running a candidate might have saved Labor the embarrassment of a swing away from them to ON, but that's just theoretical speculation on my part.

[willedoo]

It's certainly interesting politics in this country lately. What we've just seen is One Nation take a traditionally safe Coalition seat, but not just any seat, the seat of the former opposition leader and leader of the Liberal party. What hurt the Liberals was the swing against them in the last federal election which knocked their safe margin down to 6%.

The big lesson there is that it doesn't matter how many seats you have, it's the seat margins going into the next election that counts. If you have a big majority made up of a lot of marginal seats, the switch can quite easily flick the other way next election.

 

The reason I had to edit this post is a sticky 'a' key on the laptop. If I don't proofread, I have to go back with an edit and add a heap of a's.

Edited 2 hours ago by willedoo

[onetrack]

Farley seems quite a sensible individual, with a very diplomatic turn of speech, unlike a lot of the ON rabble. It will be interesting to see what happens from here on in. A well-spoken, thoughtful individual such as Farley may bring a lot more credibility to the ON Party.

 

However, the general trend of elections in recent decades is voters vote for whoever is in Opposition, just to express dissatisfaction with the ruling Partys performance. No matter who is power, they all appear to have no answers to the ordinary voters pressing problems - inflation, the cost of living, fuel prices, housing unaffordability, lack of job opportunities - they all perform dismally in these fields.

 

I'd like to see some politicians with real backbone, take on the billionaires and giant global corporations, and tax them more heavily, and also lay into the betting conglomerates that wield so much power, and which every politician is too frightened to offend.

[willedoo]

By-elections are often a very different breed than general elections. Mainly due to a lot of local electorate issues, combined with the fact a certain amount of voters feel it's safe to cast a protest vote against the status quo in a by-election. In a general election, those same voters might play safe and stick with the majors. Water is one issue in Farrer, but along with some other local issues, a lot of voters saw the Libs promising to fix things in an electorate that's been held by them for decades. I can understand how a lot of them would feel neglected and think about giving someone else a go.

 

I don't think the poor coalition result is a reflection on their candidates. Both Liberal and National candidates were top knotch candidates, but incumbency worked against them, as well as the problems in Canberra.

[red750]

Every ON voter questioned on TV, when asked why, said "We needed a change."