Is our 2 party system just a con?

[willedoo]

On the subject of voters no longer listening, it has a two part effect. On the one hand, they no longer trust or believe the incumbents and stop listening to the sales pitch. The other factor is that the only way the majors can dismantle the One Nation juggernaut is to point out the faults and weaknesses of ON. That's where the second part comes in; people stop listenening to that as well and basiclly couldn't care less about the party's faults if it means getting rid of the status quo.

[red750]

17 minutes ago, Grumpy Old Nasho said:

I can't get a code anymore for my online banking changes

This belongs in the Gripes thread, it has nothing to do with the two party system or Australian elections.

 

But I agree, the overriding demand to do everything on your phone is a real pain. Now you can get your drivers licence on your phone. Soon it will be the only way, like it or not. Not happy, Jan.

[Marty_d]

Unless your phone is really old, you should be able to search up "wi-fi calling" in Settings and switch that on.  Then you can get calls and texts with your phone using wi-fi from your home internet.

[Marty_d]

But back to topic - yes I think Jerry has it but it's damn depressing.

The fact that people are angry at the status quo I get.

The fact that they don't care that things can get a lot worse for them, that's the sad bit.  Looks like the lessons we should be learning from the USA are not being learned.

Dark times ahead.

[willedoo]

For anyone still pondering why so many people are turning to One Nation, the easiest way to find out is just go down to the pub and talk to some concretors or brickies or truckies. People from a variety of walks of life are making the shift, but the biggest demographic is the working class blue collar workers. They'll tell you all about it.

[facthunter]

And where do they get their information From? Murdock and now overseas BOT's? If they checked things out Australia is right up with the best economic performers in the world. Still got triple  A ratings  Inflation in control Adequate fuel reserves. Just tell ME were  all you whingers would rather be living right now, if it's so hopeless here. Nev

[Jerry_Atrick]

1 hour ago, Marty_d said:

But back to topic - yes I think Jerry has it but it's damn depressing.

The fact that people are angry at the status quo I get.

The fact that they don't care that things can get a lot worse for them, that's the sad bit.  Looks like the lessons we should be learning from the USA are not being learned.

Dark times ahead.

It is depressing but the reality is the incumbents won't  change unless it is forced on them.. 

 

And there appears only one way they will get it.

 

 

[Jerry_Atrick]

31 minutes ago, facthunter said:

And where do they get their information From? Murdock and now overseas BOT's? If they checked things out Australia is right up with the best economic performers in the world. Still got triple  A ratings  Inflation in control Adequate fuel reserves. Just tell ME were  all you whingers would rather be living right now, if it's so hopeless here. Nev

I think you'll find they get their information from their bank account and what is left in them after the bills are paid.. or their crumbling health services, etc.

 

Murdich makes it easy ti fund someone to blame and someone to use to punish the incumbents.

 

Look over here.. a PM who finally gets it and with really tiny tweaks, the protest party, Reform and his mates are imploding in the polls

Edited yesterday at 09:37 AM by Jerry_Atrick

[nomadpete]

1 hour ago, Marty_d said:

The fact that people are angry at the status quo I get.

Yes, that's easy to see.

 

So how can we motivate the ruling politicians to...

 1. Listen to the electorate.

 

2. Take action to react to the electorate's concerns.

 

3. Communicate to the electorate about what action they are taking.

 

4. Restore the lost trust. Maybe by demonstrating that they fulfil their election promises.

 

Otherwise, brace yourself for a local repeat of the trumpian disaster.

[Grumpy Old Nasho]

The major parties have had 125 years to get it right. In all that time you'd think they would have learned that democracy means more than just having an election every three years and then treating the electorate with contempt.

 

They're simply not the kind of people we want governing us anymore, they've had their day, their psyches are no longer fit for purpose. 

[willedoo]

Yes, unless the status quo gets enough of a shock, continuing to support them is like giving an alcoholic a beer in the vain hope they will give it up.

 

It's put the Coalition between a rock and a hard place. They're losing support to One Nation and to try and counter that, they're talking about One Nation when they should be talking about Labor. The Government could end up losing quite a few seats as well. They're a very broad church these days, but the cocktail set won't get them over the line. They still need their traditional base of the blue collar worker, and that's the main demographic heading to ON.

 

Another thing to ponder is this - Coalition voters who have gone to One Nation will not likely go fom there to Labor in the future; if they move from ON, they will most likely go back to the Coalition. On the other hand, the demographic that is deserting Labor for One Nation, would they be more likely to go straight back to Labor in similar circumstance? I'd tend to think if they've left Labor and leapfrogged the Coalition to ON, they might be tempted to go to the Coalition in the future if the Coalition came up with some appealing policies and narratives. It's a potential problem I see for Labor.

[willedoo]

It's a shame people can't debate politics in a mature fashion without resorting to name calling. 

[nomadpete]

I suspect one root cause of the malaise, is that politics has become a business dominated by professional politicians. Their greatest motivation is a desire to keep their job and rise through the ranks. 

They act as though it's a game of 'say whatever it takes, to get the votes'.

 

The electorate no longer believes anything any of them says (even the honest ones). To restore trust they will have to get the punters to start saying 'Hey, thank goodness, xxxx did this for us! '

 

 

[old man emu]

3 hours ago, nomadpete said:

To restore trust they will have to get the punters to start saying 'Hey, thank goodness, xxxx did this for us! '

How often do we hear of any good work that our Local Member does for the electorate? As Mark Anthony was want to say, "The evil that men do lives after them;  The good is oft interred with their bones."

 

If those good works were publicised, then a Local Member would be assured of continued support.

[facthunter]

NO one has YET said where they would rather be ( as I asked earlier on.) Surely the question is quite straight forward. IF you think Trump is BAD, Pauline is his greatest admirer outside of the US,. OME, anyone can check how WE are Performing compared with the REST of the World but that would ruin their case. Nev

[old man emu]

4 minutes ago, facthunter said:

anyone can check how WE are Performing compared with the REST of the World but that would ruin their case.

Anyone can, but few do.

 

Old scandalsheet maxim: Never let the truth get in the way of a godd story.

[Marty_d]

And "A lie travels around the world before the truth gets its boots on"

Which is what liars like Trump and Pauline depend on.

[facthunter]

Just what do LIARS say that could/should be believed? Proper Parties have rules about what Policies they have. There is NO stability at Present or likely with the Hanson/Ashby dictatorship. History repeating......  30 years. Promises there are just Words borrowed from Trump and Farage and various criminal Nazi's. They have Piles of cash to run court cases. SHE Reads her Speeches, (written by Ashby). Donors expect a return on their Investment. That's who she will be standing up for. Not the Underdogs and poor people.  Nev

[nomadpete]

6 hours ago, facthunter said:

Promises there are just Words borrowed from Trump and Farage and various criminal Nazi's. They have Piles of cash to run court cases. SHE Reads her Speeches, (written by Ashby). Donors expect a return on their Investment. That's who she will be standing up for. Not the Underdogs and poor people.  Nev

Nobody is really disputing all the above.

The problem is that the rest of the big party politicians are tarred with the same brush. 

And often enough it is sufficiently true to drown out any good they actually do.

[Jerry_Atrick]

8 hours ago, facthunter said:

NO one has YET said where they would rather be ( as I asked earlier on.) Surely the question is quite straight forward. IF you think Trump is BAD, Pauline is his greatest admirer outside of the US,. OME, anyone can check how WE are Performing compared with the REST of the World but that would ruin their case. Nev

It doesn't matter.. The fact we are heading downhill slower than the others doesn't make it good nor excusable People are wanting things to turn around, not to be told it will turn around and then the same path continue. After at least two generations of things getting worse, people are saying how do we change this. They only have one really big lever. The problem is, there is no one to step up with the real fixes so the only alternative is to, as @willedoo put it - burn the house down and start again. 

 

A lot of people don't see Chump's actions as anything but that... Even one of his MAGA supporters said it is the bitter medicine America needs to heal and get better (I am not sure I subscribe to that way of thinking, but the reality is there are far too many being pushed to the margins and they are getting angry).

 

[willedoo]

Speaking of MAGA, I was reading a news article on one of the recent elections and it had a file photo of what was obviously some enthusiastic ON supporters on election night at wherever their campaign function was being held. A couple of them were wearing blue MAGA hats which I hadn't seen before. At first I assumed they might be ON caps with a take-off of the Trumpian caps, eg: MAGA being Make Australia Great Again. I zoomed in on the photo and could see the smaller lettering underneath; the caps represented MAGA - Make Albo Go Away. They've probably been around for a while, I've just never seen them before.

 

 

[willedoo]

There's some interesting numbers in the upcoming Victorian election. The lower house has 88 seats currently consisting of Labor 56, Liberal 19, Nationals 9 and Greens 4. That gives Labor a buffer of 11 seats, meaning they could lose 11 seats and still govern in their own right with a majority of 1 at 45 seats. If it came down to the wire they've always got four greens for minority government support if the Greens retain their seats

 

The blokes from Redbridge are constantly crunching numbers and polling figures. Kos Samaras has identified 11 seats with very similar demographics to the wipe out of Labor in Secret Harbour, WA. According to him, Labor can almost safely write those 11 off to One Nation, with a twelth seat being one to watch as the demographics of diversity split between the north and the south half of the electorate. His partner Tony Barry is tipping a Labor loss and that the Coalition will get a majority in their own right without needing the support of One Nation. He said a lot of the eastern seats that were formerly Liberal heartland are swinging back to the Liberals, and that is the problem for Labor. Seats with a high diversity (high migrant population) are polling up to 70% primary vote for Labor, so they should have no problem holding those. Victoria is the only state where the Liberals are polling better than One Nation.

[Marty_d]

42 minutes ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

It doesn't matter.. The fact we are heading downhill slower than the others doesn't make it good nor excusable People are wanting things to turn around, not to be told it will turn around and then the same path continue. After at least two generations of things getting worse, people are saying how do we change this. They only have one really big lever. The problem is, there is no one to step up with the real fixes so the only alternative is to, as @willedoo put it - burn the house down and start again. 

 

A lot of people don't see Chump's actions as anything but that... Even one of his MAGA supporters said it is the bitter medicine America needs to heal and get better (I am not sure I subscribe to that way of thinking, but the reality is there are far too many being pushed to the margins and they are getting angry).

 

If they think things are bad now, wait until the oligarchs are directly in charge (as opposed to the current proxy by bribery).

[willedoo]

We'll all be rooned.

[Marty_d]

Actually - I don't buy it.

The biggest reason things go downhill for blue collar workers is inequality.

More of the pie goes to the massively rich and trickle down economics is the same joke it's always been.

Even if they blame the major parties, they're voting for the fringe party that's bought and paid for by the same rich fucks that are already ruining their lives.

If they truly wanted to change things for the better, they'd vote Green or progressive independents like Pocock.