Not going to go too much into my personal feelings here, suffice to say I'm out and out Lefty scum who mostly follows politics for the schadenfreude so I'm enjoying the show. But in terms of long-term trends/probable future outcomes this has been an interesting one.
Quote Originally Posted by griffin View Post
With the Senate still likely to remain held by the Coalition, who will block most of what Labor will want to pass, a Labor minority government would have trouble passing legislation in the lower house to begin with, without compromises to Greens or independents.
Quick little correction here: the Senate is basically Hung as it usually is, with the Coalition usually getting their way through One Nation and whoever else they can wrangle votes from. At present there's a swing to progressive Independents and more greens, so Labor's issues are - based on current polling - more likely to swing the other way (i.e. they'll have to negotiate with more progressive Senators rather than the Coalition).
I've gotta say I'm really enjoying reading your take on things @Griff, cheers for the perspective/s.


Anyway, for me there were a couple of really interesting things that came out of this season. I was honestly expecting Morrison to sneak back into minority government (or at least a larger minority than Labor) on the back of UAP/One Nation preferences, with both majors losing seats and a large number of Independents. I still hope the Independents get the balance of power, I know both two-and-a-half major parties have been pushing the 'chaos and instability' angle but when you look at what actually happened with Gillard-Rudd2 there were a lot of good legislative results and having to actually negotiate policy with people who WEREN'T beholden to Party politics lead to better outcomes and a LOT more transparency and accountability. So I'm pretty pleased at the rise of more Independents. It helps that I live in Tassie these days and we've got a really good track record with people like Wilkie and even Lambie, she started off a bit wobbly but has turned out really well - effectively, having more 'regular people' in politics seems to deliver better results.

I read somewhere that we had 50%, possible as much as 58% (I forget the number, think it was 50.8%) pre-polling day votes cast. A certain amount of that is probably due to Covid, which is still around and we're doing about as poorly at as we ever have despite it not rating a mention much in the campaign, but voter comments suggest a fair amount of that was also an 'I'm sick of it' factor. That's pretty incredible, especially since the LNP government actually made it harder to cast an early vote - they cut down the time you could do so and really pushed people to vote on polling day. So yeah, that's a pretty significant shift there, and changes how campaigns are likely to be run in future as well as reflecting (in a negative-for-mainstream-politicans way) a significant level of voter disaffection and/or hostility towards politics in general.
It was also quite interesting to see a lot of public hostility to the 'gotcha' journalism we saw so much of over the past 6 weeks, especially since voter questions during the public forums were a lot more substantive and concerned with actual policy. So it's not just the pollies who are on the nose.

Lastly, there's doubtless going to be a really interesting ****fight over future direction in the Coalition over the next few weeks/months/years. The much-diminished 'moderates' have been decimated and will point to the Coalition's incredible march to the Right as the cause, while the Nationals (who have been largely responsible for said march) have kept all their seats and will doubtless blame not pushing far-right enough as a result (likely as much/more for political jockeying's sake than out of genuine analysis). Barnaby's already out there starting to lay the narrative, and the Nats are always pushing for more power/influence within the Coalition even if it means trading off national-level electability. If Dutton gets back in (oh please oh please oh please let him lose his own seat, it'll so satisfying to watch) then he'll almost certainly be the new leader, and it'll probably mean yet more Trumpification rather than the 'return to the Centre' the already-ignored-and-now-even-less-powerful Moderate wing are already pushing for. Given that they've just barely squeaked into power with both wings for the past two elections, and that support for the two majors has been going steadily downhill for a long time, it's hard to see how 1) they can reconcile the two camps and 2) win a majority again if they don't. I personally doubt we'll see 'the End of the Coalition' exactly, both sides know they can't win on their own, but where it gets interesting is that Party loyalty only ever lasts as long as their own personal survival isn't at stake, so what we might (probably IMO) see if/when the Coalition lurches even more to the Right is a few of the remaining Moderates decide that going Teal themselves is a better bet than staying as a hostage/accomplice to the likes of Barnaby and Matt Canavan. And that's before seeing what happens with the Morrison/'center-Right'/Pentecostal camp, who are/were the weakest camp in terms of numbers but have enjoyed a lot of power and influence under Morrison and were the 'compromise' group. It's hard to see them just lying down and giving all that up, and Morrison personally (if he even stays in Parliament) and his apparently-very-loyal team isn't likely to enjoy copping the blame for losing, much less losing so comprehensively. Which is tricky because just about everyone else hates the smarmy fat smirking git and were apparently already gearing up to throw him under the bus ASAP. I can't wait to see what the next lot/s of leaked SMS messages are like.