Australians come to their senses – March 24th will be remembered as the day they collectively said “we’re tired of this sh**” Commenter “truthseeker” writes in comments:
============================================================
Anthony,
You may want to refer to Jo Nova’s latest post about the results of a state election down under.
Now for all of you nice people from the USA who may not think state elections are that big a deal if you do not live in that state, please remember that we only have 6 states and 2 territories, not 50 like you guys. We just had an election in Queensland, one of our most economically important states, especially for mineral wealth representing about a quarter of the population. Before the election the Labour (think Democrat) held a small majority in the 89 seat Lower House (House of Representatives).
With over 70% of the vote counted, the results are;
Liberal / National Party coalition (think Republicans – sort of) – 78 seats
Labour (think Democrat) – 7 seats
KAP (new party – think TEA party with less logic and more strangeness) – 2 seats
Independents – 2 seats.
A mini-van will have more seats than the previously incumbent Labour party in the new parliament.
I have one word for this … OUCH!
=============================================================
Jo Nova writes:
Those devastating Queensland Election Results: Voters hate lies and the Carbon Tax
UPDATE: Is this a record? Has there ever been a loss this bad in Australian history? Conservatives likely to win 74 seats of an 89 seat parliament.
Labor was reduced to only 11 seats in 1974, and on latest counting tonight appeared set to retain only nine seats. Some analysts put the figure even lower, at seven. This would mean Labor falling short of official party status and relying on the incoming LNP government to grant it party offices, staff and resources. The Queensland Greens failed to win a seat and suffered a fall in support. [The Australian]
This is thread for all those who want to comment on this election. According to Bolt, things are not just bad, they’re seriously awful for the Labor Party. Newspoll says LNP (conservatives) 55%, Labor 26%. Channel Nines polls says Labor could be left with less than 10 seats!
The ABC’s election predictor at 8:26 has LNP on 67 seats, Labor on four, others five, doubtful 15. Absolutely catastrophic for Labor. The current leader of the Labor Party in Queensland is Anna Bligh facing a 13% swing against her, and will need preferences just to stay in Parliament.
March 24, 2012, will be remembered as the day the electorate delivered a decisive, devastating blow to an incumbent Labor government. Courier Mail
For non-Australians, Australia has seven states (technically 5 states and 2 territories), and in 2007 all the States and the Federal Government were Labor. Currently Liberal (meaning conservative) governments have won NSW, WA, and Vic and now look like taking a landslide in Queensland. These are the four largest states.
===================================================================
Andrew Bolt has this update:
Queensland election – and why it spells death to Gillard
Andrew Bolt March 24 2012 (5:52pm)
Here is the bottom line from the rout of Labor in today’s Queensland election – the line that spells doom for Julia Gillard, too.
Premier Anna Bligh, 2008:
I will not kick (Queensland households) when they are down and I will not abolish the petrol subsidy.
Three months after the 2009 election:
THE Bligh government will scrap its 8.35 cent per litre fuel subsidy and hold a multi-billion dollar fire sale of State-owned assets to offset a plunge in revenues during the global financial crisis.
And that was already that, as the next Galaxy poll showed, two months later:
There has been a dramatic swing to the Opposition, with a 59-41 lead on a two-party-preferred basis – a 10 point swing from the March 21 state election… And Ms Bligh’s popularity rating has hit an all-time low for a Queensland premier at 33 per cent.
Remind you of anyone?:
Anna Bligh broke a pre-election promise, and hiked up people’s bills. She immediately lost the public’s trust and never regained it, although got a brief sugar hit during the 2011 floods.
Julia Gillard broke a pre-election promise, and is already hiking up people’s bills. She immediately lost the public’s trust and never regained it.
The analogy still not close enough?
Sky News exit polls show voters were most concerned about the Cost of Living (69 per cent), followed by Delivery of State Services (63 per cent), Carbon Tax (44 per cent)
How do you think Gillard will do in Queensland next year?
I read on one of the news articles, the only reason Greens had any seats at all was Labor preference votes. Now that Labor died so horribly, the Greens died with them because of lack of preference.
Shows you just how many votes Greens were getting in the first place. None.
What a lot of US readers don’t realise is that voting in Australia is not voluntary like you have but is compulsory for all citizens who have attained 18 years of age before the date of the election, not in jail for longer than 12 months, not insane or overseas. Failure to vote will result in a fine and or a jail sentence.
No need to spend billions trying to woo voters to actually turn up. But, piss off enough peole and you get the reaction my fellow Queenslanders have handed to Labor. I was an dyed in the wool, family Labor supporter but I can no longer stomach the federal and state policies that have basically ruined my state and country. If anyone thinks that this result isn’t a clear and present warning to the Prime Minister then they have are dreaming. The Greens failed to gain anymore than 2.9% of the vote and no seats.
Congrats Oz – I sincerely believe you have the best country in the world – like Canada, but with warmer weather. I was worried about your future under the Gillard dictatorship, but am now heartened by this welcome election news. If I were younger, I’d move there in a heartbeat.
A common problem of Oz and Canada is the significant influence of miserable old British leftists in our new societies. These embittered socialists emigrate to our shores, burdened with excess baggage from the class-riddled United Kingdom, and spread their socialist venom like rancid Devonshire cream.
These British malcontents also formed the core of our radical leftist labour movements, and pollute our societies by trying to engender class warfare where none should exist. We should, by now, have the confidence to simply ignore these whiners and continue to build the best countries in the world.
________________________
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/15/aussie-government-proposes-unlimited-speech-regulation-names-climate-skeptics-and-labor-critics-as-targets/#more-59235
Visited Oz in 2005 – what a great country!
Really nice people, great climate, beautiful vistas.
Cairns, the Tully River and the Great Barrier Reef – outstanding!
Oz has a proud history and a great future – IF you don’t let the watermelons drag you down into the mire.
69 % of exit poll voters stated cost of living increases as their major voting reason.
Qld’s electricity prices have increased from one of the world’s cheapest 10 years ago to among the world’s most expensive today. The reasons for this are three fold:-
1. Transmission upgrades – electricity was state owned and run – in a small population with limited economy this was necessary. Transmission upgrading fell behind increased demand fuelled by growth in population as coal mining boom took off early 2000’s.
Also Queensland has Fedaral and State sponsored “clean energy” schemes where those rich enough can get huge subsidies plus a feed in tariff for solar power installations while the poorer and most in need citizens get the increased bills – clearly people are not as stupid as politicians think.
2. Privitisation of energy retailing – a useless attempt to inject “competition” while the generation capacity remains state owned. Also the government sold off the state owned railways retaining the commuter network – ie sold off the profitable coal haulage and kept the loss making commuter network.
3. 44 % of exit poll respondents directly cited the Federal Labor government’s “carbon tax” as the reason for voting against the State Labor government.
So approximately 69 % cited negative economic impacts as their reason BUT a significant component is also TRUST.
The Queensland Premier promised not to abolish a petrol subsidy before the 2009 election but did so immediately afterwards. She never recovered her previous high public confidence.
Our Prime Minister promised no carbon tax before the last election yet introduced one less than six months later. She never recovered her previous high public confidence.
If anyone is stupid enough to think yesterday wasn’t a vote on the carbon tax and clean energy they are delusional. If anyone thinks the multitude who voted against the State Labor government will vote FOR the Federal Labor government next year they are delusional.
Betrayal of trust and ignoring economic hurt inflicted by intentional government policy lead to the biggest electoral defeat of a government in Australia’s history – it clearly showed you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
Can the US reject the same political double speak – I’m waiting to see.
PS – I have been a lifelong Labor supporter – they used to represent the ordinary people and were responsible for a majority of the good Australian governments initiated BUT they became hijacked by a “green” agenda and listened to the spin of endless drought and squandered public money on a useless agenda whilst allowing services to decline.
Now after 3 years of wet weather and floods any wonder they have shut up about “clean” energy and climate change.
So, yes I think environmental issues had a huge impact – the Greens lost a lot of ground when they were predicting they would win their first seat – they didn’t.
George Lawson says:
March 24, 2012 at 1:13 pm
The message to President Obama is clear.
=======================================
Not at all George…….That’s how we got republicans in Congress…democrats didn’t get the message
From the Aussie “The Punch”
A key reason Bligh is so powerfully on the nose is her announcement after the 2009 election of a decision to sell off $15 billion worth of state assets.
Nothing had been said about this in the campaign. Voters viewed it as a breach of trust – in effect, a broken promise. And they have never forgiven her.
Queenslanders made up their minds about Bligh back then. As a result, they paid little heed to her messages in this campaign.
In the final days, Newman was still asking why she had lied about privatisation and calling on her to apologise.
The parallel with Gillard’s broken “no carbon tax” promise is inescapable. Bligh’s breach of faith was less blatant than the prime minister’s, but she paid a heavy price.
The overwhelming likelihood is that Gillard will, too. The looming Labor massacre in Queensland shows that voters have long memories.
http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/the-labor-brand-is-damaged-and-so-is-the-product/
TomT says:
March 24, 2012 at 11:28 am
Nerd: I agree with you the Tea Party isn’t strange. I am not sure the author of this post does either. He says KAP is stranger than the Tea Party and less logical. Personally I think most political movements are stranger and far less logical than the Tea Party.
________________________
Being the curious type who does not trust the MSM, I looked into where the Tea Party “reputation” came from. (I am not a member)
I tracked it down to the Blair-Rockefeller poll
The Report title is Tea Party Distinguished by Racial Views and Fear of the Future”
How ever when you dig into the questions especially the conclusion, “Race Consciousness and Divergent Views about Equality are Characteristic of Tea Party”” you find most of the questions start: ““Do you think it is the responsibility of the federal government to make sure that…” Therefore all the results are confounded with Tea Party views of the proper role of the federal government (SMALL). Therefore no conclusions can be drawn except that the questions were specifically tailored to make sure Tea Party members look racist when the results were intentionally misinterpreted.
Other results were:
Tea party members are “political sophisticated” The poll found The “majority (65.3%) of Tea Party members have some college training, with 27.5 % having earned a Bachelor’s Degree or higher… Nearly half of Tea Party members (49.9%) are middle class, with an annual household income of 40 to 100K… two-thirds (63.2%) of Tea Party members are over the age of 45.”
In other words these people are not dumb and have been around the block a couple of times. So then we come to the report that Tea Party members have a pessimistic view of the future. This is only based on their predictions for one year. The questions were asked in 2010 after the election. “…36.9% of Tea Party members think their personal situations will get worse or much worse … Specifically 39.2% of Tea Party Member believe their own personal financial situation will be worse in a year… And 62.1% of Tea Party members think the country will get worse or much worse in the next year…”
Considering that year is now up and the unemployment rate is still around 23%…
And then considering this article from June 20, 2011,
ERRRrrr, Ms Maxwell, I do not consider the Tea Party view “pessimistic” I consider the view realistic.
So for those Aussies who think a similar group is “Weird” check them out and make your own judgement because the MSM LIES! And not only does the MSM lie they are the propaganda arm of the Regulating Class
Ian W says:
March 24, 2012 at 11:04 am
//////////////////////////////
AND
Boeing are loving it.
What a whammy for the EU.
Many of us here are hoping this conservative election victory in Queensland marks the beginning of the end for our incompetent LaborGreen minority federal government.
Presumably we will now see frenzied efforts by the Gillard/Brown regime to implement their media and internet political censorship laws. Not content with an already a left leaning MSM, they want a 100% ban on contrary political/scientific views.
Roll on 30 November 2013 election, hopefully sooner!
Jimbo says:
March 24, 2012 at 11:10 am
/////////////////////////////////////
How can you say that?
According to tye latest UEA/Met Office revisions, they now claim that the globe is warming faster than ever. Have you not heard? Are you not concerned? Are you not with the message?
It is all part of Labor’s commitment to the environment, now they can car pool.
simonw says:
March 24, 2012 at 12:02 pm
The surfers’ van in the photo is far too functional to be Labour.
I think Compo’s Commer would be about right:
http://www.steamin.in/RDC/Mildenhall120507.htm
______________________________________
NAH…
That does not capture the real spirit of the green liberals like this photo does: http://olive-drab.com/images/army-horses-mules_ww2_03_700.jpg
There’s a problem- Tony Abbott is the alternative.
If Australians were discerning enough , they’d look to the micro parties like LDP or DLP -anyone but the two majors. Our politics presents the same issue as American democracy; the centre left/centre right political factions are just two wings of the status-quo.
Labor will be booted out because of their idiotic handling of the country, their own capriciousness and the carbon tax -and deservedly so, but we’re talking greater of two evils here guys.
The Greens vote rose in the last state election (2009) to 8.4% as first preference, then doubled to greater than 10% in the federal election (2010) and 12.77% in the same election for the senate for the state. Instead this election looks to see the Greens vote to fall well below 8% even though they contested all 89 seats. Meanwhile Katter’s Australia Party only contested 76 seats and picked up nearly 12% of the first preferences.
Mainstream media in Australia had in many cases the Greens polling higher than KAP (9% – 8%). The KAP put a stronger platform forward on no Coal Seam Gas extraction than the Greens, though their highest profile candidate did not win his seat they still won two seats overall. Come senate time in the federal it will be interesting if the greens will continue to lose votes and whether KAP can pick up a senate spot….
Anthony,
Thank you for highlighting my post. I did get the spelling of “Labour” wrong (it was about 2am in the morning here when I made the post) and so if you want to change it, please go ahead.
The fact that the Greens did worse and that Labor was destroyed was all about the betrayal of trust. We do not trust our politicians that much generally, but to get betrayed so many times, to such an extent and for it to have such an economic impact is where this result came from. The Carbon Tax is a multi-facetted and multi-layered betrayal, so it was a huge part of this.
To get this in perspective, there has not been an election rout like this for over 100 years. It may be 100 years before we get the next one.
cui bono says:
March 24, 2012 at 12:14 pm
….Sadly, this leaves the UK as the only major country in the English-speaking world without a clear electoral choice….
_____________________________________
I am not sure the USA has a clear choice either.
I voted for a republican senator after calling and asking his stand on a few bills coming up for vote that I was very opposed to. After the election he voted FOR the bills he said he was against. When I called after the election I was told not to worry modifications were made and that is why he voted for instead of against. (Insert eye roll) If there is a USA and an election in four years I will be out beating the bushes for a candidate to run against that lying syphilitic son of a camel. Actually I have already been campaigning against him for over a year.
There was a range of issues that brought labour to its knees in Queensland. Carbon would be one, however the Labour leader also broke an election promise, introduced legislation that denied first people access to their own lands for spurious environmental reasons, presided over the Flooding of Brisbane and generally were incompetent. A competent government would still have lost, but not by this scale. As one commentator put it “the people just stopped listening”. Would they have lost on Carbon alone? Carbon is a National issue but Queensland is a major exporter of coal. The fact that the Greens lost support as well probably gives you the answer. In Australia The Federal Labour Party is only in Power because it gained the support of the Greens, but in Queensland the Greens are a bit player. They can only have lost support there because of their perceived role in the Federal Government. So the answer is that Quuensland Labour lost significant support due to Federal Environmental policies including Carbon.
crosspatch says:
March 24, 2012 at 2:34 pm
Down here we are cheering.. and waiting with cricket bats at the ready for the next federal election
We Yanks wait with pitchforks and torches. Maybe cricket bats are a safer alternative. Harder to poke your neighbor’s eye out with those.
_______________________
Some of us Tarheels are waiting with the tar and feathers. I figure humiliation works a lot better and you do not get a sympathy backlash…. Oh would I love to tar and feather the turkeys in the District of Criminals…
I hope Cameron and his Lib dhimm axis are watching this carbon taxing loony controlling government having their nuptials removed and wondering about their own chances of ‘reproduction’.
I rejoice for Australia and my Aussie mates, it is splendid news indeed.
“It’s just part of the political cycle”
An unprecedented historical wipe out is not part of any sort of political cycle. It’s equivalent to the Democrats in the US acquiring minor party status after the next election.
Energy policy and anger with the federal government’s new taxes played it’s part, but a major factor seems to have been back flips on election promises and sales of state assets to make up for fiscal incompetence. Similar things happen in other countries, i.e., “read my lips”.
Sam Geoghegan says:
March 24, 2012 at 4:58 pm
There’s a problem- Tony Abbott is the alternative.
If Australians were discerning enough , they’d look to the micro parties like LDP or DLP -anyone but the two majors. Our politics presents the same issue as American democracy; the centre left/centre right political factions are just two wings of the status-quo.
Labor will be booted out because of their idiotic handling of the country, their own capriciousness and the carbon tax -and deservedly so, but we’re talking greater of two evils here guys.
___________________________
The very reason I have always been an Independent. I just wish we had something decent to vote FOR.
This landslide down under gives me hope people are starting to wake up and demand an accounting from their politicians instead of letting the party “Bosses” rule.
Disappointed to see in the article that the TEA Party-types were labeled as
“KAP (new party – think TEA party with less logic and more strangeness) – 2 seats”
Let me clear up the confusion (sown by the Leftwing media) about the TEA Party:
The TEA Party in a nutshell – God, guns, American oil, strong defense, spending control, no illegal immigration, less government, less taxes, less abortion. We are also tired of the fact that a lot of policies from Washington are designed to modify behavior, and in the last couple of years they have become even more draconian and unyielding. Results of the TEA Party: The 2010 elections.
6 & 2 is correct.
6 States – SA, WA, VIC, TAS, QLD, NSW
2 Territories – Northrn Territory, Australian Capital Territory
Plus Pacific and Indian Island territories
BOLT – On the recent election:
“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”
George Orwell