Disclaimer: as you’ve likely picked up from Twitter, I’m obviously biased. I’m not going to make much of an attempt to avoid that.
The Australian Federal Election is happening this Saturday. The likely outcome is that our new Prime Minister will be Tony Abbott, a conservative, bible-loving, homophobic misogynist. He’s the leader of the Liberal Party, who aren’t really very good at being liberal. Hence, in Australia, there’s the distinction between big-L Liberal and small-l liberal. The Liberal Party has an ongoing coalition with the National Party, who are also conservatives (perhaps moreso) with a focus on the bush (anywhere that isn’t a city). Together they’re known as the Coalition (yes, I know, it’s imaginative, but they save their creativity for how to best fuck over refugees, women, the poor, and generally anyone whose skin colour isn’t white).
They’re not in power at the moment though – the party running the country currently is the Australian Labor Party (also known as the ALP, or just Labor), and the bloke in charge is Kevin Rudd. He ousted the last Liberal Prime Minister, ‘Honest’ John Howard (who wasn’t particularly good at being honest), but then was kicked out by his his colleagues and replaced with by his deputy, Julia Gillard. His colleagues found him particularly hard to deal with – labels such as micromanager, dictator and arsehole would generally fit the bill. Gillard, on the other hand, was much better at working with her ministry, and is generally regarded as being quite a good negotiator. She’s also our first female Prime Minister.
Julia Gillard managed to win the previous election, but only by forming a minority government with the assistance of independents and a member of the Greens, as neither she nor Tony Abbott had a clear majority. Sadly, Gillard was never given a fair chance of running the country – Rupert Murdoch controls much of the media here, and so they were always quick to attack and slow to be reasonable, and Abbott is much the same. Plus, Kevin Rudd was always lurking, throwing in the occasional leak to destabilise things further, always hoping to reclaim the leadership.
A couple of months ago, the Labor party realised they were heading to a massive defeat at this coming election, and so switched back to Rudd, as while his colleagues hate him, many outside of the political halls of power thought he was great.
Initially, the polls indicated he could win, but with the constant attack of the Murdoch media, along with poor communication and the occasional bad decision, it’s almost certain Tony Abbott will take over.
The larger question is whether the Coalition will control both houses of power – we have the House of Representatives (much like the USA’s Congress), which is where the majority must be held to become Prime Minister, and then we have the Senate, where majority isn’t critical. If you control both houses, then you can push through any old legislation you like.
Our Senate, while mostly a mix of Liberals, Labor and Nationals, also has several members of the Greens, who are the largest truly progressive party (Labor once owned that label, but have shifted further and further to the right, much like US Democrats from what I understand). The Greens currently hold the balance of power in the Senate – unless both Labor and Coalition agree, there’s no way to get legislation through unless the Greens are happy with it.
Australia’s seeing a noticeable number of asylum seekers arrive by boat – the numbers aren’t anything close to what other countries around the world see, but it’s more than what we’re used to. Over the past 12 years or so conservative politicians and media have crafted such a fear-focused campaign that these refugees are now treated worse than animals, and many people are fine with this – better than them coming here to steal our jobs and talk their foreign lingo! Send them back to Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq and Sri Lanka instead! Most of them are Muslims too, and we can’t have that!
Urgh. So, John Howard led the charge (just prior to September 11 2001) with this fuckery, and Abbott’s continued with it, and Labor’s followed suit too. The two major parties seem to be in a fight to be more cruel and inhumane.
Then there’s climate change – Abbott was once a denier, but these days perhaps he understands it’s real (or it’s just an act), but his policies are more likely to raise carbon emissions than lower them. Rudd once labelled climate change the biggest challenge of our generation, and yet has shrunk away from meaningful action ever since.
The economy is an odd one – Australia avoided the recession that’s hit the rest of the Western world over the past ten years. The global financial crisis never really took hold, and some of that is thanks to Rudd’s team, a little bit of that is probably due to Howard’s team before him, and perhaps also credit belongs to the previous Prime Minister (and before that, treasurer) Paul Keating. And yet, the Coalition still believe this is their strong suit and that Rudd and co have led the country astray. This should be a major winner for Labor, but between Abbott’s bullshit and the media, it’s not helped much at all.
I’m sure there’s more, but hopefully this helps with understanding a lot of my ranting tweets and retweets.