Climate change is the "pivot point" of Australian politics: party allegiances are ded

Bomberboyokay

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In the UK Brexit is the lens by which the ongoing struggle between the economic winners of the last forty years (metropolitan, tertiary educated, professional employment, internationalist in outlook, welcome immigration and diversity coz good food, hotties etc) and the losers (manual or "sunset" industries and locations, lack of access and/or willingness to engage in tertiary education, see, usually correctly, immigration and "diversity" as directly threatening their personal economic situation) in the neo-liberal western politico-economic structures.

Now many traditional Labour voters are pro-Brexit who will vote for literal Tories, many Remainers were classic soft liberal Tories. All is upside down.

Was there really a flip though? Jeremy Corbyn's Labour won 30 seats a year later and the Conservative Government has been in minority and a joke ever since.
 

Bomberboyokay

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Can someone who doesn't think we shouldn't do anything about climate change anyway explain why it was the Greens' fault Rudd chickened out and Abbott is a scumbag.
 

its free real estate

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Can someone who doesn't think we shouldn't do anything about climate change anyway explain why it was the Greens' fault Rudd chickened out and Abbott is a scumbag.
Your bizarre double negative aside, Rudd took a climate change policy to the 2007 election and won Labor’s first election since 1993 (and since then their only majority government in 23 years).

What the Greens did was pure self interested political bastardry. It undermined the hard won political capital of the ALP and set in chain a series of events to turn what had been public support for climate change mitigation into public skepticism. After Rudd couldn’t get his climate deal up, Turnbull was booted for Abbott, and the entire political turmoil of the past 10 years began. We now have no decent federal climate policy. Thanks Greens.

The same Queensland electorates that saw huge swings to the Coalition on the weekend Rudd won in 2007 while having a CPRS policy. There is zero chance anyone could bring a climate policy now and expect to win those electorates.

But so long as muppets like you get to put up “this Saturday I’m voting Green” on social media I don’t think you’ll care.

As for Abbott and the Liberals, the story of the scorpion and the frog applies.
 
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Let’s imagine for instance 35 years ago Hawke attempts to introduce Medicare, and some spoilers like the Greens said “it’s not socialised enough, we need to add dental work, and there must be no private insurance, etc”.

We’d likely have no Medicare today.
Hawke would have argued them out of it.
That's what good leaders do.
 
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In hindsight, I think dealing with climate change is far too big an issue to be fought in a election by what was effectively a caretaker government and an opposition.

This topic I think is now the at the behest of what Morrison wants to do with it as a mandate for a second term. I don't think an opposition can propose anything huge anymore. They just have to play the media and demonstrate they're not nuts.

On "identity", many people who should be in a union today simply don't view themselves as working class regardless of the fact their income says otherwise. Chicks flogging makeup at Myer, IT grunts, whoever. Air conditioned workplace and dressing properly means they can't see they're at the bottom. Also the casuals and part-timers doing what used to be full-time jerbs think they're "passing through" or "lol not doing this forever". Suddenly 5 years go by, they're still there, being underpaid.
Man, if ever there was an accurate post on this site? Here it is.
 

Todman

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Let’s imagine for instance 35 years ago Hawke attempts to introduce Medicare, and some spoilers like the Greens said “it’s not socialised enough, we need to add dental work, and there must be no private insurance, etc”.

We’d likely have no Medicare today.

There were no Greens, but there were Australian Democrats.
 
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Climate change has to be sold to the public correctly.
For example, fighting climate change will make Australians wealthy.
Australian scientists are the leaders in fighting climate change.
The patents that are developed in Australia will lead to billions of dollars flowing into the economy.
Let's get behind our greatest minds in Australia with the money they need to do their job.

Billions have flowed into cancer research because everyone is affected in some way by cancer.
Well everyone is going to be affected by climate change.
There’s s couple of things happening here; Labor has totally underestimated their target market. Bill Shorten pitched his campaign on the concept of the hard working union boy from Maribyrnong. Phrases like ‘the top end of town’ aren’t going to resonate with labor voters these days. 35 years ago? Yes, when Bob Hawke created a huge political shift, but now? No.

You’ve got a lot of labor voters who are the ‘top end’ these days. Shorten is and was out of touch because his view is that the top end is your wealthy types from point piper like Turnbull.

Christopher Pyne summed this up on Q&A last night; elections are won at economic level. You can’t call a retiree who had a SMSF living off 700k super the ‘top end of town’ and take away their franking credits. People will always want a stronger economy first because it’s the HERE AND NOW.

This was never a climate change election, it was an economic one and labor went too hard left too soon and really missed the target. That’s why Labor needs Jim Chalmers and not Albanese.
 
Retaining franking credits or abolishing them?

Retaining them. No true fiscal - or social - conservative could support it.
 
I think you are trying too hard to weave climate change into the narrative of what happened in this election.

Trying too hard? It literally cost one of the Conservative players his seat and career.
 
Well sure. But there's a difference between saying it is a key issue, and that it is the defining issue.

The Australian political landscape has been due for a realignment for a while, I don't think that is news to anybody. Ever since Hawke came to power, the relevance of our postwar union/anti-union political blocs to your average voter has steadily declined. We see that manifesting itself with the steady splintering of the primary vote on both sides of the aisle. I am sure we will see the major parties shift and align along different axes, and no doubt differentiation on environmental policy will continue to form part of that.

However, the idea that we will see a social 'pro/anti-climate action' schism is incredibly unlikely, if only because it doesn't effectively define a demographic or a philosophy any more than 'pro/anti-economic growth'.

The whole Brexit/MAGA analogy in the OP is incredibly tenuous and problematic for a bunch of reasons, but I won't go into that.

My point is climate in Oz, Brexit and MAGA are all the same thing: lightning rods for the same thing, ie, the cultural and economic conflict between winners from neo liberalism who wish it to continue and losers who want to stop it
 
There’s s couple of things happening here; Labor has totally underestimated their target market. Bill Shorten pitched his campaign on the concept of the hard working union boy from Maribyrnong. Phrases like ‘the top end of town’ aren’t going to resonate with labor voters these days. 35 years ago? Yes, when Bob Hawke created a huge political shift, but now? No.

You’ve got a lot of labor voters who are the ‘top end’ these days. Shorten is and was out of touch because his view is that the top end is your wealthy types from point piper like Turnbull.

Christopher Pyne summed this up on Q&A last night; elections are won at economic level. You can’t call a retiree who had a SMSF living off 700k super the ‘top end of town’ and take away their franking credits. People will always want a stronger economy first because it’s the HERE AND NOW.

This was never a climate change election, it was an economic one and labor went too hard left too soon and really missed the target. That’s why Labor needs Jim Chalmers and not Albanese.

Exactly this. It is about the economics always.
 
Equating a North Shore squabble with the UK leaving the EU is more than slightly ridiculous.

Really? The North Shore of Sydney has done very well out of neo-liberal economics, hence its key concern is climate change. North London has done well out of it too, hence it is firmly Remain.

If you're Remain, you're for action on climate change.

If you're Leave, you doubt climate change is real, or don't think it is a big deal.

British people backing a leave vote in the EU referendum are almost twice as likely to believe that climate change does not have a human cause, according to a new poll

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...ikely-to-disbelieve-in-manmade-climate-change
 
Would Warringah vote Leave or Remain? Would Warringah vote for Trump?

The answers to these questions are self evident despite Warringah not being in the UK or US.

That you know the answer instinctively illustrates what I'm talking about.
 

Caesar

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Really? The North Shore of Sydney has done very well out of neo-liberal economics, hence its key concern is climate change. North London has done well out of it too, hence it is firmly Remain.
North London is also firmly in favour of top hats and morning suits, but I don't see you in here blathering about the "lens of haberdashery".

I understand the general point you are fumbling for - Australia has some similar challenges to face between its haves and have-nots that are currently being dealt with in the UK and the US. I agree (not that I think this is news to anybody). Saying that everything revolves around climate change and that climate change is the new Brexit/MAGA is mostly just a load of post hoc nonsense though.
 
North London is also firmly in favour of top hats and morning suits, but I don't see you in here blathering about the "lens of haberdashery".

I understand the general point you are fumbling for - Australia has some similar challenges to face between its haves and have-nots that are currently being dealt with in the UK and the US. I agree (not that I think this is news to anybody). Saying that everything revolves around climate change and that climate change is the new Brexit/MAGA is mostly just a load of post hoc nonsense though.

Actually North London isn't, that's Kensington and Chelsea and Mayfair you're thinking of.
 

Chameleon75

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My point is climate in Oz, Brexit and MAGA are all the same thing: lightning rods for the same thing, ie, the cultural and economic conflict between winners from neo liberalism who wish it to continue and losers who want to stop it

Yea trumps broken with the liberal economic consensus, there are similarities but differences to.

Here both majors are onboard with the economic consensus, I think the issue is simpler, household debt at record highs, credit growth at a 25year low and stagnant wages.

Basically household credit is maxed out. You have one party presenting no changes, and whilst things might not be great, they’re at least promising not to make things worse. The other party is presenting as the great reformers, and whilst their proposed reforms weren’t extensive, they presented themselves as the heir to Hawke which implies that the proposed reforms were just the start with little details. Reform is disruptive, creates uncertainty you can afford to entertain when you’re in debt to your eyeballs.

The stupidity is that the reserve bank handed labor a gift in the minutes of their meeting. They highlighted stagnant wages as an economic threat and downcast the non inflationary unemployment rate to 4.5%. All they had to do was present policies that promoted jobs growth and wage inflation, and keep banging away at that. The economic argument would’ve been on their side.
 

medusala

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In the UK Brexit is the lens by which the ongoing struggle between the economic winners of the last forty years (metropolitan, tertiary educated, professional employment, internationalist in outlook, welcome immigration and diversity coz good food, hotties etc) and the losers (manual or "sunset" industries and locations, lack of access and/or willingness to engage in tertiary education, see, usually correctly, immigration and "diversity" as directly threatening their personal economic situation) in the neo-liberal western politico-economic structures.
.

That's the conventional wisdom but its nowhere near that simple.

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/brexit-and-the-squeezed-middle/

Our findings confirm a negative relationship between education and voting Leave: the higher the level of one’s education, the lower the likelihood of them voting Leave. Our findings, however, reject the dichotomous view of the low-educated Brexiter vs the high-educated Remainer, by showing that two groups with intermediate levels of education (voters with good GSCEs and A-levels) were more pro-Leave than the low-educated (those with no formal education and with low GSCE grades).

Our argument is that, rather than representing the ‘left out’, Brexit was the voice of this intermediate class who are in a declining financial position. This category of voters represent a group of high sociological relevance also labeled as ‘the squeezed middle’.
 

medusala

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My point is climate in Oz, Brexit and MAGA are all the same thing: lightning rods for the same thing, ie, the cultural and economic conflict between winners from neo liberalism who wish it to continue and losers who want to stop it

Quantitative Easing has played a big part (thats hardly neo liberalism).

https://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/09/10/some-95-of-2009-2012-income-gains-went-to-wealthiest-1/

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-04-10/qe-and-inequality-the-two-seem-to-go-together
 
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