On Saturday 11th March, Western Australia held its state election and the incumbent (centre-right) Liberal party government was turfed from office after 8 ½ years in favour of the (centre-left) Labor Party. The result wasn’t overly surprising, the margin was … with a swing of over 15% against the LIBs and the government losing half their representation.
Demographically Western Australia is a bit like Texas except the wealth comes from iron ore and gold. Frontier and independence mentality included.
It would be fair to say that the Barnett government had run it’s course.
The interesting bit was with the third party result.
The Australia Tea Party is known as One Nation and in the weeks prior to the election was polling over 14% but their support only delivering 4.7% on the day.
The major reasons for the collapse was a contentious preference deal between which buggered their “party of protest” raison d’etre and an anti-vaxer position taken and re-iterated by the One Nation leader Pauline Hanson.
Might just be a harbinger result for the populist right on this side of the puddle.
The big test here is the Queensland state election likely to be held before the end of the year.
Queensland (Australia’s Florida) has danced down the One Nation footpath previously (in 1998 they won 23% of the state vote) and despite that venture ending in an ingloriously spectacular flame out the polling indicated the state has been looking at doing it all again.
If Queensland was to give One Nation the same collective meh! of about a 5% vote the ferals amongst the right wing nationalists will turn on themselves again and the contagion will be contained for another couple of decades.
The hard right wing reptiles of the Cori Bernardi/George Christensen/Tony Abbott ilk might just find the donkey they have been climbing onto has just carked it under the load.
The centre right government of PM Turnbull might now have the courage to stare their wrecking ball threats down.
Some Europeans have told me that things like a massive social welfare systems have lead to too many people just becoming lazy and living off the government and the high taxes required have hurt some people.
Then the problem with many people, perfectly content in their own homogeneous European town, suddenly have them forced to accept all these different people as their neighbors, in their schools, and on their streets.
Which is interesting, because it was the left (at least in Canada) that opposed such trade deals as NAFTA saying too many jobs would be exported to low wage countries, which has been a pro conservative ideal for many years.
… the social & economic problems in Europe are the same as the problems experienced in the US and consequently US remedial policies like, say, building a wall are the solution. :dubious:
You probably need to speak with a broader range of Europeans.
Leaning nationalist is leaning conservative, though. It’s a cry back to the old way when things were “better” because we only cared about ourselves and our own.
The problem to me seems to be that we didn’t actually get across the problems with racism, and, while people are actually against that form of bigotry by and large (neonazis excluded), they keep on arguing for other forms of bigotry.
Nationalism is still bigotry, and we need a movement to push that idea, like we did with racism. That’s not say you have to allow every immigrant to come in–just they aren’t an OTHER you can blame for your problems. They are equally entitled human beings.
It’s true that free trade isn’t the panacea it’s supposed to be, but that doesn’t mean the exact opposite is the solution. And, even if you are more protectionist, you don’t have to also be nationalist.
Or, at least, that’s my opinion. I try not to believe that people are really bad, even if it feels like they must be. I have to believe they just don’t get how awful the things they do are. So I will keep trying to spread the word. Hopefully others will, too, and we can fix this shit.
Yes, BUT, as some of us are pointing out, it may be reactionary but not *ideologically *“conservative”/RightWing as we normally understand it just by itself; it depends on what *else *you wrap around it in your platform.
There is no seismic shift taking place rightwards. Put simply electorates are sticking it to the ruling party, whether left or right, for the reasons mentioned already in many of the posts. Unless the right pulls some miracle while they’re in power (highly unlikely) the electorates will be kicking them to the curb at the next election cycle. In other words same ol’ same ol’.