{"id":3996,"date":"2025-04-28T00:42:29","date_gmt":"2025-04-28T08:42:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/?p=3996"},"modified":"2025-04-28T05:48:42","modified_gmt":"2025-04-28T13:48:42","slug":"australian-elections-are-never-what-we-expect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/2025\/04\/28\/australian-elections-are-never-what-we-expect\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian elections are never what we expect"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three years ago on April 10, I wrote:<\/span><\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s much-awaited (by us, anyhow) election was called yesterday. This is not just any election. It\u2019s our last opportunity to move away from rabid and corrupt politics.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Our next election is on Saturday and we live in a different country. <\/span>Three years ago, w<\/span>e<\/span> were ruled by a queen, and now we\u2019re ruled by a king. For some reason, we are far more prone to jokes under Charles than we were under Elizabeth. <\/span>Technically, most of the parties are still <\/span>similar<\/span>, but this is another pivotal election, <\/span>and not because of Charles<\/span>. This was our position three years ago https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/2022\/04\/10\/why-the-aussie-elections-are-so-important-this-year-an-introduction-for-the-unwary<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We still have Mr Dutton, currently Leader of the Opposition, who has an apparent and possibly heartfelt desire to be Trump-lite. He replaced Scott Morrison when we decided we didn\u2019t want more Trump-lite three years ago, which makes it a mystery to me why he\u2019s choosing this path right now. Maybe he knows something about Australia that I do not know? I suspect his party would have won the election if he had not made that decision. Why do I think this? Dutton was doing very nicely in the polls until his aim to copy Trump was clear. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Independent of his policies, are his nicknames. I suspect he\u2019s in the running for the most nicknames in history of any senior Australian politician. The one that trumps all (sorry, I could not resist the pun) is \u201cMr Potato Head.\u201d Australians seldom give nice nicknames. Our current prime minister is nicknamed \u201cAlbo\u201d which looks innocuous until you allow for the Australian accent. Our accent means that we call our PM \u201cElbow.\u201d Intentionally.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Back to the parties. Now, there are other parties (minor ones) who also desire to copy Trump. One has even renamed themselves \u201cTrumpet of Patriots.\u201d No-one speaks kindly of them, but speaking kindly of people is not common in this election. The longest debate I\u2019ve heard about them was which nickname is the best. The one that sticks in my mind (not the most common, just the silliest) is \u201cStrumpet.\u201d In and of itself, this will not affect their votes. Their policies, however, are not compatible with the left, or anyone who votes sort of centralish. Most of us vote sort of centralish, which, in comparison to the US, is slightly left wing. Sometimes quite left wing. This means that the Strumpets are the closest Australia comes to a Trump-like party. They\u2019re not that, though. They\u2019re right wing modified by some current causes. Current causes are a big thing right now.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Back to logic and commonsense. Three years ago I explained that the LNP (which we call the \u201cCoalition,\u201d mostly) were in power and that they were right wing. They are still right wing. They\u2019ve lost a lot of their reputation and are in the middle of a generational change. The vote three years ago caused that, in a way, as did their wipeout in the biggest state in the country. Many of the new candidates for this elections (especially in electorates like my own where not a single LNP person won a seat in either house) are shiny new people about whom we know\u2026 not much. (If I were writing this for Aussies, I would use \u2018bugger all\u2019 instead of \u2018…not much\u2019, but I am aware of US sensibilities about what is everyday English in Australia. Not so aware that I refuse to tease you about it, but aware.)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Labor is now in power, and have the Elbow as leader. Albo is not much loved right now (and neither is Penny Wong, who, three years ago, we all adored), but I suspect Labor still represents more than 50% of Australians. It is a party strongly linked to unions and ought to be quite far left (and once was further left) but now it\u2019s the centrist party. Since I\u2019m in the mood to point things out, the party has US spelling and not Aussie spelling because it was named by a teetotaller US founder. Australia being Australia, we named a pub after him, just as we named a swimming pool after a prime minister who drowned. (I wrote about some of this three years ago. Good historical jokes are worth repeating.) I firmly believe that Australia is everyone\u2019s ratbag cousin who is very charming but gets up to much mischief.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Three years ago I talked about the Greens. This year, I want them at the bottom of everyone\u2019s vote. This won\u2019t happen. They have set up a whole branch of the left (including many people who used to be my friends) and those people exclude Jews and hate Jews and blame Jews and do not listen to Jews and\u2026 you can imagine the rest. Me, I live it. They\u2019ve put forward candidates that put the bad stuff happening in the Middle East ahead of what\u2019s happening in Australia. If they get as much power as the latest polls suggest (14% of the vote) then quite a few Australian Jews will either have to hide (many are doing this already) or leave (and some have already left). <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The party has always been left wing, but now they\u2019re closer to Communist than to the environmental activists they once were. I am often scolded for saying these things. I answer the scolds with the labels placed in Jewish Australians by their supporters. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Some of the new Left don\u2019t even believe there are Jewish Australians. I had that discussion with someone just yesterday. They now believe I exist, but it took two hours to convince them. We\u2019ve been here since the first long term European settlement in 1788 (one of the First Fleet babies was the first Jewish free settler), so many of us are descendants of colonists. Most of us are descendants of refugees. And every day someone scolds me for personally having colonised Israel and murdered Palestinian children. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The hate is carefully targeted. Most of the rest of Australia has no idea. It\u2019s a bit like domestic violence. \u201cThat very good person can\u2019t have caused that black eye. You must\u2019ve walked into a door.\u201d This is being Jewish in Australia right now. It\u2019s why the bottom of both my ballots is already populated by the Green candidates.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

There is a new environmental party (Sustainable Australia) which won\u2019t be down the bottom of my ballot. They\u2019re not going to gain power, but if they can increase their influence a bit maybe we can talk about what needs to be done to deal with climate change rather than about the problem of antisemitism. The antisemitism isn\u2019t just the Greens, you see. ASIO (our CIA equivalent) gave its annual assessment publicly this year. They said that antisemitism is Australia\u2019s #1 security threat. Media ignored it. The Greens ignored it. All the other major parties factored it into their policies, but are talking about housing and jobs and the like because we have a housing crisis. I am still dealing with the notion that the new Australia can\u2019t keep more than two ideas in its head at once. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Everyone else belongs to small parties or independents. Lots of those already in Parliament or the Senate are being challenged. Some will get second terms, others will not. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

David Pocock is one of the bellwethers. He was voted to replace Zed, who was right wing (LNP) and wildly unpopular as a person. Pocock won partly because he used to be a very famous sportsperson and partly because so many preference votes flowed to him. He was the third in primary votes, and won on preferences. (This is a very Australian thing, and I can explain the voting system again to anyone who has forgotten or would like to be able to follow our vote on Saturday night.) The thing is\u2026 he voted leftish for most of his time in the Senate. Frequently, he voted alongside the Greens. He replaced a right wing party in that Senate place. What will that do to his preferences next Saturday? <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

How many independents and small parties will get through in a strange election where the main left wing party expresses bigotry? It depends on how far we veer left as a country. It depends on how loyal we are to individuals in both Houses. It depends on how personal everything is, in a year when I\u2019m hearing so many people talk about their vote as personal.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I see two big options. One is that a lot of these independents lose their seats. This would return control (in the Senate in particular) to the party with the most seats in the Senate. The other option is that Australians vote a lot of these people into Parliament and the Senate <\/span><\/span><\/span>and make everything very, very complex<\/span><\/span><\/span>. I\u2019m hoping that this is unlikely, given that many of the independents or small party representatives care only about one issue or are cults of personality, or are \u201cWe are not Greens \u2013 we just vote with them\u201d people. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We don\u2019t know <\/span><\/span><\/span>how many independents or representatives of small parties will get through<\/span><\/span><\/span>. The nature of advance polls is to focus on the major parties, so we really do not know how much support these legions of political individuals have in any given region. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Part <\/span><\/span><\/span>of<\/span><\/span><\/span> this rests on the nature of preferential voting. In the electorate of Blaxland, for instance, which has possibly the highest number of Muslim voters in the country, will the <\/span><\/span><\/span>L<\/span><\/span><\/span>abor candidate be returned to power, or will Omar Sakr (the Greens candidate) be voted in, or will an independent specifically representing Muslims <\/span><\/span><\/span>(the one suggested by the Muslim Vote) <\/span><\/span><\/span>get in? <\/span><\/span><\/span>The Muslim Vote<\/a> <\/span>focuses on Muslim voters and assume<\/span><\/span><\/span>s<\/span><\/span><\/span> that their main <\/span><\/span><\/span>political desire is not about housing or education, but about creating a Palestinian state<\/span><\/span><\/span>. I chatted with a friend today, who is <\/span><\/span><\/span>also <\/span><\/span><\/span>Muslim, but from Indonesia, and she had no idea that this group even existed. <\/span><\/span><\/span>T<\/span><\/span><\/span>he public talk about Muslim votes assume that most Muslims who vote are either Palestinian or support Gazans. And yet\u2026 we have many Muslim Australians from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Turkey, Malaysia and various African countries. I do not know if there is a voting pattern for all these people from all these backgrounds. Some are fully integrated into Australian society, some maintain boundaries and stay largely within their own communities.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

My guide to the elections three years ago was a lot simpler. Right now, it feels as if life was a lot simpler three years ago.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

PS Just in case you want to know what advice Jewish voters have been given, it\u2019s \u201cMake up your own minds, you\u2019re adults.\u201d We have, however, been given a guide to making up our own minds. <\/span><\/span><\/span>2025 federal election – ECAJ<\/a> <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three years ago on April 10, I wrote: Australia\u2019s much-awaited (by us, anyhow) election was called yesterday. This is not just any election. It\u2019s our last opportunity to move away from rabid and corrupt politics. Our next election is on Saturday and we live in a different country. Three years ago, we were ruled by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,636,14,17],"tags":[656,112,311,475,70,580,88,119],"class_list":["post-3996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","category-life","category-nonfiction","category-rants","tag-antisemitism","tag-australia","tag-climate-change","tag-elections","tag-history","tag-jewish","tag-politics","tag-voting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3996"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3998,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3996\/revisions\/3998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}