Interesting debate at John Quiggin on whether the election revealed a rightward shift by Australian voters. Left-inclined posters keen to deny this, but the evidence seems irrefutable. Consider two key issues: immigration and greenhouse policy. Conservatives have long been anxious about the decline of Anglo-Australia particularly since the 1970s when non-Anglo immigrants became assertive and [...]
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Discussion of the emerging era of minority government has ignored the 1901-10 period when neither of three parties: Labor, Free Traders and Protectionists (sometimes almost 4 parties when the conservative protectionists acted independently) had a majority and when Alfred Deakin, as Prime Minister three times, dominated Australian politics. Elections encourage an outbreak of ‘poll fetishism’ every poll or hint of one is racked over obsessively. But polls are not a magic time tunnel to the future but a summation of frequently unclear voter responses that reflect views held with varying degrees of intensity. Too often poll watchers fail to see the forest for [...] Since the British ‘church and king’ mobs of the French revolutionary era, Disraeli’s 1880 election victory and Henry Maine’s discovery of the referendum conservatives have sought to present themselves as true representatives of the people vs. liberal elites. Conservative rhetoric has often been successful in annoying the left, but despite the hyperbole conservatives have sometimes [...] Election campaigns attract fascinated attention. In fact I doubt the election campaign will make much difference either way, before it started the likely outcome was a narrow Labor victory. The evidence is that American presidential election campaigns made little difference as Brendan Nyhan noted just after Obama’s victory: Many on the left in response to Labor’s rightward shift on asylum-seekers have argued that Labor is engaging in unnecessary panic. Eva Cox: Just go on the record. Some may call this a history-making campign, but I expect that this will be a campaign that will inspire low levels of interest and enthusiasm compared to 2007, Julia Gillard notwithstanding (see my recent article here and my earlier one here) Tony Abbott has done exceptionally well so far, he [...] Yet another ‘debate’ about the role of the Communist party in Australian history. It’s like most contemporary political debates purportedly about past events: largely meaningless in the absence of any criteria for making evaluations, in the absence of such criteria history simply becomes a stock of anecdotal examples. Contemporary discussion of Australian Communism almost entirely [...] |
   
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Copyright © 2010 Geoff Robinson - All Rights Reserved |
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