Over the past month, we've been having an election campaign, which has ended tonight with the Liberal party winning. For you Americans, "Liberal" is the equivalent of the Republicans, not the Democrats!

(In America, 'liberal' means socially progressive, elsewhere it means economically liberal, a la laissez faire capitalism)

The Liberals stand for deregulation of everything, cutting of public services, minimal government investment, selling of government assets, cutting of taxes on the rich and on business, no support for the poor or the working class, etc, etc...

What I've discovered over the past month, is that there's a huge geographical split in support for that ideology, with the less populated states and territories to the north being extremely socially conservative, religious, homophobic, racist, etc... And basically only the urban areas of Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide holding any widespread opposition to these views.

Me being from Melbourne and Sydney, I'm really feeling that we should secede from the federation!

Seriously, in my extended peer group, of friends, family, co-workers, friend-of-friends, etc... I know a few people who vote Liberal, but I don't know anyone at all who supports Tony Abbot. Everyone I've ever talked to is disgusted, embarrassed and creeped out by the guy. Not only do most of the people in my area disagree with his party's ideologies, we also just despise the man himself.

Here's a list of reasons why: http://www.scribd.com/doc/133134121/Tony-Abbott-Gaffes

Or a longer discussion: http://heathenscripture.wordpress.com/2013/09/06/nows-a-really-good-time-to-re-think-voting-abbott/

Or the short version of policy comparison: http://dontbeafuckingidiot.com/

Anyway, I just had to vent. I've never experienced this kind of divide before. I've seen people in the US with their Obama-is-the-anti-christ, or Bush-carried-out-911, or I'm-gonna-shoot-JFK, type levels of hatred, but this is new to me.

I was ideologically against the previous Liberal leader, John Howard, but he was at least a decent statesman, came off as respectable, and was a brilliant politician... I could understand why people might vote for him. But this. This I just can't comprehend. I don't even know how this guy got to be the opposition leader, let alone get votes!

This guy is now the Prime Minister:

This eccentric billionaire made it into the house of reps, with his own self-titled party, and is likely to win some senate seats too:

(Yes, he's really building giant replicas of both the titanic and dinosaurs)

Australia's most famous xenophobe might have won a seat:

And the great homophobic cowboy:

Sounds like the people are rising up and fighting back against the progressives. Good for them. I heard they lied about a carbon tax; raise your hand if you're surprised that people are angry at a lying government.

Before the previous election, the progressives were proposing a market-based trading system for "carbon credits". The conservatives suggestion was that this was too complex, and the simple solution would be to just put a tax on carbon. The progressives won the election, but had a minority government and had to compromise on all their legislation. The end result was the conservatives' idea of a simple carbon tax ended up being the one that got passed through parliament.

The Murdoch media then ran a scare campaign, about how the poor were going to suffer because of this new "tax grab", about how the cost of living would skyrocket due to polluters simply jacking up their prices and handing the cost on to the consumer.
Non of this happened though. The cost of living actually went down by 20c/week on average due to income tax cuts, prices didn't rise due to a diligent consumer watchdog, and polluters did actually take measures to cut down on pollution.
The truth doesn't matter though. Even up to today, Murdoch still reports that everyone is now going bankrupt due to the carbon tax, so yes, the masses are upset with this great "carbon tax lie".

Now would be a good time to mention that Rupert Murdoch has a complete monopoly on "cable TV", and a very-near monopoly on news outlets. In the year leading up to the election, they not once were critical of the conservatives, and went as far as completely making up their own facts and photoshopping progressives on Nazi, North Korean and Soviet bodies:


It's also worth pointing out that the progressives are not at all socially progressive any more. They've copied the right wing so much in order to get into power, that they're now a centre-right party, and the conservatives are a far-right party.

For example, the big bad guy that the media constantly brings up as our national boogey-man isn't Al Qaeda, The Terrorists, or Bin Laden -- our boogey man is "the boat people". These are people who sail in leaky fishing boats, mostly from Indonesia, over dangerous seas to try and enter our country without papers.
Americans would call them "illegal immigrants".
The big issue is that this is such a stupid and dangerous journey -- spending weeks in a boat that's 10x over capacity, starving to death, caked in your own sick, shit and piss, with a very real chance of downing -- that over 90% of the people that attempt it are found to be genuine refugees who are fleeing wars and political persecution (which under UN conventions that we've signed, means we have to protect them).

Australians aren't very happy about this (shown by the map above), despite the fact that the majority of our illegal immigrants actually fly over on holiday visas, and then disappear while in the country, and that "boat people" are actually only a tiny, tiny fraction of the problem. Those facts don't matter, we need a boogeyman to hate.

Anyway, because the masses hate these "boat people" so damn much, the current/now-previous "progressive" government created a system where the boats are intercepted by the navy, and towed to 3rd world pacific islands, where the "boat people" spend about 5 years of mandatory detention inside concentration camps, where they're starved, ill-sheltered, and subjected to violence and rape. After their detention, they're resettled in the 90% of cases where they're genuine refugees, and returned home in the other 10% of cases.
This is supposed to be a deterrent to stop them from coming. Nonetheless, they keep coming, and we keep building more island camps.

This is apparently the nice, soft, bleeding-heart lefty party. The "progressives".
On the other hand, the conservatives think that concentration camps are too soft, and would just have them all drowned at sea.


So, no. The people aren't fighting back against the progressives, because the "progressive" party are conservative. It's just that the conservative party are even more so.
Because the two major parties are so similar, there was actually a huge swing towards 3rd party candidates, which this year included a lot of Libertarian parties, and Wikileaks (Julian Assange didn't quite win a senate seat, but came close).

The main reason why many voters have flipped from "progressive" to "conservative", or centre-right to far-right, is simply all the lies that they're fed from Murdoch.

Those policies of intercepting and locking up assylum seekers? Murdoch says that these policies actually opened the gates for thousands of boats to flood into the country. It's implied that any brown-skinned or Asian person that you see in your neighbourhood, is a "boat person".

That time that Australia was one of the only countries to not experience a recession during the GFC? Murdoch says we did have a major recession. La la la la!

When foreign economists are praising our economic stimulus program that actually worked? Murdoch says the government is about to go bankrupt, and bring the nation down with it.

When Murdoch says that our public debt is at record levels, and the nation is at risk of collapse? The truth is we've got the 3rd lowest public debt in the G20.

When the government proposes that they should have an observer member on the media's self-regulation council? Murdoch reports that they are Stalin reincarnated and are trying to pass laws that will censor all newspapers.

The Prime-minister, while their party is officially against gay marriage, they admit that personally they're not opposed to it. Murdoch reports that they want people to be able to marry children and animals.

The icing on the cake is the NBN though. Our telephone infrastructure used to be government owned - the past conservative government sold it off to one company, who became a monopoly and a huge roadblock to any improvements to the infrastructure. Due to this stagnation, the current/now-previous government formed a new corporation from both private investors and some public investment, called the National Broadband Network corporation, who are in the process of laying fibre-optic cables to every single household, to provide up to 1GB/s Internet speeds, to everyone. To prevent a complete monopoly, they're regulated to only be a wholesaler (later to be split up), who will rent capacity out to ISP retailers.

Murdoch is extremely upset out this. Large parts of Australia are rural areas, long distances from the telephone exchanges, which means they can't possibly use DSL technologies and are stuck with really crap Internet connections. This is great for Murdoch, because he is partnered with the current telecommunications monopoly, where he alone can sell these people a "Cable TV" + "Cable Internet" package ("cable" in quotes, because it's often delivered via satellite).

Even in the metropolitan areas, he has a complete monopoly on "Cable TV", and only has to compete with online TV/Movie services, like Netflix, etc, in the small number of areas that actually have decent Internet capabilities (ADSL2+, etc).

The NBN is going to disrupt his businesses, by providing everyone with more than enough capacity to have these services provided via the Internet, and many different Internet retailers for them to choose from. This is apparently one of the main reasons he's completely backed the conservative government, with completely editorial bias in all of his outlets.

The 'conservatives' have promised to cancel the NBN project. They (and Murdoch) have been telling everyone that fibre-optic is already obsolete! It's a waste of money. No other countries would bother laying these cables. And the masses buy this bullshit.

Their "better" alternative plan (mocked here) is to lay the fibre optic to neighbourhoods only, installing countless cabinets (which require a lot of power) on streetcorners everywhere, which will then merge the fibre-optic backbone with the existing copper networks, to provide a slower service to everyone (DSL), at a higher cost, with a longer installation time-frame, higher per-consumer expense ($thousands out of your own pocket to connect your own home to the cabinet), than the NBN plan. Also, in regional areas, they won't bother laying any cables, and instead will just rely on 3G to give people broadband.

It's just bad on every level, but they can with a straight face tell us that it's better, because 80% of the media will back them up in these blatant lies.

I skipped over all of the "sky is falling" propoganda to ask how you can hate on a guy who devotes much of his free time to actually serving the public?

The dude is a certified lifeguard...

The dude gets his photo taken in black communities, with a life-savers cap on, in a volunteer firemans uniform, yeah. Each time he does, he charges us, the tax-payer around $30k to charter a private jet to fly him to these political events! That's the most expensive volunteer in Australia, not a typical aussie bloke

He's a certified sociopath (so is Rudd probably, to be fair).
He preached no-sex-before-marriage, almost got married so he could, then stood her up after it was planned. Told her he was becomming a priest, thus he couldn't marry her. Convinced her to be with him anyway. She got pregnant, he fucked off.
Became a priest, then by his own admission became a lawyer because his mates were making more money. While studying, he verbally, physically and sexually assaults feminists and lesbians on campus. Covereds up priest-kiddy-fiddling at his old post. His ex-almost-wife's son finds him in parliament, and it's a joyous reunion, and he praises her. Turns out it's not actually his son, and he shuns her until she dies, then praises her again.
Admits that he'll do anything to gain power, just for power's sake. Is constantly sexist against women, saying they should be virgins until marriage (but men shouldn't), they should do all the housework, they don't have the right to withhold sex from their husbands, that if they're successful in business then it's extraordinary. Is extremely religiously homophobic, saying the gays will all burn in hell for eternity. Inappropriately touches teenage girls, sniffs women's hair.

The guy is creepy as fuck. The fact that he's consciously decided to raise some money or do some phoney volunteering for causes that he's known to be against doesn't sway me. Saying "oh look, he helped raise $300k for a women's shelter" in no way counters all the continuous sexism he emits. Likewise, when Aboriginal elders travel 3 days to deliver a speech and he snores through it and refuses a meeting with them, he can't make up for it by flying by taxpayer-funded jet to a remote community and have a few photos taken in a hard-hat.

And that's the issue I have with the Murdoch monopoly. For weeks we hear about how Gillard did some work with a socialist group on her student campus. It's the end of the world, the PM is a communist!! Quick, chuck her in a chaff bag and throw her out to sea!!!
...but there's a tonne of actually disgusting stories about Tony, which they won't print no matter how salacious they are.


The real reason I'm pissed off is because the coalition campaign didn't have any policies that weren't blatant lies. They just kept repeating the same campaign lies over and over until they became the accepted truth.
Murdoch had been doing this for them for the past year too. What's really sad is that his ideology only benefits the rich, but the papers do a great job of selling it to the "Aussie batters" and bogans.

Labor, despite being full of in-fighting (and full of corruption at the state level), actually did terrifically managing the economy, actually managed to get us moving (very slowly) towards reducing the amount of coal we use, started patching up the education system after Howards endless cuts, and have started some very important long-term investments. Abbott wants to undo all of that, and more, such as bringing back "Work Choices(tm)", and extending government hand-outs to everyone (scaled by wealth), instead of just those actually in need of charity.

e.g.

º 2 million new jobs. We've only got 1 million unemployed!! Oh wait, that makes sense, he wants the lower class to all be working two jobs to survive

º Carbon tax gone. This presents the "carbon tax" as a burden in the cost of living. The truth is that the cost of living increase delivered under Gillard was smaller than any under Howard! The carbon tax did not impact the average Joe, it only caused a few very large companies to have to invest in newer equipment. This is not a promise to help the masses, but a promise for a handout to a select few.

º End the waste and debt. No details, except cutting 20k jobs. Meanwhile they're running ads saying that a Labour win will result in 20k jobs being lost!?! WTF?
Also, "the debt" (as above, which is the 3rd lowest in the G20, an extremely negligible amount) was used to prevent a recession during the GFC.
They're telling us the economy has been mis-managed, while the rest of the G20 are putting us up on a pedestal for economic management -- remarking that if we hadn't done what we had done (i.e. if we'd listen to Abbot's austerity measures), we'd be looking like Europe right now.
Lastly, their claimed "savings" that they want to make, add up to about 1.6% of the budget -- again a completely negligible amount, and token effort. Any savings they do dig up are going to come from cutting public services. Less medical care, less education opportunities, less public transport.

º "Stop the boats". They've been peddling the myth that somehow Howard did stop the boats, and then Rudd "dismantled" this golden era. That's so absurd that I don't know how they print it.
Howard stopped one boat, temporarily, and then shipped it's passengers off to an island concentration camp. Rudd kept up these same policies of shipping them off to island camps. Recently he took this to the extreme of actually promising to actually refuse all "boat people" from now on, forever, with the whole "if you come here by boat, you will be resettled in PNG" policy. Even with that extreme policy, of banning all "boat people" for life from Australia, according to the coalition, he's not "stopping the boats". That just proves that it's just a mantra with no meaning. No matter how far right Labor goes on the issue, they're never going to be tough enough. They'll never have "stopped the boats" as far as the coalition is concerned, because they know that it can't be done.
The coalition doesn't have any more extreme plans than island camps either, besides the ridiculous one of buying up every Indonesian boat...

º Less public transport, more roads. That's the only one that's not some kind of mistruth! I just simply don't agree with it. Australian public transport is truly dismal.

I voted Liberal for the first time in my life yesterday having been a longtime Labor supporter. There's no need to get upset that the party you voted for didn't get in, nor is there a need to write off the majority's views as being 'influenced by Murdoch'.

Can I ask why you flipped from Lab to Lib? You've already mentioned that you like his "aussie helper" personality (and I've mentioned I think that it's a blatant facade). What policies swayed you?

P.S. I didn't vote for Labor or Liberal. I just preferenced Liberal as low as possible, because of how personally and ideologically scary Abbott is. Unless you're a rich white sociopath, he doesn't represent you.

We're all just extremely lucky that the senate is going to be hostile to the coalition, so the most extreme wind-backs (such as WorkChoices(tm), cancelling the NBN, austerity measures, buying/sinking the boats, denying climate change, etc) aren't likely to be passed.

Dear Hodgman - While U.S. Republicans and your Liberals may overlap in generality, they are not the same. Let us clarify the U.S. definitions of Republicans vs. Democrats.:

Government Regulations : Democrats - Someone who has not a clue on a subject telling you the way it should be, Republicans - More government control over your life.

Helping the poor : Democrats - Keeping the poor, poor so they can give them more government stuff in return for votes. Republicans - creating the opportunity for individuals to succeed, by getting a job, starting a business so the poor can help themselves and not be depending upon the government for handouts. ( Give a Man a Fish...... or Teach a man to fish. )

Government services : Democrats - Well what can I say, They want to control everything in your life, feeding your kids, Telling you how much to eat, teaching your kids that they are entitled to everything someone else has worked for, Republicans : Defending the Nation, providing an education to students that allow them to think for themselves. National infra-structure.

The differences go on and on. Is either side totally right or wrong ? No, they both have valid points. They both agree on many issues. The difference comes on how to solve this issues.

Here is a few ideas on how the 2 parties can come together...

Government Regulation should only be extended to keep the populous safe from harm and industrial dangers. ( good for the democrats) but not stifle industrial growth to the point that the financial burden is to high to re-invest in those areas that would promote the previous ( good for the republicans)

Helping the poor : If a person is physically able to work, but is relying on the government for financial aide, then those people should perform a service for the government at a minimum wage level. If a private sector job becomes available then those individuals should be moved to the private sector and loose their handout.

Gay Marriage ? Marriage is a Moral/ religious issue. 1 man / 1 woman. The support through legal means to extend all permissible rights afforded to MARRIED couples should fall under a Civil Union Law for same sex couples. The phrase Married Couples was adopted by the government simply because it was already a term pre-definition which everyone understood.

Basically what I am trying to, That we as a World Nation, need to stop letting people control our lives, with their steadfast, my way or hi-way mentality. Because where I live, Hi-ways Intersect which means there is a meeting area. But it does not work when the parties are traveling away from the middle instead of towards it