Comment on Albanese in trouble as polling shows Dutton most likely to be next PM
shirro@aussie.zone 5 days agoYou are free to vote for the Socialist Alliance if you want but they aren’t winning any seats. You can vote for the Greens but they won’t do much better. Whether you like it or not the ALP were founded by Australian workers to give them a political voice and they have done that for over 120 years and delivered some huge wins. They are the reason we have a public health system, pensions, super, minimum wage, somewhat decent working conditions etc.
I have no idea why someone who wants politics to move to the left would shit on the ALP who are hanging in there as best as they can while the world is turning to shit. The people deserting the ALP aren’t going to the left. Those that are they can get back on preferences. Nobody is being blocked. You can’t sell your message to the Australian people and that isn’t Labor’s fault. They clearly have the same problems.
Those benefits were won by the actual labour movement.
Parties like the ALP coopt the movement and put an official face on it. They take the wins and put them into legislation so people believe the wins were given to us by our government, which dupes people into thinking our government is legitimate.
Oh and as a bonus legislation can compromise what was actually won by watering it down, so we accept less.
pupbiru@aussie.zone 5 days ago
yeah this graphic was made for the US where FPTP locks them into bullshit… we have choices: our preferences actually send a message
Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 5 days ago
Okay, you can talk about how it works in theory, but in practice we see the rightward ratchet effect. The LNP won an election and immediately raided the ABC journo’s offices, which led to David McBride’s prosecution, and they did robodebt and prosecuted Richard Boyle.
Then the ALP comes back into power and just allows those prosecutions to continue. We’ve got another whistleblower prosecution just the last couple of weeks.
That’s literally the ratchet effect. They are barely doing anything, just marking time.
The rightward ratchet is not a purely US thing, it is how liberal democracies all over the world behave. The mechanisms are all slightly different but the reality is that our governments are captured by the wealthy and powerful, and they want them to go right, so that’s where they go. The two sides of electoral politics are simply a more sustainable method of maintaining that rightward movement.
You say preferences send a message, but I don’t feel particularly heard, do you? You know what sends a stronger message? The removal of PMs that go against US interests. Our politicians know exactly where they stand.