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Comment on Is Australia's Overton Window Shifting?

Labor might not be left enough for you personally, but each time the libs are defeated they need to move to the left to be viable, and Labor will have to move further left to differentiate themselves.

I’m not sure that’s actually how it works in Australian politics, though. Because the major parties are campaigning for the votes of politically disinterested people, they don’t need to be ideologically distinct from one another. A campaign where they essentially buy votes through micro-targeted policies suits both of them.

That is to say, the spectrum of acceptable opinions is moving to the left in an observable manner, right now.

I don’t necessarily think that’s accurate either, at least not based on what the major parties are doing. Generationally it might be true (millennials aren’t moving right as quickly as previous generations), but so far the Coalition has made no attempt to move back towards the centre (and might not even do it after this election) so Labor is under very little pressure in that sense.

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null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Votes from politically disinterested people are only part of the picture. One of the reasons liberals weren’t viable is because their base is dying off.

They need to gather up new dedicated voters somehow, and all the commentary is saying they need to move away from conservative policies like nuclear.

We will see what emerges in the coming days. I’m expecting a leader who is more palettable to the left than Dutton was.

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- Ilandar@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  From what I understand, the only people contesting it are Angus Taylor (from the right faction) and Sussan Ley (whose positioning seems debatable). Neither seem like particularly great options, though. The moderate faction seems to have been decimated, even at the membership level. From Crikey:
  
  One moderate contacted Crikey the morning after the election, describing the faction as a “critically endangered species”. They were plainly upset at what they saw to be a shift to the right supported by the party’s membership base.
  
  “As long as you have a cooked membership, we’re going to continue to have cooker candidates,” they said.
  
  The concerns echo a piece in the Australian Financial Review by Phil Coorey, who said the Liberal Party had “no soul to search” after many future leaders of the party lost their seats or saw their margins decimated. Coorey noted many of those were moderates, and “the broad church is no more”.
  
  It doesn’t sound like they actually have many options left if they want to lead the party back towards the centre in the short-term, and getting wiped out of major cities isn’t going to help that either.
  
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  - null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    The rest of the article you quoted discusses the need for liberals to become more moderate.
    
    These are the two paragraphs following yours:
    
    Charlotte Mortlock, a former journalist and Liberal staffer, is the founder of Hilma’s Network, an organisation designed to encourage greater participation of women in the Liberal Party. She told Crikey the moderate wing of the party needed to be “more vocal than ever”.
    
    “Pandering to the base of the party hasn’t worked for them,” she said. “The broader public need to see them being vocal and overt in their demands for reform and if they’re not, then they can’t blame the public for not knowing they exist.”
    
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    Ilandar@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Of course the remaining people in the moderate faction think they need to be more vocal. It doesn’t change the fact that they are really struggling right now and that the people in leadership positions seem to be more interested in listening to Gina Rinehart and Sky After Dark, who are still arguing that the reason the Liberals are losing voters is because they haven’t moved far enough to the right and still don’t spend enough time on culture wars.
    
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