Is Australia's Overton Window Shifting?

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com⁩ to ⁨australianpolitics@aussie.zone⁩

Since the recent election there’s a lot of commentary saying the Liberal party needs to reconsider its policies and re-align with its core values which, when enumerated sound very centrist.

I just watched ABC’s q&a, there was a few interesting points. There was a strong consensus that Trump style culture wars are toxic in Australian politics, and that it’s unlikely future candidates would take that route.

I don’t want to gloat infront of the seppos, but I think what’s happening during this aftermath is very salient for all of those “both sides are bad” Americans.

In October last year there seemed to be a lot of users saying that they didn’t want to reward the dems with their vote, and that the only way to communicate with the party was to withhold their vote.

I think what’s happening right now in Australia demonstrates the importance of voting.

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

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Fleur_@aussie.zone ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
With regards to the American demographic that doesn’t vote because both sides suck, in Australia we vote for every party so eventually a preference will be selected. On top of that voting is compulsory. Both these things combined makes it so that voters can vote for their preferred candidate without fear of wasting their vote

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Zozano@aussie.zone ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I think it’s important to remember: this is the value of preferential voting. We dont NEED to be concerned with *the culture war" for labor to win by a landslide. Labor gets the benefit of being centrist, so people on the right will vote for labor before they vote for the greens. Labor isnt the “enemy” in the same way the ‘dems’ are to the GOP.

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Ilandar@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

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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kudra@sh.itjust.works ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I think now would be an excellent time for the Overton window to be pushed even further to the left, given the results of the Federal Election, and to highlight exactly how far from the original “left” Labor has moved. The intent wouldn’t be to form government or even have much chance of getting a seat: I’m talking left of Socialist Alliance. And I have some pleasantly controversial policies with which to begin this project. Things The Greens won’t touch, and that the Socialist Alliance don’t even really have on their radar as they are focussed generally Marxist theory and unions. I’m talking mainly about being honest and open about the need for radical change in economic policy to degrowth, things that the current left parties don’t talk about because it’s seen as “political suicide”. Yup. Need someone in the far far left to tell the emperor they have no clothes.

Some specific fun policies:

Make advertising illegal (especially billboards, but also on social media, no money changing hands to force shit people don’t want to see in front of their eyeballs. Bring back word of mouth!)

Instigate a compulsory National Service period for young adults (like a gap year between high school and university) for all genders, can choose between military & climate corps

Massively tax carbon costs for food transport. Those oranges from California should not cost the same as Australian in season oranges, sorry.
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- dumblederp@aussie.zone ⁨44⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
  My hatred of advertising was probably a big part of why my small business failed. People need to be able to inform the market of their product and services. Johnny graduates as an accountant can he not put an ad in the classifieds or a sign on his office? I think there should be places where advertising is acceptable where people can look for what they might need, rather than having companies competing for our attention while telling us that we’re incomplete without their things.
  
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- eureka@aussie.zone ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Might as well throw my cent in:
  
  yes yes yes
  
  I’d rather SES and other emergency services than military training.
  
  I don’t know enough to say 100% support, but it sounds smart to me. Not even just from an environmental pollution POV. That said, there would also need to be controls to avoid local price gouging.
  
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- Zagorath@aussie.zone ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I am 100% on board with point 3. And not just food, but all products.
  
  I like point 1 in theory, but have concerns. Billboards are easy, do that 100%. You didn’t mention TV, but I assume you’d want it banned there as well as social media? The problem is, you ban advertising on TV and we go back to the days where the ABC is the only player around. I’m not going to be upset if Australia’s Next Top Influencer Chef or Farmer Wants a Renovation go away, but a lot of people do obviously get value in them. And the consequences if commercial sport went away would be much more severe, given their role in encouraging young people to get out and be active. I would immediately ban gambling ads, and would be open to the idea of banning alcohol ads and ads for other harmful products. But banning all advertising on TV is a non-starter, unless you can first come up with a serious viable alternative revenue stream. If commercial social media died, I would be much less upset. But do you mean social media, or do you mean all websites? YouTube and the Guardian going away would be a real loss in a way Twitter and Facebook would not.
  
  Point 2 is an absolute no. Military chauvinistic bullshit. We’re not a country at severe threat of invasion like Taiwan or South Korea, where national service might be justified. As someone more interested in an anarchist style left than a statist one, I can’t even begin to condone this idea.
  
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  - kudra@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Oh! Also forgot to say: we already came up with a model to remove, very successfully, advertising from TV:
    
    it was called Netflix.
    
    Unfortunately it got enshittified, and now everything is a giant shit show in that department.
    
    But you make advertising illegal, and companies are still going to have subscribers.
    
    I’m also pretty happy with just ABC iView these days, I rarely even bother with SBS and haven’t had Netflix for years.
    
    There’s also Beamafilm and other public library initiatives.
    
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  - kudra@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Sweet on 3. I’m also big on adjusting that as a carbon tax, so for example, your tax if your goods ship via sail/carbon neutral means is way less than carbon intensive transport. But refrigerated long range transport seems super crazy at this point.
    
    1 I am open to persuasion on. I know there’s some parts of the world that outlawed billboards, and that’s a vast improvement and a public good for a more restful visual environment. We’ve seen the evil perpetrated on the internet through advertising. It’s just the worst way to have monetised everything, and in hindsight was a massive mistake, and has been since long before this (look up the history if deBeers, and advertising in general. I actually studied advertising briefly as one of several streams in graphic design study, and backed out after one semester, I did not have the stomach for it). People of Fedi are largely already convinced advertising for monetisation is evil. Maybe some kind of limitation in advertising regarding company size, dunno, but I really don’t like the future of Idiocracy, and smarter people than me have already commented that we’re more than halfway there.
    
    And to 2. Allow me to explain further. I first came to this idea of compulsory national service after a conversation at a nightclub over a decade ago where it was mentioned that only 2 nations in the world (at the time) had conscription for all genders: Sweden and Malaysia. This was incorrect as there were several more, as I discovered when I looked it up, and most northern European countries have added conscription for women since. But the person speaking was female and had said it was fantastic, got her opportunities that she might not have had otherwise, allowed her experience in leadership roles that were rare at the time (and often still are in many places), and lifelong friends.
    
    This article just published 3 days ago pretty much gives a bigger overview and I agree with.
    
    www.abc.net.au/religion/…/105257832
    
    I think that we are going to need more social cohesiveness as the world becomes more unstable both geopolitically and physically as climate change really ramps up.
    
    And please note, I do not believe anyone should be required to serve mandatory military service: that’s why I stated specifically military OR climate corps.
    
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- null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I was reading the first part of your comment thinking that anything left of the greens is too nutty for me, but then I would absolutely vote for any of those three policies.
  
  You’re right in that they’re non-starters politically, but certainly part of an idealist utopia.
  
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  - vividspecter@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    I was reading the first part of your comment thinking that anything left of the greens is too nutty for me, but then I would absolutely vote for any of those three policies.
    
    This is a pretty common view where people think the Greens (or left of that) are extremist, but when given actual Green’s policies tend to prefer those policies when polled.
    
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  - kudra@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Thanks! Good to see there’s at least one other nutter here in Fedi that would vote for these 😊 the idea would be to go into it knowing that the majority would say “you’ve got to be f&*>ing joking mate” - which is exactly the Overton window strategy of right-wingers: of which Overton was one. We gotta start really pulling back not just to the centre but far beyond.
    
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