by PAUL COLLITS – VOTERS will not need reminding that elections in Australia are meaningless affairs these days.
They are contested by two undeserving branches of the UniParty that together struggle to get two thirds of the primary vote.
- Not since the fall of Singapore has there been such apprehension about Australia’s future.
- The splintered alt-Right is more splintered than ever.
- Albo has proven to be an increasingly common combination of clueless and dangerous.
Then, they bury important issues. They reduce policy debate to the lowest common denominator.
In doing so, they actually bring the major Parties even closer to one another than they normally are.
GOAT TRACK
And the legacy media steers the conversation ever towards the UniParty. The two majors simply play endless “look over there”.
This election cycle is proving to be a Bruce Highway of a campaign, with likely very dreary outcomes.
Travelling thousands of miles down the Queensland coast on the Bruce “Highway” is never pleasurable.
The road is a goat track on a good day. Governments charged with its upkeep have long promised better times, but never deliver. There are few votes up that way, certainly not for Labor governments.
My most recent trip on this road was burdened by personal loss. Not only that, there were the recent Queensland floods.
They rendered this trip an exercise in deep pot-hole dodging and substantial wheel damage. Worse still, Australia is currently in the throes of an election campaign.
This meant thousands of beaming politician-faces on corflute boards lining the highway all the way back to civilisation, south of the Tweed.
As with the highway, the best descriptors of this election campaign include words like long and tedious, dismal, full of holes, dodgy, endlessly disappointing and with no happy ending within reach.
The current election is being fought between the Labor Government led by Anthony Albanese and the Liberal-National Coalition led by Peter Dutton. Not household names, internationally.
On reflection, Oz elections are much worse than simply meaningless. They are occasions of electoral sin.
The May 3, 2025, election is a shameless auction, even worse than most.
It has the usual ingredients. Non-problems consuming attention and dollars.
Meanwhile, real problems are being parked – like the deep household recession, the ghastly fruits of mass immigration, the crashing of our energy economy, fiscal incontinence on a grand scale, rampant, largely unchecked anti-Semitism, ongoing attacks on free speech, endless wokism and Aboriginal “welcomes-to-country”.
Promises will be broken at will, “as circumstances change”. Inevitable, unmandated actions will be forthcoming down the road. More rule by the unelected bureaucrats of the managerial class.
One of Australia’s most prominent and sensible economists, Judith Sloan, has described 2025 as “the worst election in history”.
The sooner May 3 arrives the better, because at least then the politicians will have run out of time to dream up hairbrained expensive proposals.
It is impossible to disagree. There aren’t even compelling, larger-than-life leaders to excite us, even to distract us, this time around.
No Trump down under, of course. No Orban. No Milei. No Meloni. No Elon. No Farage, even (with all his now manifest shortcomings). No need to “make Australia great again”.
We are fine, apparently. But we aren’t!
Professor David Flint in The Spectator argues that we are crying out for new leadership: “Not since the fall of Singapore has there been such apprehension about the future of Australia.”
True enough, at least among the awake, if not among the rest.
Yet, here we are. We are at the precipice, but clueless as to how to get politicians to change direction, to step us back from the abyss.
Hell, most of the establishment political class is engineering our trip to the abyss. The insouciance among the lap-top class is incredible. A business-as-usual election in apocalyptic times.
Elections in Australia long since ceased to be real policy contests between seriously different major Parties keen to please their bases.
The demise of proper elections that provide true accountability is as much a threat to democracy as recent events in France, Germany and Romania (for example).
The cynicism runs deep here, yet Australians with the inclination and nous to build alternate, winning coalitions of alt-Parties with a sense of what we-the-people want from government seem totally unable to do so.
SPLINTERED
The splintered alt-Right is more splintered than ever, with yet new micro-Parties emerging.
They have names like the Libertarian Party, Family First, the Family Party – yes, there are even two “family” Parties – People First, One Nation (think Pauline Hanson and Malcolm Roberts), and – yes, this is true – Trumpet of Patriots.
Ironically, this last lot are the closest thing we have to an unapologetic MAGA Party. It is now led by the quirky, outsider, billionaire miner, Clive Palmer, an absolute COVID hero to boot.
The million strong convoy to Canberra of 2021 at the height of the jab-dictatorship has dissipated, gone without trace. There are a few remnants. Not that visible, though. Or loud. Or united. Or impactful.
They are destined to remain very, very micro, alas. The most that can be hoped for is a few right-thinking senators who might provide the odd brake on major Party agendas.
Notwithstanding the seeming Reform UK implosion, Aussies can only look on with envy at the Brits’ ability to form a single alt-Party with a focus on the big issues that resonate with the 80 per cent of the people who hate the current direction of national travel.
As it now stands here, the polls are favouring the incumbent Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, and his hard-Left government.
The “Albo” (as he is known, typically without affection) administration has proven to be that increasingly common combination of clueless and dangerous.
The Liberal-National Coalition opposition led by ex-copper Peter Dutton, which has offered some glimmers of hope for better policy outcomes, still has not earned the trust of the millions of Australians who still remember the plandemic and its awful deeds.
Dutton had surged in the polls but now seems becalmed halfway through the campaign. The earlier likelihood of a one-term government – a rarity in Canberra – has faded.
What the “club sensible” centre of the electorate fears more than anything else is the return of Albanese but with minority government status.
Because of the concentration of progressive greenies in inner-urban electorates, The Greens and the mostly rich, woke, climate obsessed women who are known as “the Teals”, are able to win a goodly number of seats.
BOTHERER
The thought of this lot – think of a bunch of female, climate-botherer Keir Starmers – bargaining with Labor for their preferred “vision” and shopping list of demonic actions is beyond disastrous.
When you see disgusting election adverts from groups like “Farmers for Climate Action”, you know you are in big strife.
The old debate on the right will, no doubt, occur again.
Don’t talk about the UniParty. The two Parties are distinct. Albanese must be got rid of, for he is dangerous. Forgive the Libs. We know they are weak and will go to water – again – come the fresh whiff of ministerial leather.
We know this much:-
- They will never leave the Paris Agreement.
- They remain committed to net-zero (with a twist of nuclear promised).
- They will never apologise for their freedom-crushing COVID policies, or for trashing the economy with a trillion-dollar plandemic spend.
- They won’t ever get rid of subsidised child care.
- They won’t defang the ABC, up there with the BBC in its abominable ways.
- They will continue to allow the flying of three flags (Australian, Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander) everywhere you look.
- They won’t abolish the office of the eSafety Commissioner.
- They won’t reverse, Trump-like, all the woke gibberish.
This is merely a brief summary, not meant to be comprehensive.
Ah, they say. They will cut immigration! By a little. Maybe.
It was a Liberal Prime Minister (John Howard), after all, who initially went big on immigration, in the early 2000s.
The Libs started the immigrant-led Ponzi economy. With all its entirely predictable fruits. Like foreign enclaves and no-go areas.
Like Chinese ownership of Oz ports and other key infrastructure. And a veritable Muslim invasion, especially after 7/10. (No, we don’t have the rape gangs, yet).
So much for the Lib-Nat Coalition.
But Albo is worse (they say)! Bring back the Libs! Each election, someone asks – are you better off than you were three years ago?
WORSE
Well, the answer to this question has been the same (no) for as long as any of us can remember. Each government is worse than its predecessor.
Yes, Albo’s Labor is up there (down there?) with the current UK’s version of Labour.
His government has been repulsive. No doubt about that. But only those with short memories will have forgotten what went before.
Having the Libs at the helm then didn’t prevent massive tyranny.
The Catch 22 election is upon us. It is the apotheosis of what the public choice theorists have long argued.
That power-hungry establishment Parties of “Right” or “Left” simply build coalitions of bribed, vested interests with promises of endless, exponentially increasing booty and access to power, coalitions of sufficient heft to get one of them over the line.
Canadian author Mark Steyn says that we cannot vote our way out of the Western mess. The 2025 Australian election is living proof of the truth of his claim.
Whoever wins here will inherit an unholy mess, and will not have the will to address it.
Whoever wins on May 3, we can expect this from a sullen electorate. A large informal vote. A large number of voters simply not turning up, and copping the fine.
A huge pre-poll vote will suggest that people just want to get their trip to the ballot box over as quickly as possible. Primary votes for the majors will be in the thirty per cents. Oh, and a tiny vote for the alt-Right micros.
Meanwhile, come three years’ time, the Bruce Highway will still be a goat track. Trust me on that one. As Brisbane gets its un-needed, brand new stadium for the 2032 Olympics.
Distractions? Priorities? Circuses? Solving non-problems? Fiscal incontinence? You bet.PC
Whoopee! We get to “vote” on which faction of the criminal gangs known as government get to loot the wealth of the inhabitants for the next 3 years.
This is an awful message to purvey.
Yes I share your disappointment with the continual demise and leftward trajectory of the coalition. And yes Labor is a proven demonstration of that awful place where the Liberals are headed. But while we get the governments that we as voters collectively deserve, that result is never the fault of the voting process. The nations apathy towards politics and the value of a vote is a major part of the problem. Voting gives us an opportunity to have a say and to influence the outcome.
If we want change we have to go out and get change rather than grizzle that our 18millionth of an election outcome didn’t bring about political revision or revolution. It didn’t take just one election for Australia to end up in the functional mess it is in now and it is awfully unlikely that a single election will turn it around. We need to get out of this mindset that our elections are a popularity contest between the latest pair of awful or lacklustre persons put forward by the red and blue teams. Those dopes are not the all powerful masters of all things Labor or Liberal they’re made out to be. More they’re a reflection of the internal power battles within their respective teams.
The other nonsense which infuriates me is the idea that its a two party system and thus only ever a Labor/Liberal contest, nothing could be further from the truth. Even if the only likely outcomes in 2025 will be tweedle-dumb or a return of tweedle-dangerous to the top job.
It is unlikely that Red and Blue combined will be securing anything much over 50% of the vote. Which on recent performances is a lot more than they deserve. Yet you in this article and the media in general routinely gloss over the ever growing selection of other votes. No were unlikely to see Prime Minister Hanson or shudder the thought Emperor Bandt, but to dismiss the minnows is a huge mistake. Small parties, independents, and senators with a pulse can wield a massive influence on a whole raft of outcomes every week between this election and the next.
The majors do all they can to paint the cross bench as a curse. Why wouldn’t they? They’re protecting their own interests rather than yours. And just and we can can have good and bad governments we can can have a good or bad cross bench. A cross bench that can at times, particularly times of unpopular government like now, have a massive influence on what bills are debated and/or passed.
Why just glance over the minor parties when these are the most likely conduits for political change? I’d hope that forums like this would be more enthusiastic about presenting and evaluating alternatives ideas rather than ignoring or glibly dismissing them. Everyone has to start somewhere and while some are one and two election wonders others are showing consistent growth.
As much as I despise their ideas, beliefs and directions I have to admire the politics of the greens. They’ve shown that at around 12% of the primary vote it’s possible to affect considerable influence over weak governments.
Yes the minor right have been a disjointed rabble but the better players are making considerable efforts to consolidate and to work together. Look no further than column I of the NSW senate ticket to see a real example of that growing cooperation.
Don’t dismiss the value of YOUR preferences either, you can give your number one and below to smaller parties and independents and still have it flow to your least despised major if those above are not successful.
The “is a vote for Albo” argument is nonsense for anything other than green or Teal vote.
Just know who you’re voting for and you can avoid the crackpots, in particular the climate200 funded independents who are Teals in disguise. Equally anything about Trombones or Teapots with a last minute saturation advertising campaign and some bizarre preference suggestions, has some very questionable motives.
I despise the idea that taxpayer funds are distributed back for any political party campaign, but if they must I’d rather see them reward cash strapped minors than fund the status quo. You’re preference flow vote for either major doesn’t come with that financial reward. So it’s a good way to make them sit up and realise we the voters are not impressed with their performance.
Don’t be despondent about voting, it’s an opportunity to bring about change. The alternative ways to bring about change are not something we should want to contemplate. Rather our votes are a way of revising the makeup of our governments and the directions or the parties who contest them.
For mine I’m proudly backing the Libertarians. They’re closer to the foundation ideals of the Liberal party than the Liberals themself. Achieving growth and a senate seat or two will not be a waste of time and will not go unnoticed.
“This is an awful message to purvey.”
Wrong. The sad truth is that no matter what happens now, Australia is already cooked – look at the UK and Europe to see where we’re going to end up.
I am a conservative voter, and in the absence of a credible and coherent conservative party, I voted informally. My wife also voted informally, and my son will vote informally.
I am considering potential exit strategies for myself and my family, in anticipation of that time, now fast-approaching, when Australia will become a place in which it’s simply no longer worth living. Maybe you’ll still be around when the rioting starts, or when a civil war kicks off – good luck with that.