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generator: pandoc
title: 2019 Australian Election Video Transcription
viewport: 'width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes'
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2019-05-20T23:10:00+10:00
Hey everyone.
I just thought I'd make a quick video about the Australian Federal
Election. So it seems like the Labor Party have been soundly defeated by
the Liberal-National Coalition--the right wing party--in the election.
And a lot of people have wanted to know why, and what it means: and
basically Australians don't trust a right-wing social democratic
message.
It's also been the way the Labor Party campaigned. In NSW for instance
it has been shown that a lot the working class suburbs had a swing
towards the Liberal Party. A translation for American people: the right
wing party in Australia is called the Liberal Party, and the Centre-Left
or notionally Centre-Left party in Australia is called the Labor Party.
So the Labor Party had a swing towards them in the rich suburbs, and the
Liberal Party had a swing towards them in the poorer suburbs, the
working class suburbs. So it's really interesting to see that the Labor
Party haven't been organising the traditional base that they need to be
organising. They haven't been targeting the people that they need to be
targeting, like the way Jeremy Corbyn has. They main problem is that we
can't have a Jeremy Corbyn or a Bernie Sanders-type effect because
there's no-one in parliament like them. It's really depressing. And also
the Labor Party is really undemocratic. Someone like Jeremy Corbyn was
able to be elected because they opened up their preselection procedures.
In the Labor Party in Australia, we don't have any kind of democratic
one-vote one-person procedures like they do in the UK Labour Party, so
it's not really possible for us to get someone like Jeremy Corbyn
elected, even if there was someone like that in parliament.
One really cool thing, though, is that in about 3 different electorates
across Melbourne, there were about 5% primary votes for Victorian
Socialists, which is really good. The Victorian Socialists are this
really cool party that is an alliance between a lot of different left
groups in Victoria.
The main problem is though is that the battleground was Queensland in
the Federal Election. And the wishy-washy nature of the Labor Party
going soft on Adani, or opposing Adani sometimes but saying they were
going to open up Queensland and the Northern Territory for gas piping
and gas fracking is confusing, and I've seen a lot of people say that
the Labor Party judged the mood and interests of Queensland well because
apparently people in Queensland are racist or more concerned with their
jobs than the environment. But I don't really think so. I think that we
haven't had that time, or we haven't had the will or volition by the
major parties to raise the issue and have a discussion with people in
Queensland. So it's complex.
I personally feel like this is the Milliband moment of the Labor Party
in Australia. So, Ed Milliband was the son of Ralph Milliband, and Ed
Milliband was the last Labour leader before Jeremy Corbyn, before they
had an election. Ed Milliband was accused of being too left-wing in his
policies, and that's basically all the commentary I've seen about Bill
Shorten and his campaign. Bill Shorten was the leader of the Labor Party
before he lost the election. And of course this is nonsense. I really do
think that a far-left message of jobs AND the environment would have
really resonated with a lot of people in Queensland. It's interesting
because I was seeing a lot discussion about where the battleground of
the election be, and a lot of people thought it was Victoria because the
Labor Party did really well in the state election with "my friend, your
friend" Daniel Andrews: supposedly the most left-wing Premier in
Australia. But they're returning 3 Liberal senators, so the proportional
vote actually isn't that closer towards Labor winning, or persuading
more people. So it was a bit of a toss-up. A lot of people kept asking,
"What about WA?", but Western Australia doesn't have enough seats to
influence a majority inside the Australian Parliament. So, I guess
that's my two cents. That's my opinion on the Australian election.
Bill Shorten personally is just a hack. He was known to have knifed BOTH
Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, and really, the Australia public know this
guy believes nothing. This guy really stands for nothing, has had no
principled stance on anything, and will say whatever is necessary to
win. So personally, Bill Shorten is really hated.
And I think sometimes the Victorian Socialists is a bit of a "bubble"
phenomenon. When you're living in the inner city of Melbourne, it's
wonderful that we've had these kinds of victories, but have they
translated to reaching out to other parts of Australia.
The Labor Party's pseudo-left policies: a lot of commentators said,
"Labor took a chance and made a statement"--the Labor party made
STATEMENTS, but people don't really believe them--Labor, that is, they
don't actually really believe what they're trying to say. So we don't
really have someone who has been in the fight for a long time and
actually really stands for something. So when you get given all these
promises--and people say \"ohh, yeah okay... :-\" And also, a lot of
their principled policy came out in the election campaign. It wasn't
actually prosecuted over the last three years.
I guess that's the biggest thing that Australians have noticed: that the
Labor Party have this massive small target strategy, they banked
everything on doing nothing--up until the election when they popped up a
bunch of policies. I guess that just didn't translate--maybe it did
translate? The free dental care stuff, for pensioners. But they're just
untrustworthy.
Why would you trust the Labor Party?
I certainly don't.