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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.