Transcript of AE 1362 - The Goss : The Crazy Results of Australia's Recent Election

G'day, you mob Pete here! And this is another episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So today I have a Goss episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen. And we talk about the week's news, whether locally, Down Under here in Australia or non locally overseas in other parts of the world, okay. And we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right. If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia. We also talk about that in The Goss.

So these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English. So it is particularly good to improve your listening skills.

In order to complement that, though, I really recommend that you join the podcast membership or the Academy Membership at AussieEnglish.com.au, where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes, the PDFs, the downloads, and you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time. Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time. Keep practising and that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit. I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode guys. Smack the bird and let's get into it.

Dad.

Pete.

Elections.

Yes!

Everyone loves an Australian election. Do you find it ever weird how much we probably know more about American politics than Australian? As a country? Like, it seems like we pay so much more attention to American politics than we do our own.

Yes.

Is that, is that weird?

Well..

Because I've sort of grown up in it. And so you just. It's just a sort of given. But I can't imagine going to America and then being like, um, you know, Albo is a bit of a dickhead, isn't he? You know, like, I would just not expect them to know.

Well, that's the difference. Is that I think we know a lot about Australian politics. But.

Yeah. I would be like, I can. Let's see what I can do, okay. So it's like Trump, Biden, Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton and then Bush again..

Yes.

Before that? And then what was the guy who really hated drugs? I've forgotten his name, his wife and him.

Ronald Reagan.

Was it him? Was it him before that Bush?

Yeah.

Damn. And then before him, it was Nixon?

Jimmy Carter.

Now, there you go. So that's my limit. I can get to about the 80s. So back to Reagan. And I..

Go back through prime ministers in Australia.

Yeah, exactly. I would be, I would be shocked. Even if the average Australian could do that, let alone if an American. If an American came in and was like, let's go through all the Aussie prime ministers all the way back to the 70s. I'd be like, damn, dude, are you working in this area in academia? Like..

I know. I could do it, but but it'd take a while to think about it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, man. Let's see. So. Yeah. Okay, let's try and do it right now.

Nah, let's don't. It'll drive you nuts. Um. But yeah. It's so. Yeah. Australian politics is, um. Well, it's. I suppose it's one of those things that we end up with lots of American television. So whether it be fictional stuff, talking about American politics or just news stuff. Um, yeah. And I'm not even going to start discussing the current situation in America because.

Dad's been actively avoiding it.

I'm actively avoiding it, which you can't.

It's so, it's so funny because I'm so deep in it. Um..

And so is your mother! Every day she's got three stories of "I'm sick of it."

Yeah. No, I keep sending, Dad. Well, at least initially after Trump became president or like. And actually started working. I was sending you stuff all the time, and I noticed you just didn't even reply. I was like, yeah, he's over it. He doesn't want to fucking..

Tap out. We're just so angry I can't stand..

The first trumps. Um, what would you say the first time he was president, you were constantly on about it. I remember, too, it was. I was on the other side where I was like, Oh, it's not that bad, Dad. He's just, you know, he's just shaking the boat, mate. And now you look and you're like, Oh shit. Anyway, anyway. But yes, we..

So we get bombarded with that crap. Whereas Australian politics is just sort of just, it just, it's, it's daily life. So it just, it just sort of happens.

It's also pretty uneventful by comparison.

Pretty much.

You know, you don't have people like Elon Musk around or you know..

And and we have a different, um, political system. The three tier system in the US, um, with the president, the Senate and the House of Representatives, um, is obviously one more tier than we have. We have no, you know, head of state other than well, we have the king, but the king has no direct role in Australian politics. The monarch has only ever once done that and, and dismissed. Well, the Governor-General, on behalf of the Queen, um, dismissed a prime minister and a government.

Was it again? "May God forgive the governor general because no one else will" or something..

No. "May God save the Queen, because nothing will save the governor general." Uh, which is pretty accurate.

Yeah.

Uh, and and so, yeah, we don't have that third tier, so there's a lot less tension. And in Australian politics, um, you know, there's always the, you know, the, uh, the opposition, no matter which, whether it's the left side or the right side, whether it's the Labour Party or whether it's the Liberal Nationals, um, is always going to be bad mouthing the government and that just gets a bit boring. And so people don't take much notice of it.

Mhm. Well they just have to be contrarian.

Yeah.

In order to win votes. You can't say, 'You know what? I actually agree with what they're doing.'

I think that's, that's the problem with with politics in general is that- and whether it be the American version of it, or whether it be the Australian version, which is very much based on the British version, um, nobody, when they invented this style of politics, invented parties and said, We'll have two parties. And the party that gets the most, uh, people elected will become the government.

Mhm.

It just turned out that way.

Yeah. It's interesting how it's sort of..

Parties are a natural. Yeah. If you want power, you have to, you have to collaborate with other people.

Yeah.

And so it was just a natural thing that happened. Uh, And so we now end up with the party system across all democracies.

Yeah.

And, and it's a terrible design because you end up with, and I've said it for decades now in Australia, that the politicians are no longer employed by the people, they're employed by the parties. And so in a, in a notional sense, obviously they are employed by the people and really but notionally they're answerable not to the people but to the party. And so their, their prime ambition is to win the next election, to get in power. It is not to run the country or the state or the city. Well, it's to be in power.

Well, that they did have a good vision right, for the country. And how do we make sure we win the next election? What is it again? They usually like the, the three year cycle we have here is the first year they try and do as much as possible for people. The next year they think about what can we do to, um, you know, try and bring to the next election.

And then the third year is just electioneering.

Yeah, exactly. And then just trying to make sure you get voted in. So two thirds of the time is just wasting..

Yep!

Wasting time and getting nothing done.

Pretty much.

And the annoying thing I think too, is that they quite often just tinker around the edges to how do we appear like we are doing the most possible to the average person, or for the average person, without actually rocking the boat and causing any negative side effects to our donors. Or to our party.

Yeah.

And so they end up usually making all of this bluster and yelling about all these changes they're going to make that are going to make a huge difference. And in reality, it's like it'll do 1% of that. And it's whilst ignoring the really important things that are too hard to fix, like climate change or, you know, education and education or all these other issues that are coming up. We'll just say, Well, we're going to slightly change housing policy so that, you know, it'll be 1% easier to buy a house for first home owners. And that gets all of the headlines.

Yeah, exactly. But yeah, so we had a federal election at the beginning of this month, three weeks ago now. And um, the government got returned with a huge majority, which is the first time in history that a first time government increased their majority in Parliament.

Yeah. It was, I was going to say, did that shock you?

Yeah.

Were you expecting..

I know, the, the extent of it did.

Yes.

I expected them to increase their majority slightly.

Yeah.

Because the opposition was so pathetic that, that you, and their, their campaign was awful. Like they were pathetic for three years as an opposition. Uh, but their campaign was, was just even worse.

Well, they were effectively like, let's do Trump Lite in Australia.

Yeah. Yeah. That was that. They came in with no policies.

Yeah.

And all they did was whine about the government.

And like, blame immigration. Let's talk about work politics. Trans people are a big problem. All these things that it's like these are not.

They're not Australian issues.

They're not currently. They're just not problems that you should like. The average person at the moment is not worried about those things. We're not. We're not whingeing about trans people in, in you know, male or female bathrooms. And that is our primary care. The average person at the moment is worried about cost of living, inflation, housing, you know, those sorts of problems and work, the workforce and everything. And they just seem totally like, let's play, you know, emotional politics on these things.

Yeah, exactly. So yeah. So it was no surprise that they lost, but I just didn't expect them to lose by that much.

I was so happy. I just, it's one of those things like the Liberal Party could be liberal. They could be such a good party if they had someone like Malcolm Turnbull at the reins and they had an actual vision for the country and they would do it like, I mean, you know, any party could be like that, I guess. But.

But they.

They've just cooked. They've lost themselves in the 1960s. They, they really have gone. You know, John Howard who was a prime minister about 30 years ago, um, he took the Liberal Party back to the 50s and the 60s in his attitudes.

Yeah.

Malcolm Fraser, who was the Liberal prime minister before Howard was, was much more small l liberal. He was much more inclined to, you know, have policies to to try and improve the country, um, and, and move us into the 21st century. You know, at the end of the 20th century, uh, but Howard took them backwards, and they've gone further backwards ever since.

Yeah.

They've, they've just, they're, even the women. And so this is not a sexist thing, but even the women there could be lumped in with just a bunch of grumpy old white men.

Yeah.

In their, in their attitudes. And they've missed the, they've missed the millennial bulge.

It's weird, isn't it, because you're kind of like, do you guys not realise that you don't represent the interests of like, the demographic..

Demographic of voters now?

Yeah, exactly. Are you not, are you not paying attention to the fact that millennials now make up, you know, a vast majority or whatever of the of the vote is, and you should be thinking about what their issues are? If you're, if your only goal is to just get re-elected, you would think objectively, you would be able to work that out. Just look at the stats and then be like, this is where we're going to focus our attention.

So instead of, instead of trying to appeal to the electorate, they tried to look to the electorate on the things that they wanted to do. And they were pointless. They were because they had effectively the, the challenge they had was that the, the there are three lies that are perpetuated in right wing politics in, around the world. And Australia has been as bad as anybody else for the last century. And and that is that capitalism works as a political ideal, that trickle down economics works, and that the right side of politics, the right wing side of politics, are always better economic managers. None of those things is actually true.

Well, I love to..

And.

We know that objectively..

We do.

Liberal party. And you look at all of the stats about, um, what the debt and everything in Australia and our budgets and stuff. And every single time the Labour government gets in, the debt reduces.

Yeah. We're in a better economic, we're in better economic circumstances at the end of a Labour government than we are at the end of a Liberal government. And that's universal. It's not just the odd thing happening. It happens every time.

It's shocking when you see a graph and you can see, you know, the level of debt or whatever, and you're like, how is this not talked about more? How did people not know this?

But, but it's not just not know it. It's the fact that people actually believe the reverse.

Yeah. Yeah.

Because they've been sold this thing from conservative side of politics for a century. And that therein lies the problem with the Liberal Party in that the, the, this time the, uh, the Labour Party actually did a pretty good job of managing the country coming out of Covid in a worldwide decline in, uh, cost of oil, increasing cost of living, but decline in people's ability to pay for the daily things that they need. Worldwide, and had nothing to do with what the Australian government did. They did a pretty good job managing it, and the Liberal Party just kept trying to blame. Oh look, the cost of living crisis. It's all the Labour Party's fault. And I think people looked at it and went, No!?

This is like what?

It's the same in every country in the world. It's how, how. And we've actually we're actually better off in Australia than in most places in the world. And that's because of the policies of the Labour government.

But this is the entertaining thing about party politics, right?

It is!

They have to play that game.

Of course they do. But but the thing is, they ran out of that. The steam ran out of that argument in that most people I just look. Well, pfft, no.

It's interesting. It'll be interesting to see how and if the Liberal Party and the Liberal National Coalition think.

The Liberal National is no longer a coalition. That's the other thing, is that there was a coalition because we had from the 1950s onwards, we've had three major parties. There's been a few rise and fall along the way, but we've had three major parties in Australian politics. The Labour Party, which is on the left, and the Liberal Party and the National Party, which used to be the Country Party and mostly made up of people, you know, from country electorates, as in not in the major cities. And they became the National Party. Um, and any government that has ever been formed on the right side of politics was a coalition between the Liberal and the nationals.

So in order to get them to the..

.. Last 60 years, 70 years, they've never had enough, um, to to rule in their own right. So they've always had this coalition. Now the technically they and they, they basically formed a formal coalition about 30 or 40 years ago. And that's been dissolved yesterday. Yeah, before..

Yeah so I'm totally out of the loop with this. What's the latest news on that?

The National Party have said that they've dissolved the coalition. They're not going to collaborate with the Liberal Party.

Is that like..

Which is complete rubbish! All it means is that they're not going to vote the same way.

Yeah.

Um, which who cares which way you vote? You're in such a minority in Parliament. It is not going to matter which way you vote. It is completely meaningless.

Is this. Is this rats deserting a sinking ship?

Well, I think it's not rats deserting a sinking ship. I think it's as much as we think that we can actually have a better voice to push the policies that we want to push. This is the National Party.

Yeah.

By not being constantly, you know, pushed around by Big Brother because the Liberal Party always had more members than the National Party in parliament. They still do, but it's getting smaller and smaller.

So what would happen would be what, the National Party would be like. These are the issues we're worried about, and we'll vote with you. If we can get some kind of support on these issues or some of these issues. And the Liberal Party would be like, all right, but you have to support what we want in these key areas, and then we'll work together to do that. And so what the National Party now is just like, yeah, we're just doing whatever we want.

Pretty much. Yeah.

Because you guys don't have..

Push our policies and..

How many seats did they get? So like the National Party and the Liberal Party about even now inside?

No, the liberals are still got more, but not many more.

But they got absolutely crushed.

Like the Liberal Party got smashed. Yeah even..

Peter Dutton lost his own seat.

He did. Yeah. And it was mostly in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

All the big cities, huh?

In the city. Well, and also in Tasmania. Tasmania only has what, 4 or 5 seats in Parliament.

James, my friend James..

They're entirely Labour.

Was like, What the hell? Tasmania is normally insanely conservative blue, a blue state, like a liberal state. And he's like, it's all red.

Yeah.

I think it just went flipped red..

The entire city of Adelaide. That's the greatest city of every electorate in the city of Adelaide is now held by Labour.

You wonder if the, like Albo, and that were watching the results and they were surprised with how well they did. It would have been cheating themselves like what the hell?

Yeah.

I remember, didn't he get called in less than two hours as well? Everyone was watching the news and thinking, All right, we're going to be here for a few, like, several hours. Eight hours. James was telling me he went out and got beers and was like, sat down and he's like, It's over in two fucking hours! He was like, what the hell?

That's actually something that's also interesting about Australian politics, because I've only, I've been in the United States during two elections. Um, and one of them, your mother and I actually went to a, uh, an Obama rally. Um..

Disgusting traitors.

35, 35,000 people out there.

That must have been an event. That must be crazy.

And Bill Clinton spoke.

Yeah. Yeah.

So we got to see the ex-prime minister, or the ex-president. And the next president was the..

And you've seen al Gore as well, haven't you?

Uh, well, so have you. Were you there?

No, no..

No, you didn't go. And he went.

Yeah. You didn't you go to a talk with him?

Yeah. We did. Yeah.

Did you not in New York specifically.

I did.

Yeah. That's right.

I shook his hand. I said, thanks for the great job. And he said, you're welcome and walked off.

Yeah.

But he was leaving the stage. Yeah. Um, yeah. So, uh, I've been in the, in the US for two federal elections, and the US election system is really interesting in that every election is held on the first Tuesday in November. So if you're being elected as the local dogcatcher or the president of the United States, it's all it'll be all on the same day.

Yeah.

Uh, and so which is useful in a sense that everybody knows when the election is going to be on. There's no, you know, hedging and calling elections when you think you're going to win and so..

Like in Australia.

Like in Australia. Uh, well, and now in, um, certainly in Victoria, we have um, our elections are set, um, you know, every four years.

Yeah. Okay.

But that's only the state election. Um, but there doesn't seem to be that, you know, people will sort of be interested and they're engaged in it, but I didn't I didn't know anybody who was having election parties and sitting up at night and watching the election results and so on. Um, and I think possibly because it's just overwhelming, you know, when you've got so many things to follow. And of course, everybody, when you're there and watching it on TV, all you hear about is the presidential thing that you know, who's, you know, going to be in the Senate and the House of Representatives and who's going to be the governor, who's going to be the mayor, and all that sort of stuff you don't even hear about. Um, so I think that's the thing is that it just gets overwhelmed by the presidential thing. And that's sort of pretty boring to sit and watch.

Yeah.

If you- it's great as a new person.

It's like two snails fighting, right. Yeah. Like, okay. These ones are neck and neck..

They're not because of the silly college system. You know, it's every state gets a different number of votes and so on. But, um, but all you're doing is you're watching that, you know, the two snail race of, you know, is the red line or the blue line going to get to the minimum number that's required.

What is it again, 270 or something like that?

Yeah. Whereas in a, in an Australian politics you can follow it electorate by electorate. Seat by seat. And you, you know, you follow your own, but you're also. Oh, this one's going to be close. We'll watch that one all night because it might you know I mean.

ABC has always done a really good job. I think they've had a certain character. I've forgotten his name. You probably know, but he's been on there for..

Anthony Green.

Anthony Green. Yeah. He only I think he retired this year after..

And they gave him a big..

20 years or so?

35 years.

35 years! My gosh. So pretty much my entire life.

Yeah.

So what, he started in 1990.

Yeah. And he started for a, he got brought in for a six month part-time contract.

Yeah.

To develop a, a tracking system to follow the next federal election.

Wow.

Um, and he stayed there for 35 years, full time as their, you know, election..

But it was always cool watching him discuss everything as it was happening on those nights, because he would be in front of, like, a really large TV, at least more recently, um, you know, and go from electric to electric, electorate to electorate and, um, talk about, you know. What does this mean? Oh, this one's just been called bang. You know, and then this one comes.

But even polling booths.

Yeah.

He would know that. Oh, within this electorate, this polling booth was important last time. And so and our figures from the, the scrutineers are suggesting that polling booth is going to be important this time. But the amount of information that guy is you collect in his head was incredible.

It'll be interesting to see how they replace someone like that.

Oh you can't.

Yeah.

You can, you can, you can put another person there who is very good. And the guy they will replace him with is exceptionally good.

Yeah.

Um, he's a, uh, a statistician, and and he was the guy that the ABC had as the front person during Covid.

Oh, the younger dude with glasses.

Yeah.

Brown hair, right.

Yeah. I can't remember his name.

Yeah. Forget us, guys!

Yeah, he's he is really good.

He's really good doing Covid.

Yeah. And he's, he'll be the natural person to..

Data dude! The numbers guy!

The numbers guy.

The numbers guy. All right. So we've shat on, um, the Liberal Party for a lot of it. When I was, when I was preparing to vote for this election, I tried to do something different this time, instead of just doing the typical. I'm sort of more left, so I guess I'll vote for Labour or fuck it, I'm not voting. I'm just..

.. what my father used to do!

Yeah, just put in the whole none of these applicants..

None of these applicants is acceptable, my father used to write.

I did the, make a ballot or buildaballot.com.au or whatever it was thing. Where I went through, and they effectively asked me a series of, you know, 30 questions about..

Ah yea, the ABC website.

I think it was them. Yeah. There's two. There was two of them. There was the Vote Compass one. I'm again, sort of more putting you on the graph of where do you sit? Um, and then there was the builder ballot, which was asking you about your values, which were tied in with the what the different parties were running on, you know, legalised marijuana or..

And then giving you, in your electorate. Here's the order you should put your..

Yeah. Well it shows you where you are on that vote compass thing. And I was actually really surprised that I was like quite far away from Labour. Labour's kind of like centre left.

Yeah.

Liberals are very right. The Greens are kind of like, um, far left and right up on the top, you know, top left corner of whatever that four, um, square graph was. And I was sort of halfway between the greens and um, and, and labour and yeah, it was, it was just interesting because I ended up building my ballot, effectively taking photos of the, um, the results, because it took my values and effectively showed me which parties locally I aligned with the most, you know, and giving you a percentage alignment. And it would be like, you know, 99%, um, the Marijuana Party, um, you know, 96% the sex party or whatever it was.

Just changed their name, yeah?

Yeah, whatever they are. And then, you know, the Greens and then Labour was kind of like around 58, 60%. And then the liberals was like 30. And so I was like, you know what? I'm just going to do a value based vote this time where I'm not going to just select just the Labour Party, but I will order it all. And I assume to that the preferential voting system that we have.

We should explain to people.

But means that Labour will get the vote anyway, but it sort of preferences these other parties first, hopefully with a bit more power locally if they were to get in right like. Or get their person in. But yeah you explain you explain.

Yeah. And look, this is the other thing that, you know, that is Australia is different from most other countries in the world is that firstly we have mandatory voting.

Yeah.

Or at least mandatory turning up to vote.

Is that good or bad?

It's good.

Why?

Two reasons. One, because it encourages every person to participate.

Yeah.

And secondly, because.

It's truly representative.

Well it's. Yeah. Which makes it representative. But the second thing that is important is that we have the infrastructure to cope with the number of people that are required.

Yeah.

Again, having been in the US for two federal elections.

Where this isn't the case..

But it's not the case, it's not mandatory. And the and now they have you know, back in the olden days, you used to have to turn up to vote on the, you know, the first Tuesday of every year of November. But now you can, you can watch people in queues waiting for an hour and a half or two hours and are coming close to the time, you know, I think at 6:00 or whatever time it is, 6:00, 7:00, they'll walk down the line and put a line in it and say, you're the last person who can vote anybody behind you in the line cart, because they simply have no idea how many people are going to turn up to vote.

And the game that gets played then by presidents or politicians of like, how do we make sure people don't vote in this area? So well, like, we'll say that all the buses have a free holiday or something on that same voting day.

And so it's so easy to manipulate.

Exactly.

So, you know, in Australia that mandatory voting is the first thing. Um, and then the second part of it is that we have a preferential voting system, and that is that we don't have a first-past-the-post, and that is when you. So if you've got roughly 100,000 people in an electorate, so if there's 100,000 people in this electorate and that are voting, then and you've got seven people, then the person who's got the most votes..

You mean seven running politicians, yeah..

Seven candidates. Um, the the person who gets the most might have 40,000.

Yeah.

That doesn't give them the win. Whereas in many other places in the world it's just the highest number wins regardless.

Well, effectively, it's what everyone gets to vote on one person. And that person who gets that vote, if they don't win, it's just nullified. That vote's chucked out. It's not useful after that.

Yeah. So what happens is with the preferential vote, is that because, say we had seven people in our seven candidates in our electorate at the last election. When you vote, you have to put them in preferential order, and that is you vote number one for your first two, three, four all the way down to seven.

Yeah.

And so the number one votes all get counted.

Yeah.

And then the, the number seven drops out. And they take all of those votes that got that the seventh person had number one on.

And look at who was there..

And they re-established their number two and recount those. And then they dropped the sixth person out and so on. Until somebody has 50% of the total number.

Yeah.

And then.

It's done.

The electorate is declared.

But in that way of that more complicated way of doing it, every single vote counts.

Every vote counts.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so you can vote for the lunatic party if you want. And then you can put a major party second. Effectively you're voting for the major party.

Mhm.

And that's, and so everybody has the option of doing that. Now the parties put out how to vote cards. Um you know when you turn up to, you know to the electoral booth to vote, there'll be people standing around outside handing you here's the Labour Party, the Liberal Party, the Greens or whatever it happens to be. Um, and they will have a preference to say, put these people in this order. Mhm. Um, but every person, you can put them in whatever order you like. You don't have to follow theirs. There's no standardised way of doing it. Um, and so you, you get this system that allows people to You can't win an election until you've got half the numbers at least, so you've legitimately done it.

Yeah.

Um, the challenge with that is that people don't understand it. And I've even had arguments with your grandparents who just think, oh, you know, that person only got in based on green preferences. And you go, no.

It was your preferences.

It was the preferences of the people who voted. The Greens might have said, we suggest you do this, but it's not. The Greens didn't suddenly go, Oh, we lost, but we like them better, so put them in.

It's funny because that's how I used to think it worked, I think.

You don't get in on green preferences. You get down on preferences that the Greens suggested you put.

Yeah.

So every individual voter puts down their own preferences.

Yeah. Well for me it was put just make sure Labour goes above the liberals because you know ultimately it's between those two.

Mostly.

Yeah. In most places. And so it's like look Labour's going to win the seat here. It's almost certain. So they don't need to be right at the top of the list. And it's better if just in case these other, um, groups or people or candidates that align more with my values are higher up just in case, for whatever reason, they did end up.

Yes.

You know, getting in there. So that was my, at least my take on it.

Yeah. And look, a lot of the I mean the Greens party got smashed um, in a number of people elected. So the Greens, um, got an increase in their absolute vote. The number of people who voted for them increased, but they they lost a whole lot of, um, election electorates that they previously had. A lot. 2 or 3.

What was the uh, Adam Bandt will..

But Adam Bandt, who was the leader of the Greens, he lost.

Yeah.

But mostly they were losing on that whole preferential system where they would typically win an election by finishing second.

Yeah.

And, and then getting preferences to go a jump above whoever was ahead of them. Uh, but in this case, though, a lot of them were they were finishing third. And so if you finish third, you can't win.

Yeah.

Because in the end, it's your preference, the people's preferences who voted for you that are going to elect either 1 or 2.

Yeah.

And so their votes were being split that way. Um, which was sort of weird.

I'd heard that they kind of just come off message like.

Oh, they had I, I have always voted green in the Senate.

Yeah.

I vote ALP. And you know, no qualms about telling people is I vote ALP in the House of Representatives, the lower house. Um, because the the lower house is the house that forms government.

Yeah.

The Senate is the House of review. They don't form government. Um, but, um, I vote Greens in the Senate or independents if there's a good independent.

Yeah.

Um, because I actually want a voice in the house of review.

Okay.

Rather than having. Because the least productive form of government you can have is one that has a clear majority in both houses.

Yeah. Because then they can do what they like.

Which means mostly they do nothing.

Yeah.

As opposed to where they've got to say a majority but it's the..

Majority in the lower house is the government..

.. bargain with other people?

But then they have to actually form a loose coalition with a whole bunch of independents or small parties in order to get the majority of votes in the Senate to get the legislation passed. Uh, I prefer that style of of government.

Yeah.

That's just a personal preference. Uh, but, um, but I think the Greens this time have just sort of. They lost the plot. They went too far left. And I'm about as, I'm further left in my politics than the Green Party is. But they went too far left in a sense that they they began to hate the word because it's been so overused. But they became so woke that people just didn't want to have anything to do with them.

Yeah. Um, again, it's just that tone deaf thing of not listening to your vote base, right? Like you're not thinking about what are your actual problems today, and instead you're telling them these are the issues you should be concerned with.

Exactly.

And that's what the average person who's going to vote is going to be like, fuck you, dude. I don't want to be lectured. I want you to represent what I care about.

Exactly. Don't tell me how to follow you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You follow me!

Exactly. Yeah. And it's hopefully it's a wake up call for, um, for all these parties. You know, whoever you voted for, whoever you support politically, um, hopefully it ends up meaning that the Liberal Party will sort it shit out a bit more.

And take a while to..

Become a little more sensible. And the same with the Greens.

Same with the Greens. I think the Greens will come back. The other thing that the Greens have suffered from is the centre left of the Liberal Party. Um, not this election, but the election before a lot of the people who were, you know, really middle in politics, in the, in the Liberal Party got disenfranchised with the grumpy old white men and, and left. And they formed, a bunch of them, and a lot of them were women because they realised that they were never going to get into, um, you know, be the preferred candidates in many of these Melbourne and Sydney suburban seats.

Yeah.

And so they went independent and they won. And they got they got chunked together.

Who's the Teals.

.. knows now as the Teals. They're not a party. Um, they're just a bunch of mostly moderate, right. You know, right, centre-right. But they're, they're effectively a fairly left of the centre in the, in the Liberal Party. Uh, and they were disenfranchised with them. And so that was the other problem that they, those people were taking the third vote, if you like. Um, in many, um, electorates in that, you know, typically there'll be people who will always vote Labour and the people will always vote Liberal, and they'll be swinging voters in the middle. The Greens for the last 30 years have taken a lot of those swing votes. And then the Teals, uh, have have stolen a lot of that swing vote for themselves. So there were just fewer swing voters to jump on the Greens.

And because the Labour Party did so well, a lot of the people who were typically voting green as the left party were perfectly happy with what the Labour Party were doing. And so, you know, didn't vote. Green didn't swing to green. Uh, so it's uh, yeah, it's an interesting thing that's happened in politics. Uh, I still haven't looked at and I still don't think the Senate has finally been declared. I don't know. Um, and so I don't know whether there is an I doubt whether there will be a clear majority for the Labour Party in the Senate, but.

Yeah. So what are your expectations for the future now? Are you expecting Labour to get a lot of positive things done for the country over the next three years?

They've certainly got a good mandate. You know when you win in a landslide.

Yeah.

You've effectively got, it's you know, that mandate is the power of the people. The people have told you that they agree with the A, your performance in the past, but also the policies you went with.

But does this now effectively means..

Like a now disco- oh, it does, but it now means that here are all the things we said we're going to do. We're just going to have to tick them off.

Yeah.

Because the the worst thing you can have is in two years time is if you haven't been because you've got a clear majority.

Yeah.

If you haven't been able to do this. And that's the challenge in this system is that if the Greens end up, the Greens will still be reasonable power in the Senate. And some of the Independents in the Senate decide they want to be a pain in the arse. And that was the problem that the Greens had. The Greens were voting against the ALP, the government in the Senate a lot.

I think we noticed that just more, right.

Just to, just to be difficult.

Yeah.

And people went, no, you're actually agreeing your policies agree with them but you're grandstanding. So stop it.

Yeah.

That's..

So you think they'll get a lot of..

So I think they should get a lot of stuff done. And if they don't they'll be gone. Because the worst thing you can have is a huge mandate. And then you don't do the things that you said you were going to do that gave you that mandate?

Well, it's hard to imagine now the Liberal Party winning again in three years and..

I can't see it happening. They'll win a few more seats back because this is the shock vote. Yeah, yeah. The tide can't go out any further. When, when the bay is entirely lost, it's water. Some of it has to creep back in, but.

Yeah. Far out. Anyway, hopefully you guys enjoy this political chat and, um. Yeah, whatever side of politics you're on, hopefully you, um, you got a lot out of it.

Yeah. All right.

See ya!

Bye!