Submitted 3 days ago by atro_city@fedia.io to australia@aussie.zone
Y'all have first past the post / winner takes all, don't you? There was a vote recently and "labor" won from what I'm reading?
Labor, coalition, independents, etc. what kinds of parties are these? I thought Albanese was a "cunt" yet his party seems to have won again? What's going on?
Y’all have first past the post / winner takes all, don’t you?
Nope. Instant-Runoff Vote, where we rank preferences. It’s much better.
ncase.me/ballot/ has a neat interactive visualisation of different voting methods.
Labor, coalition, independents, etc. what kinds of parties are these?
The Coalition is a coalition of allied parties, not just one party. Generally speaking, it’s the Liberal Party and the National Party. Now, if you’re used to American political media, you’ve probably learned an incorrect definition of ‘liberal’ - it doesn’t actually just mean ‘progressive’, liberalism is an ideology focusing on the ideal of liberty, and most parties in modern liberal-democratic countries are liberals, whether they’re classic liberals (think US Libertarians), progressive liberals (think a Green party) or conservative liberals. The Liberal Party of Australia are conservative liberals, and they’ve been mirroring some of Trump’s rhetoric and US Republican Party ideas like the DOGE. Australia apparently didn’t like that.
Labor were historically a social democrat party representing the labour movement and unions, but has drifted further away from that and is now considered either the centre or centre-left party.
The Greens are the third biggest, a populist progressive party, focusing on issues like environment and climate, social justice and housing.
Independent candidates are independent, they aren’t in a party. Some have left their old parties, some were never in one.
I thought Albanese was a “cunt” yet his party seems to have won again?
Since when has that stopped politicians from winning?
What’s going on?
The Liberal Party faceplanted, many of their voters swung to Labor. Others will have chosen smaller parties, but Labor and Coalition each had about 33% of the primary vote in the past few years with Greens and One Nation down somewhere around 10% so Labor was clearly the most likely to win this year.
Interestingly, unlike the House of Representatives which election coverage has focused on, there is still a crossbench in the Senate, it looks like Greens will still have around 11 members there, forcing Labor to appeal to them in order to pass bills in the Senate.
These are generalisations, there are some technicalities I’ve avoided.
Y’all have first past the post / winner takes all, don’t you? There was a vote recently and “labor” won from what I’m reading?
We have a (ranked choice voting) preferential vote system. You number your choices (1-8 for house of rep and 1-6 or 1-12 for senate). If the absolute majority isn’t obtained on first count the preferences are distributed until a majority is gained and that majority forms government.
Labor, coalition, independents, etc. what kinds of parties are these?
Centre-left (progressive), centre-right (conservative) and varied respectively. Independents can be anything from legalise cannabis through Kitkat Palmers (billionaire) wannabe Trump party. Ranked choice allows for support of smaller parties but still picking one of the main two if it comes down to a close call.
I thought Albanese was a “cunt” yet his party seems to have won again? What’s going on?
Im not a fan of Albanese due to him largely coasting on important issues; like housing but Im not aware of the broader population thinking he was a cunt. After Morison (deeply moronic conservative who was last PM) he got job and at least was professional.
Problem is Dutton, the opposition leader just had that bad a platform. Marking yet another attempt for the coalition attempting to bring US/Trump bullshit over here, being a cop who’d disobey an international court warrant, nuclear power saga and in general just being super scarce on details for his plans as PM.
Even if I’m centre left inclined, the coalitions performance this cycle still somewhat disappointed me. A weak coalition means it’s more like for a complacent Labor party.
Im not a fan of Albanese due to him largely coasting on important issues; like housing but Im not aware of the broader population thinking he was a cunt.
For what it’s worth, I’d say many online communities (including Lemmy) are more progressivist than the average population, so a non-Australian could easily get that impression.
Hmm.. I'm curious now, how did a conservative rightist party end up with Liberal in their name?
Legalize cannabis party and the trumpet one aren’t independents
Thanks for the correction, I lumped in other parties with independents.
It’s preferential FPTP, if no candidate gets 50% the lowest vote candidate is eliminated and preferences are distributed, repeat until there is a winner
Labour is centre-left Liberal/National Coalition is centre-right but ran on a further right platform and had their arse handed to them Greens are left Most of the Teal Independents would be considered left to centre-left There are a variety of fuckwads running right to far-right platforms (Seriously, what kind of cunt do you have to be to think Palmer or Hanson could run a country anywhere other than into the ground)
It’s preferential FPTP
This contradicts FPTP - Australia does not use FPTP.
They’re far from perfect, but the alternative was Donald Dutton
I get what you’re saying, but there were other viable alternatives (as unlikely as they were!) precisely because we aren’t in a two-party FPTP system.
The lower house single-member electorate voting system does still favour larger parties, it’s just way, way, better than FPTP.
oercollective.caul.edu.au/…/electoral-systems/
Relevant part starts at “Majoritarian (or ‘winner takes all’) systems” about a third of the way down.
Y’all have first past the post / winner takes all, don’t you? There was a vote recently and “labor” won from what I’m reading?
Others have answered you that we have preferential voting, but I’m still really confused about why you’re asking in this way? It makes if sound like FPTP would have stopped them from getting elected, and preferential would have prevented it.
As for what’s going on, Dutton, the leader of the Coalition, and members of that group of parties associated themselves with Trump, who’s really unpopular here. They also provided literally no policies to genuinely help with the cost of living issues people are facing, instead engaging in culture wars stuff. We have mandatory voting here as well, you can’t just sit it out, so it makes the sort of apathy+populism that has gotten Trump elected not possible. The silent majority of voters rejected Dutton and the only other major choice was Labor.
The silent majority of voters rejected Dutton
This time, not for the last two decades though.
Y’all have first past the post / winner takes all, don’t you?
No, preferntial i.e ranked choice
There was a vote recently and “labor” won from what I’m reading?
Indeed
Labor, coalition, independents, etc. what kinds of parties are these?
Independents aren’t a party per se, the hint is in the name
We have the Green parry as our centre party and everyone ekse is to the right of them. There is nothing i’d classify as left.
Labor is anti refugee, pro fossil fuel mining, anti enviorment etc i.e part of neo liberal orthodoxy, centre right, Liberal Party (not liberal in the US sense) is climate change denying, anti refugees, pro private health care, TERFs, etc two sides of the one coin. Bit of difference over Gaza, like minded on Ukraine.
Labour are pushing future made in Australia the initiative to create renewables in Australia and export to the world.
That’s not exactly pro fossil fuels
I’ll preface this by saying I’m not as informed as some so if I get something wrong, apologies.
We don’t have first past the post.
Australia has federal, state and local government elections. This election was federal. Each state is subdivided into large federal regions, and we vote on representatives for our area (green ballot and lowe house). We also vote on which party we want to see in control (white ballot and upper house).
The green ballot is just counted up, and the person with the most votes wins. The white ballot is harder to explain, but basically you need a majority of seats to take government and have to win 76 seats. There’s a transfer system you can read about on wikipedia.
Idk about Albonese being a cunt but every politician in Australia is considered a bit of a dickhead. We don’t worship them here. So we vote out the biggest dickhead (Peter Dutton) most of the time (some could be lovely but most people are aware how many do very little and earn $400k salaries).
Dutton ran a campaign on nuclear power and other things I won’t go into. Nuclear power has 0 infrastructure in Australia so we’d be starting from scratch. It would take 15 years to begin powering Australia. We will have a crisis in 5 years due to population growth. This is extremely easy to point out as stupid, and hard to argue against, especially when half the country already has solar power on their roofs. They also told everyone they’d make fuel cheaper and buy more military equipment even though we have a deal to get military equipment from the US and UK. It’d be nice to have but stupid to run on it.
They didn’t have many other policies that made it to me, but I largely block ads so you could go read more about it online.
Conversely, Albonese ran on things like healthcare, the housing crisis and affordable living. Things people actually care about given the times.
Parties:
TL;DR Most people would probably say the liberals ran a bad campaign, hence they lost badly. Albo is likely a cunt but he’s better than the guy we voted out who wanted to force the country to go with nuclear power, which would start producing energy 10 years after we had a shortage. At least Albo is going to do things with healthcare and affordable living. And if he fails, we’ll vote him out and get someone who will because we aren’t a cult.
cunt is a compliment
It’s also an insult. We’re a nuanced people.
We have Useless Cunts, Hippie Cunts, Fascist Cunts, and a whole lot of Cunts with Clive Palmers and Gina Rhineharts hands up their arses making their lips move. There are also a few Good Cunts who actually care about their constituents and the future of the Country.
We also had one Potato-shaped Dickhead but he’s gone now.
Australia uses the instant-runoff ranked ballots electoral system.
Here is a map of the countries that were formerly part of the British Empire.
Doof!
Winner takes all in the house of representatives. The senate uses proportional representation
The big two parties labor and the coalition change the rules and gimp small parties every time they start to get popular (see the recent party name bans, increase in members needed to register, caps to self funding and expenses)
The actions of the republicans in the US have pushed voters away from the coalition and their leader Peter Dutton (who lost his seat) as they were cozying up with the Trump administration and mimicking them in various ways
Therefore Labor wins
TassieTosser@aussie.zone 3 days ago
We don’t have fptp, we have ranked choice. So if our first choice gets eliminated, votes will go to the second choice and so on. This means that minor parties and independent candidates have a chance.
Labor is our centre-left part with roots in unions. Liberals are centre-right with roots in business and suburban professionals but have been charging hard right in an attempt to pick up the conservative retard vote. Our current actual centre-right is a bunch of independents (candidates not endorsed by a party) collectively known as the Teals. Greens are the biggest actual left party. Pauline Hanson’s One Nation (PHON) and Trumpet of Patriots (TOP) are right wing nuts.
Albanese is a “cunt” because he and his party still cater to big business despite claiming to be the party of workers. An example from Tasmania being introducing Federal legislation to protect the salmon farms currently destroying our waterways in an attempt to buy votes in a marginal electorate.