So Australia's 2 July election is now confirmed. Really, the election campaign has been on for a while. Now add the eight weeks to the election. It's going to be a long campaign.
I have no idea who will win. The number of Government seats provides a significant electoral buffer, but the opinion polls show the two sides running neck and neck in the national vote, with a trend towards Labor. In the end, its how the vote breaks in individual seats that will determine the results.
Are we talked out on the election at this point?
We have also talked about Donald Trump before. I didn't expect him to maintain his success to the point of becoming the almost certain Republican nominee. Hilary Clinton looks reasonably safe in terms of her bid, so it looks like Trump versus Clinton. Would anybody care to revisit their original forecasts?
In the Philippines, it looks highly likely that Rodrigo Duterte will become President. He has been compared to Donald Trump. He has also told Australia to but out on some things.
Have we entered another era of "strong men" in politics?
As always, I leave it to you to go in whatever direction you want.
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17 comments:
Well, my first thoughts on the US elections were wrong - except, possibly, HRC might still feel some FBI-induced heat. But as to your "era of strong men in politics", it resonated with something I read recently:
The appetite of the people of these States, in popular speeches and writings, for unhemmed latitude, coarseness, directness, live epithets, expletives, words of opprobrium, resistance.
This I understand because I have the taste myself as large, as largely, as any one. I have pleasure in the use, on fit occasions, of—traitor, coward, liar, shyster, skulk, doughface, trickster, mean cuss, backslider, thief, impotent, lickspittle.... A perfect writer would make words sing, dance, kiss, bear children, weep, bleed, rage, stab, steal, fire cannon, steer ships, sack cities, charge with cavalry or infantry, or do anything that man or woman or the natural powers can do.... I like limber, lasting, fierce words. I like them applied to myself,—and I like them in newspapers, courts, debates, congress.
Do you suppose the liberties and the brawn of these States have to do only with delicate lady-words? with gloved gentlemen words?
Walt Whitman, "An American Primer" - 1856, thereabouts.
kvd
Anyway, politically, it's just a question of balancing the cucumbers and the grapes:
http://twistedsifter.com/videos/monkeys-get-different-rewards-for-same-task/
kvd
kvd: I wonder what Walt Whtiman would have thought of Trump. I suspect he would have been able to find some colourful expletives that might be apt.
In Australia, as I contemplate the next few weeks I just hope that I am wrong in my observation watching ABC news tonight that the eyes of the people in the street standing behind Malcolm Turnbull were glazing over as he spoke briefly about jobs and growth.
Laughed when I watched cucumber and the grapes, kvd. On Whitman, I hadn't heard that quote. Follow it up, though.
Winton, from your perspective, the 2014 budget was a disaster that just keeps growing. It really blew the chances for the changes you want, at least in the short term.
Jim, in my view the 2014 budget was a fairly moderate response to the worsening fiscal situation. Abbott's disaster stemmed from the mixed messages he took to the preceding election campaign. If you want to persuade people that there is a fiscal problem you can't go to an election with a heap of new spending proposals. Abbott has gone up in my estimation by acknowledging that recently.
I haven't examined the last budget in detail, but I get the impression that the cuts in the 2014 budget would not have been sufficient to bring the budget back to balance this year even if the Senate had not been obstructive.
The difficult task of the Coalition now is to convey what they are talking about with the "jobs and growth" slogan. It might be easier to talk about the desirability of tax cuts for business because of the links between investment and jobs.
Probably get slammed for this but, if you think of Mr Trump as somewhat of a crass speaker of truth to entrenched elites, then the closest Oz pollie is Mr Leyonhjelm :)
kvd
The difficulty, Winton, is that the budget was not seen as ether fair or moderate to the point that it has become enshrined in popular methodology as one of Australia's worst budgets. It wasn't just the conflict between Abbott spend and the budget message, but the scale of the proposed changes introduced for other reasons that were justified on the grounds of fiscal repair. Here, and I think I said this at the time, the Government had mixed two things to the detriment of both. It wanted to both fix the budget and bring about changes that it considered desirable across many areas from education through welfare to health encapsulated in the slogan lifters not leaners. That message was flawed by the conflict between Abbott spend and budget repair, but it was flawed anyway because people saw through the budget justification.
Assuming the Government's starting point, it should have focused on either budget repair as the central message or the need for major reform as the central message. The second might have been politically hard, but it would have been clear.
I think that you are right that even if fully implemented the 2014 budget would not have achieved its longer term fiscal target because of economic shifts.
kvd, I would jump on you a little on that comparison. I actually don't understand the framework that sets Trump beliefs or indeed what those beliefs are beyond a certain level. With L, there is a clearer framework.
A hasty postscript. Yes, both do attack the views of entrenched elites.
Jim, if you read my earlier comment again, I made no comment upon their actual or perceived policy positions. But now you mention it ("clearer framework") I think there are just as many inconsistencies in the LDP policy positions as there are in what we currently know of Trump's.
kvd
The two economic difficulties with the budget were that
(1) all of the spending was based on trickle-down economics (give businesses and the well-off concessions and this would somehow turn into jobs and economic activity) while the cuts were to key sectors such as education or to benefits for those who would actually go out, spend and stimulate the economy
(2) the revenue cuts outweighed the spending cuts even with favourable and incorrect predictions for resources prices factored in.
(1) is fairly well disproved by the Panama Papers which show that many wealthy hide assets offshore, rather than either spending here or paying taxes. This last budget is still pulling (2) with unlikely rates of steel and iron prices not supported by China's predictions of shrinking growth. We are unlikely to see a surplus any time soon.
I've always thought that "winning" or "losing" election debates was utter drivel, but now I see Bill Shorten has "won" the first day of the election campaign. Roll on July 2, can't come quick enough.
Love this:
"I am endorsing Hillary, and all her lies and all her empty promises," said P.J. O'Rourke. "It's the second-worst thing that can happen to this country, but she's way behind in second place. She's wrong about absolutely everything, but she's wrong within normal parameters."
Ah, democracy! :)
kvd
kvd wrote: "there are just as many inconsistencies in the LDP policy positions as there are in what we currently know of Trump's." That may be true, kvd, I haven't read the LDP policies, but there does seem to be more in L's position. With Trump, he strikes me as a total wild canon.
I really laughed at your quote from P J O'Rourke. Sort of captured it. Might steal that. Who is PJO?
Specifically on the budget deficit, 2t, you have the old distinction between cyclical and structural deficits. I haven't been too worried about the deficit because of the expectation that, with time, the cyclical elements in the economy would turn around. If there has been a structural shift in the economy to sub-par growth, then we have a problem because that will turn cyclical deficits into structural deficits.
Malcolm Turnbull told us today that a vote for an independent is a wasted vote. If I vote for a party that doesn't get up is that a wasted vote? Are all the votes that don't elect someone a wasted vote? And what is he saying about the people who vote for independents, are they a waste of space? The sheer arrogance of that statement pisses me off no end. But what annoys me even more are that our journalists let them off the hook when they say stuff like that. This quote from Marx (Groucho not Karl) sums up my feelings towards politics in general.
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies".
O'Rourke is an American conservative commentator; worth reading, with the appropriate leavening of salt. I think he was the fellow that said something like "if you think healthcare is expensive now, wait until its free".
Anyway, I'm with Bill, just above, particularly about 'journalists'. Paul McGeough, for instance, is becoming quite unhinged.
kvd
Gee, that Groucho Marx, what a commentator.
There is one thing that unites the left and right in this country. Our dislike of politicians. The election campaign that is now upon us makes me shudder every time I hear the mantra "jobs and growth". I watched in fascination as Julie Bishop interviewed last night dutifully repeated the party line, word for word. You could swap heads on this lot and the message would be the same. And our opposition leader isn't much better. Don't they have advisors? "Yeah nice point Bill but you still sound like a whining school boy".
If we are getting the politicians we deserve then we must have done something pretty awful things in the past. No wonder voting is compulsory in this country...otherwise who would bother. I worked as a casual at the AEC during a couple of elections. We had a pile of voting slips we called the "Get F***ed" pile in honour of the pithy comments scrawled on the ballot papers. As the count continued the pile got higher. I suspect this year it may compete with the donkey votes.
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