Rebecca White’s concession speech before all the votes have been counted suggests the ALP hates the Greens so much that they would be happy to suffer 4 more years of irrelevance on the Opposition benches than actually putting those differences aside to enact good and considered legislation. Such great vision! What does the party even stand for except as a vehicle to punch left rather than the common opposition.
Jeremy Rockliff’s ‘victory’ speech was embarrassing. 63 percent of the population chose another party and he claims the entire state for the liberals when the numbers do not lie.
The beauty of Tasmania’s electoral system to me is that no party can hide behind the single member preferential voting to hide their party’s deep unpopularity with two thirds of the electorate.
Great article Tim. I was in Tasmania on election night (I vote in Lyons) and White’s speech certainly left open the possibility of Labor forming government. Seems like she got rolled by the ‘faceless’ men in the ALP’s state administrative body. They seem to be too scared to want to govern. One wonders why the ALP bothers standing sometimes. The Rundle piece in Crikey was excellent, I thought. Such an opportunity for change wasted by a yet again gutless ALP.
Good piece, and I think wise to acknowledge we are in transition and that it is not inevitable that a sensible cross-bench emerges as an enabler of sensible government (although it's far and away my preference).
If anything, your piece understates two risks.
The ALP diktat to Tasmania did not shock or surprise me (I wish it did). Both party machines have way too much invested in terms of personal careers and life decisions to allow a simple thing like the benighted view of the ignorant masses getting in the way. Like any cornered animal, they will fight, honourably and dishonourably, smartly and stupidly, to survive, because they see the battle as existential. It doesn't have to be - there's a perfectly valid way to work with the views of the unhomed third - but all they see is oncoming headlights.
The second risk is that the longer the majors fail to deal with the unhomed third, the more explosive the response of that third will be as their needs are ignored. Their ranks, our ranks, will swell, and at some point frustration will boil over. I can see a few trigger points already, as I'm sure your readers can too, but to some extent it doesn't matter what it is. Trying to maintain the entitlement of the majors is not sustainable, and systems under pressure need release or redesign (I'm not an engineer btw, just struggling for metaphors).
Rebecca White’s concession speech before all the votes have been counted suggests the ALP hates the Greens so much that they would be happy to suffer 4 more years of irrelevance on the Opposition benches than actually putting those differences aside to enact good and considered legislation. Such great vision! What does the party even stand for except as a vehicle to punch left rather than the common opposition.
Jeremy Rockliff’s ‘victory’ speech was embarrassing. 63 percent of the population chose another party and he claims the entire state for the liberals when the numbers do not lie.
The beauty of Tasmania’s electoral system to me is that no party can hide behind the single member preferential voting to hide their party’s deep unpopularity with two thirds of the electorate.
Great article Tim. I was in Tasmania on election night (I vote in Lyons) and White’s speech certainly left open the possibility of Labor forming government. Seems like she got rolled by the ‘faceless’ men in the ALP’s state administrative body. They seem to be too scared to want to govern. One wonders why the ALP bothers standing sometimes. The Rundle piece in Crikey was excellent, I thought. Such an opportunity for change wasted by a yet again gutless ALP.
Good piece, and I think wise to acknowledge we are in transition and that it is not inevitable that a sensible cross-bench emerges as an enabler of sensible government (although it's far and away my preference).
If anything, your piece understates two risks.
The ALP diktat to Tasmania did not shock or surprise me (I wish it did). Both party machines have way too much invested in terms of personal careers and life decisions to allow a simple thing like the benighted view of the ignorant masses getting in the way. Like any cornered animal, they will fight, honourably and dishonourably, smartly and stupidly, to survive, because they see the battle as existential. It doesn't have to be - there's a perfectly valid way to work with the views of the unhomed third - but all they see is oncoming headlights.
The second risk is that the longer the majors fail to deal with the unhomed third, the more explosive the response of that third will be as their needs are ignored. Their ranks, our ranks, will swell, and at some point frustration will boil over. I can see a few trigger points already, as I'm sure your readers can too, but to some extent it doesn't matter what it is. Trying to maintain the entitlement of the majors is not sustainable, and systems under pressure need release or redesign (I'm not an engineer btw, just struggling for metaphors).
Top article TD.