Australia’s political throne has a new contender – one Mr Peter Dutton. But if you’re one of those mumbling “Peter who?” – you’re not alone. As a contender for both Most Boring and Most Offensive MP in Australian Parliament, when Peter Dutton does stand in front of a camera, many people either find their eyes glazing over or their noses
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The Senate results are finally in, and one thing’s abundantly clear – Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s decision to take Australia to a double dissolution election instead of just calling a standard election has backfired big time. Roll back the clocks to March this year, and unable to convince the Senate that they should pass his ABCC legislation, Turnbull threatened Senators with a double
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Earlier this week I wrote about inaccuracies in our voting system which are impacting who wins government. I showed how the LNP have held government far more often than Australia’s voting preferences suggest they should – and how if we had used a more accurate model in the 2016 election, Bill Shorten might be PM now instead of Malcolm Turnbull.
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If you look back at the last thirty Australian Federal Elections, the Australian Labor and Liberal National Parties have won the countrywide two-party preferred vote exactly fifteen times each. If our electoral system were accurately translating Australian voters’ wishes into election outcomes – as Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said in February that it should – then this would mean that the ALP would have
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Are you a Politician who can’t get his own way? Have you put forward perfectly reasonable policies to the people of your country – only to hear the whiny cries of your ungrateful constituents? Are you trying to get some legislation through parliament, but find that those unreasonable Politicians in opposition won’t play ball? Are you sick of people ignoring your
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Final Update on 8 July at 8:30am (with mini update on 9 July at 6:30pm) I’m calling it folks. I’m packing up my election ‘night’ desk for another three years. While there are still a number of seats that have to be finalised, it would take such a dramatic shift in voting trends moving forward that the outcome is pretty
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You wouldn’t know there was an election coming where I live. There’s no posters on poles, no pollies hanging around on the streets, no letterbox drops, no text messages and no robocalls. If you didn’t follow the news, you wouldn’t even know there was an election on. This is in stark contrast to the New England electorate – home to Deputy PM Bananaby Joyce
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Over thirty-three millions Brits exercised their democratic right to have a say in whether Britain should remain in the EU or leave last Thursday. But did they? Was the Brexit vote democracy in action – or politics at its worst? Democracy is a serious business Democracy is a serious business – as the people of the UK were reminded last week. About eight
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You don’t hear much about the election for the ‘other House’ in our Federal Parliament – the Senate. There’s no polls predicting who will win. Parties don’t do a special launch of their State/Territory Senate candidates. You don’t get letterbox drops or see State Senate candidates plastered on our local electricity poles. And yet the outcome of the Senate election will have a huge
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Imagine a world where our politicians suffered real consequences when they mislead the public with a lie. A world where politicians had to work together like civil adults – instead of tearing each other apart like badly behaved toddlers. In other words – imagine a world where politicians had to live by the same standards that we do. For too long
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