Things other countries might not know about Australian elections:
Voting is compulsory. The punishment for not voting is a $20 fine. There is no punishment for vandalising your vote, handing in a blank ballot, or just showing up , having you name crossed off and leaving again.
However, if you don’t enrol to vote when you turn 18, our data systems aren’t sophisticated enough to catch you.
The Liberal Party is right wing and the Labor Party is left wing.
Because we have compulsory voting, the major parties tend to aim to appeal to undecided centrallist voters. People with fixed political beliefs (most people) are kind of taken for granted. This is very boring but it keeps our politics from getting as polarised as other countries where parties aren’t just trying to win over voters but also to motivate their bases to come out and vote.
Voting happens mostly at schools and community centres.
Parties send volunteers to hang out at polling places and try convince people to vote their way. But things stay pretty polite because Australians find enthusiasm to be suspect.
Once you cross a certain line to enter the poling place those people have to leave you alone.
Schools and charities will sell things like homemade cakes and BBQ sausages in bread as a fundraiser.
The sausages are called ‘democracy sausages’ and taste just slightly of democracy.
You can also do a postal vote and vote in the days before election day at certain places.
Before all of my non-Australian followers unfollow me today, please be reminded that the Australian Liberal Party is our group of crazy right wing nut jobs in power, not actual liberals.
for those who don’t know shit about australian politics
Our current Prime Minister, Scott Morrison AKA ScoMo AKA Scotty from Marketing, best known for making the worst fucking tourism campaign in Australian history and for leaving on a Hawaiian vacation while our country burned (and then blaming it on his family), will not be Prime Minister any longer.
His party, the LNP, could win literally every remaining seat up for grabs and still not reach majority.
It’s currently unclear whether the other major party leader, Anthony “Albo” Albanese, will be able to form a clear majority. If not, this will result in a hung parliament.
In this case, Albo will have to form alliances with independents and smaller parties to form a minority government.
The “crossbench” (our name for seats held by anyone other than the major two parties) is looking heavily progressive, with the Greens and independent candidates running on policies of climate action doing well.
Fuck ScoMo, I hope the door hits his ass on the way out.
Also, didn’t Scomo shit his pants in a McDonald’s parking lot?
I’ve been dating an Australian for three years and this is what I’ve learned.
Join leading American and Australian socialists for a special US election meeting where we will analyse the results and project what a second Trump term, or a Biden Presidency will entail. This Wednesday, November 4, 2pm AEDT.
The Australian economy’s 30-year expansion, one of the longest of any country in the history of capitalism, came to a screeching halt in the last quarter. Figures for the three months to June show a contraction of 7 percent, the largest fall since records began in 1959. While economists expect a rebound in the next set of quarterly figures, the real pain for many working-class households is only just beginning.
Hospitality, recreation and transport have been the worst-affected industries. Construction and manufacturing are also struggling because investment started to dry up in the middle of the year.
An Australian Bureau of Statistics business survey, released in August, revealed that almost a quarter of companies had reduced or cancelled investment plans in the previous three months, and that a third of businesses were expecting difficulties meeting their financial commitments over the next three months. Uncertainty about the future was affecting the investment decisions of 50 percent of businesses.
Journalist and filmmaker John Pilger has been attending WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s extradition hearing, which he has observed for several weeks from the public gallery at London’s Old Bailey. He spoke to Arena magazine’s Timothy Erik Ström about arguably this century’s most important political trial.
Holy shit i am SO PLEASED TO SEE THIS TWEET ON MY FEED. My mum is one of the people that’s been helping the Djapwurrung people protect these trees for the last two years (the fight to save the sites has been going on for way longer; two years ago was just when works were about to begin, and attempts to stop the destruction moved from council/legal offices to people literally sitting in front of the trees to block access by large machinery), so it’s an issue I’ve been watching from up close, and and it’s one that hasn’t seen mainstream attention, even though it should have.
There is a core group of individuals who have been on site for TWO YEARS. Other volunteers come in and out to help and live onsite for anywhere between a few days to a few months at a time, but there’s a few individuals who have been on country for TWO YEARS, without pause. They have been camping, unceasingly, on the land to protect these sites (several trees with varying types of cultural importance, including an 800 year old birthing tree which has been the site of over 10,000 Djapwurrung babies being born) for two years. The sites haven’t been left unmanned even for a few hours since this all started.
One of these indigenous protectors has:
been deliberately sprayed in the face with weed poison by a local farmer
been endlessly targetted by the local cops, including being arrested for having an expired licence (even though he was driving a truck on a private field at the time, and not out on the road, so there was no grounds to arrest him) and put in jail for several months over this offence (even though a white would never be arrested for an expired licence. In the end when it finally got to court, the judge was like “You’ve imprisoned this man for months for an expired licence? What the fuck, get out of here, charges are dropped, give the man a warning and let him go”
had the local MacDonalds threaten to call the cops on him for the “crime” of loitering (read: eating a meal in-store)
had a different MacDonalds threaten to call the cops because he didn’t want to give the staff his name and phone number (the COVID restrictions require restaraunts to ask for phone numbers in case of a break out so they can notify people, but it’s not actually a requirement of diners to give those details, and the restaurant certainly doesn’t have the grounds to call the cops on someone for not supplying their number)
strained himself so much by insisting on staying on the land to protect the sites that he wound up hospitalised with various illnesses that struck him because he was physically and emotionally exhausted by the whole situation
walked from the site into Melbourne city, on foot, in an effort to raise awareness (over 200 kilometres/41 hours worth of walking)
The front line camp is alongside a busy road, and all the asshole locals and truck drivers who go past that are pissed about the protest make sure to express their displeasure by honking their horns loudly and repeatedly whenever they go by, whether that’s at 2 pm or 2 am, which I’m sure you can imagine does wonders for the protectors ability to get a good night sleep
That’s just a snippet of what this one person has gone through. That doesn’t cover the constant abuse faced by all of them, the attempts at property destruction, the attitude they get by locals whenever they go into town for supplies, the constant red alerts because someone’s heard that the machinery is being mobilised and that they’re moving to start works tomorrow. There were several occasions where police were called to disperse the protectors so that works could begin, and it’s only because there were more protectors than cops that everyone wasn’t arrested and dragged off.
I could literally go on for days with details about this. An archeologist came out to the site and was absolutely staggered by the stuff that was there – in addition to the trees themselves, there was more archeological evidence of the local indigenous tribe that had lived there, sitting untouched on the surface of the earth than this archeologist has seen at any other site throughout Australia. A detailed report was sent to the supposed Minister for the Environment, who summarily ignored it and gave her stamp of approval for the works to commence without reading any of the reports. The protectors went to court over this and it was found that yeah, the Environment Minister hasn’t done her job at all, and a full review has been ordered —- but the works haven’t been cancelled altogether.
All this for a road that will shave a few minutes of travel off the road that currently already exists. All this for a road that’s got a speed limit of 80 that they want to boost to 110. All this for a road that could go a different route. There’s another route available that the protectors have been pitching for since the start, but VicRoads refuses to consider it for reasons they won’t specify.
This route that they’re insistent on not only cuts directly through several indigenous sites (some of the only ones left in Victoriaof this kind) it also costs around $630 million more. This route is full of hills and valleys that need to be flattened, and it’s twisty and turny. The Northern Route - the one protectors have been wanting since the beginning - is flat and straight, will be literal hundreds of millions of dollars less expensive, will take less time to complete, and doesn’t cut through any indigenous sites.
Here is a copy of an academic petition sent by RMIT to the Victorian government, signed by over 150 academics.
Here is an article written by an indigenous woman (which I am not, by the way; I’m just a white woman who is outraged by what my government is trying to do to these people) on the topic that has some more information.
“Let’s invade a sovereign nation, overthrow their government, and replace it with one that’s friendly towards us!” says person with Ukrainian flag in their Twitter handle.
I can’t believe “countries have a right to determine their own security arrangements” was only a hollow talking point
have been actioning in kooyong outside frydo’s office recently w some others and the amount of support for monique ryan is astounding. esp in a seat that labor doesnt even bother running in! my wildest dream is a labor minority government with green and teal independents in balance of power…
In order to get the Prime Ministership, Turnbull has agreed to leave the Liberal’s position on Gay Marriage and Climate Change unaltered. Two key areas, where he has vehemently disagreed with Tony Abbott. The Liberal Party is still the same racist, homophobic, climate change denying claptrap with a now charismatic articulate exterior.
The idea that our compassion and solidarity for our fellow human beings ends at an artificial line carved up by rich old white men is despicable. This is the biggest refugee crisis that our world has faced since WW2 and I can only hope that from Europe to Australia to America, we open our homes and give refuge to the millions of vulnerable desperate people fleeing their war-torn homelands.
What a redneck wonderland footy has become. Every weekend, somewhere in Australia, Adam Goodes steps out onto a footy field. Simultaneously, an army of gutless drongos get ready to express their contempt for him, hiding anonymously in the choir of clowns who boo his every step.
Hey, bigots, don’t get me wrong.
I defend your right to express your unfathomable sense of outrage and injustice. It must burn long and deep. Probably over the spiralling price of a pie at the footy or the quality of the rubbish beer you force yourself to drink whilst acting like obnoxious school kids.
Your worries and concerns must weigh heavily on your poor benighted souls. So knock yourselves out. Boo away. At least have the courage though to admit what it is.
Racism.
Naked, loud, contemptible, pathetic and unashamed.
None of this crap about Goodes staging for free kicks, being a “sniper” or sweet talking the umpires as the reason for the booing.
Don’t use football as shield for your prejudice.
Adam Goodes has made it quite clear he hears those boos as a statement on his race and culture. Blokes like Goodes tend to have a finely tuned radar for racism. When you have been living with it all your life you learn to speak it’s many ugly languages.
So when he tells you what it means to him and you choose to boo, you’re confirming to him and every other indigenous footballer what you’re really about.
What you don’t like and can’t abide is that Adam Goodes won’t be the Aboriginal footballer you want him to be.
He refuses to simply be the smiling face of AFL Indigenous Round where the game’s self congratulation goes into over drive and Aboriginal people are celebrated in a set of proscribed rituals that say nothing about the true state of affairs and everything about our need to be absolved from responsibility.
A smoking ceremony here. A ceremonial dance there. A welcome to country and then goodbye, onto the next costume party.
No, Goodes wants to look you in the eye and talk about who we really are and where we’re really at. Goodes wants to confront racism and its uncomfortable truths. In the stands you sit in, the mines you work in, the boardrooms you meet in, the homes you live in.
He won’t simply be the Aboriginal man you want him to be.
And with your symphony of boos you’ve made it quite clear where you stand.
The fact that you fuel your own sense of outrage at Goodes and Lewis Jetta’s “war dance” shows how feeble minded and self righteous you are.
Where’s your sense of outrage at the appalling gap in life expectancy for indigenous people?
The massive over representation of indigenous people in jail?
The continuing scourge of deaths in custody?
Your silence is deafening on those issues. Your outrage reserved for a man who dances on the footy field.
And whilst you’re booing ever louder and ever longer you can try drown out the truth of these things.
You can’t. And you won’t.
Because Adam Goodes’ legacy will endure long after your hollow howls ring out.
The Australian Vietnamese community outside Scots Church for Malcolm Fraser’s funeral. Under his prime ministership, Fraser took a humane bipartisan approach to Vietnamese refugees fleeing the war. It accepted over 2000 Vietnamese boat refugees, It did not detain refugees in camps or issue Temporary Protection Visas. It increased the formal refugee program so desperate people did not have to make the dangerous journey by boat. Between 1975-81 over 43,500 arrived, with over 95% coming through refugee resettlement programs. (X)
