Australian Federal Election 2016

[David]

[Pies4shaw]

I might add that the Greens aren't pulling the "left" vote. The reason the ALP is so frightened by them is that, in traditional ALP-voting electorates, they are pulling a significant proportion of the ALP moderate to conservative, middle-class vote away from the ALP. The ALP still has its union-base but it has always relied on the "middle" to gain power. When it starts losing the middle in electorates like Melbourne, where I live, Wills (where I used to live) and Batman (where I grew up), there's a "dangerous" trend they need to manage. They tried to do it in Melbourne by pre-selecting a "female, gay, Muslim whale" (hyperbole intended) and hoping that the superficial identity politics would sort the vote for them. I think they probably now realise it's more about the policies than how "alternative" the candidate looks.

As I understand the position, Wills and Batman remain in ALP control only because the LNP direct their preferences to the ALP, rather than the Greens (so, eg, based on 2010 preference flows from the LNP, the ALP would have lost Wills this time by about 7% and Batman by about 10%).

I don't know whether the Greens will continue to be able to steal the swinging vote from the ALP and the LNP in solid, working-class electorates that have always voted ALP about 70/30 but, if they do, they have the potential to become a powerful electoral force in a way that a party splitting the left ALP vote or the right LNP vote could never expect to do.

[David]

That's a pretty sound analysis, but I'm not sure why you don't think the Greens are pulling votes from Labor's left. While they're starting to make serious inroads into the 'wet' Liberal vote, some moderate Labor voters and of course their old constituency of otherwise unaligned greenies, their core demographic remains the non-radical left voters who were formerly aligned with pre-Hawke Labor or the Democrats (and, of course, people too young to remember either of those).

Actual Tories and RWNJs aside, you will get no group more antagonistic to the Greens than the Labor right (voters and politicians alike). So I'm pretty sceptical about the idea that the Greens are drawing any serious movement from there.

[Pies4shaw]

They're taking votes from the part of the ALP constituency that might "change sides", however you describe it.

You refer to groups as "right" and "left" in a way that is, frankly, completely alien to me and has nothing, so far as I can see, to do with class analysis - that's not a criticism; I am merely observing that we are speaking at cross-purposes.

That said, I think yours is probably what we might affectionately call the "Wokko Fallacy" - that is, picking up all of the people who vote Green and calling them lefties because they vote Green. Being "progressive" is not the same thing as being "left". The "progressive" vote comes mostly from the "wishy washy", "namby pamby" middle class doesn't it, not the potential membership of "Socialist Action"?

[stui magpie]

This left right discussion reminded me of this article by Waleed Ally.

[Pies4shaw]

That's quite wrong, I think.

What actually happened was that a portion of those in the ALP party machine associated traditionally with the unions found themselves co-opted (willingly) in large numbers into the managerial class by the adoption in the mid-80s of Neo-liberal policies like the Prices and Incomes Accord. That, together with the obsession with counting things, because we suddenly could, which in its turn developed a massively expanded "professional" public-administration sector (I mean the people who manage things, who have grown exponentially in number, not the people who actually do things, who haven't grown relatively in number - WPT could probably explain that distinction very practically from his experience), led to a new, special kind of divide within the ranks of ALP supporters. Essentially, what we had was, on the one hand, a much-expanded managerial middle class created to serve an ALP adaptation of Neo-Liberalism yet peopled, almost exclusively, by co-optees from the "labour movement", but, on the other hand, a kind of "rump" of ALP supporters who could not participate in the personal benefits of becoming part of the new managerialism machinery and continued to be called "workers". Those people who continued to be called "workers" are still strung across the right/left political spectrum, in the old sense. Typically, the elements of the "rump" are still locked in vicious internecine rivalries but only within - and for control of - the ALP.

What that massive disruption of the "labour movement" did was separate out the "sort of clever" people into a new bunch that, in time, came to realise that - although its roots were in the labour movement - people in their new bunch no longer needed a "labour" movement and gradually disassociated from it. The people that hang around (and off) that relatively recently created bunch of people include some people who pretend that they are "left" (or at least dress like they might be) for a while before they allow themselves to be gradually absorbed into the large, new work sector created for them over the last 30 years by their predecessors. It is those people who I think of as being capable of being swayed away from the ALP in their voting, not the old "left" or "right" of the "labour movement".

I have deliberately condensed and simplified what I consider to be a very significant, multi-faceted and subtle set of socio-political changes. We can hack at it about the edges but that is, roughly put, about the size of it.

[stui magpie]

^

Fair enough. Did you read the whole article or just the piece i quoted?

I also think there's a separation between social and economic values that's been ( I think) referred to before. hence you can have people with progressive social vaues who lean right economically and other variations, which means the old left-right thing just doesn't work.

People who go to the greens are (IMO) going for the social aspect not the economic one. I don't know if there are any current parties who are genuinely left economically.

[Pies4shaw]

^^^ Just the bit you quoted (where I come from, reading the whole of a bad essay by a law student is considered punishment).

Edit: I actually skim-read the rest of it, just now. He lives in a much more interesting world than the rest of us. Would that anything nearly so exciting as what he is describing were actually happening.

[stui magpie]

^

He does, and he apparently lectures in politics at a Uni.

Still, the ideas in concept aren't without merit. Our current 2 party system has both as relics of a bygone era. Both have tried to refashion themselves but the fringe elements make that difficult.

[Dave The Man]

[img]https://scontent-syd1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-0/s480x480/13590399_674430826028795_8166361079180761106_n.jpg?oh=e01b23f1dcb45cc8b7db3a7393578f2a&oe=57F142B7[/img]

And they give nothing to the People in Need.

DISGUSTING

[nomadjack]

For what it's worth I think Aly's analysis is spot on. What we are seeing is a gradual realignment of a class-based party system which no longer makes sense in a post-materialist society. While the ALP has borne the brunt of this realignment in terms of the gradual erosion of it's traditional support base the conservative side of politics is now under the pump. The one thing that has kept the conservative and liberal elements of the Liberal Party together since the party's formation has been mutual hatred of the ALPs program. Its no real surprise that this ideological marriage of convenience is now hitting the rocks as the ALP embraces more centre to centre-right policies, language and symbolism.

[David]

[Dave The Man]

IF The Election was Done Again I bet Labor would easily Win

[David]

Can we get, like, something on the Senate preference flows between now and 2017? Get on it, AEC! I grow tired of waiting.

[Jezza]