Well That's Over For Another Three Years

Well my homeland went to the polls last weekend and now the dust has finally settled it would appear that incumbent prime minister Scott Morrison has pulled off the greatest escape trick since Houdini.  All of the polling indicated that the Coalition were going to be crushed and instead they have been returned to power with an increased majority, which is to say they actually have a majority.


Various supporters of the losing side have been raving about how ignorant, racist, xenophobic, climate denying, fascistic and generally despicable the Australian population is and how short sighted they were in failing to realise the glittering magnificence that had been offered to them.  If nothing else its an interesting insight into what happens when a group of self obsessed narcissists finally learn the opinion of people outside their immediate social circle.  The leadership of the Labor party itself has been somewhat more circumspect.  There will, after all, be another election in three years and the leadership at least realises that you can't refer to the electorate as verminous scum until after you've removed their ability to select their own leaders.  Instead they went down the path of admitting that they hadn't explained their policies clearly enough.


Explaining policies clearly is an issue that bedevils both parties.  There are two major problems with clearly explaining your policies.  In order to clearly explain them you would first have to understand them.  Secondly if you did explain your policies clearly and in detail the likelihood is that people wouldn't vote for them.  It doesn't matter what the policy is there are always losers and unfortunate side effects and there are generally enough people on the wrong end of the policy to make getting elected on it problematic.


So the Labor party has done the only thing it can, replace its leader and (at least by implication) foist all of the responsibility for the preceding disaster onto his shoulders.  Never mind that it was the same party that gave him the job in the first place.


Over on the other side of politics Scott Morisson has a different problem.  Firstly there is a certain amount of triumphalism at the unexpected win.  That's understandable but should be kept in perspective.  The government has a majority of two.  One car accident will put them back into minority government.  The second problem may be of more long term concern.  As noted everybody thought the Coalition was going to lose this one.  As a result a large number of talented rats abandoned the apparently sinking ship in the lead up to the election.  This leaves Morrison in the unenviable position of appointing a new front bench out of people who honestly thought that working for a crushed and eviscerated opposition party was the best job offer they were likely to get.


Still the Morisson government can claim it has a mandate.  The only problem is that nobody really seems to know what the mandate is for.  Morisson essentially campaigned on tax cuts (Liberal Party 101 but a safe bet) and not being Labor.  He'll probably get the tax cuts through and I think we can all agree that he isn't Labor.  Apart from that its a little difficult to see not just what he'll do but why he went to all the effort of winning government in the first place.  What ever it is I guess he'll claim he has a mandate for it.  At least as long as all of his MPs drive safely.