Australia has voted. Or has it? In a country with mandatory voting and with not insignificant penalties for those who disobey the authorities by not having their name ticked off the voting register, this election was a watershed moment for forced participation in Australian elections. The media is comprehensively ignoring this subject, but even a cursory examination of the stats released by the Australian Electoral Commission reveals that over 30% of registered voters boycotted the 2022 federal election.
In the past, Australians who were disgusted by their political class managed to hold their noses and cast a vote anyway. But now the stench has become too great for a third of the population, and they are happy to risk being singled out for punishment as opposed to going through the increasingly absurd carnival of lies that occurs every three years Down Under. If I were to hazard an observation, it seems to me that they do not want to lend credibility to what is by now an openly corrupt and useless political process. Useless that is, for the millions of Australians who do not or will not neatly fit into one of the many groups of victims who clamor for attention under the rotting banner of Western Liberal Democracy.
This collapse in support of the democratic system will be ignored by the establishment. Either they will sweep it under the rug, or they will come down hard on those not voting in a mistaken attempt to makes examples of the population so they will fearfully fall into line the next time. While such a ham fisted approach would be obviously counter productive, that alone makes it a credible contender for most likely post election dumb authoritarian move.
Those people who refused to play the game understand that the act of voting is not the participation in political life that it is cracked up to be. In Australia at least, the voting process is itself a study in humiliation for citizens threatened with punishment for not participating in a supposedly democratic process. But while voting is no longer a participation in political life, (if it ever was), neither is marching in protest against one of the many government injustices.
Saturday afternoon protest marches are nothing more than a study of how the suburban middle class can virtue signal through the act of taking a casual walk, while being safely ignored in a political sense by the powers that be. Out of the hundreds of public protests against authoritarian overreach around the nation over the past two years, the only protest that had any effect whatsoever was the CMFEU members riot outside their Melbourne CBD headquarters. Those protesters had no qualms about tearing the building to pieces, nor in going up against the very nervous police; they had no narrative to maintain and nor were they interested in optics. What mattered to them was very clearly communicating their rage and their total disgust for those that had betrayed them.
If the majority of other protests had followed the same disruptive bent, then Australia would be a very different place today. You do not overthrow tyrannical and oppressive authority by following their rules, as all this signals is that you are compliant, and thus the politicians and their cronies are still safe.
This week in Sri Lanka, politicians’ houses are being burned to the ground and their vehicles tossed into the ocean by an enraged populace that has had enough of the corruption and lies. As far as direct participation in the political process goes, this is a highly effective strategy to keep future politicians in some sort of line.
While a third of Australians refused to vote, the hyphenated name class congratulated themselves on their illustrious showing with a new political force known as the ‘Teal Independents’, a grouping of histrionic middle aged women who are about as independent as a boy band made up of former child Disney stars. Their collective focus is the ubiquitous and meaningless draw card known as climate change, and they managed to extract five key seats from the Liberal Party.
These women represent the acceptable face of Liberal Democracy in Australia; affluent women who religiously believe in policies based upon nothing but air, but firmly designed to destroy the lower working class through onerous taxation and self destructive policy making with the basic necessities of modern life as the prime target. That they are all women is itself a clear sign of their intentions; to continue the march of feminism through the destruction of God given boundaries and norms. Letting women rule over you is a sure fire way to damnation in the Good Book.
That Australians have had enough of the political sham is obvious; whether or not they are ready to take the next step of doing something about it is another question. If Australians want a clear example of how to participate in the political process without becoming beholden to it, then the French Yellow Vest movement is a good place to start. Most likely, it will take a great crisis to force Australians out of their century long political lethargy. With those now in charge of Australia’s political fortunes, such an outcome might not be too far away.
Originally published at Pushing Rubber Downhill. You can purchase Adam’s books here.
