Some Thoughts On The Australian Election, 2022

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According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) population clock:

‘On 24 May 2022 at 09:16:47 PM (Canberra time), the resident population of Australia is projected to be:

25, 896, 010

Last Saturday the number of people enrolled to vote was:

17, 228, 900

The number who actually voted was:

12, 756, 111

The Australian Labor Party won office with this number of first preference votes:

3,972,105

They currently have 75 seats out of a Parliament of 151 seats, with 76 seats they would have a majority within the House of Representatives. In this election they won 32.8% of the first preference votes out of those who voted. 23% of those enrolled to vote and 15.33% of all Australians.

In a country where it is compulsory to vote, 4.5 million did not even bother. Of those who did turn out to vote 644, 677 voted informally, which means that they filled out the ballot incorrectly so their vote was not counted. There are 5,000,000 people who didn’t vote.

On the Right we put a lot of faith in One Nation, Pauline Hanson’s Party and the United Australia Party. Together they got around 1.1 million votes, 589,896 for One Nation, 499,631 for the United Australia Party. Unlike Labor and the Liberals whose share of the vote went down both parties’ votes went up. After the past two years it was disappointing to not see a bigger share go to them.

The system is rigged to support the major political parties, in the past it was considered to be against the national interest for a minority government to exist. This view was held by most Australians and by the major political parties. But over the last thirty years the share of people who vote for the major parties has declined. Today people want minority governments and the system isn’t designed for that, which means that people are becoming more disenchanted with the entire process.

The Liberal government was punished for the last two years, for its lies and its pretending to be on our side when it wasn’t, for shutting the country down over Covid. The current narrative is that the election was about climate change, well for some electorates that was true. 7 of the 10 richest electorates voted for more action on climate change. But the issue has brought down two Prime Ministers before, because the issue is simple in concept but it is very complex and costly in reality. No one has been able to square that circle and I believe that on that score nothing has changed.

Unfortunately whether the Liberals or Labor win an election the Uniparty always wins.

Originally published at Upon Hope. You can find Mark’s Subscribestar here.