Yeah, I see your point and agree that would be worse.
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How long a member has been there wonât suddenly make safe seats marginal, otherwise Labor wouldâve run a candidate for North Sydney.
At least in Australia - unlike the USA - we no longer have gerrymandering, so instead of politicians drawing dodgy boundaries to help themselves our rules aim for seats to be logical contiguous areas of approximately equal size (by population) and even though the rules aim against safe seats, there will be some areas where the majority of voters always vote with a particular party, and even if you or I donât like which way they vote, itâs a democracy so itâs the votersâ choice.
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I used to be very much of the opinion that terms should be set at 4 years.
Completely do not agree now though. With politics as it is, an election is a good pressure valve release. A 4 year term just means more anger and complaining while people forget that that party was actually voted in.
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I see your point but what Iâm concerned about is when you have continuous elections the likes of Abbott & Trump get power; great campaigners (if you ignore morals entirely), effective at attacking/opposing the other side/everything, but terrible at governing:
Itâs easy to say no, but none of the hard work in helping to transform the country to a prosperous sustainable long-term future is done because of endemic short-term thinking. Itâs bad enough already - especially with pollies being lazy, looking too much at opinion polls & focus groups, while not making the arguments to show the problems and sell their proposed solutions - and Iâd hope a 4 year term might help provide some breathing room, and just maybe it might assist in making it more practical to get some work done in addressing long-term problems.
I donât think Abbott was terrible at governing.
Actually, he provided the opposite of what you say he did. He provided the long-term thinking; the (potential) prosperous sustainable long-term future to the Budget, to Medicare.
Itâs just that people didnât like that.
What Abbott was bad at was day to day retail politics. He had a tin ear. Thatâs different to governing.
In terms of what people get in a panic about, Abbott eating an onion, Abbott liking Credlin, or Abbott giving a stupid award to a member of the royal family, just totally donât enter my radar in terms of important issues.
However, if you were in the news-starved world of Australian media, with news sources staffed with young grads out of TAFE with no nuanced political analysis, then yes, you might have concluded that Abbott was terrible and chaotic.
How much more unpopular can the Coalition be before Malcolm gets the boot? Who will succeed him? Julia Bishop has already mentioned she is not interested. I donât particularly like her but I feel she would be the only option.
At this stage Malcolm Turnbull will not be running for Prime Minister in the next election. Surely?
Malcolm is preferred PM over Shorten. No way heâs going anywhere while that lead remains intact. Howard traded off this the whole time he was PM.
Next election is literally three years away, lol. Bad poll numbers are to be expected during a term. Storm in a teacup, this.
You canât see bad poll numbers before an election, win an election, and then bad poll numbers after an election, and hang off every poll! There is inbuilt âprotest voiceâ in any poll. Be wary any poll that wildly inflates minor party figures - One Nation is very unlikely to get the figures it is polling in an election.
And Turnball is getting legislation through which Abbott struggled to do.
Yeah true. It is early days. And I guess if polls recently have taught us anything it is to not believe them 100%.
Exactly; that is a key example of how Abbott couldnât govern. He refused to negotiate with the cross-bench senators, he broke election promises, increased the budget deficit (after campaigning on a âbudget emergencyâ), blamed the senate after saying that was an excuse when his party blocked some things Labor wanted to get through the senate, and pissed off his colleagues (which is where Credlin came in).
It is interesting that Labor originally were all for the penalty rates being cut and now will lodge a bill opposing it. It makes for good politics and will keep them popular within the general public.
Yeah, political opportunism at work, like Abbott being happy to go along with an ETS but turning 180 degrees to oppose everything just for oppositionâs sake, and trying to block everything in the senate.
That period lowered the standard and so despite disliking Laborâs opportunism - I prefer consistent, principled stands - I can understand Labor giving the LNP back the same sort of blocking & opposition for oppositionâs sake.
They all backflip, nothing new.
Yes but it was a new low (at least for recent times) when Abbott went on-and-on about Gillard being a liar, breaking an election promise (with all the personal nastiness that came along with that), only to break his own promises.
Things werenât all roses when Hawke & Keating were running the country, or Fraser before them or Howard after, but I still think the lowest point since then was Abbott & he really lowered the tone, worse than Rudd (even with his extremely arrogant personality, etc. which was mostly hidden from the public for so long, and the issues which flowed from that way of governing).
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I know you say Malcolm is preferred PM but that means nothing really. Preferred party is what determines the Prime Minister. I agree its too early to do anything about it right now. But the Coalition would have to worried about todays polls. A lot of the independents are taking their seats; Xenophon Team, One Nation etc. Nick Xenophon is targeting two more Coalition areas in the next election. They already took two in South Australia in the last election. The Coalition really has to look at looking down those Independent areas.
Well, although the system is we vote for our local representative (MHR), and if that personâs party has a majority in the House of Reps their party leader becomes PM, butâŚ
most voters donât know who their MP/candidate is but know the party leaders are, and to a significant extent the question of which party leader theyâd prefer as PM influences which partyâs candidate they vote for.
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So why is Labor overwhelmingly the preferred party but Malcolm Turnbull still the preferred PM?
But thatâs an opinion poll; people can express the view they prefer Laborâs policies (or dislike how the LNP are governing right now), but like Malcolm &/or dislike Bill, without changing the government. Things are different when itâs actually election day.
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I am not doubting they are opinion polls and things will definitely be different once election day comes around. I am just pointing out it doesnât matter who is the most popular PM it matters which party is preferred. I am also stating that although it is an opinion poll they canât just be shoved aside and said âOh well its just an opinion poll it doesnât mean anything.â That would be naive and a little under prepared of a government wanting to win an election. Those giving the opinion are the ones that are going to vote. They have to be given some consideration. I am not saying that means get rid of the Prime Minister. I think that means they need to look at those âSafe seatsâ they once thought they had and make sure they fight harder in those markets. Because as the Xenophon team has done in South Australia, and One Nation in QLD, they targeted those seats that the Coalition failed to give time and effort too and that could have potentially lost them the last election. In the next election if the Xenophon wins the seats they have and get the two others they are targeting they have less chance of winning back government. These polls are very early days but if they just go oh well just a poll Malcolm is still preferred then they wonât win the election.
I think you will be surprised at how much effort goes into those swing election areas. In my area it was a safe Coalition seat. Nick Xenophon targeted it and there were meetings, personal greetings and everything to get the votes. And they lost. It worked. Obviously people voting for the Xenophon team werenât really thinking preferred PM were they?