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dolorosa_12Before I start, a few things to contextualise this for non-Australians:
The conservative party in Australia is called the Liberal Party
The Liberal Party (or, more correctly, the coalition between the Liberals and the National Party (rural conservative party) is currently in government in Australia, but they only had a majority of one in the lower house of parliament
When the party ousted its former leader, Malcolm Turnbull (who was believed by the hardliners of the party to be too socially progressive to appeal to the apparently vast hordes of far-right racists they felt were their voting base), Turnbull announced he was resigning his parliamentary seat, meaning there would need to be a bye-election in his former electorate, Wentworth (in the wealthy eastern suburbs of Sydney — incidentally I have occasionally been a voter in Wentworth, although they're constantly changing the electoral boundaries and I'm not in that electorate at the moment)
In ousting Turnbull, his party has continued the now decade-old tradition of no Australian prime minister since 2007 serving a full (three-year) term
The person who replaced Turnbull as leader and Prime Minister is Scott Morrison, a fundamentalist Christian, social conservative, and former immigration minister who was responsible for escalating Australia's vile treatment of refugees
In any case, the bye-election was today (Saturday). All elections in Australia are held on Saturdays.
In spite of the fact that Wentworth is an electorate which has been held by the Liberal Party since Federation in 1901, there was clearly a lot of concern that the result was in doubt. Given I'm out of the country and not a Wentworth voter, I haven't been paying that much attention to the campaign, but my impression was that voters all across Australia are massively fed up with the Liberals, Wentworth voters, who tend to be the sort of 'socially progressive, economically conservative' type of wealthy big city residents were incensed by the ousting of Turnbull (and also had a lot of residual irritation about the marriage equality postal survey last year), and everyone was supremely annoyed by the soap operatic, farcical psychodrama with a revolving door of prime ministers that Australian politics has become. Kerryn Phelps, a left-of-centre independent, stood as a candidate in the bye-election.
Scott Morrison, clearly fearing the worst, did a stupid stunt clearly designed to appeal to the large Orthodox Jewish community living in Wentworth. On Monday he announced an absurd scheme to move the Australian embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This backfired spectacularly: Indonesia, one of Australia's biggest trading partners, was outraged and announced it planned to pull out of a proposed trade deal. And to complete the ridiculousness of the whole thing, as any sharp-eyed reader will already have realised, to announce this on a Monday in advance of an election that was due to take place on the Saturday of the same week to appeal to Orthodox Jewish voters was completely pointless: no observant Jewish people are going to vote on Shabbat, and so would already have voted by post before the Monday announcement!
So, to sum things up, the Liberals demonstrated that they knew nothing about Judaism, lacked awareness of a large voting bloc in an electorate due to have a bye-election that might affect their parliamentary majority, and alienated a major trade partner, all in an attempt to win an election in an electorate they've held comfortably since 1901...
...and they lost. Kerryn Phelps is now the Member for Wentworth, and Australia has a hung parliament.
The schadenfreude. It is glorious.
In any case, the bye-election was today (Saturday). All elections in Australia are held on Saturdays.
In spite of the fact that Wentworth is an electorate which has been held by the Liberal Party since Federation in 1901, there was clearly a lot of concern that the result was in doubt. Given I'm out of the country and not a Wentworth voter, I haven't been paying that much attention to the campaign, but my impression was that voters all across Australia are massively fed up with the Liberals, Wentworth voters, who tend to be the sort of 'socially progressive, economically conservative' type of wealthy big city residents were incensed by the ousting of Turnbull (and also had a lot of residual irritation about the marriage equality postal survey last year), and everyone was supremely annoyed by the soap operatic, farcical psychodrama with a revolving door of prime ministers that Australian politics has become. Kerryn Phelps, a left-of-centre independent, stood as a candidate in the bye-election.
Scott Morrison, clearly fearing the worst, did a stupid stunt clearly designed to appeal to the large Orthodox Jewish community living in Wentworth. On Monday he announced an absurd scheme to move the Australian embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This backfired spectacularly: Indonesia, one of Australia's biggest trading partners, was outraged and announced it planned to pull out of a proposed trade deal. And to complete the ridiculousness of the whole thing, as any sharp-eyed reader will already have realised, to announce this on a Monday in advance of an election that was due to take place on the Saturday of the same week to appeal to Orthodox Jewish voters was completely pointless: no observant Jewish people are going to vote on Shabbat, and so would already have voted by post before the Monday announcement!
So, to sum things up, the Liberals demonstrated that they knew nothing about Judaism, lacked awareness of a large voting bloc in an electorate due to have a bye-election that might affect their parliamentary majority, and alienated a major trade partner, all in an attempt to win an election in an electorate they've held comfortably since 1901...
...and they lost. Kerryn Phelps is now the Member for Wentworth, and Australia has a hung parliament.
The schadenfreude. It is glorious.
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