Occasionally, you get some good political news

[dolorosa_12]

It's a rare occurrence, but once in a blue moon, voters do the right thing.

My hometown: Labor to win re-election in ACT with support of Greens. This would be Labor's fourth consecutive term in office in Canberra.

New Zealand: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's Labour Party wins general election (in an absolute landslide).

Proportional representation and/or compulsory voting. Who'd have thought that they generally produce more satisfactory electoral results? /sarcasm

Meanwhile, in my other other hometown, we've got the type of squalid corruption scandal for which New South Wales is sadly all too infamous. It's got everything: secret affairs, stacks of cash being handed over in Aldi plastic bags, people being found unexpectedly dead in swimming pools... And, New South Wales being New South Wales, the whole thing was only illegal because the MP in question didn't declare what he was doing! Accepting cash in exchange for favours: completely legal in NSW, as long it's made public. It honestly makes you despair.

The less said about politics in my current home country, the better...

Comments

[kore]

Yaaaaaaaay Labour and Jacinda Ardern! That's awesome.

[dolorosa_12]

I love her so much! I keep watching videos of her victory speech and laughing with delight!

[schneefink]

And, New South Wales being New South Wales, the whole thing was only illegal because the MP in question didn't declare what he was doing! Accepting cash in exchange for favours: completely legal in NSW, as long it's made public.
*facepalm*

[dolorosa_12]

Yep, NSW has made political corruption something of an artform. It's been like this for decades, no matter which party is in power.

On a happier note, I saw that you had pretty good results in the local elections recently: the rise of the far-right in Europe is not an inevitability!

[schneefink]

Yep! I was very happy that the far-right lost so clearly; the happiness was slightly dimmed by the fact that they lost most voters to the former center-right party, which has been sliding further and further to the right recently to the point of being hard to distinguish sometimes. Now I'm just crossing my fingers that the socialist party will continue the coalition with the green party and not either the center-right or the neoliberals.

[dolorosa_12]

Fingers crossed for a red-green coalition!

And yes, I can certainly understand your fears re: the centre-right drifting further to the right — that's basically what happened here in the UK. Voting for the far-right collapsed, because those voters felt perfectly well catered to by the centre-right party.

[corvidology]

Great news about Jacinda Ardern. When you live in tRump land, it's so nice to see a political leader doing the right thing just because it's the right thing.

[dolorosa_12]

The scale of her victory was so, so satisfying to witness, because it basically represents a resounding endorsement of her approach to the handling the pandemic, and other crises.

[lirazel]

Proportional representation and/or compulsory voting. Who'd have thought that they generally produce more satisfactory electoral results? /sarcasm

God, I dream of proportional representation constantly! I doubt that compulsory voting could ever happen in the US, but maaaaaaybe one day we'll get proportional representation?

I had no idea NSW was so full of political drama!

[dolorosa_12]

I wish we had proportional representation in the UK so, so much, but I doubt it will ever happen. As to the compulsory voting in Australia, it's one of my favourite things about the political system there. Compulsory voting was originally implemented because politicians worried that Australians had a lack of political engagement (this was back in the early twentieth century — can you imagine such an attitude now?) and felt this was the only way to address the problem.

It doesn't necessarily result in more left-wing politics — the centre-right coalition parties (it's two parties who don't contest in each other's seats and always govern together, not the sort of shifting groupings in coalitions you get in continental Europe) win national elections far more frequently than the centre-left Labor Party. But it does mean that there is zero voter suppression, and the whole electoral infrastructure is really well organised (when I lived there and voted in person it never took more than about fifteen minutes at most to wait, and you can go to any polling station in your electorate, not just one single polling station; overseas voters can vote early in embassies/consulates, or request postal ballots, and the electoral commission drives around hand-delivering ballots to voters who live in really remote parts of the outback). There's never quite 100 per cent turnout, but it's usually around 95 per cent — and because parties can't rely on small segments of the population turning out for them and suppressing the vote of others to win, they generally will try to appeal to as many voting demographics as possible. This does result in rather bland, centrist suburban politics (and the 'centre' has drifted increasingly towards the right over the years, like everywhere else that has a Murdoch-dominated press), but even though I generally despair of my fellow Australian voters, at least I never feel that an election result is illegitimate, unjust, or doesn't represent what the majority of voters want.

[lirazel]

I love reading about this. What a fantastic thing.

[lokifan]

Accepting cash in exchange for favours: completely legal in NSW, as long it's made public

*facepalm*

But yay Canberra and New Zealand!

[dolorosa_12]

Indeed. It's no wonder that NSW state politics is basically a byword for corruption in Australia.

But yes, very good news elsewhere!