The Forum > Article Comments > A good start > Comments
A good start : Comments
By Graham Young, published 9/9/2013Many of the media organisations concentrated on policies and facts this election, but in truth elections are about trust and tendencies.
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Posted by Marilyn Shepherd, Monday, 9 September 2013 3:02:43 PM
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This great article says a lot in a balanced manner. However, I think many Australians do not realise how close the nation came under the Labor/Green to destroying democracy as we know it. Labor/Greens were seriously intent on destroying free speech and the press etc. We are still overseen by dangerous people in government funded organisations or committees that espouse over the top political correctness. We also have left wing academics driving over zealous regulations on everything from A to Z - the notion of individual responsibility for managing our lives is just about dead in the water. Big religion (funded by the taxpayer) is still a major road block to a fairer secular society where one's religious beliefs are a very private matter.
Posted by Pliny of Perth, Monday, 9 September 2013 3:06:12 PM
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Dear GrahamY,
From the AEC website I have the Liberal and National Party primary votes at 45% for this election. I went to Wikipedia (possibly a mistake) for the historical House of Reps figures for the L+NP PV. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_system_of_Australia#Primary_votes.2C_two-party-preferred_votes.2C_and_seat_results_since_1937 These returned the following. 2004 – 46.7%, 2001 – 43%, 1998 – 39.5%, 1996 – 47.3%, 1980 – 46.3%,1977 – 48.1%, 1975 – 53.1%, 1969 – 43.3%, 1966 – 50%, 1963 – 46.0%, 1958 – 46.6%, 1955 – 47.6%, 1951 – 50.3%, 1949 – 50.3% So indeed I was out. 2001, 1998 and 1969 were all less going by these figures at least. And there have been 15 not 13 Coalition victories including the latest. Happy to stand corrected if I am in further error. Still that leaves the current percentage at 11th out of 15 election victories for the LNP. In that it was only after two terms in opposition I am happy wear a “very good result” but not “one of the greatest victories in Australian politics”. Posted by csteele, Monday, 9 September 2013 3:08:43 PM
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Pliny, that is just tosh. There was no plan to destroy free speech but for the record we don't actually have free speech in Australia and we now know we have zero privacy thanks to Edward Snowden and Julian Assange.
Posted by Marilyn Shepherd, Monday, 9 September 2013 3:33:14 PM
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Dear Graham,
This article is a brilliant idea. We need more socially minded people who are prepared to offer their services for the good of the community. By providing this “chill out room” on OLO, the angry socialists have the opportunity to vent their spleens in a controlled environment. Hopefully this will enable them to move from anger at the beginning of the trauma cycle through the various phases of acceptance, reconciliation and so on, then back into normal society as functional members of the community. It also occurs to me that this might also be a great source of renewable energy? If you can just find a device that could collect the unrestrained anguish, emotion, vilification, hypocrisy,dysfuncionality, gnashing of teeth, wailing and hatred coursing through this thread, we might be able to power a small town for months? I note there are already concerned citizens trying to help them with the soothing balm of reality however, it just seems to make things worse for them. If things don’t settle down after a week or so I recommend a couple of Aspirins for you and some men in white coats as backup for them. Posted by spindoc, Monday, 9 September 2013 3:41:59 PM
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You said first preference votes, not total Coalition first preferences. If you look at Liberal first preferences you will see they are as I said. First preferences are arguably not a good measure as they depend to some extent on what minor parties are around.
On the same basis I don't think that the Labor result was really all that bad as the Greens take up a lot of what used to be their territory, so their first preference vote is depressed as a result. If you don't like using total number of seats won, which is what I did in the article, then I think you're probably best off using the two-party preferred result. In which case this election the coalition got 53.15%. In 1975 they got 55.7%, and in 1996 53.63%. So it is pretty close to Howard's best. You can also compare it to Rudd who only got 52.7% in 2007 and Whitlam who got 52.7% as well. I don't understand why people just won't give credit where it is due. Abbott got a very good result in historical terms. Posted by GrahamY, Monday, 9 September 2013 3:48:27 PM
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And can you please explain why the media are so obsessed with precisely one in every 210,000 of the world's population asking Australia for refugee protection?