awesomelaurie

[awesomelaurie]

Election 2019

Trying to make sense of the swing TO the LNP, when so many seemed to have backed a change and polls predicted a change of government.

The good news: Australia as a whole has rejected the "wreckers" - the politicians seen as backstabbers of their party leaders. We've shed Rudd, Gillard, Turnbull, Abbott, and now Shorten, who was widely known to have played a part in the Rudd/Gillard era. Personally, I only warmed to Shorten in the past few months, I had been unimpressed at his part in that chaotic time and that was hard to get past.

The Dutton scenario is one I don't have an adequate answer to. That's the exception to the rule.

On the positive side, we have rid ourselves of the likes of Anning, Shelton, and Palmer. So it seems that broadly we have rejected some of the RWNJ. That's something to celebrate.

The not as good but still-not-horrible bit: Queensland, the state I moved to a year and a half ago, was firmly at the front of the swing toward the LNP, but for maybe not the reasons we think.

I've not been here long enough to be an expert, but long enough to have made a few observations, so please take the following with however large a grain of salt is required.

Queensland is unique in its' population distribution.

While NSW has 5 cities with a population over 50,000, arguably all but one (Tweed Heads) are within commute distance of Sydney. I know that before I left Sydney, I knew people who had bought in Newcastle and Wollongong, respectively, intending to commute to office jobs in Sydney.

Victoria has two not within a Melbourne commute - Ballarat and Bendigo.

Queensland has SIX: Townsville, Cairns, Mackay, Rockhampton, Hervey Bay, and Bundaberg.

These places are hours from the tech, finance, and government centre that is Brisbane. In fact, Cairns is the same distance from Brisbane as Melbourne is. Office jobs are not abundant. These areas live on hospitality, on agriculture, and on mining.

I have a sister north of Bundaberg. There are VERY few jobs available. She's lucky enough to have one, but it doesn't pay well, and it doesn't allow a lot of opportunity to save. To get ahead, and not live week-week, she has considered "driving trucks at the mines" There are people in worse positions than she.

Some have only ever worked the mines, and rely on them for their livelihood. No mines means no paycheques.

So when a party is seen as wanting to take action on climate with no regard for the opportunities that this action would take away, that is literally seen as taking away jobs, or taking away opportunities for advancement. No amount of hospitals or schools can make up for that.

If you can't make sense of people voting against their children's futures, consider this: these people were voting FOR their children's future. In some cases they are voting directly for the ability to put food on the table, petrol in their cars to get the kid to sports, and clothes on their back. This is traditional Labor party fare, and it feels like Labor have lost touch with this part of the electorate.

My take on this is that we should all go and have a beer & BBQ with our friends or colleagues who voted LNP. Not the franking credits bunch (that's only a few % of the voters at best), but the ones who want to feed their kids. My bet is you find out you have more in common than you might think.

And if you can find out you have some fundamentals in common, then maybe, collectively, we can find out that this is OUR Australia, and work on ways to ensure people have jobs at the same time as ensuring we don't destroy the environment more than we have already.

I don't know all the answers, but I'm confident that millions of us, jointly, can find them.

On the flip side, if we sit here de-humanising those who want to provide for their families, we simply create a US-style divide that leads to voting against the other guy instead of FOR our shared fundamentals... like not letting Nazis into parliament (bye Anning, you won't be missed!)