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The Age
22-05-2025
- Politics
- The Age
Australians can't stand sore losers. How did politicians miss the memo?
Australians don't like sore losers. We are a country that celebrates near misses, unlucky defeats or even unexpected successes (see: Steven Bradbury). Generally, we recognise that if you fall short, you should accept your lot and march on. Now, it seems there's an exception to this rule: federal elections. Since the historic outcome of the May 3 election (historically good for Labor, historically bad for the Liberal Party), there has been a growing chorus of those who argue that because their team didn't win, preferential voting is to blame. A feature of Australian elections for more than a century, preferential voting was originally a promise from then Nationalist prime minister Billy Hughes, gaining support within conservative circles after the 1918 byelection for the West Australian seat of Swan. Labor's Ted Corboy, a young returned serviceman who had seen action at Gallipoli and in France, was up against the Country Party candidate Basil Murray, the Nationalists' William Hedges and an independent, William Watson. Corboy secured 34.4 per cent of the vote, enough under the then first-past-the-post electoral system to make him the new member (and, at 22, the youngest person ever elected to the House). Between them, Hedges and Murray gathered 61 per cent of the vote, but without preferential voting, they were left in Corboy's wake. Loading The Hughes government, under pressure from his party and the emerging Country Party, moved quickly to introduce preferential voting in time for a byelection less than two months later (which was won by the conservative candidate). And that's how we've run House of Representatives elections ever since. But the May 3 result has prompted an outpouring of sour grapes from those who reckon a century-old system put in place by conservative parties to maximise their electoral chances is somehow being used by Labor to keep the mob formerly known as the Coalition from power.
Sydney Morning Herald
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
Australians can't stand sore losers. How did politicians miss the memo?
Australians don't like sore losers. We are a country that celebrates near misses, unlucky defeats or even unexpected successes (see: Steven Bradbury). Generally, we recognise that if you fall short, you should accept your lot and march on. Now, it seems there's an exception to this rule: federal elections. Since the historic outcome of the May 3 election (historically good for Labor, historically bad for the Liberal Party), there has been a growing chorus of those who argue that because their team didn't win, preferential voting is to blame. A feature of Australian elections for more than a century, preferential voting was originally a promise from then Nationalist prime minister Billy Hughes, gaining support within conservative circles after the 1918 byelection for the West Australian seat of Swan. Labor's Ted Corboy, a young returned serviceman who had seen action at Gallipoli and in France, was up against the Country Party candidate Basil Murray, the Nationalists' William Hedges and an independent, William Watson. Corboy secured 34.4 per cent of the vote, enough under the then first-past-the-post electoral system to make him the new member (and, at 22, the youngest person ever elected to the House). Between them, Hedges and Murray gathered 61 per cent of the vote, but without preferential voting, they were left in Corboy's wake. Loading The Hughes government, under pressure from his party and the emerging Country Party, moved quickly to introduce preferential voting in time for a byelection less than two months later (which was won by the conservative candidate). And that's how we've run House of Representatives elections ever since. But the May 3 result has prompted an outpouring of sour grapes from those who reckon a century-old system put in place by conservative parties to maximise their electoral chances is somehow being used by Labor to keep the mob formerly known as the Coalition from power.
Canberra Times
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Canberra Times
Drug cheats rejoice. There's now a comp designed just for you
Sue writes: "I have written before of the need for the Liberals to reach out to the community and understand what Australians want and need before endeavouring to reform and regrow their party. They are so out of touch that building on what they have is unlikely to help them make any improvements. Likewise, the Nats, or gnats as someone so appropriately called them. They buzz around saying annoying things without any apparent understanding of what they are talking about. An attempt some years ago to broaden their appeal caused them to change their name from the Country Party, but with that the only change, no one really noticed anything. After all, a cow turd by any other name ... For many of us, the gnats are already irrelevant."
News.com.au
21-05-2025
- Business
- News.com.au
‘Magical economic basket cases': Bob Katter slams free marketing
Independent MP Bob Katter says Canada, New Zealand, and Australia are 'magical economic basket cases' because of free marketing. 'I am old Country Party, I believe in aggressive marketing policies,' Mr Katter told Sky News host Ross Greenwood. 'We're not out there to be fair, we're out there to win. 'The colonial spot marks are flashing neon lights here … the only three countries on Earth that went to free marketing are Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, and all three are magical economic basket cases.'
Sydney Morning Herald
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
The battle for the soul of conservative Australia may have just begun
In the 1974 Queensland state election, the Bjelke-Petersen Country-Liberal coalition was re-elected in a landslide off the back of Gough Whitlam's massive unpopularity north of the Tweed, reducing Labor to a cricket team in parliament – a result not eclipsed until Campbell Newman's landslide in 2012 reduced it to a netball team. (Labor returned the favour with its own counter-landslide three years later, but that's another story.) Little noticed at the time was the result in the electorate of Wynnum, a bayside suburb of Brisbane. Labor was defeated in one of its safest seats – not by the Liberal candidate but, in a three-cornered contest – by the Country Party. It was the first time the Country Party won a capital city seat and heralded years of struggle between the two parties, culminating in the Liberal Party terminating the coalition in 1983. Like current Nationals' leader David Littleproud, the then-Liberal leader Terry White said it was a principled decision. (In White's case, this was true: the immediate catalyst of the split was Liberal demands for a parliamentary public accounts committee – thinly coded language for the need for a mechanism to expose the blatant corruption of ministers such as the storied Russ Hinze.) But the public saw only political chaos, for which they blamed the Liberals – White had theatrically torn up the coalition agreement at a press conference – who were decimated at the election the crisis precipitated. After two terms, Labor won a landslide victory in 1989 and remained in office for 30 of the next 35 years. (There are many landslides in Queensland elections. We are not famous for nuance.) The intense mutual antagonism of the former coalition partners continued in opposition, coming to an end only when the parties merged in 2008. That antagonism was initially fuelled by Liberal alarm that their erstwhile coalition partners were trying to drive them out of their urban political heartlands. The fears were well founded. After capturing its first capital city seat, the Country Party decided to expand into the cities. It began to de-ruralise its image: In 1975 it changed its name to 'National Country Party', and thereafter to the current 'National Party'. This was not a cosmetic change. The Queensland Nationals (unlike their interstate counterparts) were set on a deliberate strategy to supplant the Liberal Party completely. They challenged Liberals in three-cornered contests throughout Brisbane and in provincial cities. The plan worked: by the time of the 1986 election – Bjelke-Petersen's high-water mark – the Nationals had all but conquered the Liberal heartlands, including Brisbane, displacing Liberals in all but a handful of their traditional seats. Their success gave birth to even grander ambitions: the 'Joh for PM' campaign the following year (the last time the federal coalition split). That hubris-fuelled descent into political madness destroyed whatever chance John Howard had of winning the 1987 election. Nine more years of Labor government followed. While state and federal politics are very different, as the contagion of 'Joh for PM' demonstrates, political disunity at one level can spill over into the other. More importantly, the history of non-Labor politics in Queensland for most of the past half-century provides the clearest possible demonstration of how much more difficult it is to defeat a Labor government when the opposition is divided. Something that would make Tuesday's split even more damaging would be if it metastasised into the kind of fight over political territory that kept the non-Labor parties out of office in Queensland for so long.
