Wining an Election is about as difficult as it gets. It’s a hell of an exercise to convince the majority of people in a population of 14,253,393 voters nationally to vote for your party. Then that is broken down into 151 Electorates. So each of the Parties have to win in those electorates as well. As we know there are two Major groups, consisting of four party groups. They are.
The Nationals and The Liberal National Party in Queensland. In the 2019 Election the Proportion of First preferences of the National vote was as follows. (House of Representatives). Labor Party.................................... 33.34% Won 68 Seats Liberal Party.................................. 27.99% Won 44 Seats The Nationals................................ 4.51% Won 10 Seats The LNP......................................... 8.67% Won 23 Seats Coalition vote............................... 41.17% Won 77 Seats. The Minor Parties, The Greens................................. 10.4% Won 1 seat Independents Katter Australia Party............................ 0.49% Won 1 Seat Other Independents.............................. 3.37% Won 4 seats The reason the Greens Won 10.4% of the National vote and only 1 seat compared to the Nationals who won 4.51% of the national vote and won 10 seats is because the election is determined over 151 seats. NOT on National Vote. In the 2019 election and all elections. Here are some of the ingredients they need to win. 1/ A plan to win. Plans in Politics are called policies. In an analysis I did after the 2019 Election I counted the policies Labor took to the Election. There were 173. The Liberals took 36 and the Greens took 9. See my analysis here. https://www.thevogfiles.com/2019-federal-labor-election-loss.html Did the Labor party take too many policies to the election? Many people said that Labor took to many policies to the Election in 2019. They had a strategy of telling the public their plans early and they were all fully costed. Personally, I think it was a good and correct idea for this reason. I want to know the ALP’s vision for Australia in detail, where we are going as a Nation and where my family will be situated when I am gone. Hopefully in a much better place than we are in now. I asked myself if I could get that vision from the Liberal Party/Coalition 36 policies? The answer was NO I couldn’t I didn’t trust the small government approach that the liberals take to governing, the cutting of Taxes, the Broad Church Rhetoric (Which means nothing) and the small Government they like. All it does is make less money available for services and the means of delivering them (Public service jobs). A classic example is the Failure of Australia’s Quarantine system, which is a Federal Government responsibility and the ability to protect the population by suitable planning and administration to protect Australians from harm. The utter and abject failure of the vaccine roll out comes to mind in this regard. There is another point I would like to make here also and that is the policy is there for all to see. Do you remember Tony Abbott’s promises of No changes to Pensions? And No cuts to the ABC? He lied and cut funding to the ABC. He lied and reduced pensions by fiddling with the allowable assets. Modelling I did showed that 400,000 pensioners were reduced to living under the poverty line by his cuts. That was in a population that it was estimated 17% of were already living under the poverty line. 2/ A comprehensive messaging strategy to explain the plan I won’t say that the ALP were an abject failure here, because they were honest in the presentation of their Fully costed plans. What they came up against was a hostile Press in the form of News Limited and all its penetration in Australia, A clever but devious campaign by marketing professionals who saturated social media with scathing and untrue memes about Labor’s policies and a clever and unprovable slight that “No one liked Bill Shorten”. Clever and believable lies about Labor being a high taxing Party based on policies which aimed at reducing welfare for the wealthy. I remember being in the playground many years ago when a boy who didn’t like me said tantamount to the same thing as they made up about Shorten. “No one in the playground likes you” saturation coverage worked well for the Coalition and I am sure affected the way people voted. On polling day I sat in the after party in my electorate and watched the loss. When it was apparent that Labor wasn’t going to win. A lady I didn’t know from a bar of soap turned around and said to me. “I knew it, we lost because no one likes Bill Shorten” I responded “Why do you think no one likes Bill Shorten?” She said “Ask anyone in the room they will all tell you that” So it worked, even on Labor voters. Say something often enough and people will believe it. Of course political messaging is much more subtle than that and the Liberal party are brilliant at it. They have everyone believing that the union movement is populated with thugs. They even had a Royal Commission about it which found scant evidence but they were able to drag Julia Gillard and Bill Shorten up to give evidence about their imagined misdemeanors. 90 matters were referred to Police and the Fair Work authorities in various States and to date only one of them has gone to court. No one has been jailed and the man who was Commissioner disappeared from Public life after allegations were made against him by several women. Conclusion. So developing a set of policies and then selling them to a huge public is a really hard thing to do, especially when the press decide to repeat the lies of the Coalition. The biggest lie told was that the Labor party wanted to Tax people and the Federal Treasurer made up an amount of billions of dollars. Because the press repeated these lies in the Newspapers and on the Television people believed them. They also believed the lies the Coalition continually tell about climate change and the denial of climate change. So let’s now come to the current day and changes to policy that the Labor party took to the last election. Not only do we have a worsening climate change situation because of the denials of the Coalition sceptics, we have a largely hidden financial position which an incoming Labor Government would have to deal with. Much of the dealings of this government (Since 2013) have been cloaked in secrecy and double dealing and so it is very difficult for the person on the street to have an appreciation of what is really going on. Remember when the Coalition talked in grand terms about “Debt and Deficit” and went on and on about it until everyone believed them? Well I want to share with you how bad the Coalition are at spending your money and how much of it they have spent in the last 8 years (The Bits that I can find). Before you read this bear in mind that this is what an incoming Labor Government will have to face before they actually start delivering their fully costed plan for Australia. Bear in mind also that this Coalition believes in small government and not providing service for people, so they give taxes back to the people and then can’t deliver services people need. They don’t collect the tax that they should and so cut pensions and welfare and the NDIS. Because of their philosophy, their ideology, their meanness and their greed. Here is a List of Coalition Financial Failures in the Last 7 years. 1/ Failure to Balance the budget over the last 6 years coupled with the failure to collect the correct amount of Tax from Corporate entities. The facts of this are set out in detail in this Analysis (https://www.thevogfiles.com/further-analysis.html). I added up that they have had cumulative deficits of $174.5 Billion between 2013-4 and 2018-19. If they had collected 30% of Tax on 20% of gross income (Like BHP/Billiton, Fortescue metals and Hancock mining pay) then that deficit would have become a surplus over that period of $166.8 Billion. Some Money Managers. 2/ Profligate (a great word which means “recklessly extravagant or wasteful in the use of resources”) spending in the Tenders let complete government work. Since 2013 when they came to power the Coalition Government have let 485,029 contracts worth a whopping $422.6 Billion. See the Evidence below. 3/ Profligate grants rorting. This is a difficult area to find the data on before the 1st Jan 2018, because it is held on individual Departmental sites, BUT since 1 Jan 2018, when the Government placed all grants awarded on a central Portal called GrantConnect They have awarded 111,404 grants for a Value of $63.9 Billion. Once again the evidence is below. I have written and analysed these grants extensively and that analysis can be found here.
https://www.thevogfiles.com/rorts-central.html So these are three financial areas where Billions of dollars have 1/ Failed to be collected as Tax 2/ Squandered recklessly 3/ Used to purchase votes to buy elections. Whilst I don’t agree with the changes to The Negative Gearing”” policy or “The Stage Three Tax Cuts”, I am really aware of the need to counter the Lies of the coalition about Labor being a high taxing party. In my view (and I am not speaking for the party and they have no idea that I am writing this either) Labor have been prudent to look at their Policy offerings in light of the current dire financial circumstances and to adjust accordingly. It is no good being a purist and being in opposition. Nothing happens in opposition. It is only when they sit on the treasury benches that they can change Australia for the better. I hope that has put some context around the enormity of gaining Government, particularly against one as corrupt, duplicitous, connected and nasty as this one. Comments are closed.
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AuthorThe VOG Files by Vince O'Grady Archives
July 2023
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