The Australian Labor Party achieved a huge success that even it wasn’t expecting. In a crushing defeat of the conservative opposition Labor now has more than double the numbers of the Liberal National Party Coalition in the House of Representatives.
Australia isn’t a particularly left or right country. Politics are generally centrist. Any form of extremism is unpopular and, in fact, usually despised. It’s considered un-Australian with good reason. Over the last century a lot of Australians have emigrated to Australia specifically to get away from political nutcases.
Like most Western countries, Australia was equally baffled by the return of Trump and not at all thrilled. Australians do not want to risk the misery of even traveling to the US after their revolting experiences last time.
It’s nothing personal. Most of us have American friends and relatives and do business in the States in some form. The problem is that you can’t be pro-American and support this melodramatic incompetence at the same time. These idiots are literally putting our friends and relatives at serious risk.
This election outcome really was an anti-Trump backlash, but only to a point. People are tired of politics. They are tired of governments ignoring basic human realities. The constant disruption and stresses of political madnesses since 2016 have long since outstayed their welcome.
Making things worse for the opposition were a series of Trump-like noises. Shamelessly imitating foreign ideologies isn’t terribly popular either. These noises included cuts to the public sector, a large nuclear program, and a seeming total disregard for the unpopularity of Trump’s various crusades.
It looks like conservatives around the world are all singing from the same hopelessly outdated and largely irrelevant hymn book. The same dogmatic approach to practically every subject simply doesn’t work. It’s particularly hard to see how millennials or Gen Z could possibly relate to these anachronisms.
Far worse is the fact that none of these Illiterate slash-and-burn policies could ever work. The world simply doesn’t do business like that anymore, and doesn’t live like that anymore. The classic conservative anti-globalism and anti-all other human beings obsession is merely insane.
The election delivered a truly punishing result. The relatively low-profile opposition leader who was weirdly and inaccurately described as an Australian Trump lost his own seat. He had held that seat for 24 years.
The new majority is unbreakable and will outlast Trump’s second term. That suits just about everybody because the distrust of Trump is pretty much universal on both sides of Australian politics. Only the senile and the infantile trust a windbag.
There are now few if any right-wing governments remaining in the English-speaking world. The question is whether or not global conservatism can understand the response.
