How can Labor claim to represent the working class? They are the party of bureaucratic, corporate, academic inner city elites and almost nobody else. The only electorates that voted yes are in the ACT and a few inner city electorates in each capital (not even that in SA or the NT). The ALP should be ashamed to call themselves Labor. If they had any honesty they would rename themselves Capital, because that's who they represent: a cabal of rich elites who only exist through collusion with government. The Liberals should be ashamed to call themselves liberals too, but this is neither the time nor the place. 62 of 78 Labor held electorates vote no, and more than a few of those are likely to flip to no as results come in.
Why should Labor be ashamed? That’s an absurd statement. In any instance it seems it was the educated vs the uneducated or those that can connect the dots and those that can’t. I don’t consider myself educated but do feel like I can connect simple dots. The script has been flipped many times but that is if you believe that our major parties represent a distinct political compass. Labor have been the economic movers and shakers but the Liberal party have been the social movers and shakers ushering in marriage equality. Our major political parties are quite centrists although the national party can drag the liberal party to the right on certain social issues. The big difference between the 2 in last 40 years seems to be one does most of the moving and shaking and the other sits on sidelines criticising. The uneducated will follow slogans and the liberal party seem to sadly use this type of politicking.
The non-tertiary educated used to be called the working class, or at least roughly synonymous with it. Labor should be ashamed because they claim to be a working class party and had almost the entire working class flip on them, because they are in fact now the party of rich inner city elites - academics, bureaucrats and corporations, and almost nobody else.
Blame LNP for becoming hard nosed social conservative. Why did the LNP turn their back on their supporters? It took Labor to float the dollar and deregulate the banking system that saw significant changes to our economic fortunes. So the issue isn’t Labor not supporting the working class but the working class turning to social conservatism. Again it reads like the educated vs the uneducated; emotionally unintelligent vs the emotionally intelligent; the dot connectors vs the non dot connectors; Comprehenders vs Non Comprehenders . Because Labor were the movers and shakers the LNP needed another version of themselves so decided to appeal to the social attitudes of the working class. Australia’s political compass isn’t clear cut and glad it isn’t. Let America play their games of teams and colours lol.
How have the LNP become more socially conservative? Would Menzies have run a plebiscite on gay marriage? The LNP is happy to park itself 2 steps to the right of Labor - they supported the WA cultural heritage laws, supported the voice until it became untenable to do so (and many still supported it at the state level), supported a disinformation bill, supported treaty until it became untenable to do so, etc. No political compass is clear cut.
Now if only a constitutional referendum was an federal election (hint they're not). Like anyone who lets there own biases effect their analysis (and you do this a lot) your applying one data set, the results of the referendum to another entirely different and unrelated data set (the results of the last election) in order to try and prove a point. And as is almost always the case when people do this they fail - as you just have. The last referendum related to one specific issue and, like all others its a binary choice i.e do I vote yes or no for the proposal. Elections on the other hand force voters to make multiple judgement calls on a wide range of policy positions concerning economic and social issues as well as the personalities of the people standing for election. To be clear the last election was one resoundingly victory by the Albanese lead Labor Party and that win extended across multiple 'working class' electorates. In part this victory reflected the fact that the Liberal party had been in power of a long time and was getting 'tired' and had been caught in a succession of scandals and policy failures (robo-debt anyone?) and in part it also reflected the fact that Liberals had two leaders in row with all the charisma of roadkill. But importantly it also reflected a judgement on the policies offered by both sides. And when asked to pass jusgement on those policies? Well this time around all those poor working class voter you seem so concerned about? They voted for Labor and apparently they disagree. Next time? We'll see.
Didn’t Menzies proclaim the Liberal party to be progressive as the name suggests? Still very distinct from the communist party aka Labor as he painted them. If the social climate was right then maybe he would have supported gay marriage due to his support for individualism. Little Johnny swung the liberal party strong right and Turnbull brought the party back to the centre and now Dutton is attempting to drag it back to the right. The Voice and treaty were untenable because that’s how Dutton made the issues.
