#the first sentence of this accidentally got Dandelion by Boards of Canada stuck in my head

[radramblog]

WA election aftermath

The aftermath of an election is always a tenuous time, with seats in doubt for some time well after the election is called, and a massive number of people effectively gaining and losing their jobs. In a two-party system, there’s always a winner and a loser, and as a result at least one side is going to have emotions running high.

I’d like to delicately consider the results of this election, and the potential impacts of such on the state. With that in mind…..

Holy shit I knew this was going to be an easy labor blowout but I didn’t expect that kind of result.

I don’t think I’ve seen a bigger blowout in any election, ever. It’s absolutely farcical. I love it. I can’t stop grinning thinking about it. The Liberal Party got fucked. This feels like vengeance for all those years suffering under Premier Barnett, cunt as he was.

Alright, bit more seriousness, let’s break it down.

Labor

Labor winning this election was pretty much a matter of course. There was no universe in which they didn’t succeed, even the opposition knew that. The people have seen the state government’s response to COVID-19, and how well it went for us, and saw the opposition dragging their heels and arguing against them, which is not a good look. I think there are three big things that brought Labor so far forward this election, and I genuinely think that COVID-19 was one of them- it might literally have been the best thing to happen to WA Labor last year, and I mean that without a hint of irony.

The second big thing was Clive Palmer. More specifically, that WA Labor got to have Clive Palmer as an enemy. Now I don’t know about over east, but it’s presumably less pronounced since he got a couple seats there at some point. But Clive Palmer is monstrously unpopular over here, and his attempt at subverting WA border restrictions for his own ends was not something anyone wanted to see- so the current government completely shutting him out was very welcomed. I do genuinely think that the dislike for Clive Palmer gave WA Labor a huge advantage, since they were the ones standing up to him. We all saw his fucking annoying advertisements 2 years ago in the Federal election, and we kicked his farce of a party out then- it’s no surprise that we don’t want him around now.

Last but certainly not least, of course, there is Premier McGowan. Marky boy is probably the most approved-of politician I can think of in recent memory, cultivating a minor cult of personality that isn’t locked to one side of the political compass like, say, Trump’s. That does, of course, leave him as a bit of a centrist, which is not exactly great in my eyes, but it could be a lot worse.

Labor now has a massive amount of power, holding every seat they had and gaining many more. And while the opposition is rather weak, it’s likely that any influence the Libs/Nats would try to have isn’t something I’d want to see anyway. Regardless, now that the immediate threat of election is over, Labor does need to be held accountable for mistakes they make, because they are far from perfect- McGowan’s position on fracking is a good example.

Liberal

I never thought I’d feel any form of sympathy for a Liberal leader, but it’s hard not to feel sorry for Zak Kirkup. He’s a relatively young politician essentially thrown out as a lamb to the slaughter, becoming the first Labor/Liberal leader in 90 years to lose their own seat in a state election.

With that said, I feel no reason to similarly sympathise with the remainder of the party losing their seats. They’ve got to rebuild now, with a maximum of 3 seats to work with, which leads me to believe they’re going to need a complete redo of their positions/branding/policy if they want to succeed next time around. They might end up straying dramatically from their political positions, which could be good, or it could be very bad.

I’m interested to see what happens to the Liberal party in the coming weeks. But I suspect they aren’t going to be especially relevant in government for some time.

Nationals

The Nats look set to become the new opposition, a sentence I never thought I’d say or write, but it does sort of make sense. If the Liberal party continues to suffer, they may end up in that position for quite some time, which would make WA a pretty unique political landscape in the country as far as I am aware (hahah I don’t know shit about other states politics)

I’m not super aware of Nats policies aside from their regional focus, which doesn’t apply too much to me specifically. But if their regional focus includes big business operating in rural WA (which a lot of it does) then colour me disinterested. If they are the major opposition, though, then I’m expecting some amount of increased regional spending on Labor’s behalf as appeasement, or to get them to agree to other bills. We’ll see.

Greens

If you go by total vote counts, the Greens actually have a fair few more than the Nationals- but that’s not exactly how that works, is it. We didn’t have any seats, but hey, at least that means we didn’t lose any seats.

Maybe next time, folks.

Others

At time of writing, the third most dramatic swing in votes was in One Nation, everyone’s favourite xenophobes- except, it’s a 3.7% swing away from them, which is huge considering they now only have 1.2% of the votes. It felt like at the last election we kicked Pauline’s grotty arse out of the state, but now I’d be surprised if they made much of a reappearance here at all.

The fact that the No Mandatory Vaccination party has the 5th most votes total is both staggering and terrifying. They’re still about a third of the Nationals, but that such a fucking hellscape of a party got that high upsets me greatly- especially since I don’t want to know where their preferences ended up.

The WAxit party only has about 4000 votes, so I guess we aren’t seceding after all. But hey, apparently more people want to vote for that than to legalise weed (by ~1500 votes), so they’ve got that going for them.

At time of writing, the Animal Justice Party, the Daylight Savings Party, the Health Australia Party, and the Great Australian Party (which I only found out afterwards is an offshoot of One Nation) all have exactly 0 votes counted for them. Better luck next time, or better yet, just don’t bother next time.