Australia

Preferential ballots.  The ranked voting system that Justin Trudeau wanted.

Australia has instant runoff voting so I don’t see why Labor and the Greens should merge there.

JKR wrote:

Australia has instant runoff voting so I don’t see why Labor and the Greens should merge there.

Because Labor is in the back pockets of the same corporations as the Coalition?

Ban white conservatives from Australia.

Aristotleded24 wrote:

Can someone please explain why the Coalition still enjoys a comfortable lead in public opinion polls even while climate change is ravaging Australia?

Ask someone from Ft. Mac. Maybe they understand.

No polls yet have come out since the impact of the wildfire season has been felt. Looking at the reception that Morrison had in that moment, I wonder if he's had his "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" moment.

The real fear is that Morrison will be made to walk the plank for this, and his government manages to choose someone else and that gives the government a new lease on life. Anybody more familiar with Australian politics who can weigh in?

The ad shows Scott Morrison in the field, taking charge (angry locals refusing to shake his hand are nowhere to be seen). Firefighters battle the flames with abundant support from Defence Force personnel and aerial assets. The Federal Government's contributions are proudly listed in on-screen text. Uplifting background music instils confidence that this is a man with a plan.

There will no doubt be debate as to whether this is indeed a party political advertisement capitalising on the disaster, or simply an effort to disseminate information.

But when it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck …

When a written version of the ad was posted on Morrison's Facebook page, it initially carried a big DONATE button at the top.

Donate to the Liberal Party, that is, not any of the worthy bushfire relief efforts. A grab for cash as well as political capital. Classy stuff. At least this appeal for donations was quickly taken down.

I give up something wrong here

The New South Wales division of the Young Liberals’ push for a change in the government’s climate policy was spurred on by a membership which understands the risk it faces if no action is taken, its president has said.

The NSW branch passed a motion at the Young Liberal council in early December calling for a “practical, market-based means” for Australia to cut emissions by 30% of Kyoto levels by 2030, and provide energy market certainty.

The motion puts them at odds with the Morrison government, which has stubbornly insisted no change is needed to Australia’s emissions reduction strategy, even as the nation struggles through an unprecedented and deadly bushfire crisis, but is in line with the views of the NSW environment minister, Matt Kean, who has demanded more action.

The NSW Young Liberal president, Chaneg Torres, said his branch was just doing its job.

“The Young Liberals exist within the party to reflect the views of young people, to our MPs, to our wider party, and I think from our point of view, climate change is a particularly important issue for our generation because it concerns the actions of today affecting the lives and quality of life of my generation, but also generations to come,” he said.

“And we certainly understand that it is a risk that we will particularly face, my generation, if nothing is done in the present.”

Torres did not go so far as to criticise the Morrison government, which he said had its “heart in the right place”.

Aristotleded24 wrote:

No polls yet have come out since the impact of the wildfire season has been felt. Looking at the reception that Morrison had in that moment, I wonder if he's had his "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" moment.

The real fear is that Morrison will be made to walk the plank for this, and his government manages to choose someone else and that gives the government a new lease on life. Anybody more familiar with Australian politics who can weigh in?

In a poll released today, Scott Morrison has "suffered a massive hit to his personal approval rating and been overtaken as preferred prime minister by Anthony Albanese in the first published opinion poll of 2020." However, the margin between Labour and the Liberals is very close suggesting the the Liberals may be tempted to change leaders before an election. 

The Newspoll, published on Monday, confirms that a horror summer in which Morrison chose to holiday in Hawaii during the extended bushfire crisis that has claimed 28 lives and more than 2,000 homes, and fumbled meetings with victims, has significantly impacted his popularity.

On Monday Labor stepped up its attack on Morrison, with deputy leader Richard Marles suggesting the prime minister’s performance through the crisis had shown he was “loose with the truth” and “disinterested in the national interest”.

The poll of 1,505 voters, conducted between Wednesday and Saturday, found more voters (59%) are dissatisfied with Morrison’s performance than satisfied (37%).

Satisfaction in Morrison fell eight points and dissatisfaction increased by 11 points, both movements outside the poll’s margin of error of 2.5%. Just 4% of voters were “uncommitted” when asked how Morrison is performing.

Albanese is in positive territory after a six-point increase in satisfaction from 40% to 46% and dissatisfaction falling from 41% to 37%.

He leads Morrison as preferred prime minister, 43% to 39%, the first time he has done so since taking the Labor leadership after Bill Shorten’s shock loss at the May 2019 election.

Morrison dropped nine points as preferred prime minister while Albanese increased by nine points, reversing Morrison’s lead of 14 points in the last poll, taken in the first week of December, to trail by four points.

The Coalition suffered a two-point drop in primary vote to 40% while Labor recovered by three points to 36%. In two-party-preferred terms Labor lead the Coalition 51% to 49%.

The pollster Kevin Bonham said Morrison’s plunge from 14 points ahead as preferred prime minister to four behind is “the equal second highest such loss in Newspoll history”, after Paul Keating’s 23% drop against John Hewson after the horror 1993 budget.

He also said it was “highly unusual” for the current prime minister to trail the opposition leader on preferred prime minister when the two-party-preferred margin was narrow. ...

But Morrison’s horror summer – in which he was heckled by survivors in Cobargo, New South Wales – continued with the revelation that the NSW Rural Fire Service commissioner had not been informed of the compulsory callout and an embarrassing gaffe in which Morrison claimed nobody had died on Kangaroo Island where, in fact, two people were killed.

On Sunday Morrison acknowledged that he “could have handled on the ground much better” in the “strained” emotional environment of firegrounds. ...

(Deputy Labor Leader) Richard Marles took issue with Morrison’s suggestion that “moments of national crisis are a state issue and previously there hasn’t been an expectation of commonwealth involvement”. He told reporters in Melbourne it was “patently wrong”, citing the Rudd Labor government’s involvement in the Black Saturday bushfires. ...

Doubts have been raised about the Australian government’s ability to meet its Paris targets of 26% to 28% emissions reduction by 2030, with the use of carryover credits criticised as an “accounting trick” that may add up to as much as 80% of Australia’s emission reduction achievement.

The former head of Morrison’s department, Martin Parkinson, has blamed “civil war” within the Coalition for the government not developing a more ambitious climate policy, warning that global efforts were insufficient to halt warming at 2C.

Marles accused Morrison of “running away from the country without telling anyone”, “literally forcing people to shake his hand” rather than showing empathy, and being “incredibly slow” to involve the Australian Defence Force. Marles also blasted Morrison for filming an ad to promote the government’s disaster recovery efforts, suggesting it showed “panic” – not on behalf of the nation, but for his own image.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/13/scott-morrison-su...

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

jerrym wrote:

In a poll released today, Scott Morrison has "suffered a massive hit to his personal approval rating and been overtaken as preferred prime minister by Anthony Albanese in the first published opinion poll of 2020." However, the margin between Labour and the Liberals is very close suggesting the the Liberals may be tempted to change leaders before an election. 

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/13/scott-morrison-su...

The more shocking thing is that they are close even with all that is going on. The Liberal party ought to be in single digits and they are not. This is a sad reflection that even as the consequences of climate change become painfully clear the politics of denial is still extremly strong.

The following article provides an explanation of why, despite the catastrophic damange done by climate-change induced wildfires and drought many Australians remain in denial. 

Even as Australia burns, its voters may not take the plunge into meaningful collective action to fight climate change. And here’s why: out there be dragons. Thirty-six of them, by the count of Robert Gifford, a psychology professor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. These are the psychological hangups that haunt humans and stymie efforts to deal with the global climate crisis. “Dragons of inaction,” Gifford calls them, and they are formidable. ...

“The dragons of inaction are the reasons or justifications or excuses that people use between either having a good intention to do something and then not doing it or simply using that as an excuse to not be concerned or not take action,” he explained.

The most fearsome of these dragons include a perceived lack of control, the influence of social norms and the difficulty of habit-breaking, conflict with seemingly more pressing needs and wants as well as attachment to a conservative political ideology. Others include putting inordinate faith in technological salvation, growing numb to dire warnings, the perceived inequity of taking action when others might not and mistrust of government and other authority figures. Humans are also prone to discount risks that seem far off into the future or far away from one’s immediate surroundings, Gifford said, and seek to justify the way things are if they expect change to involve personal sacrifice. 

“We call that system justification,” Gifford said. (The full list of his dragons can be found here.) ...

But Australians have long battled dry conditions and seasonal fires, making it more difficult for the human brain to draw the complicated connection to global warming that is making such events more frequent and more intense.

“The challenge we have is it is an exaggeration of weather patterns for which people are already socially adapted,” said George Marshall, co-founder of Climate Outreach, which advises governments across the world on how to communicate their climate change strategies and also the author of the book Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change.

Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, has played up this argument and downplayed the connection to the policies of his Liberal government (the main conservative party in Australian politics). His actions include cheering the expansion of the country’s coal industry and scrapping the previous Labor government’s short-lived carbon tax. Both of these measures encourage more pollution and increase global warming, in turn making Australia’s fires worse.

But people tend to gravitate toward simple explanations, Marshall said, which helps explain the spread of a discredited notion that hundreds of arsonists are to blame. (In fact, police in New South Wales said just 24 people had been charged with deliberately lighting fires since November, while there are more than 150 blazes currently raging in that state.) “The most compelling narratives for us are the ones that have clearly defined enemies and victims,” said Marshall, who is also the author of the book Carbon Detox.

He said the fires, which are most explicitly threatening rural, conservative parts of the country, could send the country down one of two paths. On the one hand, they could spark serious conversations within those communities about the need to deal with climate change, which would in turn force the Liberals to react and adapt. But they could also exacerbate social tensions in a country where voters have entrenched and polarized views.

“You might find a situation where left-wing people in Melbourne become very, very agitated, but someone like a sugar-cane grower in Queensland doesn’t shift at all,” he said. “If you're somebody whose house has burned down or whose farm has lost all its livestock, and you felt that you were really in the middle of it and traumatized by the experience, you're not going to welcome a bunch of cappuccino drinkers in Melbourne going on a march.”

Humans are adept at using motivated reasoning and other mind tricks to seek out information that confirms our own opinions while ignoring or downplaying those that challenge them, political scientists say. So even as some Australians had to plunge into the ocean to avoid the flames and smoke, human psychology offers those predisposed to ignoring climate change plenty of encouragement to look away.

“Many people would like to think that stronger climate signals are going to change people's perceptions and further engage them in climate change,” Erick Lachapelle said. The political scientist at Université de Montréal has polled Canadians extensively on the topic. “But the reality is that people interpret climate signals through their pre-existing beliefs and worldviews.”

That is, instead of extreme weather shaping opinions, opinions shape how extreme weather is interpreted. “If you're more individualist, materialist, conservative, then acknowledging climate change challenges your worldview because it requires you to rethink your assumptions about the role of the free market and government intervention,” he said.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/01/08/analysis/humans-wrestle-drag...