As I reported recently, even Labor insiders and unionists are warning the party leadership to drop the woke-ism and stop making policy in and for “inner-city coffee shops”. That covers everything from climate alarmism to radical gender theory.
As former frontbencher Joel Fitzgibbon warned, Labor’s brand is rapidly going the way of Kodak. “We are facing something that looks a little bit like an existential threat here.”
More than a little bit. Labor has just been trounced in a by-election in the coal-dependent Hunter Valley.
But it wasn’t just Labor who got handed a drubbing. The traditional rural conservatives, the Nationals did even worse.
The stark reality is that voters are fleeing the two-party system.
The Nationals registered bigger negative swings than Labor in the Upper Hunter state by-election in voting booths that fall within the federal seat of Hunter.
An analysis of booths from the by-election within the Hunter seat, held by Labor MP Joel Fitzgibbon, shows the Nationals primary vote at 24.6 per cent, down 6.5 per cent in the same booths from the 2019 NSW poll.
Labor’s primary vote in the Hunter booths was down 5.5 per cent since the 2019 election, falling to 29.6 per cent.
What should really terrify both Labor and the Coalition is the stampede to the minor parties.
One Nation attracted 13.2 per cent of votes in the booths, while the Shooters Fishers and Farmers registered 12 per cent.
The Nationals’ vote went down in coalmining booths, including in Muswellbrook, in contrast to the last federal election.
Nationals senator Matt Canavan, who conducted the analysis, said the results showed disaffected Labor voters were shifting to One Nation and the SFF rather than to the Coalition.
And with good reason. One Nation are the only party willing to pull their heads out of the arseholes of the inner-city cafe set and say what voters want to hear. Pauline Hanson might have sent journalists reaching for the smelling salts when she wore a burqa into the Senate, but mainstream Australians got it. Malcolm Roberts might send the ABC’s “fact-checkers” into conniptions with his views on climate change, but they’re views held by millions of Australians.
The SFF, meanwhile, are showing remarkable signs of developing from a fringe party to the sort of rural conservatives that country voters were once rusted onto.
“Working-class voters are up for grabs. They’ve left Labor but they haven’t yet gone … to the LNP in the mining towns of the Upper Hunter.
“One Nation won more of the disaffected voters than we did.”
Senator Canavan said the Nationals would have a better chance of winning the Hunter electorate if the Morrison government promised to build a coal-fired power station while refusing to sign up to zero-net emissions by 2050.
The Australian
Scott Morrison needs to stop worrying about the Canberra press gallery and come out swinging, as he did when he famously brandished a lump of coal in Parliament.
In the meantime, admit it or not, the major parties are in a cold sweat over minors and independents. Senate voting “reform” in 2016 was plainly designed to nobble the prospects of independents and minor parties in the Senate. The political class’s lackeys in the media have been gunning for One Nation for years, not least with the ABC’s disgraceful set-up that tried to paint them as “gun nuts” in thrall to the NRA.
But, as Morrissey once said, “the more you ignore me, the closer I get”.
Please share this article so that others can discover The BFD
