Last night, somewhat early into the count, I posted an article on the big Labor win. Now, some 15 hours later, there of course is still counting going on. But the main takeaway from last night – that the Libs have been crushed – only becomes more apparent with each passing hour.
The current count for the main players is this: 82 seats for Labor; 36 for the Coalition; none for the Greens; and 11 independents. As I say, things will change a bit more in the hours and days ahead. But the outcome is certain. So here I want to offer a few more of my own random reflections, and then share some from others.
-I have said several times now that if I could have only one win – Trump or Dutton – I would go with Trump. As bad as a Labor win is, a Kamala win would have been so much worse. Just think of all that Trump has done in his first 100 days. Plus America has much more of a global impact than Australia. So one out of two wins is a good start.
-The problem is, there are a number of good, strong Christians and conservatives in the Coalition, and/or many good ones that ran for office. But too often the top dogs have just been far too hopeless. Dutton threw away this election by being weak as water on so many key issues that really counted. As long as there are leaders like this in charge, these guys will get nowhere fast!
-Regardless of the results last night, I must thank all the Christians and conservatives who either ran for office or worked to help others in their election bids. Well done champs for all your hard work. Just imagine how much worse things would have been had it not been for all your dedication and commitment.
-As to some good news out of this Labor onslaught, a few items can be mentioned. One of the most welcome bits of news in this: Before last night the Greens had 4 seats. So far they have none. Two are definitely gone, and even the leader, Adam Bandt might lose his seat. That is certainly a good outcome indeed.
-Also, we have other races that might move in our favour. One Nation leader Pauline Hanson now has her daughter Lee in the mix, and she ran against the rather bizarre Tassie Senator Jacqui Lambie. That would be another neat win if it happens. But as I said last night, it could well be a full month before we learn all the results of the Senate races.
-As I walked the dog this morning, I happened to notice that the sun was still shining, the grass was still green, and Jilly dog still enjoyed being out and about. Another Albo win cannot change those realities, and more importantly, the Labor victory does not in the least impact this core truth: God is still on the throne, and a final reckoning is coming soon enough.
-Oh, and on a lesser note, at least Geelong won tonight – so it wasn’t ALL bad news!
Other commentators
The Victorian lead Senate candidate for family first, Bernie Finn said various things, including this: “How do we get Jacinta Nampijinpa Price into the House of Representatives ASAP?” Good question. He also said this last night:
The Liberal Party of Australia is terminal because it forgot why it exists. It’s only a matter before life support is removed. What we need is a new conservative party that knows what it believes in and has the courage to fight for those beliefs.
Adelaide academic and prolife activist Dr Joanna Howe posted this late last night:
Tonight’s loss for The Liberals is devastating.
Going forward, the party must decide: is it the party of John Howard or the party of Malcolm Turnbull?
In Dutton it was neither and in a presidential contest between Albo versus Dutton, he just couldn’t measure up. Albo’s not even charismatic (like a Hawke) but Dutton was just woefully bad.
Neither conservatives nor moderates were passionate about getting him elected. He wasn’t prolife, he didn’t oppose vax mandates and he failed to connect with ordinary Australians over their cost of living issues.
We know which way the media pushes the Liberals to go (towards Turnbull not Howard).
But I honestly believe that for the Liberal Party to comeback it needs TRUE and COURAGEOUS leadership like what we see from Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price or Senator Alex Antic who are both prepared to actually stand for something.
Unfortunately both are in the Senate.
The Liberal Party has a long way to go before it can be a genuine alternative government.
The head of Family First Lyle Shelton said this in part:
The green shoot from last night’s catastrophic election result was the re-emergence of Family First after a nine-year absence from the federal scene.
Of the 92 House of Representative seats contested, Family First polled more than four per cent of the primary vote in 13 electorates.
This is extraordinary and exceeded expectations. It qualifies Family First for significant electoral funding which otherwise would have gone to the major parties.
Your support made this possible – thankyou!
The eight Family First Senate candidates achieved close to, or just over 2pc, in Qld, NSW, Victoria and South Australia…
Well-known freedom fight Monica Smit correctly shared these thoughts:
It’s gonna be a rocky three years.
Energy prices will soar, digital ID will rear its ugly head, taxes will go up, immigration will go nuts, housing will be more scarce, public servant jobs will increase.
Clearly Australia voted for this. That’s democracy. They deserve it.
Buckle up.
2028 WILL BE BETTER…!!! And we start campaigning for that on Monday! We can’t leave it to chance again.
In the Spectator Australian academic Michael de Percy said this about one real winner from yesterday’s result:
The real winner of this election was Pauline Hanson’s One Nation. Unlike the other conservative parties, Pauline stuck to her guns. She didn’t deliberately antagonise the Coalition and for the most part her preferences were directed to them.
Not like the other conservative parties who did little more than fight against the Coalition. They deserve much of the blame for Labor’s win. Working Australians would have been better off if Clive Palmer had played lawn bowls.
What we needed was a conservative leader who would fight for us. Instead, we had conservatives fighting each other. Except Pauline.
As the Liberal Party destroys itself by focusing on individual interests while ignoring its base, conservatives would be justified in supporting One Nation. After all, One Nation represents what would once have been Blue Ribbon Liberal supporters.
And Rowan Dean, also of the Spectator, said this in part about the Liberal meltdown:
Let me be crystal clear: the decision to distance the Liberal Party from Donald Trump was an unmitigated disaster. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either a fool or suffering acute Trump Derangement Syndrome. When Peter Dutton was Trump-like, strong, powerful and fighting the Woke orthodoxy, he won the unwinnable referendum, the Voice, turning an 80-20 ‘Yes’ vote into a 60-40 ‘No’ vote.
An astonishing achievement that defied all the pollsters and pundits. And he did it by being fiercely anti-Woke and single-minded. Then, when Peter Dutton went anti-Trump, didn’t attack Woke, went Labor-lite, he lost not only the election but also his seat.
The TDS crowd can try and spin that however they like, but the facts are simple. The populist anti-Woke (ie Trumpian) strategy was an astonishing success. The anti-Trump, pro-Woke, all-things-to-all-people strategy was, as we learned last night, a worse-than-imaginable disaster.
Peter Dutton’s greatest legacy is not in fact winning the Voice referendum, magnificent though that was, but his unequivocal, unwavering and full-throated support for Israel after the horrors of October 7 at a nightmare time for Australian Jews. For that, he must be eternally honoured and the Liberal Party must retain that unequivocal support no matter what lies ahead.
Let me also make this part: the Labor Party did not tear down Peter Dutton. The Woke, leftist bedwetters of the Liberal Party backrooms and focus groups tore down Peter Dutton. And destroyed the Liberal Party in the process. Many – including the ABC – have already tried to blame Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (and Andrew Hastie) for the Coalition loss for supposed clangers made during the campaign.
He finishes his piece with these words:
Voters are instinctively wary of leaders who look unsure of themselves, and rightly so. Peter Dutton the Conviction Politician would now be headed for the Lodge. Peter Dutton chose to abandon those core beliefs and follow the siren call of the pollsters and focus groups and bedwetting backroom boys. You reap what you sow.
Is the Liberal Party still fit for purpose? Is it time for a National Conservative party combining the Nationals, One Nation, the other Libertarian/Family First/Trumpets or whatever they’re called and those members of the Liberal Party who wish to, yes, make Australia great again?
The bedwetting Liberals have been an unmitigated disaster – they destroyed Tony Abbott, gave us Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison, and wasted nine years in government and then destroyed Peter Dutton, the hero of the Voice. Let them form their own party – they can call it the Bedwetters.
Do we need a new National Conservative party? A party prepared to fight climate change dogma, Net Zero, Indigenous separatism, Woke identity politics, and stand for traditional, Judeo-Christian Enlightenment pro-Western and pro-American values. Conservatives need to decide.
I most certainly agree.
Final spiritual consideration
Being a Christian first, and a conservative second, I am of course disappointed by the results. It will be a very hard road we will be on for some years to come. But at the end of the day, I know that we tend to get what we deserve. Plenty of Christians almost glibly quote 2 Chronicles 7:14 – you know: “If my people who care called by my name…”
Having just read it again this morning, I need to keep reminding believers that context is everything. The reason Israel was in a mess and in need of God’s deliverance was because of their sin, disobedience, idolatry and unfaithfulness. So it was YAHWEH who had judged them. Recall the closing verses (vv. 19-22):
“But if you turn aside and forsake my statutes and my commandments that I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will pluck you up from my land that I have given you, and this house that I have consecrated for my name, I will cast out of my sight, and I will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples. And at this house, which was exalted, everyone passing by will be astonished and say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house?’Then they will say, ‘Because they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and laid hold on other gods and worshiped them and served them. Therefore he has brought all this disaster on them.’”
So 2 Chron. 7:14 is not just some neat promise that we can claim willy nilly. The condition is real repentance for the sins we committed. Sure, modern secular Australia is NOT ancient Israel in covenant relationship with God. But the principle here still holds. We have abandoned God and we are now paying a heavy price for this. See more on this here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2015/05/02/2-chronicles-714-in-context/
At the end of the day, our biggest need is not a new political party or leader, but getting on our knees in true repentance. And that must begin with the church.
8 Replies to “More on the Australian Election Results”
Thanks for the update Bill. I too was shocked thinking it was going to be a Liberal landslide a few months ago especially when the Voice voting was a resounding ‘No’ last year and the polls were indicating that Peter Dutton was looking good after mentioning ‘nuclear’ into our energy mix and correctly saying what the definition of a ‘woman’ was. As you said, the good side is that the Greens haven’t got a candidate in yet and Adam Brandt may even lose his seat. Looks like people are voting for the other conservative parties instead of the Coalition. Would be good if all these other conservative parties got together – maybe it could be called the Freedom Party as after another 3 years of Albanese’s govt we will want our freedoms back more than ever.
Thanks Lynette.
Correct and clear critique
Thank you Ian.
Gary North:
“Think globally, act locally”
The Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neill, was correct a generation ago when he said that all politics is local.
All politics is local. The place where you can make your stand against the expansion of civil government is locally. It is naïve to think that we can do anything nationally before we do a great deal locally.
You need training in fighting government, and you cannot get this by opposing Congress. You cannot get it by opposing the state legislature. But you can get it by opposing activities of local civil government.
Politics is the manifestation of worldviews. It begins at the local level. It begins with the day-to-day affairs of the voters. It begins in local institutions. If voters do not pay attention to these local institutions, or if there is no systematic plan to capture these institutions, then politics is simply going to be a Punch and Judy show, and the establishment will control the outcome. The acceptable limits of political debate will be established by establishment institutions. That means they’re going to win, no matter who the candidates are.
Thanks for your thoughts Bill. The idea of merging the varied conservative parties into a coalition has merit. My concern is that they are unlikely to be on the same page on a number of issues say for instance, abortion. There would have to be give and take. John Howard talks about the broad church of the coalition and look where that’s got them. It would need a strong leader to keep a new coalition party on track.
Thanks for the considered, relevant, timely, respectful, thoughtful and unpanicked reflections.
We are moving into secular times.
Recently empaneled in a jury- first swearing in was for those willing to swear on bible. I stood up. The other eleven didn’t.
This was the first election where I have not had an urge to pray. I didn’t really. No night prayers, no fasting, no manning of polling booths. It felt like it was time for Australia to feel some consequences for their selfishness. Maybe, just maybe, after our house prices tumble and our dollar halves, supermarkets are empty and gangs are breaking into houses – finally we might be ripe for revival. Start getting ready right about now…
Thanks for the update Bill. I too was shocked thinking it was going to be a Liberal landslide a few months ago especially when the Voice voting was a resounding ‘No’ last year and the polls were indicating that Peter Dutton was looking good after mentioning ‘nuclear’ into our energy mix and correctly saying what the definition of a ‘woman’ was. As you said, the good side is that the Greens haven’t got a candidate in yet and Adam Brandt may even lose his seat. Looks like people are voting for the other conservative parties instead of the Coalition. Would be good if all these other conservative parties got together – maybe it could be called the Freedom Party as after another 3 years of Albanese’s govt we will want our freedoms back more than ever.
Thanks Lynette.
Correct and clear critique
Thank you Ian.
Gary North:
“Think globally, act locally”
The Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neill, was correct a generation ago when he said that all politics is local.
All politics is local. The place where you can make your stand against the expansion of civil government is locally. It is naïve to think that we can do anything nationally before we do a great deal locally.
You need training in fighting government, and you cannot get this by opposing Congress. You cannot get it by opposing the state legislature. But you can get it by opposing activities of local civil government.
Politics is the manifestation of worldviews. It begins at the local level. It begins with the day-to-day affairs of the voters. It begins in local institutions. If voters do not pay attention to these local institutions, or if there is no systematic plan to capture these institutions, then politics is simply going to be a Punch and Judy show, and the establishment will control the outcome. The acceptable limits of political debate will be established by establishment institutions. That means they’re going to win, no matter who the candidates are.
Thanks for your thoughts Bill. The idea of merging the varied conservative parties into a coalition has merit. My concern is that they are unlikely to be on the same page on a number of issues say for instance, abortion. There would have to be give and take. John Howard talks about the broad church of the coalition and look where that’s got them. It would need a strong leader to keep a new coalition party on track.
Thanks for the considered, relevant, timely, respectful, thoughtful and unpanicked reflections.
We are moving into secular times.
Recently empaneled in a jury- first swearing in was for those willing to swear on bible. I stood up. The other eleven didn’t.
This was the first election where I have not had an urge to pray. I didn’t really. No night prayers, no fasting, no manning of polling booths. It felt like it was time for Australia to feel some consequences for their selfishness. Maybe, just maybe, after our house prices tumble and our dollar halves, supermarkets are empty and gangs are breaking into houses – finally we might be ripe for revival. Start getting ready right about now…