Hi Julia,
Just wanted to congratulate you on managing to retain the top job, even if just barely.
Before the election, I was really hoping for a sweeping victory. With a female atheist leading the one side, and a misogynist former seminarian on the other, I saw it as a fight between good and evil, between tolerance and oppression, between a belief that doesn't include an fatherly imaginary friend who rewards people based on adherence to a set of often abstract rules (and occasionally smites on the basis of same), and a belief that does. And only your being actually elected was really going to make me feel we had Australia's first female PM. (Let's be honest, deposing the fallen-from-grace leader is not really the same thing!).
Unfortunately, when it actually came to the crunch, the fight was between some pretty poor policy, and slightly worse - but surprisingly similar! - other policy. And this is why we ended up with the results we got.
I thought I'd just quickly break those down for you, Julia - you don't mind if I call you Julia, do you? - because I just want to make sure you've grasped the full impact of the results.
Basically, the real winner of this election was progressive, small "l" liberal politics. We have the first ever Greens MP elected at a general election, we have six - six! - new Greens senators, meaning they firmly hold the balance of power in the Upper House, and we have a general swing to the Greens of just about 4% - almost 3 times the swing towards the Coalition.
While I couldn't be happier about this, I'm disappointed by what it says about the Labor party, and I really think you should be too.
What it says, in a nutshell, is that the Labor party is no longer left wing enough for Australia.
Now this shouldn't come as a surprise to you, I wouldn't have thought - seeing as how much of your policy during the election campaign was virtually indistinguishable from the Coalition's, or indeed in some cases (Pacific Solution Labor's immigration policy, I'm looking at you) actually pretty much was the Coalition's (and I hope you credited John Howard in your references, otherwise it's plagiarism!).
But maybe it was a surprise to you? I have to admit, while I didn't approve of the line you were taking, I personally thought it was going to appeal to the nation. And so I was very surprised when on election night it became clear that you and I just hadn't given Australia enough credit when we were working out our lowest common denominator of conservatism.
As it turns out, Australia is not entirely as full of conservative xenophobic climate change sceptics as one might have thought. Now my excuse here is that I find it very hard to gauge the general sentiment of the country, as most of the people I know have very similar politics to me. In the past, Australia has always been much more conservative than me and mine, so I just naturally assumed this would once again be the case.
But presumably you have access to much better data than I do - annoying telephone polls, and the like - which leads me to wonder: how did you get it so wrong?
Clearly, what Australia was crying out for was strong, decisive leadership, leading to strong, decisive policy, which would then become strong, decisive outcomes. This is what you failed to present us with. Instead, you came across as weak, indecisive and all too quick to deal out or stick by some really crap policies that would clearly carry a large cost - and I don't just mean financial - yet be completely ineffectual (Pacific Solution Labor's immigration policy, I'm looking at you again. And your mate the internet filter).
The good news is, now that you've managed to form a minority government, there's a real chance for you to make up for the dismal election campaign. Show us your strong, decisive leadership.
Act now on climate change.
Kill the internet filter stone dead, and while you're at it, send Conroy back through the portal to his home world.
Legalise same sex marriage, so we are no longer denying basic freedoms to our fellow Australians.
Put time and resources into healing the mistakes of the past and redress the disgraceful imbalances between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.
Stand up and have the balls to say that asylum seekers will no longer be a political issue, and inform the Australian public of the true facts surrounding this "problem". Show compassion to these people who are exercising their basic human right to seek asylum, and stop treating them as though they are criminals. Above all, stop the downright shameful locking up of their children.
These are obviously just a few of my concerns, Julia (and I should point out, appear in no particular order), but I'll leave you for the moment to get on with these.
If you can give just these few points a good crack, when we have our next election - be it in three years, or sooner - I might just get my epic good vs evil showdown, and be able to really get behind it.
Yours sincerely,
Ricki
P.S. The NBN's good, though. I probably should have mentioned that too.
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