ABC 'journalist' claims SA has 'shifted to the right' despite there being no significant drop in the combined ALP +Greens vote.
🤦🏻

Correction: there's actually a slight *increase* in the combined ALP + Greens vote on current count

#SAvotes

@luciedigitalni i mean, an increased tendency towards visible, public extremism isn't amazing, but yeah they absolutely could have worded it better
@luciedigitalni like, the right shifted further right, so sure, that does technically change the average and thus, the spread, but they've picked a hell of a time to decide to understand how statistics work

@thegarbagebird @luciedigitalni

I think the “shift to the right” by former supporters of the Liberals is as much a demonstration of the frustration felt by more conservative voters as anything else.

We’ve seen over & over that ON & PUP members have been discredited, fallen out with leadership, & then failed as independents, Jacqui Lambie being the exception.

Bernardi is probably much smarter than the average ON candidate, & certainly more experienced, but is likely to butt heads with party leadership as a result.

I’d like to think that in Australia, with compulsory voting, a party like ON could never reach & sustain significant levels of parliamentary representation.

@Susan60 @luciedigitalni they don't have to. they just have to keep mainstreaming increasingly hateful ideas that are readily accepted by a population whose needs are not being met by major parties who are ideologically incapable of doing so in any meaningful way. keep proposing simple answers to complex problems, so newspapers keep reporting them as normal ideas, and before you know it both major parties are doing different versions of the same thing.
@Susan60 @luciedigitalni fuck knows we've got form for it

@thegarbagebird @luciedigitalni

Yes, it’s their impact on mainstream policy that is the problem. They’re too incompetent to be a direct threat.

@Susan60 @luciedigitalni ‘incompetent’ is absolutely not the barrier it used to be. global politics, and the media coverage thereof, has both normalised hithertofore unacceptable levels of buffoonery and unprofessionalism, but in some cases actively encouraged it, while also numbing us to the shock and outrage we would ordinarily feel in the face of things like overt racism and blatant corruption.
@Susan60 @luciedigitalni like, barnaby joyce wants the government to stay out of his life, when he IS the government. malcolm roberts, on-again off-again sovcit that he is, might not even accept the legitimacy of the government he is part of.
@Susan60 @luciedigitalni we're in for a real burn-out inducing few years, is all I'm saying