Australian Politics + Election thread

The fuck?

He made a well written and informative post on the topic. With the information Chin provided, we can now discuss Australian politics more. What's your point with this post?

That it was too long and I did not read it. Also that I commend his effort for finding all that shit out and posting it.

Is there like a short summery or something out there?

That's not necessary.

This is as short as I can make it without leaving out important stuff.

Aus has 2 major parties like the US, but unlike the US they choose the party leaders internally. Labor won the 2007 election, under Kevin Rudd, who was decent for a while until a few missteps in 2010 caused his popularity to fall, and his deputy ("vice president" if you will), Julia Gillard contested for the party leadership and won, becoming the new Prime Minister. This was obviously frowned upon by much of the public and her suppourt within the Labor party itself was far from unanimous as well. As is custom when there is a new PM who isn't elected, she called an election. Her campaign was sabotaged by secret information leaks from members of the Labor party who didn't suppourt her. Each party ended up winning 72 seats in the 150 seat house, but Gillard was able to form parliament by making backroom deals with the other seat holders. She would end up not honouring some of these deals, but made some more sly manoeuvres to preserve her very slim majority. Her popularity was abysmal, but so was that of the opposition leader and any other potential challengers, within or outside of her party with the exception of Rudd who remained popular with the public. Rudd (who had since been given a lower position) resigned earlier this year and re-contested the party leadership, this caused the internal party split to become public. Rudd and his suppourters argued that Gillard could not win another election (which is true) while Gillard's camp, which included Rudd's closest colleagues (including members of his cabinet when he was PM) launched withering attacks on his character, stuff like insane, crazy, hateful, and impossible to work with. There were also leaks against Rudd from high ranking Gillard suppourters, such as the following outtakes reel of him trying to record a message to the Chinese. Rudd lost, and the situation remains as is - opinion polls for both party leaders are extremely low, the person most Australians want as leader is not who his party wants, because they've chosen someone destined to lose. Everyone hates each other, even within parties, and no one shows any respect at all in parliament.

Leaked Rudd video

Australian politicians being fucking assholes

and most ridiculously, the opposition leader (and very probable future PM) attempting to run out of the house to avoid voting.

I really like those videos of Mr. Rudd and tea.

Such as this.

Wow he is so fucking stoned...