Why didn’t Brexit win the Coalition government?

When news of Brexit hit the media almost exactly one week prior to our election last Saturday, my first thought was that this will guarantee a Coalition victory on July 2nd.

But it didn’t.

Why not? Why should it have?

The first reaction from the world to the Brexit news was to sell shares and buy gold, a very conservative reaction to uncertainty that occurs like clockwork whenever people feel out of control. There was also widespread reporting of wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst the populace in the UK at the unheralded uncertainty of it all, increasing the price of gold even further.

When uncertainty strikes, people flee to what they know and the status quo wins wherever it exists. So why didn’t the Coalition win last Saturday, as people stuck with ‘certainty’, as I predicted they would by 52 percent to 48 percent?

Political apathy and disillusionment.

We are now hearing of ‘recriminations’ among the Federal Liberal Party, which is another way of saying they have no idea what happened and are even more removed from reality than we all suspected. ‘Recriminations’ means blame, and yet the blame rests with every politician in the country. When you make promises and do not keep them, change policies (and leaders) without our consent, and take the two party system for granted guess what? We rebel, and in a democracy we rebel the only way we know how, the only way we can make all politicians sit back and actually take notice. We withdraw our votes from both Liberal and Labor and give them to local independents.

Or we don’t vote at all, by voting informally. The statistics on this will be fascinating reading when the dust settles (if it does).

Politicians telling us what to do and who to vote for, when they do the opposite of what we ask them to do, and even what they themselves tell us they will do, makes us mad as hell and if they cannot see this they all deserve to be kicked out. And many were.

They might ‘talk’ to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of their constituents but there is a massive difference between talking and listening, and learning.

Scare tactics (Medicare, Penalty Rates and others) also, unfortunately, work. It is arguable that after Brexit Labor knew it was in trouble so invented the Medicare scare campaign, coming as it did so soon after can hardly be a coincidence, but we do not know for sure.

One thing we do know is that we deserve better politicians. No, that is wrong, we do not deserve better politicians but we do deserve better people who can lead us with integrity and vision.


Until that occurs, results like last weekend will continue to occur, independents and minor parties will continue to have too much influence (or not enough?) and political leadership will continue to be a vacuum.
Location: Adelaide SA, Australia

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