The Roman calendar's most famous feature isn't the Nones which nobody seems to know about any more, nor the Kalends which is where we probably get the name 'calendar' from, but the Ides which are the dates in the middle of the months. The reason for this is that the Ides of March are the date in the Roman calendar when debts were traditionally settled and the most famous example of this is the assassination of Julius Caesar, in which a funny thing happend to him on the way to the theatre and an an unfunny thing happened thereafter. Roman politics gave us the most famous example of The Festival Of The Thirsty Knife; which William Shakespeare cashed in on by adapating the story for the stage.
The Ides of March in 2022 will not be a day for settling debts. However, with the Federal Budget set for March 29, then if you assume that the writs for the dissolution of parliament for the 2022 General Election will be submitted by the Friday on the following week, then the number of logical days for the election are only 3: 7 May, 14 May, 21 May.
It is possible that although the Ides of March 2022 will not be the day of reckoning for the government but the Ides of May instead. I suspect that I am not alone when I think that the Morrison Government is bumbling its way towards electoral wipeout. I will admit that after an election has been called that opinion polls temnd to tighten and I will also admit that opinion polls themselves tend to be more reactionary than the general public for the reason that if someone is happy with the way things are then they tend not to complain but even so, the latest Newspoll spat out the following results:
Two Party Preferred:
LNP:45
ALP:55
That equates to a number of seats if an election was held tomorrow of:
ALP - 93
LNP - 52
Oth - 6
Those 6 others come with an interesting caveat. It could be 6 seats or it could be 7 seats or it could be 5.
The seat of Warringah which is currently held by Zali Steggall is probably a safe IND seat. I say probably because the previous member (Tony Abbott) was so toxic that he may have poisoned the electorate for many election cycles. I also say probably because there is a possibility that this traditionally conservative seat, has only been held by major parties on the right and by independents on the right. Warringah may remain IND or drift back to LNP.
The seat of Wentworth which is currently held by Dave Sharma. Mr Sharma is currently facing a challenge from Allegra Spender, who has developed quite a popular following. Whether or not that equates to enough votes to swing the seat back to IND remains to be seen but with a current Two-Party Preferred split across the country of 45-55, this is certainly in play to be flipped.
All of the other seats held by independents are likely to remain in their hands. Independents if they survive a second election, generally go on to have relatively long careers in Australia. Those electorates seem to like the idea that their candidate will not be swayed by the major parties and in some cases, Independent MPs have careers that span decades.
What does this say about the potential 20 seats that might be flipped over. One of the strange things about parliamentary democracy where government is formed out of the majority of members on the floor of the lower house, is that a seat which was part of the government after being flipped will then go on to be part of the next government but under a different political party. The so-called bellwether seats (like Eden-Monaro was famous for being) not only have long streaks of picking who is likely to form government but by extension, those seats end up being part of the government (albeit with changes in political party) for extended periods of time.
As it currently stands, not only are the Labor Party ahead in the polls but for the first time Anthony Albanese is ahead of Scott Morrison in the polls for the preferred Prime Minister. Those two things together are an indicator that we are more likely to have a change in government because together they indicate that there is an appetite for change. Mr Morrison who ran away to Hawaii during the biggest bushfires in the history of the world and whose government dithered and bungled its way through the pandemic, is now in danger of being turned on in large numbers in Queensland due to further incompetence when it comes to flood response.
It is probably too late for the Liberal Party to knife Morrison and put up someone else as the Prime Minister to lead the party to reelection. The likely candidate would be Peter Dutton. The problem there is that with a 2PP distance of 45-55, the seat of Dickson which Dutton occupies, is well within the domain of seats that would flip is we assume that the swing across the nation is uniform.
Knifing each other in the back in a metaphorical sense is the domain of parliamentary caucuses. General Elections aren't like the Festival Of The Thirsty Knife. They are more like the Festival Of The Stinky Wheelbarrow where the electorate at large gets to dump out one pile of muck in preparation for an empty wheelbarrow, which will then get progressively filled up with new muck until it to is dumped again and so the cycle begins anew. If the election is called and held on May 14, then it is not the Ides Of March which our debts will be settled but the Ides Of May.
Although...
Actually in all likelihood, this government has been so utterly pathetic at governing that it will probably kick the can down the road to 21 May. Decoupling the House and Senate election is the path to utter suicide and holding it any earlier than that, doesn't give the party propaganda machine enough time to rehabilitate the corpse. I reckon we're going to a 21st May election as the ice cream truck of inevitability crashes into the twitching zombie of fate.
No comments:
Post a Comment