Analysis of Federal Election 2013 results

We expected that in the wake of devastating loss of Labor and Greens in last Saturday’s election, the loss will promote these two parties to admit their failures and work on correcting them. Surprisingly, leaders of both parties resorted to cover-up and hide these devastating results under many arguments. The Labor claimed (maybe rightly) that the loss could have been worse. But they claim that this loss was due to “disunity” in the party over Rudd-Gillard revenge fight over leadership.

On the Greens side, the party could outrageously claim that they achieved “outstanding results” despite the fact that their primary votes collapsed by 30% of their previous results.

The real story behind the loss:

- For Labor:
The Labor was quick to blame the infighting between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard since mid 2010 for the loss of their popularity and scoring the worst results since WWII. This argument can be refuted easily by pointing to the fact that the opinion poll since the beginning of 2010 was worse than what they actually got after the infighting started. This is very clear indication that the real reason behind the loss of popularity was the Labor’s inability to deal with the issue of boat people, at that time. The Labor was quick since April 2010 to retreat on this front. The Labor under Kevin Rudd was quick to cave-in for the Liberals racist attacks by freezing the processing of applications of Afghani and Sri Lankan asylum seekers, April 2010. This sent clear sign that Labor is ready to back down on this issue and so cannot offer real alternative to the coalition racist arguments about boat people.

Instead of Labor understanding that Australians expected Labor to act more bravely on this issue, the Labor strategists thought that leaning more right on this issue would bring back to them some of their lost popularity. This is why these strategists thought that the leadership change would fix everything by replacing the PM, change the policy on boat people by adopting the Liberals racist harsh approach and then blame the previous PM for the leniency on boat people issue.

The move back clashed. We can prove this for second time by pointing to the fact that Rudd’s return to PM’ship saw surge in Labor’s popularity. This popularity evaporated the day Rudd announced the very harsh policy of adopting “PNG solution”.

The second most important issue in this election was the economic standstill. The voters saw the deteriorating financial circumstances in Australia and witnessed the Labor’s inability to do anything to try and stimulate the economy.

The third main important issue which lead to these devastating results was the voters’ outrage for the Labor weakness to manage minority government and succumb to Greens “black-mailing”. Many analysts indicated that introduction of Carbon Tax was not major issue in this election on its own. It was important as it was seen to be clear evidence that Labor was under Greens influence, or even control.

The Labor post-election post-mortem did not recognise these issues. And I think that the Labor’s popularity will remain low until they acknowledge these factors and work to correct them.

For the Greens:
The primary votes of the Greens were collapsed in ALL states. Nationally they got around 8.7%, when in fact they got more than 13% in the previous election. This means that the Greens lost around 4.4%, i.e. 33% of their popularity. Yet, the Greens MPs were outrageously claiming that they got “outstanding” results.

We believe that the Greens leadership will justify these disappointing results by resorting to their traditional cover-up argument of “in an election where voters was leaning to the right, it is very good that the Greens could keep the current level of popularity”. They did this to justify their failure to capitalise on the total collapse of Labor popularity in Victoria 2010 and NSW 2011, where the Greens failed to increase their voting base.

I think that the real reasons behind this collapse of voting were the fact that the Greens was seen as the small partner of the Labor government and share many responsibility for its failures. The largest failure attributed to the Greens is the introduction of Carbon Tax and the Liberals continuous link of this to the deteriorating life-style of Australians and the increase of life-costs.

In addition to this, the Greens, a party that controlled on its own the balance of power in the senate and shared in controlling the balance of power in the house of representatives (in addition to the fact that the government was dependent on Greens support of it) for the last three years could not prevent the government from going to the far-right on boat people issue. The Greens was able easily to introduce Carbon Tax, where the previous PM Gillard promised before 2010 as “will never be introduced under any government I will lead”, but was unable to move the government to ease its extreme dealing with thousands of desperate boat people.

Instead of Greens facing these failures, admit them and promise to work on correcting them, they deny that they in fact lost heavily in this election (even if their luck will see their representation stay the same or even increased by one senator). The reason behind this is the fact that the Greens party is still betting on the argument that there is no alternative to them on the left spectrum of the political scene. The Greens will be surprised to realise that this argument is not valid anymore. Many progressive voters are resorting to voting informally (informal voting was increased significantly in the last 6 years). We also believe that many progressive people will be able to create more progressive alternative to the Greens.

SO what is about Liberals?
The Liberals won in increasing majority because the other side failed, and not because any voters were convinced that they would be better government that will find solutions to the Australian challenges. We need to remember that the Labor massive loss in NSW was not because the opposition Liberals had better plan for the state. On the contrary. The Liberal government made more damage to the NSW residents’ lives than ever. The voters just gave up on Labor government, and did not trust the Greens, and wanted to send them strong message.

The Liberals did not present during the course of the election campaign any alternative plan to lift the people’s life-style and financial security. The Liberals campaigned on the failures of the Labor and Greens.

The practical results of the election:
The Labor-Greens after this election became powerless totally. The two parties have no influence (by numbers) in both houses. In the House of Representatives, the Liberals has absolute majority of 88 seats (they needed 76 to govern on their own).

In the senate, the Labor-Greens combined seats won is less than 39 seats needed to be able to stop important controversial legislations. While I do not think that “Balance of power” does exist at all as the majority of legislations (more than 85%) were passed by bipartisan support for the last 2 decades. Even this was lost in the last Saturday’s election. The balance of power is now in the hands of few senators mainly defected from Liberals and Nationals, which would be easier for Liberals to convince them to pass controversial legislations when Labor would not support them. Again, NSW LC is very clear example, where Liberal government did not have any legislation defeated in the LC for the last 2 years, where it depended on MLC from small conservative parties.

We hope that the Labor will admit the real reasons for their defeat last Saturday and start working on correcting them. Without doing this, we believe that Labor is heading for long time in opposition by repeating Beazley’s mistakes on the same issues.

We also understand that the Greens will find serious rivals in the next elections. If the Greens want to increase their voting, I believe that they need to start “putting their mouth where their money is” by acting on issues and not vending rhetoric and lies. We believe that the Greens party is not able to do so, and this is why we expect the Greens to head to more electoral defeats in the next 2 years. The first would be Tasmanian election next year.

Why lenient sentencing of Wahhabi extremist: poor judgment or "minorities: who cares... kill each other" argument!!!

Imagine that I am WHITE ANGLO-SAXON freelance journalist, blogger, political activist and community leader. Imagine that I am CHRISTIAN or JEW by religious faith affiliation. And then imagine that I was attacked physically in front of hundreds of community members and in front of channel 7 camera. Imagine all this and then imagine what would be the judgment by the judge..

Then imagine how the media will response to such attack. You can guess what kind of description of the attack and attackers...

I remember when member of parliament Belinda Neal was caught threatening (just threatening) staff member at a restaurant. She was enforced to retreat, apologise and quit politics altogether after media made her look as vampire. Imagine if she was caught punching the staff member....
And she was “true” outstanding member of the society.... and “true” community builder... and part of the attack on her that a “community builder” and “community leader” should not act this way....

So do we understand that there is two system of justice in this country: one for White Anglo- Saxon Judo-Christians and other for the rest of “minorities”?!!!

Was the judge given wrong information only, or he was “ignorant”.... Did he tell himself while making the decision “Muslim against Muslim..., who cares, let them kill each other”....

The judge should remember that it is now Muslim against Muslim... But in Britain it was recently “Terrorist Wahhabi against Anglo-Saxon soldier”... And in France, it started to spread to be “Extremist Muslims against the rest of France”... and in Spain, the bombing of trains there did not target Muslims and the bomb killed indiscriminately. So “Muslim against Muslim” argument is immature, as the violence of these “community builders” will spread to reach the judge himself.

I deeply believe that authorities now act on argument of “non-Anglo Saxons: who cares”... Let them kill each other.... We can even encourage them to do so by encouraging “tit for tat” attacks... And they may be right and things could be progressed soon to this...

Racism in our system??? We warned of this for long time... but this time it is very serious and will have great impact...

Justice was not done today.... and I am sure the implications will be dear... Australia should be prepared for the worst...

And listen to this sarcasm: the judge considers holding Al Qaeda flag and follow its teaching of absolute hate towards all “others”, attack police last September, burn down businesses, shooting innocents, spread sectarian hate and threatening Australians are in fact “community building” . If a magistrate in our judicial system has such thoughts, God helps Australia.....

I now understand why Ali (who was shot by Wahhabi extremists and was let down by our judicial system) decided to give up on the system and chose just to isolate himself totally form the community. The system did not protect him because the legal system works on “minorities: who cares... kill each other”....

We will not allow the system to prevail... We will use all available venues to change this argument of “minorities: who cares”...

My statement on the very lenient sentence of Wahhabi extremist: Dangerous message into many directions

Today the judicial system has sent very dangerous message into many directions.

An extremist was not charged for assaulting high profile community member in front of hundreds of community members in the day broad light and in front of the media cameras.

The physical assault was not because of brawl on financial dispute or fight between neighbours because of the behaviour of their children. The assault was to silence high profile community member from criticising radical elements in the society. These radical elements were free in the last 2 years to shoot people in front of their homes, attack businesses and burn them down, set up facebook pages to spread sectarian hate and violence and physically assaulting people in the streets of our peaceful cities. All these based on radical teachings and radical interpretation of Islam.

The devastating impact of such verdict will be seen and felt across Australia almost immediately.

This verdict will give the radical groups inspired by Al Qaeda terrorist organisation teachings green light to intensify their campaign of terrorising community members and business owners that do not agree with their radical views. This verdict will give these radical groups moral boost for their extreme agenda that started few years ago.

This verdict tarnishes community members’ faith in authority’s abilities and will to protect them from religious radical groups.

After this verdict can I ask few questions: who in Australia will dare to come forward and cooperate with authorities on criminal activities conducted by religious radical groups?? After this verdict who in Australia will dare to contact authorities to report suspicious activities by such radical groups??? After this verdict how will authorities expect our cooperation to fight against radicalisation and crimes related to religious extremism???

All this come at a time when our authorities are declaring that there is real threats of terrorist activities in Australia in the awake of the return of hundreds of Australians fighting currently in Syria. Such verdict will leave authorities on their own to stop terrorist activities in Australia conducted by these groups. And this is another and the real victory to these radical extreme groups.

After today’s verdict, I hold authorities and the judge who made this judgment the full responsibility of my safety and the safety of my family’s. After this verdict I hold authorities and the judge that made the judgment the full responsibility of any consequences to the verdict.

We believe that this verdict will send clear message that Australians should not wait for authorities to protect them from radical groups and they should be prepared from now on to take law in their hands.

The judicial system has failed me and my family miserably. It actually failed large section of society who was hoping for harsh decision to stop future similar crimes.

The judicial system has set a precedent in supporting radical groups to terrorise people based on their political views. The judicial system has set precedent to encourage violence based on political views and disagreement. The judicial system today has stood hand in hand with Al Qaeda terrorists teachings by allowing them to bully and physically assault opponents.

This is very sad day for Australia. We, I and my family, believe that all Australians will pay heavy price for this wrong message sent by this unfair decision.

We call on the government and authorities to take all necessary means to correct this fatal mistake. I, and other community leaders and members, will be in contact with our government to explore how to correct this mistake.

The last question to our judicial system: do you want to see ugly action of extremist Michael Adebolajo in London repeated in the streets of Sydney and Melbourne??? Are Australians prepared to see extremists cutting the flesh of fellow Australians (and maybe eat their hearts and livers) in the streets of Sydney and Melbourne and other cities???This verdict could encourage extremists groups to carry on similar attacks. They would believe that they have immunity and green light from judicial system to do so...

For the last 2 years, no one extremist was convicted and sent to jail for his crimes related to Syrian crisis and their radical views related to what is happening there.

We have all reasons to suspect that for political reasons, authorities want to cover on these crimes and not making them issue of public interest. During the last few months since the actual assault, I was kept in dark on the progress of this trial. Despite my repeated communications with authorities, including communications with NSW Minister for Police, enquiring about the progress of the case, all these communications were ignored and no reply to them was received. And here we need to know what is Australia’s interest in protecting extremist groups and their horrendous crimes against fellow Australians that do not share their extreme ideology...

And want to thanks all friends and supporters who flooded me and my family with support messages. And I call on all of them to stay calm and do not take any actions in response to this verdict. We still have hope that other levels of authorities will work on turning back this decision.