From Ballot Box To Abyss, by Alan Moran.

No party receiving more than two per cent of the vote proposed cuts in the social areas which comprise two-thirds of the budget and must be addressed if the nation’s books are ever to be balanced. The Senate’s activism and changed conception of its role reinforce such fiscal other-worldliness.

There has been a major shift in voting across Australia. Of the Senate votes registered on Saturday, the left and right minor parties obtained 35% of first preferences. In 2013, minor parties attained only 21%.

The Islam issue:

Radical Islam was avoided as an election issue by the Coalition and by Labor (which is heavily reliant on Muslim support).  The parties making this concern a feature of their policies — the Christian Democrats,  Australian Liberty Alliance and One Nation — collectively won 7% of the vote.

The economy:

Both Andrew Bolt and Craig Emerson have argued that the ALP would have done better had it offered a balanced budget.  This is unlikely. The continued success of The Greens and other minor parties, as well as the ALP itself, shows that most people’s eyes blur when fiscal responsibility is mentioned.

The ALP made only the most cursory attempts at pretending to it would get the budget balanced.  The Coalition planned a deficit that would remain at over $5 billion after five years, even with a fair breeze and following wind. …

The fact is that all but a handful of voters favour looting the rich and future generations (via budget deficits) and most hold this view in the blithe assumption that it will have no effect on future productivity and income levels.

Compared to the other parties of the Left, the ALP is a paragon of fiscal rectitude. The Greens care little for this since their paradigm is one where income levels are accepted as rising inevitably and automatically.  Others on the Left have no interest in macro management.  They and most other parties have also been easily persuaded that regulations forcing the abandonment of cheap energy in favour of renewables will pose either a trivial cost or actually reduce those costs.

So true. I have long been dismayed at how members of the Labor Party and the Greens whom I have known don’t so much have occasionally unrealistic views on the economy, as they are simply not interested in how the economy runs.

We have reached a state of affairs whereby democracy, as we know it, is eating itself.  The people see little merit in balancing the budget and are certainly not prepared to vote for measures that involve personal sacrifice. …

The tax burden, if it is to be felt anywhere, must therefore fall on those who have little political importance because they are foreigners or affluent or too young to vote.  The myth is fostered and believed that creators of wealth and generators of income will not be dissuaded from investing, that they will not recognise their capital and industry are better deployed outside Australia.  None of that matters — for voters, the issue is how to tap the wealth created by others.

Daresay it is not too much of an exaggeration to say we are now led by parasites, who encourage an ignorant, cargo cult mentality. It is not, to use a word of the left, “sustainable”. Something must change, but it looks like it will get worse before it gets better.