Sign In
0 Items (
Search
Comments (10)
I won big on the 2016 U.S. presidential election. I am not a gambler, but the betting site was offering 5/1 in the lead up to Election Day. Five-to-one in a two-horse race? Even I know that is a gimme. How do these online gambling operations stay in the black? It was with a sense of déjà vu, then, that on Friday night – in consultation with the editor of Quadrant Online – I clicked on to Sports Bet to arrange my second wager in two-and-half years and found the Coalition at 5/1. By Saturday afternoon the odds had drifted out to 7/1! So, my advice to the electronic bookies of Australia: don’t take the political experts at the ABC et al seriously – nobody else does!
There is, of course, a touch of hyperbole in that. Obviously, there are trendy and well-heeled Green-Left types who take the ABC, PC orthodoxy, the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) hoax and speciality coffee seriously, but the rest of us? Not so much.
“Independent” Zali Steggall will now make the trendy and well-heeled seat of Warringah a world leader in “climate change”. Good for her and her globally-funded Get Up! backers. On the other hand, ordinary Australian patriots, the “quiet Australians” as Prime Minister ScoMo put it in his mesmerising victory speech, are now free to get on with their lives. Tony Abbott’s dignified concession speech – a performance no less mesmerising than Scott Morrison’s – made the excellent point that George Soros’ money only goes (as of yet) so far in Australia. Abbott took a hit so others might live to fight another day.
This Christian theme is more apt for a Federal election than any I can recall. Bill Shorten, someone I once spent time with and found to be personable and courteous, might still be personally sympathetic to Christian understandings. I don’t know. And it is not, strictly speaking, relevant. What I do know is that Shorten’s attempt to caricature Morrison as a narrow-minded religious bigot who believed homosexuals were going to hell betrayed a misunderstanding of what it means to exist a free society. Roger Scruton might have explained it best when he spoke about the delusions of modern progressives in The Uses of Pessimism: And the Dangers of False Hope (2010). Modernity has been an experiment in a post-tribal paradigm: our advanced way of existing “confers security and freedom in exchange for our consent – an order not of submission but of consent.” Morrison had responded to a reporter’s original question about gay people going, or not going, to hell perfectly well: “I support the law of the country and I always don’t mix my religion with politics and my faith with politics.” It was Morrison’s freedomist refrain that Shorten, the progressive, derided as contrary to his PC religion. Who, we might ask, is the real bigot here? The fate of Cardinal Pell and Israel Folau has not escaped anyone’s notice.
The real tragedy for Bill Shorten, in my humble opinion, is not that he led the Australian Labor Party to a second defeat. It is that this ostensible traditional or right-wing Labor character became the front man for left-wing PC bigotry. Was it just me or was his heart not really in so many of the policies he delivered? If we were living in a normal world, I would probably be a right-wing Labor man, but we are a long way down the yellow brick road by now.
Some people believed that the death of Bob Hawke so close to the election would result in a sympathy vote for the ALP. But when I thought of Bob Hawke, who I voted for in 1983, 1984, 1987 and 1990, I didn’t think of Bill Shorten – the image that came to mind was always Scott Morrison, a man who is comfortable in his own skin, like Hawke, and thoroughly pleased with his lot as a regular Australian. Shorten, as a public figure, has always struck me as man who sold his soul to a cult in vain bid to obtain worldly prominence. There is another Christian moral in there somewhere.
In my 2018 Christmas Eve post, “The Ghost of a Christmas Past”, I suggested – rather than predicted, to be fair – that Scott Morrison could win on Election Day if he adequately made a case that the Coalition represented some kind of respite from the remorseless PC encroachment of the Labor and the Greens. Morrison turned out to be a brilliant – and more or less solo – campaigner. The reason he was so dazzling, I suspect, is that he is an undivided and integrated person. Marriage has liberated him, not shackled him. The family life has not encumbered him but blessed him with two miracles. His passion for the Sharks has not limited him but given him a knockabout community to enjoy. And Christianity, contrary to Shorten’s appraisal, has not turned Scott Morrison into a narrow-minded bigot but given him the grace, humility and fortitude to address the real fanatics in our society. They revealed themselves during the campaign for what they really are, from Adani and genderless birth certificates to Shorten’s anti-Christian jibe. A majority of Australians realised that Scott Morrison – if not the Liberal Party as a whole – does constitute a potential respite from PC madness. Perhaps we might start with protecting Christian schools, Mr Morrison.
Very well put. The foundation of Morrison’s victory was the economic debate, but I can’t help but feel the Folau issue and the de facto sacking of the Queensland worker who had the temerity to question Shorten about income tax rates at the top of the scale set warning bells ringing for many Australians.
We were being delivered at accelerating speed to a bad destination of intolerance, political correctness and the destruction of freedoms of conscience, thought, speech and religion. At the tiny margins in 2PP votes by which elections are won or lost, enough people realised that the Australia they loved risked destruction at the hand of the green left and Labor, and voted to resist.
This is all very nice, but I still wouldn’t trust Morrison any more than I would Turnbull to deliver on an end to PC in Australia. I mean, even Abbott never attempted that. He handed money over to the ABC, didnt repeal 18C, signed us up to the Paris Agreement, and ran with the marriage equality plebiscite. Etc. etc. Can you really imagine Morrison being harder line than Abbott?
I saw some commentator suggest that Morrison owed his victory to the fear campaign that Clive Palmer funded and ran, and Morrison just rode in on the back of it. I certainly didn’t see a great Liberal campaign, so he may have been right.
Sportsbet were especially stupid. They paid out for Labor before the night started.
No mention of Turnbull in his Victory speech, has more significance than has been acknowledged. Morrison has symbolically cast Tunbull off, and with many Turnbull acolytes throwing in the towel, hopefully is ready and ABLE to return to the man he was, stopping the boats. Tony Abbot was the first person mentioned in his speech, I find this significant.
While I heaved a huge sigh of relief as results showed that the Greens and their ALP running dogs had been defeated, like Alistair I have little confidence in Scott Morrison’s willingness or ability to make any significant headway against the powerful leftist forces overwhelming our western culture throughout the Anglosphere.
Time will tell, but Morrison has been given something of a generous handicap allowance by the ignominious departure of the worst of the “bed-welters”, and the humiliation of the despicable Turnbulls who should surely be laughed out of Australia once and for all.
While the loss of Tony Abbott is regrettable, it is an ill wind that blows no good. Abbott’s absence should at least deprive the mischief-making media rabble of the opportunity to beat up fake leadership contest nonsense.
“How do these online gambling operations stay in the black?”
.
For the most part by putting up initial prices to a market percent of around 125% (sometimes much higher, like the 159% market Sportsbet have for Shorten’s replacement, or shorter like the 107% for the 47th Parliament, which is typically the case in a small field) , giving them a gross profit of 25% if people bet in accordance with the prices. But of course people don’t, and so the bookmakers adjusts the prices in line with their exposure, who is making the bets, adjustments by other bookmakers and their own assessments, aiming to make a profit whoever wins. Thus Ladbrokes dropped Labor’s price from 1.23 to 1.18 after someone (Turnbull I hope) put $1million on them.
.
They also rely long-term on people who believe fallacies like “Five-to-one in a two-horse race……..is a gimme” – one, even two swallows do not make a summer. I missed seeing the 7/1 with Sportsbet, 7.00 (6/1) being the best I saw.
The real tragedy for Bill Shorten, in my humble opinion, is not that he led the Australian Labor Party to a second defeat. It is that this ostensible traditional or right-wing Labor character became the front man for left-wing PC bigotry.
It isn’t a ‘tragedy’. We are well rid of him but the Labor Party seems to be reverting to the old guard despite the loss – not at all understanding that Australia has moved beyond what I call “fibro politics” (yes, you saw Bowen yesterday in Smithfield standing in front of the very fibro which was his family home – the man has learned NOTHING). I have also coined another term which I think applies today and that is “nouveau educated’ – the first generations of university-educated to emerge from the working class with pent up grievance and victimhood. The old “you go and show them they can’t treat us like that’ mentality which has been so DESTRUCTIVE for Labor.
Alistair, you won’t see Scott Morrison trying to destroy PC or anything else. He will try to mend fences but don’t expect a vigorous attack on ‘the institutions’. He will use language which IMPLIES the futility of hatred and ideology (which the Left has in spades), but they are way too obtuse to get any of it!! Subtlety isn’t their strong suit.
how do they stay in the black? Because whether a horse comes 1st, last, or drops dead, they get a cut. The betting site didn’t pay you a cent; your winnings come from the losses of the dumb saps who voted on Labor.
Like that blockhead who bet a cool *million* that Labor would win.
Yes, you profited from his stupidity, but so did the betting site. And if you had been shrugging off a loss as well worth it on the odds, they would have again made a profit.
And remember in the long run, you *can’t* win; luck and knowledge cancel out. Only the bookies win. And now that the betting sites aren’t reflecting election results, they aren’t even useful as polling substitutes.
Gee assigning Bill Shorten any attribute of ‘character’ seems inconsistent with the evidence.
We saw publicly, at least, from the ‘workers mate and saviour’ profile he sought in the Tasmanian mine issue he was always a main chancer. He was fine with the pandering to selected constituencies with Labor’s policies, entirely consistent. Observers knew he was into big and bigger government to treat all ailments, real and imagined. One problem, Shorten missed out in convincing voters in the seats that mattered. The polling told us, consistently, he was never the people’s choice for PM. Morrison unplugged the dam wall on Shorten.
Having rolled Labor/Greens the Coalition now has to work very hard to turn the advantage of a majority in the House of Reps into a sustained advantage for the ‘quiet Australians’, current and future. No easy task with an economy at risk and customary Senate posturing but they are now right in the fight. Expect the oppositionists to be out in force for the next 3 years when they emerge from the safe spaces, already out there with the newly found climate ‘emergency’.