Y’all have first past the post / winner takes all, don’t you? There was a vote recently and “labor” won from what I’m reading?
Labor, coalition, independents, etc. what kinds of parties are these? I thought Albanese was a “cunt” yet his party seems to have won again? What’s going on?
Labour is a centrist party that historically emerged from the union movement. They occupy a center-right to center-left position.
The Liberal/National Coalition is right to far right, though they used to have a center right wing (“wets”). The liberal party mostly represent the interests of the rich and business - liberal as in laissez faire, not liberal in the US sense. The nationals have historically represented the interests of farmers and rural communities.
Independents are representatives without a party allegiance. When your electoral system is designed to reflect the will of the people - ie it’s not first past the post - you can have independents or minor parties.
Labor, not Labour
I’m curious as to why this is. I thought Australian English used labour as the spelling of the word while labor was only in US english. See https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labour/employment-and-unemployment/labour-force-australia/latest-release for an example of a government website using the alternate spelling.
There’s an entire section of the ALP Wikipedia page that explains it.
Thanks for the tip! It does explain it quite well. I have more questions - but also, since it’s from the earlier part of the 20th century, likely only a professional historian would know some of these answers…