Positives From The Election

While there are many reasons to lament the result of the election over the past weekend, there are some upsides. Here are a few.

Positives for me in this election result:

1. Australia is now far less likely to go to war for foreign countries to fight people who are not our problem. A large part of the LNP are Neo-cons, it is good they will have no power. Albanese has said he is open to putting troops on the ground in Ukraine, but Labor have a far more effective anti-war segment than the Liberal party, so our chances of going to war are less.

2. The LNP's claims of being good economic managers correctly fell on deaf ears. Scott Morrison's LNP government, of which Dutton was a part, dumped more stimulus money on the economy than any other government in our history, and they helped initiate the current housing crisis, and homeless crisis. It's good that Australians didn't believe these claims by the LNP to be economically responsible. They aren't.

3. Student debt should be forgiven. Boomers and older Gen X got free university and promptly turned around and indebted millennials and Zoomers who wanted degrees. That it will in part be forgiven is moral and good. Uni should be free but subject to strict intelligence tests for entry.

For those who think it should be run privately to make profit like a business, I encourage you to read this article from Macrobusiness here. Turning universities into profit centres has made degrees products that can be purchased, it has made students customers who should not be offended, and it has made lecturers and teachers the store clerks who make sure the students or customers are passed no matter what. This has destroyed our university sector.

4. The Greens lost badly, it appears. Praise God.

5. Maybe the right-wing parties will learn from this that hyper individualism is as dumb as communism...but that's more just wishful thinking...

6. The Church will be increasingly motivated to speak out, because Labor are more likely to put pressure on Christians. Not ideal, but probably needed to stiffen our spines.

There is a lot to not be happy about. But we do not win this country back by relying on the political results. We win this country back by being the hands and feet of our Lord, just as the church has done many times in the past. The darker things get the more distinctive that our light will be and will need to be.