Hmmm....
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- Written by: The PR Blog
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Senate Majority Challenge: Controlling the House is key in federal elections, but no laws pass without a Senate majority (39 out of 76 senators). The Coalition (30) and Labor (25) fall short, leaving 21 crossbench senators as pivotal players.
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Historical Shift: From 1901-1949, the "first-past-the-post" system favored major parties, limiting minor party representation. The 1949 switch to proportional representation (14.29% of votes guarantees a senator) enabled crossbench growth.
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Crossbench Evolution: The Democratic Labor Party (DLP) held influence in the 1950s-60s (around 6 senators). The Australian Democrats peaked in 1998 with 9 senators but later faded. Today, the Greens dominate the crossbench with 12 of 21 seats.
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Labor-Greens Alliance: Labor has strategically supported the Greens, creating a stable left-leaning crossbench, unlike the fragmented minor right.
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Minor Right Struggles: In 2022, minor right parties won 11.12% of votes (enough for 6 senators across states) but only secured 2 due to vote splintering. Current right-wing crossbenchers: Babet, Hanson, Rennick, Roberts (4 total).
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Shared Minor Right Values: Despite differences, minor right parties agree on skepticism of climate narratives, rejecting "woke" ideology, pride in Australia, smaller government, and support for free enterprise and speech.
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Four Strategies to Maximize Minor Right Power:
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Merger: Unfeasible due to AEC rules and risks diluting distinct identities like the Liberals.
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Preference Deals: Tried in 2022 but failed as 1/3 of votes leaked to the Coalition via preferences.
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Summit: Leaders pick the strongest candidate per state, but consensus is hard to achieve.
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Grand Primary: Each state holds a public event where minor right members vote for the best Senate candidate. A joint ticket (e.g., One Nation/Trumpet of Patriots/Libertarian) is formed, maximizing votes and legitimacy.
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Grand Primary Benefits: Offers transparency, energizes supporters, and could attract broader public attention via live-streaming. Losing candidates’ supporters are likely to respect the democratic outcome.
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Call to Action: Supporters of minor right parties are urged to share the Grand Primary idea with party leaders to boost Senate representation.
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- Written by: Op-Ed Guest Post
Legacy.com is a website where you can search what it says is “the world’s largest obituary database,” with nearly 50,000,000 entries accumulated since the site started publishing death notices in 1998.
The Web site hosts obituaries and memorials for more than 70 percent of all U.S. deaths. Legacy.com hosts obituaries for more than three-quarters of the 100 largest newspapers in the U.S., by circulation. The site attracts more than 30 million unique visitors per month and is among the top 40 trafficked websites in the world.
Although it does not appear to have an “About Us” page right now, I was able to locate one from 2019 [and one at a different URL with no apparent date. Both say it is “a top-50 website in the US with more unique monthly visitors than Wikipedia, Netflix, or LinkedIn.”
The site also claims to “offer users a permanent, shareable space to commemorate the lives of their loved ones” with “5000+ funeral home, newspaper, and advertising partners.”
Given the claim that Legacy.com offers a “permanent” space for commemoration, the recent discoveries by an alert researcher raise some interesting questions.
Read more: Millions of Entries Erased Overnight from World’s Largest Obituary Database
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- Written by: Op-Ed Guest Post
Victorians could go to prison for up to five years for hate speech under new anti-vilification laws proposed by the Victorian Government.
Under the proposed laws, it would be an offence to “incite hatred against, serious contempt for, revulsion towards or severe ridicule” of a person or group based on their sex, gender identity, or race.
It would also be illegal to “threaten physical harm or property damage on the ground of a protected attribute.”
The new laws would lower the legal threshold for prosecuting people for vilification and would add gender identity, sex, sex characteristics, sexual orientation, and disability to the list of protected attributes alongside race and religion, which are already protected.
Online, these laws will apply to anyone, anywhere who vilifies a person in Victoria, although the government acknowledges that this may be difficult to enforce.
Offline, these laws will apply to both public and private interactions.
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- Written by: Op-Ed Guest Post
Americans are now being forced to think through the first fake conviction in the history of presidential politics.
As an historian, I am really bothered when I hear lawyers on television describe these proceedings as though they were somehow related to the rule of law and the normal legal process.
It is clear that what happened to President Donald J. Trump in Judge Juan Merchan’s court was not a legitimate conviction. Nearly every element of the prosecution was false. Therefore, the outcome is false.
To say President Trump is now a convicted felon – as the left and its propaganda media allies are practically singing – is to legitimize the most corrupt judicial event in American presidential history.
The burden of proof is not on President Trump. He remains an innocent citizen framed by an astonishingly corrupt district attorney, judge, and Biden Justice Department.
Don’t take my word for it alone. Consider what a host of experts have to say.
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- Written by: Op-Ed Guest Post
It would be easier to ignore the World Health Assembly’s (WHA) deliberations in Geneva this week, but the opening address of the Director-General, Tedros Ghebreyesus, deserves a response. Both the WHO and its director are completely divorcing themselves from reality, illustrating how dangerous and unfit for purpose the WHO has become. There is clearly no way that any vote should proceed on anything of importance that the WHO may be required to implement in the coming week of WHA deliberations.
Tedros’s emphasis was on pandemics, and the faltering agreements intended to address their risk, the new Pandemic Agreement, and amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR). While these are watered down and the Pandemic Agreement may not even get to a vote, his continued justification for centering greater coordination and power at the WHO speaks volumes about the problem we face.
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- Written by: Op Ed David Leyonhjelm
In Australia, conservatives and libertarians tend to get along.
Neither has sympathy for the woke, neither declares their pronouns, chooses their gender, or seeks to cancel those with whom they disagree. They both believe in things such as equality before the law, the presumption of innocence, parental responsibility, religious freedom and democracy. Indeed, some conservatives tend to think that libertarianism is merely conservatism under another name.
That is not the case though; libertarianism and conservatism originate from quite different places.
It is worth understanding those places so that when they do diverge, it is not unexpected. It also helps those who are unsure of their own position.
Read more: Libertarians and Conservatives : Similar But Different
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