Australia’s duopoly is cruel, captured and must be destroyed 

At the risk of pissing everyone off, both the ALP and the Coalition cannot be trusted to govern humanely, intelligently, honestly and competently in their own right. Those days are long past. Parliamentary politics as it stands cannot save us from ourselves.

We are drowning in relevant examples. In the last sitting week before parliament adjourned for 2024, a barrage of horrorshow legislation passed with duopoly support – because it was cruel enough.

Legislation designed so refugees can be warehoused internationally, shipped around to client states for a fee; laws that strip mobile phones from asylum seekers in offshore gulags. Bills that restrict public commentary. Laws designed to keep children away from truth, keeping them safe, not from a world free of climate catastrophe and the hatred that cycles when you support genocide, but from TikTok and Facebook. A moral crusade, sepia-tinted nostalgia, cosy and comfortable. We’ve been here before. 

Western parliamentary politics has been captured and restricted. It is locked in an eternal tussle between do-fuck-all establishment centrists that specialise in pretending to be progressive while enjoying fossil-fuelled genocide, and far-right authoritarian pricks that gorge vampire fangs deeper into necks while also dabbling in the odd spot of ethnic cleansing. The crucial difference between the two “sides” of politics at this point is that the latter gets to cheer about the debasement of humanity more enthusiastically. 

Either way, buy Lockheed Martin stocks.

(Don’t, but you know what I mean.)

As Noam Chomsky puts it: the best way to control a population and convince them they’re free is to restrict political options to a limited window, but within that window allow vigorous debate. That is where we are at. 

As long as no one protests the new fossil fuel plants being built by both major parties, or mentions the genocide of Palestine supported by both major parties, or wants to escape the military-industrial con of AUKUS supported by both major parties, we are allowed to rant endlessly about culture war bullshit. As a passive observer to this phenomenon, I cannot tell you much about it, other than that it appears hyper-focused on who is allowed inside various bathrooms. 

We cannot be this distracted right now.

The world is stuck in a death spiral. If we’re being specific (and cheery!) about it: the world is stuck in multiple, overlapping death spirals. 

In the USA, Australia and the UK, the major parties are captured by forces working against our wellbeing, both as nations with unique needs and as a species that, at least in theory, attempts to enjoy being alive. These forces are powerful and they are already in control. 

The climate is being ravaged because, for a relatively small number of oligarchs, it is more profitable to destroy the world than it is to save it. Identically, we wage war eternally against ever-shifting enemies that “hate our freedom” or “need liberating” because wars and their spoils are insanely profitable. With growth as their mantra, western weapons manufacturers need to manufacture war. Off to save the world again, one pipeline at a time. 

These are oligarchs and corporations with more money than the Pharaohs, who “donate” (“purchase” is a better word) to all major political parties and fund propaganda media machines feared and loved by all politicians. Media barons and Silicon Valley Incelbros that purchase Overton window-shifting brain rot social platforms, pump them full of the dweebiest meme-based propaganda, tilting elections towards their own personal enrichment – all the while attuning minds en masse towards hatred and consumption. As a reward for Musk’s services to Trump, the world’s richest man has been appointed to oversee how much government money his direct competitors, like NASA, are awarded. There is no pretence with American oligarchy anymore. And in Australia, if you are paying attention, we are not so different.

Next year, it will be our turn to make the choice between an Anthony Albanese government and a Peter Dutton government. I urge us all to make a different choice. There is another way. Vote for chaos. Put the captured major parties last. 

Because, as a broad concept, trusting the problem to solve the problem seems a terrible idea. A terrible idea to try once, let alone repeat it for all eternity. Like turning to market capitalism to fix the climate crisis caused by market capitalism, trusting corrupt, cruel, cowardly politicians to fix the problems caused by corrupt, cruel, cowardly politicians really should have been a non-starter. 

Take the NACC. Australians, furious and upset after the barbarity that was Robodebt, were promised an anti-corruption body with teeth. This was a popular election issue after the pigs-at-the-trough engorgement orgy that was the Morrison Government. Albanese even stood loudly on the issue. One election cycle later and we are left with a con protecting the rich and powerful responsible for the deaths of thousands of Australians from any repercussions.

It could not be clearer that none of these people have our best interests at the forefront of what they are doing.  

Both of these ghouls support the slaughter of the most oppressed people on the planet by an apartheid cult, Zionist psychopaths armed to the teeth by the American war machine. Of Australia’s two non-options, Dutton is the more openly “feed the Arabs into the baby killing machine” with his rhetoric, attacking protests as anti-semitic and full of terrorists from Derka Derkastan. But Albanese’s complicity with Israel and his ducking behind Wong-shaped missives of grave concern while doing precisely fuck-all about one of the worst things humanity has ever done, will open eyes to his rotten politicking nature. He is not a man, he is a politician. 

Either way, it’s not a very traditional Labor value, is it? Stomping down on the most oppressed people in the world. And it defies credulity to think that Captain Double J, the guy with the single mum/anecdote, is unaware just how seriously Tory this stance is. Albanese is going to need to fight himself or give up on the posing. 

This cannot continue. 

Without serious oversight from the not-yet-totally-sold-out and depraved members of Parliament – free of captured party machines – we will remain stuck in a perpetual state of corruption, cruelty and a dumbed-down nonsensical mainstream mirror world deprived of truth. This would be a perpetual state of not good enough – not when the stakes are this high. 

Australia’s parliament needs a rupture. A fracturing. A right fucking spanking. (And, ultimately, a grand unifying moment in which it gets its shit together.) 

Fortunately, we are not helpless. Australia’s preferential voting system may be the thing that allows us to save our democracy from the authoritarian state capture befalling the West. 

The major parties are owned, so the only logical strategy for this election must be to dilute the power of the duopoly as much as possible. Make them work with real people. Make them need to negotiate on everything, with everyone, from crocodile obsessed weirdos like Bob Katter to people with working brains like David Pocock and every cooked motherfucker in between. 

Why on earth would we keep doing the same thing over and over again as humanity writes itself off into oblivion?

Parliamentary politics cannot save us – but we might be able to save parliamentary politics.