So how does having 3 right wing parties all fighting somehow not result in a Labor landslide?
Our Fair Country: The Commonwealth of New England
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Labor landslide but Nationals emerge as biggest opposition, leading to them growing until winning in the 90s?
I could see the seat numbers easily being the result of PM Joh, however having the same fair electorates as today gets rid of that possibility.
Change the electorate boundaries so the Nationals are winning 50% of seats on 30% TPP with massive malapportionment of rural areas and then, yes this Australia makes sense.
Because remember, the Bjelkemander was of two parts, both ridiculously over-representing the country, but also in SEQ eliminating every Liberal seat possible, so that the Nationals had no competition on the right.
Because their political views are rather similar, and, if they merge, the bitter competition ends.
They were both centre-right parties.
Honestly it would be more like the minor party joining the liberal defectors. But it really doesn't matter, Lyon's party could collapse, and the liberal Nationalists defectors can just start a Liberal Party.
Oh yeah forgot that the Bush family never went to Texas. So he'd have even less pull really.
No, the two parties had radically different politics up until the 60s. The UAP/Liberals was the party of the elites and the middle class. Policies have traditionally been grand, high minded
The Country party was the party of the farmer and the grazier, with an ideology vacillating between free trade and agrarian socialism. The party was extremely pragmatic, with its only solid policy being its hatred of the city elites, especially bankers, who stood in the way of the farmer and grazier. The party had a radically different view on government intervention in the economy, favouring vast government stimulus for rural areas when the going got tough.
The party's vague ideology is best summed up as Countrymindedness. Wikipedia describes it best:
""Countrymindedness" was a slogan that summed up the ideology of the Country Party from 1920 through the early 1970s. It was an ideology that was physiocratic, populist, and decentralist; it fostered rural solidarity and justified demands for government subsidies. "Countrymindedness" grew out of the failure of the country areas to participate in the rapid economic and population expansions that occurred after 1890. The growth of the ideology into urban areas came as most country people migrated to jobs in the cities. Its decline was due mainly to the reduction of real and psychological differences between country and city brought about by the postwar expansion of the Australian urban population and to the increased affluence and technological changes that accompanied it."
No. The Nationalist/UAP/Liberal party was centre-right. The Country party had no real ideology other than Country over City. The party advocated for what was best for the country at the given time, free from ideological restraints. The best example is their economic policy, which was summed up by it's opponents as ""capitalise its gains and socialise its losses!"". When the country was going well the party advocated for free trade, low taxes and railed against tariffs. Conversely, when the going got tough in the country the party strongly pushed for state support for primary industries, high tariffs to protect australian agriculture from foreign imports, and high taxes to pay for it all, though with tax exemptions for farmers and graziers, naturally.
The divide in the right-wing up to the 40s wasn't liberal vs conservative, that divide didn't begin until the parties conversion to Keynesianism under Menzies in the 50s.
Okay, so they merge in the 60’s then.
Okay, but there was certainly a trend towards centre-right.
So make the divide in the 50’s then.
The POD of this TL is hundreds of years before Australia was a country. The butterflies can make any of these ideological shifts happen earlier or later, or they can bring in politicians who never existed who shift the entire political landscape. We’re not discussing Nationals becoming the major part of Australia in our timeline, but in a world with no WWII and a powerful British Empire, so things are gonna unfold differently.
Given the debate around this, @Kanan , could you give us some canonical clarity on Australia's political evolution.
Australian federal election, 2018
The poor performance of the National Government, which was plagued by scandals under both Prime Ministers Hanson and Truss was a major factor in their defeat. Several senior members of the party had declared their support for Turnbull, and retiring cabinet minister Tony Abbott announced he would support the Liberals in the upcoming election, and that the party's continued support for former Prime Minister Pauline Hanson was worrying. Only a few days before the election, the former Prime Minister had been arrested for physically assaulting an aboriginal elder at Uluru, in an altercation over the name of the rock formation. With the party refusing to condemn the action, both Clare and Turnbull gave a joint press conference stating that such an action had no place in modern Australian society, and that both parties strongly condemned these actions.
In the last days of the election, momentum began to shift away from Labor towards the Liberals, who offered a more moderate platform over both the Nationals and Labor, with a focus on economic growth and lowering taxes responsibly when possible, much unlike the Labor platform of increased spending and higher taxes on the wealthy. This effect was attributed to Warren Truss suspending the Nationals campaign a week before the election, effectively ceding their ability to seriously contest the election. While most polls showed Labor would win a majority of the primary vote, this last minute shift in the electorate saw their primary vote held to forty-five per cent, and the Liberals up to thirty five per cent. Other parties captured almost eight per cent of the vote, but were unable to win a single seat.
Firstly, thank you for all the effort you put into this.
Secondly, 1976, hmm, too early for Joh. Does the dismissal become a quasi-coup?
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It's a bit odd that half of National's supporters voted Labor as second choice, or at least, that's what I think might be happening here?
The Nats are closer in policy to Bob Katter than the otl Nats. So it's not unheard of for Nats to also vote for Labor.
Actually, without a Second World War, France, Spain and the Low Countries probably wouldn't be using CET.
Or at least would need another reason to adopt it.
Or at least would need another reason to adopt it.
The Low Countries changed to CET as a condition of joining the Zolleverin.
France changed to CET to facilitate better trade with the low countries and Germany, and to better coordinate with Italy, with whom they have a trade union with.
Spain followed suit. Portugal is debating the switch.
This is also why Poland and the Baltics use CET, the Zolleverin mandates a single timezone.
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