This post misses another reason for voting being rusted-on Labor. The alternatives are more interested in virtue signalling than actually forming and keeping government. Labor have delivered meaningful results to Australians, in some areas they’ve not delivered but they’ve lost every election where they promised solutions to those issues.
Minor parties have historically blocked forward progress. The ETS, the HAFF, the logging ban in Tasmania, etc. Labor has historically delivered forward progress (Renewables, Superannuation, etc).
The ETS was widely considered to be worse than doing nothing for climate issues. Rudd’s government refused to talk to third parties over the ETS, and exclusively negotiated with the coalition. A year later the Gillard government actually talked to the cross bench and much, much better policy was passed.
The HAFF was passed, but only after the cross bench managed to eke out amendments to make it actually commit to doing something.
Both of those policies started as pure virtue signaling, and ended up doing material good only in spite of Labor.
(I don’t know anything about the logging ban)
life’s pretty good right now 😎
