Australian prime minister calls election for May 21

Can't wait to see this smug, happy-clapping idiot out on his arse. It's just a shame that there are no competent candidates to replace him.

3/5 odds-on. Morrison to stay in power

The elections in Hungary showed where the wind blows these days. Orban absolutely destroyed the lefties opposition

Hungarian elections a bellwether for world politics?

Never come across that one before.

The winner will be the one who can bash China the most.

Australia is in real trouble when the two top contenders are such incompetent lightweights. I can't predict which way things will go right now, but my wish would be a hung parliament where the Liberals for a minority government with the support of some right-leaning independents who make it impossible to pass bad legislation. And in the Senate I'd like to see the Liberal Democrats, One Nation and the United Australia Party holding the balance of power.

But given how easily most Australians allowed governments at the state and federal level to bully them into complying with vaccine mandates, vaccine passports and lockdowns, I'm sceptical about most people using their votes to punish these career criminals.

But we mustn't lose hope...

Funny how one person’s dream is another person’s nightmare, isn’t it?

It is. As long as we're not hurling rocks at each other and can respect reasonable differences, things will hold together. That's getting harder, though, as the main parties and especially their leadership are widening the gulf between themselves and the people they're supposed to represent a bit more every day. I don't trust them at all, and wonder why, with all the constant BS they toss out, anyone can still vote the same swamp-dwellers back in time and again.

Unfortunately I can't vote there anymore, but at least I'm not paying taxes to fund oxygen thieves like Scomo and Albo anymore.

Now I just pay taxes to the thieves in Nagata-cho and don't even get to vote them out either...

The focus on the two PM contenders and their popularity misses the point. In a parliamentary government like Australia has you don't get to vote for the PM. You vote for your MP, Member of Parliament. Their popularity may or may not be affected by how people view the MP contenders. That MP has to represent your district. and obtw, Mr. Morrison is an MP himself with a district he represents in Parliament. His electorate is only one district, not the nation as a whole. So it is a very different dynamic than electing a US or French President.

But given how easily most Australians allowed governments at the state and federal level to bully them into complying with vaccine mandates, vaccine passports and lockdowns,

I guess it never occurs to you that a lot of us agreed with the mask mandates, vaccine passports and lockdowns. Surprised? You shouldn't be. A lot of us thought the requirements made sense, were aligned with science and remain appalled at the selfish idiots who made life hard for the rest of us by refusing to do the right things and thus prolonged the misery for everyone. Some of us will never forgive it either. The greatest crisis since maybe WWII and you have a band of idiots who won't help. Oh my "freedom" is more important than whether or not I further spread a pandemic and get more people sick or even killed. No conscience, no thoughts of making any kind of sacrifice for the good of your nation, just whinging selfishness. Good thing we had better quality people during WWII than we appear to have today.

t must come as a surprise (and I suspect as a disappointment) to those people that those pesky democracies keep on having elections, even though they do their best to disparage them by claiming that when the electorate fails to elect the right-wing populists they crave we’re just compliant, brainwashed ovines.

And if it comes to pass that the Liberals do get over the line in some form or another, I hope you're just as accepting of the result as if the ALP gets in.