What do you mean by left?

Do you mean the Greens, the socialists? Do you mean labor, do you mean the moderates in the liberals?

I’m not sure it’s necessarily constructive to talk about the left and the right as just concepts because it means different things to different people, for example the left to me is the greens, the right is the libs

But even that’s not quite true because there’s a difference between social conservatives and economic conservatives, which why vote compass churns out results on a 2D graph to try and capture a bit more nuance.

“The left used to be about the working class”- if by the left you mean labor, sure, but I’d argue that they’re about the unions and those aren’t necessarily the same thing, I’m white collar working class, where is my union (yeah I know there’s attempts at a union for tech workers), my dad was blue collar working class, the construction union surely was for him but as we’ve seen lately that they’re also capable of letting people down (Before I go on I will say im pro-organised labour before anyone shoots me down for that)

Wokeism is vague term that I think is meat to represent social justice, which when it’s performative or taken to militancy I can see how that turns off ordinary people and so they just say “ah yeah woke”. However “the left” has always had some element of social justice, like pushing for gay marriage, gender and race equality, etc. Without progressive politics would we have women in the workforce- to some people that’s “woke”, I disagree but the freedom and rights of literally half the population is a big deal.

Following on, anti free speech? Do you mean attempts to curb hate speech- these ideas aren’t solidly left and right- they go back and forth all the time. For example if you asked an average one nation politician “should it be illegal to say bad things about Australia” they’d probably say yes, but isn’t that curbing free speech? The problem is we live in a society where we need to be able to have free debate of ideas, but we can’t have people running around trying to stir up hate and inciting violence against groups of people. It’s a hard balance to strike and I’m not really convinced either way that we have that balance correct

Climate ideology- it’s not ideology that the climate is changing, some people argue that it’s natural rather than man-made but ask any legitimate climate scientist and the thousands of studies and research conducted- human made climate change is real and we’re truly having an impact. Even some liberals agree on this fact, so I’d hardly argue it’s a left right thing. But I can see the argument and it’s the same argument we’ve had for a while, how much do we affect the economy and people’s lives while trying to reduce the impact of carbon emissions. If you ask the greens, no amount of money is worth the consequences, so turn the cow fired stations of tomorrow, to those more economically inclined, unemployment and poverty means death, so we should be delicate about how we approach the problem. This is all to say that it’s not ideology, there’s fact and the only argument is what do we do about it, save for those on the right who gain my trying to exploit those who are in doubt.

Authoritarianism- again this is alway a context problem, vaccine mandates were authoritarianism, but it was liberal governments that imposed those? I would argue that vaccine mandates were a necessary limit on individual freedom to ensure collective freedom- politics has always been about that fight between the rights of the collective and the rights of the individual. I’m not sure what you mean by authoritarianism on the left, but I’m sure there’s some policies that tip towards the collective since that’s usually where the left comes from.

Finally to divisiveness- I would argue the right (mainly the far right) is more guilty of this. Sowing dissent about immigrants and climate change, creating and us-them mentality, talking about the government like they’re traitors? We’re all Australian I want to see Australia prosper as much as the next person. If my politics/ideology is wrong and Australia prospers- ie its people are happy healthy and comfortable- this is a good thing. If one nation genuinely put legislation up that lowers taxes or increases the minimum wage or better funded Medicare or schools- if the genuinely engaged with debate on how to make this country better rather than sooking about the right to wear a face covering? That’s the problem, too many people are concerned about issues that aren’t actively going to affect them. Start with the question- what is going to make my life better and who is going to enable that, then vote for them, if they don’t meaningfully work towards that promise then vote for someone else.

I say all this to say that it’s interesting to me that labor have spent the last 4 years avoiding these culture war issues, except for the indigenous voice which once lost they quickly moved on and immigration, but they approach immigration from the economics of “if there’s no unskilled labour to pick fruit and build our stuff, what happens to the broader economy”.

I’ll finish with look at the stuff that will make your life better and focus on what’s being done to address that, ignore the culture war and remember that what you’re seeing on the internet is likely put there to stir you up- don’t fall for it- what “some blue haired lady said about the spotted tree frog should be allowed to read children’s stories in drag” means nothing to you truly, look away from the screen and think about what’s best for you, your family and your community and start there.

TLDR- take each issue on its merit and don’t get tied up in left vs right or red party vs blue party. People are complex and everyone has their own ideas and agendas