thoughts on news thingies from the last week
Feb. 2nd, 2026 10:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tielanpipe bombs in perth
Finally on the 26th of January ("Australia Day"), there was an Indigenous protest march in Perth.
During the march, someone threw a pipe bomb into the crowd. It was packed with metal shards and nails and suchlike. He failed to light it correctly so it didn't explode.
He was white. He was a he. That's all we know about it. And even that was mostly reported by the people who bring online news commentary, rather than mainstream media. (I saw it first with Cheek Media, myself.) You know why? Because "we aren't putting out his name because he is accused of..."
FUCK THAT SIDEWAYS WITH A RUSTY SPORK.
They had ZERO compulsion about publishing the names of the Bondi terrorists.
But a terrorist action done by a white guy? (It wasn't even billed as 'a terrorist action'. Well, excuse me for bloody well thinking that a FUCKING HOMEMADE PIPE BOMB tossed into a group of people who are supporting a particular racial identity isn't 'a terrorist action'.)
Oh no, can't publish his name!
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conservatives, right wing, and please let our electoral system hold
In other political news in Australia, our 'right wing' is going down. Hard. Not only is their current leader (she's technically a "conservative moderate" and has lasted since the election) on the way out, but the Racists And Arseholes Party (known more conventionally as 'Pauline Hanson's One Nation') is on the rise - at least in sentiment. Whether that sentiment can gather the centre-to-right-wing conservatives in Australia is another question.
Our holding institutions right now are pretty much the Australian Electoral Commission and common decency, but how long those will hold is another matter. Watching what is happening in the US, being told what is happening by billionaires who own all the media properties, having a point of view RAILROADED through thanks to a lack of media discernment, and general outrage headlines...
I can't see my conservative friends here in my electorate (strongly conservative - one of the very few suburban electorates that hasn't gone "Teal") voting PHON. And they have to vote, and they can vote for the "least worst" option - ie. preferences. Plus, we have a very large percentage of "not born here" Aussies in this electorate, possibly one of the reasons that Old Guy down the road (and a bit further in) has his house decorated with PHON and Trump flags. Yes, Trump flags. In Australia.
Great moogly googly.
Anyway, we know the guy - he stumped up on Election Day 2025, put his little sandwich board up, stuck a plastic sleeve with the "Trumpet Of Patriots" party 'how to vote' card on, and went away.
That sleeve was touched pretty much twice. Once by one of us volunteers for the other parties gingerly looking to see what they'd recommended (even the conservative volunteers were eyeing it like it was fresh dogshit), and then once by a woman from the AEC whose job it was to go around collecting the 'how to vote' cards for each party in each electorate, so that the AEC could archive them.
We left the sandwich board after we packed everything away, and it was gone the next night.
In the end, hard right-wing support isn't non-existent, and probably never will be, but the current state of world politics, where right wing conservative parties get hollowed out by hard right wing racist fucks is sincerely worrying. I've never thought Australia is immune, but it's a worrying trend to finally witness happening, even if nothing comes of it. Grievance politics is hell on the system.
Maybe it mitigates with mandatory enrolment and preferential voting - we can hope - but if it does, that's on the system and the institution, not on anything else. Heaven knows the parties and the politicians are NOT HELPING.
NOT. HAPPY. JAN.