Inspired by a weird little exchange on Twitter where I asked “I wonder how different things would have been if John Watkins was made NSW Premier after Bob Carr?”, to which @BronwynHinz replied “I wonder how different things would have been if John Hewson beat Paul Keating in 1993 and Howard never became PM” – it got me thinking about those sort of “what ifs” in general and how small, innocuous events have so readily cascaded into creating the world in which we live.
The one “What if” that has always stuck in my mind for the sheer vastness of its global consequences is “What if Gavrilo Princip missed?”
Potentially no World War 1, so no World War 2, therefore no Cold War as we knew it, no global political architecture based on the fallout of WW2 (read UN, NATO etc)– the entire world in which we live could so easily have been a profoundly different universe if one bloke was 2 inches out.
So – while we are waiting for something to happen in Australian politics – what are the Australian “What ifs”? Those small innocuous events in history where the slightest change in circumstance or luck could have created a profoundly different Australia to that which we see today?
130 Comments
Pages: « 1 [2] 3 » Show All
Possum you missed your betting markets update on Friday last week
What if people stopped being so hypothetical?
What if the BP oil rig thingy in the Gulf of Mexico didn’t break?
Well, Obama would have visited Australia instead of being stuck in the USA
Rudd’s polls would have lifted
The ALP wouldn’t have got spooked
Rudd would have remained PM
Abbott would have lost the election
Abbott would stood down from the Coalition leadesrhip
“i’m on a horse” Katter would still be in Queensland
… and life would be good
Bloody stupid oil rig thingy
As Vicky Pollard would say “yeah but no but yeah but . …”
‘What if’ the American people had made a sane decision and voted for John McCain and the glorious Sarah Palin instead of the Obamination and Goofball?
Then America wouldn’t be owing $15 trillion and accelerating,the world wouldn’t be facing a double-dip, a nuclear Iran wouldn’t be running amuck and the Krudd’s ridiculous climate change grandiosity would never have seen the light of day…..
There would have been no radical electoral correction here or the one coming in November in the US and the Krudd would have still been our PM and Turnbull our Opposition Leader.
It’s a bloody stupid American voters thingy……….
‘Course they realise that ………. now.
Fat lot of use to the poor krudd….. now.
But do they even care?
McCain/Palin a sane decision? Now we know you live in alternate universe.
McCain/Palin was the raving lunatic choice – which is why all the fundies opted for it.
Oh my God! We have our very own Aussie Tea Party-er. Hello James K – I never imagined the words “sane decision” and voting for Sarah Palin could ever be in the same sentence, but thanks for showing that delusion who’s boss.
And if I squint my eyes I can almost see your logic from here (think Russia and Alaska).
A political “what if”, in which I was involved:
What if some citizens of Manly hadn’t campaigned against David Oldfield in 1995 and prevented him by the narrowest of margins from winning that State seat. Then Tony Rabbit wouldn’t have given him a job, he wouldn’t have had that fateful dinner with Pauline and there would not have been a One Nation and there would not later have been a cozy political niche for the old cuckoo John Howard to lay his Tampa egg in.
One more on the psephology bent.
What if the House of Lords had upheld the WA Seccession vote from 1933 (interestingly a non-Labor WA government went to a State Election championing this and it was upheld 68% but they were turfed out but the new Labor Government upheld the spirit of the referendum and sent a delegation to UK)?
Anyway from my calculations the following Federal Election results would have been different without WA:
1961 – Labor defeats Menzies, Calwell a hero
1966 – Calwell wins again (Howard becomes our longest serving PM)
Hawkie has a few more narrower victories during his stint as PM
Labor has a real majority in 2010
Serious one: what if the Labor leaker kept their mouth shut. How would’ve the campaign ran then?
I suspect Julia would’ve remained flat, dull and completely sterile but nonetheless they may well have drifted over the line…
What if the “Labor leaker” turned out to be another Liberal plant, a la Gretch? What if he/she/it turned out to simply be some conservative journo’s speculative fishing? The possibilities are endless.
Pedant @ 33: HA! You’ve just given me my favourite dinner party anecdote!
JK wasn’t it the maniac Bush and his crusade that got the US into trillion dollah debt. Or is this your usual flat earth rewrite of everything?
The great Leszek Kolawkowski wrote an historical essay in the 1970s, based on the assumption that the Nazis had won the Second World War. It was, in essence, an indictment of those inclined to minimise, in the era of detente, the significance of Soviet crimes against humanity. I haven’t been able to find it through Google, but vaguely recall it was published in either Survey or Encounter.
Incidentally, I can’t work out why anyone would spend money on buying Quadrant when you could use the funds to catch the bus to a library which has back issues of Encounter. It finally closed down in 1991, but used to publish real conservative thinkers, like Robert Conquest and Raymond Aron; not the two-bit provincial scribblers who fill up Quadrant these days.
Typo: Kolakowski. Must get thinner fingers.
Oh dear Kinky…..
You could try reading to inform yourself. Unfortunately I do warn you that it’s written in rather ‘plain’ english:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704320104575015072822042394.html
If Karl Rove’s prose is rather too ‘vanilla’ for your tastes, then here’s a ‘complex’ graph (wink,wink, nudge,nudge) for ‘ya:
http://blog.heritage.org/wp-content/uploads/obama_budget_deficit.jpg
If the world had warmed up much more in the 20th century
AND
There was a massive solar storm disrupting all satellite communications on election night,
we could have had this :
What if the Abbott spill last year had allowed Fran Bailey and the newly elected MPs for Higgins and Bradfield to cast their votes?
What if the person in the Abbott spill had not wimped out and not written “no vote”?
You do all realise there is an entire sub-genre of literature devoted to this sort of thing?
An apposite example in this context is A. Bertram Chandler’s Kelly Country, in which the Kelly gang’s sabotage of the train carrying the contingent of police troopers from Melbourne to Glenrowan succeeded (instead of being foiled by the local schoolteacher). Not wanting to spoil the story, suffice to say Australia ends up a very different place.
Bogdanovist @12
Speaking of Gore v Bush one that has occurred to me in the past is
What if Ralph Nader and the US Greens had withdrawn leaving Gore and extra 1-2 %??
No Iraq war?
A more successful Afghanistan campaign after 9/11?
Better financial regulation?
No giant tax cut for the rich?
Smallish US deficits 2000 thru 2008?
A far better US response to the a GFC that is experienced as a medium level credit crunch and recession instead of Armageddon?
Sigh
What if Possum stopped blogging and left us here just talking to ourselves?
Or has that already happened? Poss?
Nah – I’m still around Winston.
It’s just that I have nothing to say worth listening to at the moment while we’re all in the middle of The Big Wait.
What if Jack Pizzey hadn’t dropped dead of a heart attack seven months after becoming Premier of Qld in 1968?
(Or what if Nev Hewitt wasn’t overseas on 24 October 1970, and Joh lost the leadership spill 12-11, instead of winning with a forged proxy and his casting vote?)
d
http://www.alternatehistory.com/
the really biggie – what if that asteroid/comet/meteor missed 65M years ago and mammals never took over from dinosaurs?
or even further.. evolution occured more rapidly, and homo sapiens sapiens had by now been replaced by a more intelligent, less belligerent species?
Yes Dave and all lefties amongst us would be the lapdogs for the “more intelligent, less belligerent species” because…. well, that’s just what lefties do.
@74 David Richards, ah yes, that’s been done too: Harry Harrison’s West of Eden.
Thanks Mark – will have to see if I can find a copy
If John Hewson had become PM in 1993, would John Howard have done a John Olsen and just wait and strike for the leadership anyway?
I voted Labor in ’93 but I often find myself wishing Hewson had won that election.
It is not yet clear what impact Andrew Wilkie’s election in Denison will have on the federal scene, but if 32 Lib voters who voted for Elise Archer had voted for Richard Lowrie in the state election earlier this year, then Wilkie would likely have been in state parliament instead, and maybe no other independent would have emerged to rip Denison from Labor’s complacent hands.
I think a good “what if” for Queensland is the series of events contributing to the Mundingburra by-election and subsequent change of government. Would Kevin Rudd (working for the Goss Government before its curious demise) have run for parliament in 1998 without that happening?
And of course a good what-if that has already been flagged by Mumble long ago: what if Latham had attracted two less “Lemmings”?
What if Mark Philippousis had actually been a tennis player?
Good point. Beazley would lead Labor into the 2004 election. Assuming he didn’t win, by then he’d get the point that losing 3 times is enough and probably retire from parliament. Would Kevin Rudd rise? Or would Mark Latham then be the favourite choice to succeed the leadership? If so, how would’ve 2007 (or whenever) played out? Would Latham still have been beaten like that, or would’ve an increasingly tired old government had fallen? Perhaps Costello would’ve been leading the Coalition. If Labor did lose, without Beazley trying to undermine Latham’s leadership, perhaps Latham would not have turned out so bitter and ended up being a minister under Rudd or appointed to some nice embassy?
If only Whitlam’s Retrospective Abortion Bill had gone through, we might not have been plagued by Tony Abbott.
I go with Darryl’s suggestion/s @72
“What if Jack Pizzey hadn’t dropped dead of a heart attack seven months after becoming Premier of Qld in 1968? (Or what if Nev Hewitt wasn’t overseas on 24 October 1970, and Joh lost the leadership spill 12-11, instead of winning with a forged proxy and his casting vote?)”
But given the current big wait, I’d also add, what if the line-ball result in the seat of McEwen in 2007 had happened this time? Would we have had to wait a month for the re-check, re-count, Court challenge and then Court appeal to be determined before we could know who could form government?
What is Senator Bertie Milliner had not dropped dead of a heart attack, and so Bjelke-Petersen had been denied his opportunity to rort the Senate?
What if Abbott and co. had received enough votes to form government before their $11B budget hole was discovered?
What if Costello hadn’t appointed Henry as Treasury Secretary?
Oakeshott has been clearly in the tank for Labor and after Windsor’s gleeful phone-in last night on Lateline, he obviously thinks he’s got the pass he needs to fool his electorate.
I doubt Katter is that stupid but Oakeshott and Windsor will be toast at the next election.
What a very ugly alliance it’s shaping up to be.
The Libs can no longer just dance around the poisonous issue of Treasury and Henry.
Imagine if there wasn’t one big massive conspiracy to by everything and everyone to stop the Liberals getting elected. Imagine if treasury wasn’t filled with evil moles, hellbent on getting Labor reelected or that the laws of arithmetic weren’t biased in favour of Labor. I mean what if that nasty preferential voting law was just ignored this one election, instead of unfairly helping Labor and stupid conventions unfairly giving Labor the first shot at forming government. Whose rules are they? The nation’s or the ACTU’s? And how about our horrible Governor-General not accepting the will of the people and appointing Abbott PM immediately. Y’know who her son-in-law is, don’t you? She should resign in disgrace, or be immediately removed! Let’s not forget the Constitution. Annoying little document. Marx couldn’t have written such lefty filth! Everything is so biased against the Liberals!
JamesK – Oakeshott doesn’t need to fool his electorate. 50% of his primary vote support comes from conservatives, the other 50% from ex-Labor and ex-Greens voters. In two candidate preferred terms, a majority of his voting support comes from non-conservatives.
Windsor could vote for same-sex marriage, an RSPT, a carbon tax and the legalisation of intimate relationships with small furry animals – as long as he provides outcomes for his electorate, New England is his until he no longer wants it.
You should stop reading The Australian James, it gives you silly ideas
JamesK is getting nervous.
What’s the word…. Schadenfreude.
Labor won 1939 Griffith by-election by 8 votes if they had lost it they would probabaly have not won it in 1940 and indies would not have held BOP after 1940 Menzies would have remained PM and G J Coles the Henty indie would have joined the UAP. Menzies would be have been wartime PM etc.
1940 election Labor should have lost on 2PP they were in a clear minority they were very lucky.
What if Lang had refused to accept his 1932 dismissal = civil war?
What is UAP had contested Henty in 1940 rather than trusting that G J Coles was was good as an official UAP candidate?
JamesK, interestingly Katter said prior to the election that he would work with the Greens if there was a hung parliament.
Oakeshott is a strong advocate for the introduction of an ETS, and wanted to take things further than Labor were prepared to at the previous election.
Windsor regarded the modifications that he was associated with to the original Labor ETS, taking into account agricultural issues as one his major “wins”. Unlike Tony A. he certainly doesn’t believe that “climate change is crap”.
All these guys have personal majorities and followings in their electorates that would make most party members, Liberal or Labor, green with envy.
And Fairfax as well Poss?
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/independents-support-for-labor-would-betray-rural-folk-20100829-13xjq.html
No counter argument given just the less-than-subtle suggestion that it’s all a News Ltd conspiracy.
What’s next? I’m sure you could point out that I’m a bigot, sexist, Islamophobe, homophobe, racist (oh wait……. Oakeshott has already thought of that one……), xenophobe or something else less-than-human etc after nauseating inane etc. …. anything that saves the bother of a rational argument.
Do you agree with Oakeshott that The Nationals are racists Poss?
Go ahead gives us your your response.
Mine is a view Poss and incidentally not dressed up as anything other.
Moreover its a perfectly reasonable view. It has been expressed by many.
That of course doesn’t make it correct but it is patently not reactionary.
I’m more than merely well aware you don’t agree with it…..we all are.
If you have a valid argument to counter it, however, then save us the belittling smear and let’s have it.
That the argument that Treasury has been politicised is big news might just be because it is the truth.
If true, it’s a threat to our democracy ….. except apparently when it favours the Left….
By the way, perhaps you could also inform us as to which party did the seat of Lyne overwhelmingly support in the Senate?
Well it is Paul Sheehan. I think I’ve forgot more about Lyne before breakfast than he’s ever known in his life. I went over Oakeshott’s voter base in a post earlier this week.
Lyne is a 60/40 conservative seat – where Oakeshott gets half his vote from the non-conservative side on the primaries, and a majority of his vote from the non-conservative side on the two candidate preferred.
And yes – if you’ve ever known, met or otherwise ever had anything to do with the Nats in the seat – particularly the Hastings Nats – they’re the biggest bunch of racist, bigoted, corrupted bastards (see The Glasshouse) in dire need of a punch in the face that you will ever have the misfortune to meet.
I’ve personally witnessed members of the Lyne Nats half-joke at a public meeting that it’s a shame we can’t shoot the Abos anymore. Not that it was any sort of rare event either – I’ve seen the same arsehats hassle a young half Asian bartender with such charming jibes as how they’ve never fucked a slope before – it would have gone on and on unless a few of us threatened to kick the shit out of them unless they shut their mouths.
The saddest part is that they were actually shocked that anyone gave a rats about it.
I’ve seen plenty of flavours of pricks before – but those Nats in the Manning and Hastings valleys… that’s a special type of fuckwit disorder. Unless you’ve seen it, you don’t get it.
Yes, a Hewson or even a Peacock win would have saved our national character from its greatest stain.
Too bad we didn’t know what would happen and do a strategic vote. Especially as we ended up with most of Fightback anyway
Hmmm…. A few bad eggs does not a people make.
Was Mark Vaile a racist?
Only Nats outside of Lyne aren’t racist?
You get turkeys everywhere no matter what the education no matter what part of the political spectrum. For my money there are rather more of ‘em on your side of the spectrum. In fact the Left hold something of freehold property rights on vulgar sliming of fellow citizens.
Jonathan Greene’s two ‘girlies’ of ABC’s even-more-leftist-than-usual Drum, Marieke Hardy and Catherine Deveny spring to mind.
So much so that I’d be disappointed if the laudable Annabel Crabb stays on there.
‘Oakeshott’s latest via his mates says much more about Oakeshott than his predominantly conservative electorate not all of whom are ignorant.
And would Oakeshott have initially won his seat in a general election rather than a by- after Vaile resigned giving a two finger salute to his own electorate?
I reckon Oakeshott is being laid bare and I don’t like what I’m seeing character-wise.
I’ll bet many of the voters of Lyne don’t either.
Mind you I still think I’m gonna lose the last bet I made: $100 on the Coalition to win at $3.40!
Doubledang!
No James, (and yes, Poss), it’s not just Lyne.
I’m in Cowper, one up the coast. I’ve been told by one local Nat spruiking real estate that my local town was special because unlike other local towns “we got rid of all our blackfellas ages ago”.
Another told me just last week that I should have more children, because mine were so well behaved and “we need more white children”.
The second, while glad to have played his part in getting the local Nat re-elected, was ecstatic that Katter would end up in a position of influence, saying that as a farmer he expected Katter to achieve more for him in the next three years than the Nats had done in a decade under Howard. Despite being an active member of the Nats, he wasn’t concerned at all about who formed government as long as whoever it was made concessions to the three amigos, especially Katter.
For what it’s worth, while the local Nats are breezily dismissive of Gillard, often with more than a dash of outright sexism, they hate Abbott with an absolute passion, and generally view the Nats’ subservience to the Liberals with the greatest disdain. (And then they vote for them, go figure.)
But I must say that as far as the local Nats go that the ones who are active in the branches are a hundred times more prejudiced than most of the people who vote for them, who really are just locked into the Lab-Lib horserace and vote for the Nats purely because they’re the local entrants in that race. And also, for all that I find him lazy and not to my taste politically, that Hartsuyker himself (our Nat member) hasn’t struck me as being particularly like the branch members on the occasions I’ve met him. At least if he thinks like the rest of them he has the sense to keep his mouth shut about it to voters.
Havent looked at this for a bit. Old JK been busy entertaining (somewhat off thread) Karl Rove on Bush probably a little partisan ….possibly like Hockey on Abbott. And possibly even larger black holes.
Of course they didnt have a GFC in the USA so it would entirely appropriate to compare Bush and Obama.
Must be getting a little anxious now J. A nice Xanax may get you through the necks tweak could be a bit ordinary for you and yours
Pages: « 1 [2] 3 » Show All