Independent Australia
17 May 2025

Voters weren't sick of hearing about Gaza legacy media journalists seem tired of talking about it, writesTom Tanuki.

WHAT AN ABSOLUTEjoy to listen to all the sweeping societal diagnoses from full-time salaried political correspondents in the wake of the election. Some Canberran tea leaf-reading from professional Parliament House hallway creepers.

Im most thrilled of all to learn that the electoral defeats of theGreenswere down to Australians being sick of hearing about dead kids inGaza.

The Ages chief political correspondentDavid Crowereckonswe all thought the Greens went too far, being hyperbolic and offensive in their accusations toward Albanese of complicity in genocide and backing public protests that became platforms for antisemitism.

Greens SenatorDavid Shoebridgehas been sharing various post-electionvideosof him resolutely fending off similar media accusations of failing the electorate. They keep asking him if he regrets caring about the genocide. They wont let up soon, because theyre not interested in any answer to these questions that the Greens could give. Its a foregone conclusion for them. The results came in, they reckon, plain as day: Were over it. The genocide lost its new car smell.

Gaza casualties expose collapse of international law

As the Palestinian death toll rises, the future of international law hangs in the balance not just for Gaza but for human rights the world over.

Fair play to Crowe: he identifies the fact that unseated Greens leaderAdam Bandtwas endangered from the get-go by theAECsredrawingof Melbournes electoral boundaries, dumping traditionally Greens voters and roping in a bunch of typically Liberal-voting areas. But he and his peers also seem disinterested in the obvious: the wealth of targeted politicaladvertising.

Lots of pundits dont seem to like to dwell much on this, perhaps because they think that advertising means the usual old signs and placards. And talking about advertising doesnt lend much to punditry.

But I attribute much of the electoral failure for the Greens in particular, which we know happened despite their national vote rising, to targetedcampaigningby right-wing lobby groupAdvance Australia. According toCrikeyeditorCam Wilson, Advance Australia was the biggest non-political partyspenderin Australia on not mere 'political advertising', but specifically on online targeted behaviour modification.

Im talking about targeted Meta social mediaads.

Itsdemonstrably effectiveif you believe former Facebook executiveSarah Wynn-Williams, who recentlyrevealedthat Facebooks top brass all understood in 2016 that their big data and big advertising offerings were the single biggest factor in delivering the Trump campaign its presidency.

Advance aimed a little lower than that all their members wanted to do was unseat Greens MPs like Bandt andMax Chandler-Mather.

The campaign was great. It presented as non-partisan, and it targeted swing voters in key Greens electorates with plain-speakingCant vote Greens. Not this timemessages.

It so happened that their ad campaign bolted into the mess of an election campaign that pitched violently mid-way toward fear of change. Everyone became spooked by Trumps first100destructive, fascist and inept days in office, so their millions of dollars of targeted fear-mongering coincided with a climate of fear that paid off.

But they threw themselves off a cliff with the Greens, achieving precisely nothing for the Australian political right-wing. All they did was put Bandt out of a job, when they werent giving racists and neo-Nazis something todofor a while.

Theyre trouting as loudly as they can about their Greens victory to make up for their damning failures. But they cant hide it, and I trust their big donors noticed. They have shown they can deliver a negative outcome to halt change, as theydidwith theVoice Referendum, but they have no talent for delivering constructive change to the right.

If anything stirred my cold heart this election, it was the notion of a balance of power going to third party, minor party and independent votes (the smattering of decent left ones, that is, rather than the endless constellation of ridiculous, squawking far-right parties). And indeed,Victorian Socialistsdid well, and theyre building something impressive for the long-term nationally. The Greens also saw a small national vote swing to them, but all-in-all, that notion was dashed.

There was a strong swing against the Liberal Party, and for the first time in many elections, they tabled an actual, distinct point of difference that stood out to the layperson beyond differences in policy platforms that consume the political types. The distinct difference they tabled was that every woman and her dog could see how repulsive, self-serving and insincere defeated Opposition LeaderPeter Duttonwas.

ELECTION LESSON #1: Australians want the Far-Right-crazy dialled down, not up

While Saturdays election result was an outstanding Labor win, it was also a clear and powerful message for our polity: Australians want the Far-Right-crazy dialled down, not up.

He actually gave people convincing reasons to vote against him for once. None of them are usually that keen to stick their neck out that much.

And he did lose, because its easy to see that re-elected Prime MinisterAnthony Albanesedidnt do much to win. Cleaned up his speech and avoided gaffes, and let Dutton trip himself up, perhaps.

I know that on Gaza, Albanese and Dutton auctioned off to Australians competing opportunities totrashour democratic rights and protections to please the Israellobby. To stifle anti-Zionism in Australia, they both either seriously discussed or actuallylegislatedtrashing academic and studentfreedoms, instating mass deportations, declaring martial law and mandatory minimum jailsentencesfor politicalexpression.

Albanese and Dutton were both led up the garden path for months by an organised criminal whofedthem orchestrated acts of violent antisemitism as a ploy to bargain with law enforcement. They were blinded in that by their eagerness to shut uppro-Palestinianactivists.

Their active complicity indeflectingand drawing attention away from the slaughter and starvation of Palestinianciviliansfor political gain has been inexcusable.

And they were duly aided in all of this by legacy media, not least among which has been Crowes team of political correspondents. Theyve all been delighted to focus more ondemonisingprotesting university students and legal, non-violent CBD rallies than the growing mountains of dying children.

Now the election is done, weve sat through two weeks of these hacks dissecting how Advance Australias campaign investment must actually show that the electorate never has cared about all those Gazan innocents. I think what their coverage shows is that they thesejournalistsjust dont want to talk or think about Gaza anymore. They want us to all shut up about it.

Many of them are lifelong pundits, with decades of experience in abstracting or ignoring Arabpainthrough multiple bloody Western wars. Now we want them to care? Perish the thought.

Tom Tanukiis an IA columnist, a writer, satirist and anti-fascist activist whose weekly videos commenting on the Australian political fringe appear onYouTube. You can follow him/X@tom_tanuki.

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