Politics after Aston, a farewell to Yunupingu and the forever despicable Dutton

In this episode: the result of the Aston byelection – was it a big Labor victory or a bad loss for the Liberal Party?… and celebrating the life of Yunupingu: he was a great man of Australian political life. The work on the Voice to Parliament will continue, despite the best efforts of the small men of the Liberal and National parties to derail it.

The Aston byelection resulted in either a big win for the Labor Party or a big loss for the Liberal Party, depending on which perspective people wish to choose. Most of the analysis during the week has been on what went wrong for the Liberal Party, but the focus should be on what the Labor Party did right to win the seat. Byelections have many political issues that can be read into them – most of this analysis tends to be wrong – but the result in Aston seems like it’s an accurate reflection on what’s happening in federal politics at the moment: good news for the Labor government; bad news for the Liberal Party.

Yunupingu died during the week, campaigner for Indigenous land rights for most of his life. He first came to prominence with the Gove Land Rights case in 1971, which gave rise to the Woodward Royal Commission, the Aboriginal Land Rights Act, which in turn gave rise to the Mabo decision in 1992. Yunupingu was a highly respected member of the Australian community. His legacy on reconciliation, treaty, Voice to Parliament, land rights: he created the signposts for the where Australia needs to go on these issues – there’s still some way to go on this – but Australia will finally get there, despite offensive opportunism of Peter Dutton and the Liberal–National Coalition: the small men of Australian politics.