Blue Rey Edition

The Senate voted in favour of kids doing a pledge of allegiance to Australia in school.

Today in “oh God, what happened now in Australia politics?” Tanya Plibersek of Labor tweeted in January that she wanted a pledge of allegiance in schools - something she’s been a fan of for years. And naturally because a rational person’s response to that is “oh, that’s weird… let’s not do that” Liberal senators Eric Abetz and Concetta Fierravanti-Wells decided to run with it and hold a vote in the Senate that schools should “consider” a pledge of allegiance.

It passed 51-9 with only the Greens voting against it. A weirdly American hyper-patriotic practice that will almost certainly used to create social divides between people over “nationalist pride” has bipartisan support between Liberal and Labor.