Australian federal election: 7 September

[Angela Harlem]

Not merely likened, but that she attributed the traffic congestion in penrith to asylum seekers. You only need to look at our main freeway to see the problems these boats are causing.. If you happen to drive your boat down the M4, anyway.

[cobl04]

Lucky she's got sex appeal.

[Angela Harlem]

Well played!

[cobl04]

Check your facebook

[Angela Harlem]

this will be interesting! Thanks

[cobl04]

Hey all, I see Wilkie won the seat of Denison with a swing of over 50 fucking per cent in 2010, is that the biggest ever? Was that a big deal back then? I can't remember/didn't care.

[Axver]

A swing is only meaningful if the person/party receiving the swing ran in the previous election.

It was the first time Wilkie had stood for Denison. His two-party-preferred vote in 2010 was 51.21%; he had not stood in 2007, ergo the swing is calculated from 0% and thus it appears as 51.21%.

The electorate of Wills provides an even more dramatic example of how this can happen: Phil Cleary (yes, that Phil Cleary) won it on his first attempt in 1992 with a TPP "swing" of 65.7%.

[cobl04]

Oh.

I fucking love Phil Cleary. I'd vote for him in a second.

Anyway, I'm away this weekend. Tony is going to be our PM when I get back, and that is terrible, but hopefully he is soon ousted, the ALP gets its fucking shit together, strips its awful asylum seeker policy, makes same-sex marriage a party platform and we can look forward to being the progressive country we're meant to be, if not in three years' time, in six.

[Axver]

I hope you've all enjoyed the last full day of not having a completely humiliating fool as Prime Minister.

Savour the smell of an ALP government. It's going to be a long time before it smells like this again.

Fuck.

[Vlad n U 2]

Having extremely mixed feelings about tomorrow, a slight excitement regarding being an adult and being able to vote but uninspired about the choices on offer (I went Greens locally, SEP for senate [I chose SEP as the default, they're simply the only socialist/far left party on there even if they happen to be irritatingly sectarian and didn't bother with the preferences]) and despairing about the inevitability of Tone winning.

I wish someone could tell me it's going to get better some day but I doubt anyone could muster even an insincere reassurance for me.

[Kieran McConville]

Plus ca change...

But in fact, things do change. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. If any proof were required, consult the history books. Or Youtube.

It's been better before, it may or may not be better again. But it won't be the same.

The Howard government - a considerably more formidable entity than the current crew - in 1998 was a few thousand votes away from being a one-term footnote. And then it wasn't. Who knows what the future holds. An unfriendly senate, hopefully.

Not that I'm entirely comfortable. If anything sums up the last thirty years or so, it's an increasingly comfortable embrace of diverse social identities (by their nature, private, intimate), completely divorced from any concern with economic justice. Middle class wankery, in other words.

I mean, if the Australian electorate is angry now (I question that, but let's run with it for the sake of argument), what on earth is going to happen if things really turn sour?

[Axver]

History is, alas, not linear and progress is never a given. I suppose, if nothing else, today is the start of a great time travel experiment involving an entire continent. It's going to be interesting to wake up on 8 September 1953.

I think what disturbs me most about Australian political discourse - and this is a problem that has existed for my entire time in this country - is the commonly peddled myth that Labour are poor financial managers and that the Greens are financially irresponsible or reckless. Neither party has successfully countered the right-wing propaganda about this, though I think the Greens are doing a better job fighting the battle than the ALP are.

It just makes no sense. The "ALP can't run the economy" mantra is particularly bizarre from the Liberals when in the same breath they talk about the "Hawke-Keating-Howard" reforms. Uh, what party did two of those men lead? I don't know how the ALP have not been able to put this myth to bed. They are in fact pretty sound economic managers. I don't agree with some of their underlying principles since the eighties, but they are certainly not incompetent. I guess the main problem is that the Liberals can rely on throwing around sound bites of big numbers in the knowledge most people are economically illiterate, while a justification - even a simple one - from the ALP generally requires the willingness to listen to a little more than a sound bite.

As for the Greens, they have been more rigorous and transparent in having their policies independently costed and scrutinised than either the ALP or the Coalition. Unlike the Coalition, whose figures on Thursday were incomplete and half meaningless, we know what the Greens aim to do and how they intend to pay for it. They've been making a point of getting that message out, so hopefully the myth of "reckless Greens" will die an overdue death within a few electoral cycles.

[Vlad n U 2]

Damn it, I'll just vote for the Greens in the senate as well on second thoughts. If the SEP wants far left voters it better fucking stop acting like ultra left babies.

[Axver]

Time taken to get sausage at sausage sizzle outside polling booth: 2 minutes
Time taken waiting in line to vote: 5 minutes
Time taken to number 1-8 in Wills and 1-97 in the Senate: 15 minutes

Originally Posted by Vlad n U 2

Damn it, I'll just vote for the Greens in the senate as well on second thoughts. If the SEP wants far left voters it better fucking stop acting like ultra left babies.

Plus it doesn't help that their silly donkey vote lark favours the ALP and even the Coalition over the Greens.

[intedomine]

Voted below the line. Took 7 minutes, well worth doing, though it does get hard in the middle section. Rise Up occupied the last few spots. Had to do Below The Line because of the Sex Party's dodgy preferences. Still want them in through.

House of Reps a monumental waste of time. Higgins is safe as houses for the Libs.

[Axver]

Admittedly I'm a bit paranoid with so many candidates leading to so much potential to mess up numbers, so I was being very methodical with checking and double-checking my vote.

You know it's election day when you see a headline "Collision disrupts V/Line services" and you read it as "Coalition disrupts V/Line services". Of course, that probably will be a headline soon.

[Vlad n U 2]

Lots of anti Tone posters about, the sausage sizzle was welcome too.

Originally Posted by Axver

Plus it doesn't help that their silly donkey vote lark favours the ALP and even the Coalition over the Greens.

On one of them it has the Greens second and One Nation fifth. It's completely random.

Anyway, voted Greens for HoR and senate.

[Axver]

My local sausage sizzle proved wrong Tone's hysteria about massive price hikes on everything under the carbon price: the sausages this year were cheaper than in 2010!

Sausage, onion, tomato sauce, mustard, and bread: the taste of democracy in action.

[Axver]

Also I guess it goes without saying that I voted 1 for Green in both House and Senate. House I then preferenced Save the Planet and Socialist Alliance above the ALP, and my highest Senate preferences after the Greens went to the Pirate Party and Bullet Train for Australia, ultimately flowing onto the ALP. There was a particular pleasure in putting cunts like Stop the Greens, Rise Up, Family First, Shooters and Fishers, One Nation, and Australian Christians way down low, and the Citizens Electoral Council dead fucking last.

[Vlad n U 2]

I stayed with above the line for Greens since I found their preferences to be quite decent.

A little annoyed Socialist Alliance aren't running here, they at least have some sort of presence (their own paper etc) and come across as more likable than the SEP.