The Harry Potter Primer to Oz Politics

[Cartollomew]

http://blamebrampton.livejournal.com/171797.html

My guess would be that it's written by a "small l" Liberal (which in Australia is the imperceptibly more conservative party), but one without strong partisan feeling.

I sympathize.

To sum up the feeling of many of the people in my generation at the moment - neither of the major parties are even vaguely on the same wavelength as we are. Both sides are playing the election ultra-carefully, which means no risky policy (besides which, there isn't a lot of money to be used making promises anyway).

The minor parties are all either too tiny to be relevant or pretty much batshit insane (possibly as a result of there being only token differences between the 2 major parties).

Fortunately for me, I generally agree on principal with one of the minor parties, but not all people are so lucky. I suspect there'll be a lot of protest votes (either blank or filled out but left blank for both the major parties) at this election.

[Lellybaby]

The sad fact is that our age bracket accounts for I think maybe 24% of the vote while 36-70 accounts for nearly 50%.

They get more votes by providing services to that age group then trying to lobby for us.

It will also only get worse as the Baby Boomers (Baby Boomkins) continue to retire.

Edit: Polling data shows that the Greens could pick up as many as 10 senate seats, making them a powerful broker in the world of politics.

On a more fun note... that article was hilarious for those that know all the characters

[Cartollomew]

On a more fun note... that article was hilarious for those that know all the characters

I found it pretty amusing.

My housemate draws many parallels between this election and the one just gone by in the UK, where they ended up with a hung parliament and the conservative Tories having to share power with the not-so-conservative Liberal Democrats.
His argument being that there's a chance we could end up with a hung parliament here and a bunch of Green seats in the lower house.

I'm not convinced that's either likely or a good thing, but who knows.

I am pleased as peaches though that we don't have a first-past-the-post voting system like those crazy Poms.

[Rathollorn]

Reads to me like it's very written by a lefty tbh. Or at the least someone who supported Rudd last election.

Either way AEC as at 10:30 AEST 71 ALP, 71 Coalition, 1 Green, 3 Independent
So I'm guessing 71-71 with 4 seats still to be called and 4 votes that have to be bought.
(EDIT - AEC just moved a seat from Independent won to Doubtful - 12:30pm)
(EDIT 2 - AEC just moved a seat from ALP won to Doubtful making it 70-71 in the coalition's favour with 1 Green, 2 Independents and 6 too close to call - 1:30pm)

The nice thing about Australian politics is that the winner has to ask the Governer-General's permission to form a government and in essence has to convice her that they can govern. If I were Ms Quentin Bryce I'd tell whoever came to see her to bugger off back to the polls and this time try putting forward some policy.

The Independent Rob Oakeshott made the telling remark that what the result should underline for the major parties is that the Australian people are sick of the spin, the political blame game and the staggeringly unimaginitive policies put forward this election.
For mine the campaigns went full-tilt negative right from the outset and instead of trying to convince the country they should be leading the nation they concentrated on trashing the other guys (and conservatives always do that better than lefties). Plus, moron that he is, intellectual gnat and award winning git Tony Abbott did very well on the campaign trail talking to people.

Starting a new party for the elections in about 6 years time (I figure it'll take that long to get organised) - Party for Progress anyone?