We had a federal election last week.
It was a red landslide. Red in Australia, thankfully, isn't like red in the US. In fact, our blue seems more like the red in the U.S, although in the 90's, it very much seemed the other way around. Maybe both major parties were just assholes back then. The best thing the Liberal Party (blue) did back in the 90's when they were in power, was introduce our gun laws, after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996. I was 12 or 13 at the time, so it meant I felt a lot safer growing up as a teenager, knowing that not any crazed-random on the street was carrying around a gun anymore. Granted, a few get through the cracks, as is the nature of things, but the majority of people, outside of the army, aren't carrying a fucking firearm.
Anyway, so the election was a red white-wash - a red-wash? Labor have 90 seats, which is a record lol. I'm not that surprised the result went that way. The LNP leader looked like Voldermort and was basically a second-hand Orange-Toddler, so people had a lot of reasons not to send a vote his way. He lost his own seat too lolz. And he's from my neck of the woods, but not in my seat, so I couldn't vote him last. All of my friends did though, who are in his seat. Glad to see him gone tbh.
Unfortunately, the Greens MP who held my seat, lost as well. We have preferencial voting here in Australia, which is confusing at the best of times. It basically means that whoever gets the most votes, usually doesn't actually win lol, because of preference votes. It means that every vote cast counts toward an outcome, which is why prefencing is so important on the ballot paper. Labor and Greens voters (and some independants) will generally preference each other, and the shitload of batshit-crazy parties will generally preference LNP, because, you know, they are basically Hitler. But even all those parties couldn't save them this time lol. My vote was for the Greens, as it has been for 25 years, with a Labor preference. I am a Greens voter, despite me thinking some of their policies aren't realistic. At the end of the day, my values align with them the most. I don't particulary like Labor, but if my preference can steer a vote away from Voldermort, then that made me happy enough. So even though LNP actually have the most votes here in Brisbane, Labor wins because they are in second place, and the Greens are in third, so the Greens votes generally go 2/3rds toward Labor, which gives them enough votes go overtake LNP. It's a very interesting system that has been in place since 2001. I did have to laugh at an Independent MP who claimed victory a few days ago, only to have postal votes come in and make her actually lose. She was up on stage, hands in the air, celebrating. I laughed SO hard.
Anyway, it'll be interesting to see if Labor does much to help Australia. They were our current government anyway, so we sort of already know what to expect. The Greens leader has also lost his seat, so that's two party leaders ousted. I vote Greens, but I didn't particularly like him all that much. There are better Greens MP's than him, in my opinion, but we may only have a few left. Four Brisbane seats were Green, and now we're barely hanging onto one (it's one of 10 seats still too close to call).
But anyway, I'm all politics'ed out.
Loading comments...