It was inevitable, but kinda fun to watch anyway. The result of yesterday's election is that Labor have total control of the lower house of parliament, and are likely to control the upper house. Green vote was up by 10%, Libs vote down by 10%.
I watched the coverage on the ABC and it was really interesting that almost no-one thought that the incredible polling by the greens meant anything. Either they're really quite stupid, or they're hoping that the Greens will just "go away" in the same way that the ultra-right of Hanson has. The only commentator willing to say anything was the ABC's election analyst - and the potentials included a rep from the Libs and Labor and two anchors from the ABC. He alluded to some of the following, without actually saying it and without any of it being picked up on by the anchors...
Just a short run-down of the political landscape in Australia as I see it:
- Liberal - unlike their name, they are far from liberal, but rather the far-right
conservatives
- Labor - slightly left-of-center (but with factions all over the place) and have
been slowly moving to the right for quite some time. The biggest
indicator in recent times was the Federal election in which they sided with the
conservatives on social policy
- Greens - far-left and staying there
- Democrats - hell, who knows ;)
So we've got all the old right-of-center voters (oh, about 10%) who used to think that the Libs were OK deciding that Labor is the less nutty of the two. Then we've got a bunch of voters who used to think that Labor was socially responsible (hey, lookit that, another 10%) who have now switched to the real left-wing party.
And yet the Libs just kinda sit there stunned, not having a clue why they're not getting any votes. They were sent this message last election, when they were dumped from power. Maybe they'll get the message this time. And maybe, just maybe Labor might also sit up and listen to all the people deserting to the Greens.
In fact, on reflection the message from the two major party reps at the broadcast:
- Libs - the Greens handed Labor the votes. Wah. Occasional reference to the impending Apocalypse of a Labor majority.
- Labor - have you noticed how good we are with health, education and safety? Let me just run through it again for you. Sure, you've already voted, but I have nothing more worthwhile to say.
Glad it's over really.