What Was All That About, Then?

That was...interesting. We all knew it was going to be close but surprisingly, given there were three quite safe independents already in the lower house, there was almost no talk of the possibility of a hung parliament in the last days leading up to the election. Now all of a sudden we're realising what happens when both major parties campaign on a platform of "the other party sucks" for long enough. There's very little definitive difference, at least as far as the general public can tell, between the major parties.

Their leaders, sure. Abbott's an insane religious conservative who I wouldn't trust to balance a home budget. Gillard's unmarried, to the left of the majority of her party, and a lot less self-assured. But as far as actual party policies, they've been growing closer together for as long as I can remember and now it's Labor, the supposed left-wing party, that wants to filter the Internet and has no interest in ending legal discrimination in marriage laws. I actually voted for Stephen Conroy last, after even Steve Fielding, because of the Internet issue.

This is how I see things happening in the short term. The ABC's tipping both Labor and the coalition to wind up with 73 seats. Bandt, the Greens MP from Melbourne, will probably ally with Labor. (If Wilkie takes Denison, I expect he'll do likewise, but either way the seat would be either a Labor MP or a Labor ally.) Katter, the crazy anti-science independent from Queensland, despite what he says, will almost certainly not coöperate with Labor on a policy level. That gives them 74 each and practically speaking leaves the choice in the hands of the two remaining independents, Windsor and Oakeshott. Even if Katter, Bandt and Wilkie all surprise me, five men, with maybe 2% of the national vote between them if they're lucky, will wield the greatest amount of political power in the country.

They call this democracy.