Democracy Sausage finder
May 17, 2019 4:14 PM Subscribe

Democracy is hungry work, so democracysausage.org helps Aussies find a polling place to suit their democratic and saturday barbie needs. It's federal election day in Australia.
posted by adept256 (200 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite

Just on my way to the polling place now - the local public school. Democracysausage.org tells me that they have bacon and egg rolls, so that’s breakfast sorted.

They can’t offer any actually good candidates, but you take what you can get.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:21 PM on May 17, 2019 [6 favorites]

But can you... uh... watch how the sausage gets made?
posted by clawsoon at 4:40 PM on May 17, 2019 [6 favorites]

My (U.S.) polling place is right down the road from Friendly's, so democracy tastes like ice cream.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:01 PM on May 17, 2019 [2 favorites]

Voted above the line in the senate, largely because my writing hand is injured. Had a very hard time finding six parties that weren’t racist loons, anti-vax, or bible thumping misogynistic zealots.

Finding it very difficult not to feel like democracy is totally broken right now.

But the bacon and egg roll was solid. So there’s hope.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:03 PM on May 17, 2019 [10 favorites]

Camdenville PS apparently.
posted by pompomtom at 5:05 PM on May 17, 2019 [3 favorites]

No queue, no ID, very friendly volunteers and hot sausages. And the campaign ran for 5 long weeks. A++++ will be legally required to vote again.

The lady who was monitoring the ballot boxes said green for the house, purple for the senate, and I said oh those are suffragette colours! She laughed and said it was very appropriate then.
posted by adept256 at 5:28 PM on May 17, 2019 [5 favorites]

Marrickville PS has a #democracydog photo booth, with treats and bandanas for your political animal.
posted by zamboni at 6:06 PM on May 17, 2019

Whaaaaa??? A government helping voters find a polling place? Surely not.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:06 PM on May 17, 2019 [5 favorites]

I've done my search and found a place that offers a sausage sizzle, a cake stall and a plant stall. I'm voting below the line for the senate so I've got my rsi brace sorted.
posted by h00py at 6:16 PM on May 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

Whaaaaa??? A government helping voters find a polling place? Surely not.

Democracysausage.org is not a government site. It’s just some interested citizen sausage aficionados.

This is the AEC polling place locator.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 6:18 PM on May 17, 2019 [5 favorites]

Where AEC is the Australian Electoral Commission, an independent statutory authority that oversees the Australian electoral system.
posted by zamboni at 6:25 PM on May 17, 2019 [3 favorites]

Wish I'd checked this before I voted, a disappointing lack of food at my local polling place.
posted by Coaticass at 7:37 PM on May 17, 2019

I was just asked by Democracy Sausage to provide a review of the pictures of democracy sausage that I posted on Twitter! I can now feel I have fully participated in the great democratic project.
posted by drnick at 7:49 PM on May 17, 2019 [4 favorites]

I got a great bacon and egg roll at my polling place today (Albert Park PS).

Beautiful day in Melbourne - perfect weather for kicking out the govt.
posted by awfurby at 8:24 PM on May 17, 2019 [7 favorites]

I'm working the polls right now (on my lunch break) sadly there is no sausage sizzle here!

Voted above the line sadly- should have voted early so I could pick some of the groovy individuals but hadn't made up my mind yet.
posted by freethefeet at 9:06 PM on May 17, 2019 [2 favorites]

Got a sausage, with egg and bacon - then ate a second one cause my partner thinks anything but pure sausage is blasphemy. Then went to the cake, then took the kids to the free jumping castle!! Excelsior Melrose Park Primary, you really outdid yourself.

Queues were a little crazy when we got in; the AEC volunteer was approximately 200 years old and I swear she was doing her best impression of Flash from Zooptopia. She was literally moving so slowly I thought she had to be taking the piss.

I look forward to checking back here tonight as the calls start getting made.
posted by smoke at 9:19 PM on May 17, 2019 [3 favorites]

Whaaaaa??? A government helping voters find a polling place? Surely not.

Compulsory voting is a wonderful thing. No get-out-the-vote required. No voter suppression possible. I will defend it with my dying breath.
posted by nnethercote at 9:31 PM on May 17, 2019 [20 favorites]

I got to my polling place and realised I hadn't brought any physical currency to buy a snag. unsurprisingly the local kinda doesn't take paywave :(

and somehow the only HTV I was offered was Cory's loons. I guess everyone else looked at me and went either "he's not voting for us, no point" or picked I was going below the line and didn't want their suggested ordering?
posted by russm at 9:40 PM on May 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

Looks like it's going so well.

We really need this election to be over.
posted by prismatic7 at 9:55 PM on May 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

In the videos obtained by NITV News, Ms van Lieshout, who is of Caucasian decent, alleges that the Liberal and Labor parties are "murdering" her people.

"Are you a Christian? Because I'm an Australian-born teacher and I'm in the federal election. You have to respect me, because I was born here and I'm a teacher. What country are you from? I don't go to your country and destroy your rights, what do you say about that?" Ms Lieshout asks the men.

"You're here to vote for Liberal or Labor so we can be murdered. Foreigners are brought here for votes so that Australian-born citizens can be murdered.

"I'm going to go to your country and destroy all your people's rights and make you all unemployed, and homeless and drugged. How would you like that? That's what those politicians are doing to my people."

She's a fucking teacher.
posted by smoke at 10:13 PM on May 17, 2019 [5 favorites]

Alexandria Town Hall has no sizzle just a gauntlet of brochure hander outers. This was a sad federal election for the sausage loving voter in this part of Sydney Council. I even heard people say, "No sizzle? What's up with that!?"
posted by jadepearl at 10:15 PM on May 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

Probs a bit late, but for veegs and vegos in Brissie, Mitchelton State School and Toowong Uniting Church, Aspley East State School, and St Eta's Catholic Primary School are confirmed to have vegan snags

Maybe I'm reading too much between the lines, but it kinda sounds like... you guys might have some sort of say in which polling place you use? Is my dumb cracker Yankee brain playing tricks on me?
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:40 PM on May 17, 2019 [6 favorites]

Damn, I didn't check the sausage times and missed out. I hope my vote still counts.
posted by Marticus at 10:43 PM on May 17, 2019

Maybe I'm reading too much between the lines, but it kinda sounds like... you guys might have some sort of say in which polling place you use? Is my dumb cracker Yankee brain playing tricks on me?

Yeah there's usually 3 or 4 close enough to walk to, if you aren't lazy like me. The closest to me is 400m which is much better than the previous one that was over a km away.
posted by Marticus at 10:46 PM on May 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

There are multiple polling places in each division. For instance, I'm in the federal division of Blair so I can vote in all of these places.
posted by h00py at 10:50 PM on May 17, 2019

Well, only one of them, obviously, but I've got the choice (I chose the nearest one with the egg and bacon rolls).
posted by h00py at 10:52 PM on May 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

Wow! That's amazing! Hereabouts we have to go wherever the Board of Elections assigns us.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:53 PM on May 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

As well as multiple locations and postal voting, you can vote in another electorate as absentee, though i'm not sure how many different ballots each location will stock.
posted by Marticus at 10:58 PM on May 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

And you can also vote at Australian embassies overseas and at EVERY polling station, not just ANY polling station - you are asked if you have already voted, but that is the formality out of the way.

Pre-polling has also become less restrictive - previously you needed to give a reason - travel, surgery, etc. I heard that about 3.5 million votes have been cast with pre-polling, and that represents about a fifth of the total votes, so there is some concern that voters are not allowing themselves to be properly "educated" by the campaign before they vote.
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 11:07 PM on May 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

I volunteered at one of the polling places near our place today. As a dirty foreigner who can't vote here, volunteering makes me feel like I still played a part.

It was a new polling place and most people didn't know about it, I guess, because it was super quiet. Maybe 15 people an hour? The best thing was that the sausages and cupcakes brigade realised they were going to have heaps left over and started giving them to us for free.

Only got shouted at by two Liberals, but they were pretty scary. I'd like to think they are just angry because they know they are going to lose.
posted by lollusc at 11:11 PM on May 17, 2019 [7 favorites]

And don't forget that it's also mandatory, if you don't vote you get a fine. The fellow who commented first in this post voted in less than 42 minutes, with time for a BBQ breakfast, so it's not as onerous as all that.
posted by adept256 at 11:12 PM on May 17, 2019

For me the walk was longer than the voting process, and the walk was short :)
posted by Marticus at 11:14 PM on May 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

For me the slowest part was filling in the senate ballot paper. Fortunately I had a cheat sheet made via www.donkeyvotie.org that made it much easier and it only took a couple of minutes.
posted by nnethercote at 11:23 PM on May 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

After the first 3 I just try to decide who is more heinous than who in the rest
posted by Marticus at 11:25 PM on May 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

i'm not sure how many different ballots each location will stock

They have a bunch of printers, and print out a ballot for you when they tick your name off.
posted by pompomtom at 11:44 PM on May 17, 2019 [2 favorites]

The fellow who commented first in this post voted in less than 42 minutes, with time for a BBQ breakfast, so it's not as onerous as all that.

Ooh, that’s me. I voted at about 9:30am and the process took about 10 minutes, from walking in the polling place to the first bite of bacon and egg roll. It was a relatively busy polling place, too.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 11:59 PM on May 17, 2019 [3 favorites]

Fingers x-ed for you in Aussie.
Fave bit of news relating to the election was this set of corkers... Overheard at the polling booth -

• Richard Gill: Man at a booth in Melbourne electorate Kooyong turns around and says “can anyone find Jacinda Ardern on the ballot?”
• At Bourke Stree Public School in Sydney’s Surry Hills: “$10 for two Democracy Sausages? That’s an expensive vote.”
posted by phigmov at 12:28 AM on May 18, 2019 [3 favorites]

No sausage but I am watching Albanese stare awkwardly into a camera right now, presumably waiting for some kind of cue, and that's almost as good eh. He's talking to someone called Deb.

Anyway I just have to shout out to the Greens candidate for Barton, Connor Parissis, he's a good mate of mine, doesn't stand a chance against Linda Burney ofc but he's tried to make his voice heard, and has received a whole lot of abuse from the media for doing so. I'm doubly glad the election has ended for his sake as well eh.

Heart goes out to all the candidates who've had Labor hacks trolling through their entire history for smear campaigns, something that seems likely to become even more common.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 12:33 AM on May 18, 2019 [2 favorites]

Here's an idea for a drinking game. Slam one back every time a button doesn't work for Antony Green.
posted by michswiss at 12:33 AM on May 18, 2019 [2 favorites]

> "Pre-polling has also become less restrictive - previously you needed to give a reason - travel, surgery, etc."

Still do - at least in theory - but it's rare for pre-polling officials to ask, postal vote applications require you to tick a box only, and the AEC never checks up and doesn't really care anyway.

The only people who seem to care are the parties who want you to wait and be hit with their last-minute advertising (or, increasingly, dirt reveals), and the media who want a lazy story about how terrible it is that so many are voting before election day.

This election is the first time in the last dozen or so where we haven't been interstate on election day. We still decided to be lazy & postal vote.
posted by Pinback at 1:05 AM on May 18, 2019 [2 favorites]

ABC livestream
posted by um at 1:07 AM on May 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

AEC vote tally page
posted by um at 1:17 AM on May 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

Or just hasantonygreencalledtheelection.com
posted by Merus at 1:45 AM on May 18, 2019

Still do - at least in theory - but it's rare for pre-polling officials to ask, postal vote applications require you to tick a box only, and the AEC never checks up and doesn't really care anyway.

I know a few folks who were asked, answered with "I'll be away", and that was it. aiui you need to give a reason but there's zero shits given about making you justify or prove the reason you give.
posted by russm at 1:48 AM on May 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

Anyway, as much as I feel that the Liberal party is fundamentally incorrect I appreciate that they still submit to the process. Even One Nation submits to the process; it's on us if we vote them in.

I do not extend this olive branch to Clive Palmer, whose idea of submitting to the process is spending the fortune that he owes to his workers on political advertising. Fuck you, Clive.

Anyway, for Americans and others: we have a choice of polling place, typically schools, churches and town halls, and we just rock up; queues are rare (I just waltzed in, after talking to the former Premier who was gladhanding people as they came into vote), it's a paper vote so can't be hacked, it's fully preferential so you can safely vote for the minor parties first without your vote making it easier for the major party you dislike to win, the borders are drawn to keep the seats even population by an independent non-partisan commission, and voting's compulsory so you can't rely on apathy or disenfranchisement to win - a lot of the safe Liberal seats are threatened by independents who are economically conservative (rich) but still think we should be doing something about climate change and maybe not stranding desperate people on Nauru.

We have our depressing results, but in terms of democracy we do it pretty well.
posted by Merus at 1:55 AM on May 18, 2019 [7 favorites]

Absentee voted on Thursday. Huge queue but it was worth it as I've been traveling.
posted by daybeforetheday at 1:57 AM on May 18, 2019

Glued to ABC now. I'm actually feeling a bit nervous based on the very early numbers... :(

UAP, I'm a QLDer but seriously... fuck QLD, how goddamn stupid can you fucking be??? The first time Clive got in could be chalked up to gullibility, pouring votes to that criminal the second time is beyond belief.
posted by smoke at 2:01 AM on May 18, 2019 [4 favorites]

Yeah, not a fan of these early numbers. But it's still so early. Paper bags still in cupboard.
posted by Panthalassa at 2:04 AM on May 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

smoke, I'm a Queenslander too and empathise with your frustration. Qld has always been two states, the SE corner and the rest.
posted by drnick at 2:05 AM on May 18, 2019

Technically it's the third time for Clive Palmer: he was in Joh Bjelke-Petersen's government

I'm not worried yet; Queensland was probably going to mostly go to conservatives. The question has been whether the Coalition has lost the southern states.
posted by Merus at 2:07 AM on May 18, 2019

I mean, if turning up in parliament once in a blue moon and sleeping through sittings was bad enough, he bloody owes QLD Nickel workers 70 million, but still found the money to plaster ads left right and centre, seriously what do people see in this con man??
posted by smoke at 2:07 AM on May 18, 2019 [5 favorites]

I know a few folks who were asked, answered with "I'll be away", and that was it.

That's my standard answer. This time, they didn't even want to hear that. Asked "Do you have a reason to pre-poll?", I started to say "Yes, I'll be away" and got interrupted with "Yeah, all good" before I'd finished the second syllable.
posted by pompomtom at 2:08 AM on May 18, 2019

I'm not worried yet; Queensland was probably going to mostly go to conservatives. The question has been whether the Coalition has lost the southern states.

Qld will make or break this election. WA, SA and NSW aren't gonna move majorly. Tas will lose at least a seat from the historical Labor high water mark, and so will NT (possibly 2). It's those QLD seats that are critical. Vic will probably throw up a couple of gains for Labor, but liberals are a dying breed down there.
posted by smoke at 2:09 AM on May 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

seriously what do people see in this con man??

Fairfax article the other day interviewed a few Capricornians and the theme seemed to be "Fuck those Melbourne fuckers with their lattes and their climate science. I'll be voting for whoever they like least."
posted by pompomtom at 2:16 AM on May 18, 2019

Sinodinos is a crook who should be in jail, but I will say that he's actually rational and can make some sense compared to some of the MPs and senators they get in.
posted by smoke at 2:33 AM on May 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

Early indications in Tony Abbott’s seat indicate a 25% swing against him (with 11% of the vote counted).
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 2:33 AM on May 18, 2019 [2 favorites]

He's gawn, 100%
posted by smoke at 2:34 AM on May 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

On the ABC, the ALP has finally caught up to the LNP on the seat count. Fingers crossed this is the point where Labor can start getting its nose out in front. But it looks like Queensland has really not come through for the ALP.
posted by Panthalassa at 2:35 AM on May 18, 2019

God, Labor getting slain in QLD. It's not looking fab.
posted by smoke at 2:35 AM on May 18, 2019

He's gawn, 100%

Fingers crossed. Hopefully the motherfucker will be crying into his pile of raw onions before the night is out.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 2:37 AM on May 18, 2019 [2 favorites]

God, Labor getting slain in QLD. It's not looking fab.

It’s too early to be drawing any conclusions yet.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 2:38 AM on May 18, 2019

The thing with Queensland is that the LNP already had a monstrous number of seats there, 21 compared to Labor's 8. So the big swings the LNP are getting there in seats they already hold are basically wasted.
posted by Panthalassa at 2:39 AM on May 18, 2019

But Labor is looking likely to lose seats, and the marginals are all favouring them too. It's dangerous ground.
posted by smoke at 2:41 AM on May 18, 2019

I called Tony getting gawn cause I used to live in Warringah and voted fruitlessly for years. Before that I lived in Bennelong and tried to get Howard out but it didn’t work until after I moved away. Makes sense moving away would work again.

Still really satisfying.
posted by kitten magic at 2:42 AM on May 18, 2019 [2 favorites]

I just watched Julie Bishop boot Tony Abbott out of his electorate with a giant red high healed shoe on the Channel 9 election coverage. Life is getting more surreal by the minute.
posted by drnick at 2:44 AM on May 18, 2019

Tony is gone, but Aunty basically gave me a heart attack with this breaking news cutaway.
posted by Panthalassa at 2:44 AM on May 18, 2019

Is the Ind horrible?
posted by Marticus at 2:45 AM on May 18, 2019

Labor finally in front on the seat count. I do wonder if we're heading into hung parliament territory.
posted by Panthalassa at 2:45 AM on May 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

Chat is open, but it's just me awake
posted by Marticus at 2:47 AM on May 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

I swear on the gods if Shorten becomes PM and Labor has a leadership spill in the next 24 months I'm going to lose it.
posted by um at 2:48 AM on May 18, 2019 [4 favorites]

The Onion Lobby has a position filled today.
posted by Marticus at 2:50 AM on May 18, 2019

That onion's tasting sweet tonight, Zali's on track to win the seat on first preferences. She's very "the problems are very bad but their causes are very good" but it's a not particularly self-aware electorate, and I'll take her over our international embarrassment any day of the week.
posted by Merus at 2:54 AM on May 18, 2019

Kerryn Phelps looks like she’s going to keep Wentworth too. At the moment.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 2:57 AM on May 18, 2019

Despite a lot of talking up of Dave Sharma's chances, looks like Kerryn Phelps is set to retain Wentworth on first preferences as well.
posted by Merus at 2:58 AM on May 18, 2019

Won’t someone think of the Manly surf club dunnies?
posted by pompomtom at 3:01 AM on May 18, 2019

My prediction is that Labor will lose, by some amount of seats they lost when they decided to go "save the planet" and oppose coal mines / power plants - they pivoted away from their core electorate (blue collar working class) towards the gentrified Greens and the voters will punish them heavily for it.

After this election both Labor and Liberals will learn their lesson and never touch environmental issues ever again, and go full out on coal mining.
posted by xdvesper at 3:03 AM on May 18, 2019

What the actual fuck, Australia?
posted by lollusc at 3:08 AM on May 18, 2019 [7 favorites]

How does anyone look at the current government and think, yeah mate, let's have more of that?
posted by lollusc at 3:09 AM on May 18, 2019 [5 favorites]

I know right? Like, the NSW state election I could understand. NSW Labor sucked, NSW Libs fairly bland neoliberals.

But federally? Coalition is a fucking joke, corruption, incompetence, no policies. Labor shadow ministry is arguably the best front bench they've ever had, an incredible line up.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck QLD.
posted by smoke at 3:12 AM on May 18, 2019 [7 favorites]

Can we please tow Qld into the ocean and sink it?
posted by pompomtom at 3:19 AM on May 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

How was there a 10% swing towards Christensen after the reports broke that he's spending more time overseas than in his own electorate?
posted by Merus at 3:22 AM on May 18, 2019 [5 favorites]

Adani, dipshit QLDers and climate change denial.
posted by smoke at 3:23 AM on May 18, 2019

Keep your nerve people, it's not by any means decided.
posted by um at 3:25 AM on May 18, 2019 [2 favorites]

Pre-election polls mean nothing any more.
posted by drnick at 3:25 AM on May 18, 2019

Barnaby is keeping his seat.

I’m getting the scotch bottle.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 3:25 AM on May 18, 2019 [4 favorites]

I said it five years ago, and I think time will bear me out: the only way we're going to save this planet and stop climate change is eco-terrorism.
posted by Merus at 3:26 AM on May 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

I don't have scotch, and it looks like the champagne we bought will remain unopened tonight. So it's going to be tequila in this house.
posted by joz at 3:31 AM on May 18, 2019 [2 favorites]

I’m baking a cake. Chocolate apple. This is not looking as positive as I had hoped, but at least by the time they call it, either way, I will have cake.
posted by misfish at 3:36 AM on May 18, 2019 [6 favorites]

Keep your nerve people, it's not by any means decided.

Like, yes, but...

This government has been a fucking tyre-fire. They're not just corrupt - they're crap at it (or just brazen, I suppose). The question should be about how much they got smashed. Seems like the 'best' result is a hung parliament with the balance held by fascists and Bradburys.
posted by pompomtom at 3:40 AM on May 18, 2019 [4 favorites]

Anyway, beer run...
posted by pompomtom at 3:40 AM on May 18, 2019 [2 favorites]

Thank god I got that second bottle of wine ...
posted by drnick at 3:44 AM on May 18, 2019

pompomtom - yes exactly. I mean with just how inept and corrupt LNP have been, and with the instability they've had VS the remarkably strong and unified shadow cabinet Labor has put forward... and we still see results like this? What more do people need to convince them? If Labor can't win government under these circumstances, then when?
posted by joz at 3:50 AM on May 18, 2019 [4 favorites]

Is your bottleshop in Norway Pompomtom? Let's all go there. Fuck.
posted by smoke at 3:50 AM on May 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

Unfortunately people are stupid. I’m sorry, they really are. I feel like Josh Lyman.

I need to check the cake situation.
posted by kitten magic at 3:50 AM on May 18, 2019

If Labor can't win government under these circumstances, then when?

When they have a leader who is actually liked, perhaps.
posted by Panthalassa at 3:52 AM on May 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

Shaun Micallef for PM?
posted by Marticus at 3:53 AM on May 18, 2019 [2 favorites]

The prepoll votes haven’t been counted yet, according to Barry Cassidy. And that’s like 25% of the vote.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 3:55 AM on May 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

In a second.
posted by pompomtom at 3:55 AM on May 18, 2019

Yes but I would have thought after the last 10 years Australians would have learnt that PM don't mean shit :P
posted by joz at 3:55 AM on May 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

When they have a leader who is actually liked, perhaps.

Do people like Pastor of Muppets?
posted by pompomtom at 3:56 AM on May 18, 2019 [4 favorites]

Tone has conceded!

Fuck right off back to 1956, onion boy! Die angry and alone and in obscurity.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 3:57 AM on May 18, 2019 [2 favorites]

The prepoll votes haven’t been counted yet, according to Barry Cassidy. And that’s like 25% of the vote.

Labor has to win literally every seat that hasn't been called. It's not happening. Coalition majority.
posted by smoke at 3:57 AM on May 18, 2019

Do people like Pastor of Muppets?

All I'm saying is that a well-liked Labor leader might have been of some assistance.
posted by Panthalassa at 3:58 AM on May 18, 2019 [2 favorites]

Well shorten is gone, that's for sure. It will be albo or plibersek.
posted by smoke at 3:59 AM on May 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

A few years ago a friend of mine died from cancer, and about the same time I realized that the future did not hold any hope of a broad-spectrum cancer cure, and the best we could hope for was a more-or-less continuous flow of incremental improvements to treatments for various cancer sub-classifications.

I've come to the conclusion that the same holds true for politics. The evil motherfuckers will never truly be purged from positions of power. The best we'll get is marginal corrections to process and policy that will hopefully prevent the boat from sinking for a few more years, on into the future.
posted by um at 4:02 AM on May 18, 2019 [3 favorites]

Fair enough. I hate the presidentialism of this leader stuff. The job is head of government. I'm glad we haven't really got a head of state, and I'll be an uncool anti-republican forever for that.

For me, I'd go with Penny Wong (and then maybe Qld would secede).
posted by pompomtom at 4:05 AM on May 18, 2019 [4 favorites]

The problem is we don't have that kind of time. The transition to renewable energy needs to happen in the next decade if humanity is to have a hope of surviving, and this result has meant that Australia's going to be a stranded asset.
posted by Merus at 4:07 AM on May 18, 2019 [6 favorites]

The big question is: why do Labor consistently look likely to sweep home with a landslide all the time except on election day? Is it just the shy-Tory phenomenon, of voters wishing to present themselves as more high-minded and less self-interested than they are? Is it some kind of Australian larrikin-wowser-nexus phenomenon of visceral conservative leanings combined with a desire to see the figures of power ritually squirm and panic, manifesting it with a three-yearly ritual of toying with flipping the table followed by returning the conservatives? Or have the LNP mastered the data-driven microtargeting techniques that delivered Brexit and the Trump administration?
posted by acb at 4:09 AM on May 18, 2019 [5 favorites]

it's preferencing in the polls. Pollsters gave 60% of preference from one nation and UAP to Coalition, in actuality it was way way more than that.
posted by smoke at 4:10 AM on May 18, 2019

My only consolation is that it was looking like our first recession in decades was brewing and it'll be fun to see the Coalition take that full force in the face
posted by Merus at 4:14 AM on May 18, 2019 [4 favorites]

The view from above that we're slowly progressing to a better future on a longer timescale is not something I agree with, but even if I did, as Merus says, we don't have that kind of time right now.

Also, I don't know what you say to people who are suffering now in that case. "Hold on, in another decade or two we might be able to do something for you, or for your kids"?
posted by AnhydrousLove at 4:16 AM on May 18, 2019 [3 favorites]

Pollsters gave 60% of preference from one nation and UAP to Coalition

SRSLY?

That's demented on the face of it. Presumably one could run an historical view on prior polls, just on the question "which major gets the pref if the ballot is 1-RWNJ". London to a brick 60% is utter wank.
posted by pompomtom at 4:18 AM on May 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

You would be surprised historically in QLD, more One Nation voters than you think preferenced Labor.
posted by smoke at 4:22 AM on May 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

Is the dataset made available to randos?
posted by pompomtom at 4:23 AM on May 18, 2019

I am so angry and in despair. I can’t fucking believe it. The choice was literally between GOOD AND EVIL and we still fucking choked on it. Jesus fucking Christ. Maybe it really is time to look at immigration to NZ.

They chose EVIL. They LITERALLY CHOSE EVIL.

Who the fuck are these immoral idiots

FUUUUUUCK
posted by Philby at 4:42 AM on May 18, 2019 [19 favorites]

> "Is the dataset made available to randos?"

For previous elections, it's in the CSV data found in the tally room archives e.g. in 2016, One Nation's TPP flow nationally went LNP 50.47, ALP 49.53.
posted by Pinback at 4:47 AM on May 18, 2019 [4 favorites]

After brexit and US 2016, I'm almost numb to this by now.
posted by mosessis at 4:49 AM on May 18, 2019 [3 favorites]

OTOH, in 2016 the PUP (now UAP) TPP preference flow was ~60% - but it was towards Labor (62.86%, LNP 37.14%).
posted by Pinback at 5:14 AM on May 18, 2019 [2 favorites]

I was so hoping that I would be able to participate in my citizenship ceremony while Labor was in federal office. I can't wait another 3 years. I'm imagining being at that ceremony now with Frydenberg or Hunt leading it and walking up to them for the handshake and saying quietly that I will do everything in my power to make sure they never hold office again.

I'm gutted.
posted by michswiss at 5:24 AM on May 18, 2019 [6 favorites]

Well, life is going to be harder for a few years. Damn it.
posted by adept256 at 5:29 AM on May 18, 2019 [2 favorites]

After brexit and US 2016, I'm almost numb to this by now.

I had (stupidly, I'm a stupid. Stupid stupid stupid.) thought that the obviously awful fallout from those sort of events might've been a fillip to progressive parties. Apparently I did not understand how many hateful self-destructive pricks I share a country with.

It's a cliche, but on another channel a friend with a Kiwi passport is making plans (yeah, they're pissed - in both usages). My other passport is UK, so WTF am I to do?

Perhaps I could move to Scotland and hope for Scottish independence...
posted by pompomtom at 5:34 AM on May 18, 2019 [3 favorites]

Urgh. The Liberals have few ideas, no progressive policies and do not govern in the best interest of Australians in my view. Not happy.

Shorten may not be popular because he struggles to communicate emotions, but if this Australia cannot vote for Labor with Shorten as leader, they certainly won't accept who I think is Labour's best candidate, Penny Wong.
posted by bigZLiLk at 5:36 AM on May 18, 2019 [4 favorites]

Alternatively, I could agitate for Victorian independence, but Queensland is still going to burn a fuckton of new coal and bugger everyone.
posted by pompomtom at 5:39 AM on May 18, 2019 [2 favorites]

They chose EVIL

I mean they did, for sure, but they chose who they thought was looking out for them.

I'm angry at Labor, because the Coalition promises me horror, and delivers, and Labor promises almost nothing and can't deliver that.

But while I'm sitting here being miserable about the outcome, I am blessed to have powerful comrades who have already been talking to student Labor left who, if anything, are raging to, in their words "rebuild bottom up".

So yeah, we'll try and do our small part here, but we're really quite limited, outside of the somewhat disgusting manner in which USyd is an incubator for politicians on both sides. Still, there are those here who wear their red rose shirts and promise change from within, and I wish them luck I guess, even if I don't have much hope for their success.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 6:10 AM on May 18, 2019 [4 favorites]

[quote: smoke ] the AEC volunteer [/quote] - point of reference- the AEC employs and pays all the polling staff- but finds it hard (and especially this year) to get casual staff who are into it, so has a mix of uni students and retirees. Some of whom are not speedy, that's for sure.

Re results. DAMN.

That's all I can coherently express right now. School funding. Climate change. Worker's rights.
Damn damn damn.
posted by freethefeet at 6:44 AM on May 18, 2019 [2 favorites]

Also, death tax rumours stopped people preferencing the ALP this time I think.
posted by freethefeet at 6:44 AM on May 18, 2019

death tax rumours stopped people preferencing the ALP this time I think.

Lovely that gullible, innumerate morons who favour plutarchy will control the govt.
posted by pompomtom at 7:35 AM on May 18, 2019

I have been utterly gutted by tonight, even though I recognise that the result is exactly the same as 2016 so why am I surprised? But it has cut so much sharper than 2016, and I am torn between despair and fury.

I have been working on climate change mitigation/adaptation in a small way in my industry, and I had, in a selfish way, been looking forward to a Labor victory to make that chip chip chip of the struggle less frantic, to reassure us that there was proper leadership at some level above us.

But no! it was not to be! And I would rather be doing anything else but it seems like I have to keep chipping away at the grassroots because there is no leadership higher. No healthcare sustainability unit. No appropriate funding for general practice. Chip chip chip while the waves lap at us.

I'm gutted.
posted by chiquitita at 8:39 AM on May 18, 2019 [7 favorites]

At least tony got shitcanned. Go away forever.
posted by adept256 at 10:51 AM on May 18, 2019 [2 favorites]

Labor promises almost nothing and can't deliver that.

The thing that really hurts me is that this time Labor didn't promise almost nothing. They didn't play small target, they actually had some ambition. The Coalition played the small target, and it worked.
posted by nnethercote at 3:40 PM on May 18, 2019 [6 favorites]

Condolences folks, all I can say is I feel your pain.
posted by Justinian at 3:45 PM on May 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

Man, the American reporting on this is crap. The narrative that this resembles the Trump victory is correct only to the extent that there was a significant polling miss. This idea that Australia is part of some populist shift rightwards is bunk. Tony Abbott in 2013 was more right-wing and Kevin Rudd in 2007 was more politically popular. One Nation has lost two out of four senate seats and it is dicey now that Malcolm Roberts will be re-elected. Clive Palmer went nowhere. This is a win for boring small-target mainstream conservatism if anything.
posted by Panthalassa at 3:58 PM on May 18, 2019 [10 favorites]

I find that Kevin Bonham usually does the best postcount analysis by the way, and would recommend you use his site to keep track of developing results rather than the ABC. William Bowe is also good but hasn't gotten going yet. Round things out with Ben Raue.
posted by Panthalassa at 4:04 PM on May 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

Clive Palmer claims credit for coalition victory

“The goal for the United Australia Party was to ensure the Labor Government did not get into power, introducing more than $1 trillion of new taxes,” Mr Palmer said.

“This has been achieved with the collective effort from the United Australia Party.”
posted by mosessis at 4:28 PM on May 18, 2019

This is completely f***ed. Sorry, that's all I can fathom at the moment.
posted by daybeforetheday at 4:40 PM on May 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

Hey that islamophobic senator who got egged lost his seat.
posted by urbanlenny at 5:27 PM on May 18, 2019 [6 favorites]

My preferred industry won't survive another couple of years of current economic policy. And with government services being gutted and big disfunctional corporations randomly flaring out too, I honestly don't know if I'll have any options for job security for the next five years.
posted by krisjohn at 5:57 PM on May 18, 2019

Those nonsensical anti encryption laws are never going away now. The Australian tech industry is toast.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 6:01 PM on May 18, 2019 [5 favorites]

Re: Anning: I might be setting myself up for a fall here with the way things are, but … yeah, he always was going to lose his Senate seat.

Overall, although it's very early days with only ATL votes counted and no prefs distributed, I don't see the Senate changing party-wise much if at all.

(Some are calling a Senate return for Lambie as a possibility. Don't see it myself, but as I said it's very early. She's certainly got a much better chance than Anning…)
posted by Pinback at 6:03 PM on May 18, 2019

Fuck this place in the ear.
posted by turbid dahlia at 6:38 PM on May 18, 2019 [5 favorites]

.
posted by Coaticass at 6:56 PM on May 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

.
posted by Jubey at 7:00 PM on May 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

Six years of self-serving shit and another three to come. I was trying to convince myself that people wouldn't fall for the lies and deception again but here we are. Fucking arseholes.
posted by h00py at 7:05 PM on May 18, 2019 [3 favorites]

God it was disturbing to see Peter Dutton smile last night.

Last night's post-election wtf edition of The Drum was good. Iview has it here. Starts with a bit of giggling about being up so late, revises the events of the night and then gets into some interesting conversation about where we are now and why.
posted by valetta at 7:57 PM on May 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

I think what upsets me the most is how wrong the polls and predictions were. Maybe it's time to stop giving them attention.
posted by daybeforetheday at 8:33 PM on May 18, 2019

.
posted by flabdablet at 10:47 PM on May 18, 2019

And FUCK Scott Morrison. Fuck him right in the fucking ear with a fucking red hot fucking tyre iron. Fucking weasel-tongued hypocrititcal glad-handing mealy-mouthed Christian-In-Name-Only SHITBAG.
posted by flabdablet at 10:53 PM on May 18, 2019 [2 favorites]

Australia has been naughty and Santa has delivered our present.
posted by flabdablet at 11:41 PM on May 18, 2019

Hard to understand people actively choosing more of this government.
Even hardcore LNP supporters I know concede this government has been a mess, and hold little enthusiasm for Scomo.
Apparently, it is different in QLD.
posted by bystander at 12:31 AM on May 19, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'm sorry Qld didn't live up to your expectations.

Maybe next time you should aim to pick up more than 0 extra seats in NSW & Vic instead?
posted by Pinback at 12:43 AM on May 19, 2019

There's been a fair bit of commentary from the usual suspects about the Now Look What You Made Me Do reaction from Queensland to Bob Brown's anti-Adani convoy.

People outside Australia who are looking for a quick insight into the specific horrors we have chosen to continue visiting on ourselves can google Matt Canavan and Angus Taylor for clues. I'm not going to link to them; those fuckers speak for themselves.
posted by flabdablet at 12:45 AM on May 19, 2019 [2 favorites]

I'm sorry Qld didn't live up to your expectations

The grief I'm currently feeling is in large part because it exactly did.

It's hard enough sharing a country with that many total fuckwits; the thought of sharing a State with such a ridiculous concentration of them gives me the cold robbies, and my heart goes out to all you lovely Queenslanders who have to.
posted by flabdablet at 12:49 AM on May 19, 2019 [4 favorites]

Brisbane central was 84% yes on marriage equality. This wasn't Brisbane.

Those mining jobs are lies.
posted by adept256 at 12:58 AM on May 19, 2019 [2 favorites]

It's like Texas that has these blue dots like Austin, in a sea of red. So they end up with Ted Cruz.
posted by adept256 at 1:01 AM on May 19, 2019 [2 favorites]

I think what upsets me the most is how wrong the polls and predictions were. Maybe it's time to stop giving them attention.

At this point it is safe to assume the progressives will lose no whatter what the polls say, and then do whatever you can to help win. Normal, non career political people getting involved was the reason 2018 in the US was not a complete shitshow.
posted by benzenedream at 1:35 AM on May 19, 2019 [2 favorites]

This kind of sums up my feelings - a sense of betrayal. We voted for the government we deserved, and like a lot of other countries around the world, in the most crucial decade in humanity's history we've voted to welcome oblivion. I didn't think Australia had it in them. But they did.
posted by Merus at 1:41 AM on May 19, 2019 [4 favorites]

At times like this I really take issue with the simple equation of Australia's voters with "Australia" writ large. Most obviously, 1/3 of the population are not electors, including every Australian citizen under the age of 18. Secondly, the Australian polity is more than the sum of its voters. To see this, note that the exact same distribution of votes would have produced a hung parliament under a system of proportional representation. New Zealand's Labour party is currently the party of government despite managing only 25% of the vote in their last election compared to the center-right party's 47%. Thirdly, our economic and media elites play a massively outsized role in the outcome of elections. We urgently need a suite of reforms to deal with corruption, truth in reporting and economic justice. But we can't get them without a certain election outcome in the first place; the exact outcome that the elites are pushing back with all their might against.

I don't want to imply that the voting public doesn't deserve any flak for this result. An anaemic sense of morality in tow to prejudice, entitlement and greed fairly characterises a good swathe of right-wing voters. But all this self-flagellation invoking "Australia" is essentialist nonsense. All it does is fan the flames of defeatism and nihilism. That may feel good in the present moment, but every second spent on it now is another second our opponents get ahead of us towards the next finish line in three years' time.
posted by Panthalassa at 2:49 AM on May 19, 2019 [5 favorites]

Brigid Delaney:

“Are we doomed? Are we just like all the other countries where one half hates the other half’s guts?” I asked my dad.

I don't hate the other half's guts because I understand how the other half thinks. There but for the grace of enlightened parents and a half-decent State-funded education go I.

The main thing I have in common with all the conservatives I know is the sense of despair at watching people you could otherwise respect being led around by the nose and bleating the slogans that are fed to them by a well-funded propaganda machine instead of paying attention to what's actually going on. But the thing about conservatives is that their propaganda machine is much better funded and, to a great extent, much more actually existent than anything my side has ever had to work with.

In full accordance with the principle of the Golden Rule (he who has the gold makes the rules), the arseholes with the other side's nose rings in their hands - the arseholes I absolutely do loathe and despise and yes, occasionally hate - are motivated by no principle other than naked self-interest, primarily interested in perpetuating the status quo, and engaged in an ongoing effort to neuter any organized opposition to it. The way things are is what got them their present advantages, and everybody else can just get fucked.

When they're not twisting and cherry-picking facts to support their vicious I'm OK Fuck You agenda they're telling flat lies. They know full well that whenever an inconvenient truth threatens to rear its ugly head, all they need to do to keep their faithful onside is throw out a relentless Gish Gallop of spurious talking points and narration-framing mischaracterizations.

Because when it comes right down to it, conservatives are the stupid half of humanity. And when I say stupid, I don't mean they occupy the low-IQ half of the bell curve; I mean that they're oblivious, apathetic, insular, parochial, cowardly, incurious, small-minded, indoctrinated, self-satisfied and above all gullible. I mean that they're incapable of paying sufficient attention to any issue to perceive anything but the Naughty Words they've been primed to be fearful of like Tax or Immigrant or Illegal or Drug, they show zero ability to recognize in themselves the faults they lambaste others for, and they simply fail to recognize any essential difference between reasoned argument and marketing hype.

And I understand and accept that nobody likes to be called stupid, and that the typical result of being seen to be calling self-described conservatives stupid is to present myself to them as the kind of smug and condescending elitist that some of them will in fact fully hate, but frankly: fuck it. SloMo is in charge for another three years, I ought to be allowed my petulant little burst of rage and despair, and any smugness you feel coming off me is as nothing compared to that which will be polluting any room occupied by a Dutton or Canavan or Hunt or Frydenberg or Albrechtsen or Bolt or Devine or Palmer about now.

I don't hate conservatives, only their crypto- and not-so-crypto-fascist leaders; but having no option but to watch the chickens vote again and again and again for Colonel Sanders and then blame everybody but themselves for their own miserable circumstances is really fucking irritating.
posted by flabdablet at 3:08 AM on May 19, 2019 [10 favorites]

The inconvenient truth I had in mind but missed the edit window.
posted by flabdablet at 3:14 AM on May 19, 2019

Reuters Steve Holland, following Trump’s congratulatory tweet to Morrison: “WH: President Trump spoke this evening with Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia to congratulate him on election victory. ‘They pledged to continue their close cooperation on shared priorities.’”

The Guardian, from September: 'I think we both get it': Scott Morrison professes admiration for Trump "Morrison described Trump as “very practical” and as someone “who’s not going to waste a day”. “I like that about him. I like that about him a lot, actually.’’"
posted by Doktor Zed at 3:20 AM on May 19, 2019 [1 favorite]

But Trump does waste days. Endless amounts of them. All that time spent playing golf and no discernible improvement? Pure waste.
posted by flabdablet at 3:24 AM on May 19, 2019 [4 favorites]

> "It's hard enough sharing a country with that many total fuckwits; the thought of sharing a State with such a ridiculous concentration of them gives me the cold robbies"

Likewise, towards NSW & Vic.

Nationally, the vote for both major parties is up and down all over the place - as it stands currently, on mostly primary vote figures, there is literally no rhyme nor reason to it. But in Qld, Labor loses 2 extremely marginal seats (Longman on 0.79% & Herbert on 0.02% - 83 votes!) while in Tas, Labor loses 2 marginal seats (Braddon & Bass) and everybody goes batshit nasty.

Meantime, in NSW and Vic, Labor completely and utterly fails to make any net gain of seats - and nobody bats an eyelid.

And yet, to quote from this thread so far, it's Queensland that is the "goddamn stupid", "fuck fuck fuck fuck" "dipshit" state with "a ridiculous concentration of [fuckwits]" that should "secede" and be "tow[ed] … into the ocean and [sunk]"?

No, fuck the shitty lazy narrative you're creating to absolve yourselves of your own failure to get things up. I get that Labor supporters in Vic & NSW are disappointed at their own inability to follow through, and I even get that Qld is a more conservative state. But don't take your anger out on Qld (or Tas). Both pulled off bloody miracles last time around in turning nominal LNP/Liberal seats around to Labor - and you also failed to capitalise on it then.

Time for Labor supporters everywhere - but especially in Vic & NSW - to shut up, stop blaming others, and start dealing with a national problem nationally. Getting aggro and othering voters in your favourite kicking-state is only gonna make that job a lot harder, not easier…

(That's it from me on the subject for now; I'm walking away from the whole shitty-stupid. I'll be back when there's prepoll/postal votes and a decent run of preferences to analyse…)
posted by Pinback at 3:39 AM on May 19, 2019 [4 favorites]

You'd be more convincing if George Christensen didn't increase his hold on an electorate he wasn't serving. Labor failed in states they were counting on to make up for Queensland, true, but that's not why people are furious with Queensland.
posted by Merus at 5:18 AM on May 19, 2019 [1 favorite]

to quote from this thread so far, it's Queensland that is the "goddamn stupid", "fuck fuck fuck fuck" "dipshit" state with "a ridiculous concentration of [fuckwits]" that should "secede" and be "tow[ed] … into the ocean and [sunk]"?

Let's show each of those quotes in context.

First we have a Queenslander bemoaning the state of his home State:

UAP, I'm a QLDer but seriously... fuck QLD, how goddamn stupid can you fucking be??? The first time Clive got in could be chalked up to gullibility, pouring votes to that criminal the second time is beyond belief.
posted by smoke at 2:01 on May 18

Same Queenslander, clearly still struggling to accept what most of his neighbours have chosen:

But federally? Coalition is a fucking joke, corruption, incompetence, no policies. Labor shadow ministry is arguably the best front bench they've ever had, an incredible line up.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck QLD.
posted by smoke at 3:12 on May 18

Same Queenslander has a go at the dipshits amongst those neighbours:

How was there a 10% swing towards Christensen after the reports broke that he's spending more time overseas than in his own electorate?
posted by Merus at 3:22 on May 18

Adani, dipshit QLDers and climate change denial.
posted by smoke at 3:23 on May 18

A Victorian with his own dipshit neighbours (I live in Gippsland for fuck's sake) offers sympathy to Queenslanders likewise afflicted:

It's hard enough sharing a country with that many total fuckwits; the thought of sharing a State with such a ridiculous concentration of them gives me the cold robbies, and my heart goes out to all you lovely Queenslanders who have to.
posted by flabdablet at 0:49 on May 19

Another Victorian indulges in a little despairing hyperbole...

Can we please tow Qld into the ocean and sink it?
posted by pompomtom at 3:19 on May 18

...and then, rather than suggesting that Queensland should secede, predicts sardonically that it might do so if Penny Wong got up as Labor leader:

For me, I'd go with Penny Wong (and then maybe Qld would secede).
posted by pompomtom at 4:05 on May 18

There is no

shitty lazy narrative

here beyond the one you've assembled yourself by cherry-picking bits of things out of context.

For what it's worth, if we did tow Queensland into the ocean and sink it, the remaining seats in Federal Parliament would be Labor 62, Coalition 54 and cross-benches 5 on present counts.
posted by flabdablet at 5:26 AM on May 19, 2019 [3 favorites]

For completeness, the result of similarly towing and sinking each State would be as follows:

Sunk	Coal	Labor	Other
ACT	77	65	6
NSW	55	44	5
NT	77	66	6
QLD	54	62	5
SA	73	63	5
Tas	75	66	5
Vic	62	47	4
WA	66	63	6

So excising Queensland clearly gives us the best bang for our buck, but if they won't be in it we might be able to cobble a minority Government by sinking Western Australia instead.
posted by flabdablet at 5:45 AM on May 19, 2019 [8 favorites]

I will acknowledge that Queensland remains the only state to have directly elected or re-elected a female Premier (twice).
posted by daybeforetheday at 1:03 PM on May 19, 2019

The whole result is a slap in the face for any voter who cares about climate change, but the Queensland results are particularly so. Huge swings away from Labor in Queensland, more so than anywhere else in the country, centred around coal-producing areas. Contrast that with, say, Victoria, where there were swings to Labor but unfortunately not in a way that made much difference to the seat counts.
posted by nnethercote at 2:29 PM on May 19, 2019 [1 favorite]

"THREAD to show booth-level swings in two party preferred in major cities."

Last week, when I watched two reasonably intelligent leftie friends have a shouting match about franking credits, with neither one really understanding how they worked well enough to explain it to the other, I thought Labor hadn't done enough to sell their case. I hoped against hope, but I wasn't really confident of a Labor win. What I absolutely did not expect was Labor to lose ground. The swing towards the LNP... just.. I don't know.

All the blue in the map around Brisbane in that thread breaks my heart. Particularly nextdoor to me in Dickson where Ali France has been campaigning for months... I thought she'd at least make some impact, but more people voted for Dutton than last time?!
posted by adamt at 3:42 PM on May 19, 2019 [2 favorites]

That's a good thread, adamt. This map in particular sums things up well: Labor did well in Victoria, the Coalition did well in Queensland, other states had smaller changes.
posted by nnethercote at 6:30 PM on May 19, 2019

I lived in Sydney for three years and I only finally stopped following Australian politics when the 2016 election primaries ramped up in the US. This news breaks my heart for my Aussie friends.
.
posted by RedOrGreen at 7:16 PM on May 19, 2019 [1 favorite]

I worked issuing declaration votes (out of area) at the town hall, and it was pretty cruisey, especially given how close the nearest electorate boundary was. The firies next door were giving out sausages and firemans hats to the kids, which made for quite a party feel in the morning. We slowed right down by the end of the day, and were done counting by about 9.30pm.

In answer to this:

As well as multiple locations and postal voting, you can vote in another electorate as absentee, though i'm not sure how many different ballots each location will stock.

We were issued about 75 per NSW electorate (7 people, 15 each), but then had 50 extra for the directly adjacent electorates. There were probably more on hand, but we didn't need them. There is also the option to print them (which I believe was how the out of area pre-polling was done), or plain ones that can be filled in by hand. They're all obsessively counted multiple times to reduce errors or fraud (which is why I do this work - I love counting things).

I was so glad that I was happily counting senate papers instead of watching the results come in. It is incredibly depressing to be reminded how many people vote for arseholes.
posted by kjs4 at 9:37 PM on May 19, 2019 [4 favorites]

Sometimes the caretaker in my complex can't take the bins out. It's ok, it's not a big job, you just do it yourself. Sometimes you have to do this at 2am, just hours before the trucks come when it's obvious that no-one else is going to do it, and it's up to you. We're allowed to grumble in this case I think. It's 2am after all.

Our American friends here, their election activity on this website threatens it's integrity. Such is the volume of activity since 2016, metafilter has had to change significantly to manage it all and maintain the standards we respect. Thanks mods.

At 8am on our election day there was no post about it here. Not very gruntled, I posted something rudimentary and apolitical. Someone has to do it and the garbos are going to be here in minutes.

A Queenslander posted this thread, where were you?
posted by adept256 at 11:01 PM on May 19, 2019 [1 favorite]

People definitely need to chill out about Queensland. The big swings there are most probably a mining thing, not some sort of mystical Queensland conservative essence at play. You can see it in Hunter in NSW too, and possibly WA.
posted by Panthalassa at 11:23 PM on May 19, 2019 [3 favorites]

Obviously there's a million and one takes going around right now and that'll only continue for the foreseeable future, but I just read this Overland piece and I think it makes some good, even hopeful, points.

It is the height of hubris to have voters continually reject your party and policies and respond by saying that it is that people just don’t understand and imply they are stupid. And yet, this is not an uncommon message from progressive commentators either.

In reality is the ALP has a profound problem: many in their traditional voting base are angry and disillusioned and show no signs of returning to the fold on the basis of the ‘correct’ rhetoric. Labor’s traditional base in the unions has been decimated since the start of the Accord and the neoliberal turn of Hawke and Keating, hollowing the party out of both members and its social weight. A national internal ALP inquiry after the 1996 Keating defeat found that the party had lost credibility because it implemented policies such as privatisation. A majority of the submissions to the inquiry centred on economic issues, and the report found that they ‘can best be encapsulated as being a collective criticism of Labor’s support’ for neoliberalism. This lesson has not been learned. Old labour rhetoric now falls hollow, when the ALP in power under Rudd and Gillard refused to break from this path.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 12:50 AM on May 20, 2019 [1 favorite]

It is the height of hubris to have voters continually reject your party and policies and respond by saying that it is that people just don’t understand and imply they are stupid. And yet, this is not an uncommon message from progressive commentators either.

That's not hubris, that's just a message being correct. Chickens who feel betrayed by Labor's embrace of feather-plucking ideology and react by voting for Coalonel Sanders's nugget grinder instead are stupid. People who think their lot could possibly be improved by giving One Nation or Clive further access to the levers of power are even stupider.

In any case, the only reason that policy is at all relevant in analyzing this election result is that the main effect of Labor announcing some was giving Slott Morrison something to point a fear campaign at. This was a straight-up presidential-style personality contest and Shorten lost it.

Most Australians do not give a shit about policy except insofar as we enjoy regurgitating the dumbed-down talking points fed to us by media personalities we've already accepted as "on our side". Most Australians also have at best a superficial understanding of high-school physics, let alone economics.

Put ten of us in a room and you'd be lucky to find one who could give a cogent and correct explanation of how global warming actually works, what the associated risks are and why, and what the appropriate way to evaluate Australia's contribution to it might be.

Nine out of ten Coalition voters actually believe the SloMo blather about the Coalition having "struck the right balance" on climate change vs. economic responsibility, accepting without question the bullshit premise that these things are on opposite sides of some imaginary balance.

People don't understand and are stupid. It's just true.
posted by flabdablet at 2:32 AM on May 20, 2019 [4 favorites]

A majority of the submissions to the inquiry centred on economic issues, and the report found that they ‘can best be encapsulated as being a collective criticism of Labor’s support’ for neoliberalism.

It's hard to square this with an election where Labor was rejected by the electorate for redistributionalist policies, because they were seen as irresponsible in the fact of the assumed neoliberalism of Morrison. The Greens' inability to raise their primary vote despite their consistent socialist economic policies also suggests there's no secret base of voters secretly crying out for the end of neoliberalism.

So I commiserated with some people at work today - one colleague, who's run successful anti-road protests in Sydney, actually agrees with the criticism that the Stop Adani march did damage to support in the coal mining areas. Her advice is that you can't run a campaign simply being against something, because you're offering a choice between something possibly attractive and the feeling that you could have had it and instead got nothing. (Having thought about it, the last couple of weeks of the election ended up being about the tax loopholes and generic 'change' instead of that signature cancer policy.)

A lot of these places do not have industries other than coal mining, and yet, it doesn't seem like there's any kind of effort to put together some kind of Renewable Energy Plan as an alternative to the Adani mine. Why can't we put together, say, a map of "renewable energy sites" with a jobs figure attached to each region? These projects are already going ahead, and it's a viable, tangible alternative.
posted by Merus at 4:58 AM on May 20, 2019 [2 favorites]

Labor could totally have done that, easily outmatching Adani's likely employment numbers by a factor of ten, had they not been so totally unwilling to risk a principled stance against Adani for every conceivable reason having nothing to do with jobs.

Instead, Labor ran a two-faced campaign where Shorten was all anti-Adani spin when asked for comment in the southern States and pro-Adani spin for Queensland.

Adani's bullshit jobs figure held up against some actually plausible employment numbers for construction of Government-owned molten-salt solar thermal and consumer-owned rooftop solar in Queensland, could easily have been a cut-through issue for Labor. But it wasn't, because Shorten is a typical pissant Labor Right machine man with no vision for the future beyond beating the Coalition at its own game, so here we fucking are.

(I voted Greens).
posted by flabdablet at 6:24 AM on May 20, 2019 [1 favorite]

It should be noted that former PM Paul Keating was also NSW Labor Right but so not a pissant.

I cannot imagine the man who delivered the Redfern Park speech allowing any Government he led to put up with Adani's bullshit.
posted by flabdablet at 7:42 AM on May 20, 2019 [1 favorite]

I’m so sorry, my lefty friends. I’ve just skimmed the thread from top to bottom, and it was like a replay of November 16, when it started so hopefully and cheerfully, and ended in bitter disappointment. The shock and grief is real, and it’s ok that you may be experiencing both. I wish I had some cheery pep speech about having a good cry then dusting off the boots and getting back to trying to change the system, but I don’t believe that any more, and it would sound like bullshit to anyone who has watched the last few years unfold.

But you have my sympathies, and if I could bring you all a brownie in which to drown your sorrows, I would.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 10:39 AM on May 20, 2019 [6 favorites]

It's hard to square this with an election where Labor was rejected by the electorate for redistributionalist policies, because they were seen as irresponsible in the fact of the assumed neoliberalism of Morrison. The Greens' inability to raise their primary vote despite their consistent socialist economic policies also suggests there's no secret base of voters secretly crying out for the end of neoliberalism.

I mean, that's one read on the election. I certainly wouldn't call the Labor platform seriously redistributionalist, but critically, I think, what they didn't do was challenge the Liberals on the core issues of the election. If you accept the coalition's framing about balanced budgets and returns to surplus, then of course you're not going to be able to sell even moderate improvements to people's lives.

If the franking credit cut had gone hand-in-hand with increases to the pension, if negative gearing changes proposed had been intended to go along with a serious plan to fix the housing, a job guarantee for all but particularly those involved in coal mining, dozen other things that might have constituted seriously redistributionalist policies, and that had been rejected, well, I'm no prophet, but it would have surprised me a lot more. I don't blame voters in the Hunter and Qsld for making the choices they thought were best for them, given that Labor failed to offer an enticing alternative.

As for the Greens, I'm just going to go out there and say there might be a couple of other factors that hurt the Greens chances a fair bit which have nothing to do with their policies.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 10:01 PM on May 20, 2019

The Greens vote appears to be slightly up on last time, and it looks like they'll hold all six of the Senate seats they were defending. Compare that with the Senate results for other minor parties. Overall the Greens results are a lot better than many people were expecting.
posted by nnethercote at 12:04 AM on May 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

This was actually the best vote ever for the Greens, and the managed to get a senator returned in every state - something the Democrats never managed.

I thought this piece by Jason Wilson - a fellow QLDer - in the Guardian was excellent. He really gets it.
posted by smoke at 2:00 AM on May 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

Main thing fucking over the Greens has been their complete failure to deal adequately with the internal factional infighting between those who see the party as primarily socialist, those who see it as primarily environmentalist, those who perceive those priorities as two sides of the same indivisible coin, and those who see the party mainly as a vehicle for their own personal pursuit of power.

There are a number of electorates in which particular ethnic groups are clustered, and the MPs for those seats have been tacitly understood to have a special responsibility of representing their concerns to government, regardless of which party is in power. Victorian Jews are demographically concentrated in Macnamara, the seat that replaced Melbourne Ports.

In 2016 the Green candidate for Melbourne Port/Macnamara, Stephanie Hodgins-May, pulled out of a debate organised by the Australian Jewish News because it was co-hosted by Zionism Victoria. Zionism Victoria is a roof body which "strives to represent the Zionist and Jewish organisations within the Jewish and wider communities." Most Victorian synagogues, Jewish schools, youth groups, etc., are affiliates. Hodgins-May didn't just pull out at the last minute; she gave an insulting and equivocal response that was almost certainly false. You can read this article for details.

Hodgins-May actually did very well in 2016, which was probably a reason the sitting member (Michael Danby) was encouraged to vacate the seat for this year's election. If she had secured a few hundred more votes then she'd have outpolled Danby and been elected on Labor preferences. This may be why the Greens preselected Hodgins-May as their candidate again this year. You might think that she'd have spent the intervening years building bridges, but no. At least, not as far as I'm aware. I've seen other failed candidates making the rounds between elections; Hodgins-May's absence from Jewish events was very noticeable.

It was clear that Hodgins-May would have at best a cold relationship with the Jewish community and there was little prospect that she would relay their concerns on things like Jewish school and synagogue security to the government. Consequently, the message Labor pushed to the Jewish community in Macnamara this year was that in a three-cornered contest a vote for the Liberals was potentially a vote for the Greens candidate. I don't know if that was the main reason for this year's result, but the Liberals suffered a 6.5% swing against them in Macnamara, and it went straight to Labor. And so it should: Hodgins-May had signalled that she didn't wish to represent a large and vulnerable section of her electorate, and by selecting her (twice!) the Greens party has shown itself to be effectively, if not actually, antisemitic.

So from my perspective the Greens are neither primarily environmentalist nor primarily socialist: they're primarily a party of ratbags who have elevated their prejudices above everything else.
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:39 AM on May 21, 2019

Yes, an awful lot of Greens candidates are going to be accused of being anti-Semitic, and have been already.

I'm not familiar with Hodgins-May, the article does make them look bad in that they should have taken the opportunity to take a hard line in favour of Palestine, rather than waffling about political events.

Fortunately, it appears to be widely understood throughout the Greens here, the socialist left, a lot of young labour and a chunk of unions that our struggle here is one with the Palestinian struggle as always. Israel has as much right to exist as Australia does.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 8:47 AM on May 21, 2019

And just as strong a propensity to elect fuckhead right-wingers who immediately set about trashing their country's international reputation by riding roughshod over international law and cracking the sads whenever somebody calls their concentration camps concentration camps, apparently.
posted by flabdablet at 8:55 AM on May 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

A lot of people seem to have difficulty separating out Israel, the Zionist movement, and Judaism generally, and while I can understand how that happens, they really aren't the same thing.
posted by Merus at 3:19 PM on May 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

And nor is Israel the same thing as its current fuckhead right-wing leadership, any more than Australia was ever the same thing as the fuckhead wingnut rump of the Coalition when Onion Boi was PM. It can be hard to see the difference right after an election though.
posted by flabdablet at 7:20 PM on May 21, 2019

Yes, an awful lot of Greens candidates are going to be accused of being anti-Semitic, and have been already.

Then people probably shouldn't be voting for them, just as they probably shouldn't be voting for racist or homophobic candidates.

As it happens, the same electorate takes in Albert Park and St Kilda, areas that traditionally had a high gay population. Michael Danby's predecessor, Clyde Holding (Labor), was an early champion of gay rights and, e.g., helped gay couples with family reunions before gay marriage was legal. His record, and his regular attendance at things like the Midsumma Festival, assured gay voters that they had someone sympathetic to their concerns. In contrast, Liberal candidates back then refused to meet officially with representatives of the gay community; and then couldn't understand why they weren't doing better among white-collar professionals in a rapidly gentrifying area.

My point is that MPs have to represent and talk to all sections of their electorate, but especially minority groups that form a local cluster. If Hodgins-May wasn't willing to do that, she shouldn't have been standing. By preselecting her twice the Greens showed that they were willing to throw Jews under the bus - not just the ones in that electorate, but also others that rely on representations made by the area's MP. That's antisemitic, and, given that even a somewhat philosemitic Green candidate would likely have won, it shows they're willing to sacrifice electability in the service of ideology.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:28 AM on May 22, 2019

A Greens candidate should not support Israel, not even to represent their electorate. That's the same way so much BS is justified, and it's always nonsense. You can't justify bad policies just because the electorate likes them. The Greens position on I/P is a two-party solution and removal of settlers and militarization of Palestine, compensation for many refugees, afaik, and it's not consistent with that to go to an event from an organisation that is all about Victoria's relationship with Israel and Israel's interests.

If being pro-Palestine is anti-Semitic, then the Greens will continue to be branded as such, and if voters here choose reaction over their interests, that's the shame it always is.

Here is an interesting article about the Greens here, about champion firebrand leftists like Mehreen Fahruqi and Lee Rhiannon, and my friends who convene the anti-racism collective here at USyd. Only they are dangerous, somehow, because they believe in ending genocide in Palestine, it as usual misrepresents calls for a one-state solution because it truly imagines that Palestinians are so different that there could never be accord.

In the same way, Connor Parissis who ran for Barton, mentioned above, is accused, because he shared a meme on his private twitter, not his public official one, which called the IDF terrorists because of the dozen people they'd murdered the week before. In addition he shared a post on the anniversary of Nakba asking people to go to the rally, and has supported BDS re: Eurovision (which the Greens do not endorse).

These people are my friends, and I endorse and support them in their actions. We're not anti-Semites cloaking it in BDS, We're committed decolonialists who also believe our own country needs to be reconstructed with people whose land was stolen as real participants.

No-one involved, as far as I can tell, has trouble differentiating between Israel, Zionist organisations like afaict, Zionism Victoria and Jews here. The Greens shouldn't preselect someone with bad politics just because the voters would like it.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 7:20 AM on May 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

You can't justify bad policies just because the electorate likes them.

I'm sure there are substantial numbers of voters in the electorates around the Galilee Basin who think the Adani coal mine is a wonderful idea and would argue with total conviction that anybody who disagrees is just racist against Indians. Doesn't mean the Greens should put up a candidate who agrees with them.
posted by flabdablet at 9:42 AM on May 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

Former PM Kevin Rudd: "In all the election commentary last night, not a single word on the elephant in the room: Murdoch, with 70% control of Australia’s print media,ran the single most biased campaign in Australian political history. Reason for the silence? People are in fear of Murdoch’s power."
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:16 PM on May 22, 2019 [2 favorites]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-23/macmines-abandons-mining-lease-applications/11138310 The timing is just off.
posted by freethefeet at 6:02 AM on May 23, 2019 [1 favorite]

A Greens candidate should not support Israel, not even to represent their electorate.

Literally nobody asked the Greens candidate to support Israel, so this is the strawiest straw man that ever strewed straw. Hodgins-May was asked to speak at an election debate organised by and for the Jewish community. That isn't "supporting Israel".

No-one involved, as far as I can tell, has trouble differentiating between Israel, Zionist organisations like afaict, Zionism Victoria and Jews here. The Greens shouldn't preselect someone with bad politics just because the voters would like it.

Is that what your mates at the anti-racism collective are calling engaging with the Jewish community? Bad politics?

If being pro-Palestine is anti-Semitic, then the Greens will continue to be branded as such

Nobody has said that, either. You need to stop trying to redefine antisemitism. I don't know whether it was Hodgins-May's insane sense of privilege leading her to think she could "represent" people without talking to them, or whether she was convinced that Jewish concerns were Bad Politics. It doesn't matter, though, she was a crappy candidate whose unexamined prejudices stopped her from engaging with and speaking to a large part of her electorate.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:03 AM on May 23, 2019

Zionism Victoria, as far as I can tell by looking at their available information, represents the Jewish community with regard to Israel.

I suspect them of being Zionist, because of their name, honestly. Zionists =/= the Jewish community, as often as it is pretended that is the case. If I'm mistaken, and Zionism Victoria does not advocate in favour of Israel at all, then my bad, but assuming they do, then their role as co-hosts is adequate to disqualify the event.

It's possible to engage with the Jewish community on matters other than Israel, and far more relevant.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 9:07 AM on May 23, 2019

Rupert Murdoch will be 100 years old in 2031, unless someone finds and destroys his phylactery.
posted by benzenedream at 1:21 PM on May 23, 2019 [1 favorite]

It's a huge pity that the Australian public at large is going to keep being actively distracted from the sterling work that Beyond Zero Emissions has been doing for the last thirteen years until the fucker does die.

What we actually need in this country is a think tank devoted to finding ways to get Beyond Zero Murdoch.
posted by flabdablet at 6:48 PM on May 23, 2019

Zionism Victoria, as far as I can tell by looking at their available information, represents the Jewish community with regard to Israel.

Yes? ? The only convenient polling booth this election was in a church hall. I managed to do it without falling to the floor and demanding to be washed in the Blood of the Lamb. She could have addressed Jews in the Zionism Victoria hall without dancing a hora / swearing allegiance to Netanyahu.

Zionists =/= the Jewish community, as often as it is pretended that is the case.

… for I am the Goyrax, I speak for the Jews. I speak for the Jews, for the Jews have Bad Views.

Four and a half of the six major Jewish schools in Melbourne officially mark Yom Haatzmaut. Even the Bundist one! I don't think you'd care for the ones that don't. Of the major synagogues in Melbourne, I'm only aware of two or three (out of maybe twenty) that don't have a weekly prayer for the State of Israel and/or the IDF. Zionism is about the least controversial, most commonly accepted sentiment here. And I say this despite never having been a member of any Zionist organisation, ever, unless you count my campus' JSS. Some relationship with Israel is just taken for granted, even among most Jews who don't consider themselves to be Zionist.

If Hodgins-May couldn't deal with her constituents' background even to the extent of talking to them then she's unfit for the job. If the Greens can't deal with that and propose to cut Jews out of public life – which is what was seriously suggested during the debate over Section 44 – then they're institutionally antisemitic. That is literally what the word means.
posted by Joe in Australia at 10:40 PM on May 23, 2019

If you want Greens candidates who have an activist background, who have good politics on offshore detention, who believe in redistribution and radical immediate action on climate change, who oppose conversation therapy and support Affirmative Action, and all the other good politics I expect of them, then they're pretty likely to be pro-Palestine as well, because the movements aren't segmented off from each other. That's what I meant by "good politics". The people who are fine with barbed wire and bloodshed in Israel are going to be more likely to be fine with it on Manus.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 11:36 PM on May 23, 2019

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