Australia Votes 2016

2/7/16 - 11pm

And so we now enter the first stages with the tally of current votes, with a necessary 76 seats needed to form Government, the current tally is as follows:

LNP - 73
ALP - 66
Greens - 1
Other - 4
Undecided - 6

Sadly (for me) it looks like the LNP will get the numbers needed to form Government, all be it, a less powerful Government. Given they won 88 seats at the last election, the shift is somewhat justifiable. This is also just for the House of Representatives, those who write the policies. It's the Senate that needs to approve it in order for it to pass as law and if the shift in the House of Reps is anything to go by, then we'll see the Senate shift even more unfavorably for the LNP. This I can live with. Hell, we've had three years under the LNP, of which they broke more election promises in one month then Labor did in a year, they had three budgets that showed how out of touch they were and a change of leader who changed very little in the party despite the claims he was a different kind of leader (mostly cause it's the party that makes decisions, not the leader).

Might sound bitter, but the Libs did nothing to fix the social economic gap, instead making it wider. They claimed that this election was not about class warfare, but given their three budgets and policies, I would argue otherwise. They cut funding to services to those who needed it the most. They rode into power on lies and misinformation, made some of the most ridiculous comments in Australia's political history and tried to make points about their opponents despite their own history showing the stupidity of their comments. The Labor/Greens alliance? People do know what the Liberal National Party is right, an alliance of the Liberal party and the National party. The Medicare scare campaign? The LNP does indeed have a history of saying one thing and doing the opposite once in power, let alone the continuous cuts over the last three years to health and education, with them trying to force doctors to charge patients and passing the buck on issues that a Federal Government must deal with by trying to force the states to take over them. Yes, even their recent tantrum like behavior when things didn't go their way with the Senate and the States clearly shows they are incompetent and unsuited to running a Country.

Yes, I'm bitter and I'd rather not give them any more power that they don't deserve, but if they do win (terrible as that might be), then let this lesser power and a more diverse Senate be a warning that we can only tolerate bullshit for so long, but we have a limit. I will update this post, cause I'm sure I'll have more bloody good bitching to do once we get a clearer idea of the results of both Houses of Parliament.

I still say Mr Squiggle should have been Prime Minister. At least he's a puppet we can trust.

3/7/16 - 10:30am

Funny thing about all this, I took a poll last night about what we thought the results would be and I voted for a Hung Parliament. As of this morning the results turned to this:

LNP - 65
ALP - 67
Greens - 1
Other - 4
Undecided - 13

No they admit that the LNP will most likely regain a few, but this looks to be heading into the Hung Parliament territory. So close are the votes that the seats thought secured are now up in the air. Clearly people are sick of this nonsense. The Senate is proving even better. The latest results have the LNP and ALP having the same number of seats in each state, with one to three other seats in each state going to others like the Greens or Independents. The whole point of this Election was to remove many of these Independents out of the Senate so the LNP Government could push their agenda, but not only have they brought their chances of a majority Government into question, but now who ever wins needs even more support in the Senate to pass through policies.

This has happened in the past, so whatever happens we can handle it, but it does give me hope that people were not a gullible as I had originally thought. I mean, they still got Barnaby Joyce to keep his seat (For non-Australians, you might remember him as the Politician in the Johnny Depp dogs debacle with threats) so there are still people with questionable decision making, but overall it seems people have had enough of the constant BS that both sides of politics keep trying to feed them.

8/7/16 - 2:48pm

This will be the last update to this as there really isn't much more to say. The LNP will be returned to Government as they do have at least two of the Independents to support them in getting over the line. Not really surprising as one is Bob Katter, whom is well known out side of his electorate as a crazy lunatic (given his own campaign was about him shooting members from both parties, he clearly shows he lacks any creativity in his camp). Given he supported the LNP in the last hung parliament we had and abused his other Independents when they sided with Labor, his actions were very much predictable. Personally for me, it makes no difference. Thing is, this Election was about the LNP removing a bunch of people from the Senate in order to pass whatever policies they wanted. It backfired and as such they don't have those numbers, meaning that in order to pass what they want, they need to negotiate with a number of individuals and parties. While I do hope common sense is what most of those people have (Hell, Pauline Hanson got back in, so make of that what you will), I still feel confident that this will force the LNP to tone down their draconian policies and start listening to the people, cause they've wasted three years trying to force their will and that failed, so now it's time to put their arrogance aside and start doing stuff that actually benefits this country and it's people.

Somehow, I doubt they will.