The Greens have claimed their first seat in the house of representatives at a general election, with Adam Bandt tonight declaring his historic win in Melbourne had returned compassion for asylum seekers and concern for the environment to the national agenda.And here in Melbourne of all places, showing again that concern for the environment is often a middle class city thing.
On top of all that it's looking like it's going to be a hung parliament here too, though with the Labor party doing a lot better than the Labour party. It's 76 seats for an overall majority here and the TV graphic I can see right now has Labor on 70 seats, the Libs/Nats Coalition on 72, 5 'Others' and 3 seats still in doubt, though I think some of those are still provisional results. I think the worst case scenario would be for the remaining seats to go Labor and/or Green and for the Greens to become kingmakers. They'd put Labor back in but the price will be to bring back swinging mining taxes, emissions trading, and lots of anti-carbon wind-pissing. Since I wasn't keeping track I have no idea which seats are in doubt and what way they might go, but all the TV channels are saying it's likely to come down to postal votes. overseas votes, etc. Prime Minister Gingery Mallard was on TV half an hour or so ago to say that the result might not actually be known for a week or so, and the ilLiberal leader is about to make a speech to the cameras and party rentacrowd where he'll probably say much the same.
Who won? Who knows. But probably not us. I do hope the Liberal Democrats, Australia's most libertarian party, have had a good night though.
*sigh*
ReplyDeleteWe have a coalition government, now everyone else has to get one too?
Oh, well. At least we're bnack leading the world in something!
Turing word: whine Yes, really!