Election "Day"

I have put quotes around the word 'day' as in modern times a fair proportion of voters will already have voted.  This makes it doubly annoying to have got a phone call at about 9:45 from the NSW Electoral Commission (I presume) urging me to go and have my say!

At least that is less annoying than it would have been to get an SMS from Mike Baird while I was watching the footy last night.  According to the SMH many folk weren't as lucky.  If they were Rabbitoh supporters they'd have been really gutted: your team gets flogged and you cop a spam text!

The current sportsbet market on the election is $1.01 for the Coalition and $21.00 for Labour.  (By the way I do know the Party spells its name without a 'u' but that is merely an example of the impact of a poor education system so I ignore it!)  In the same way that I regarded an earlier price of $12 as good value but essentially meant you'd do your dough, I reckon only the numerator in the fraction changes -  the answer is still that you'd do your dough.

And so it was.

To some extent it was a contest between two invisible men.

  • Baird did a brilliant job of keeping the Monk out of the campaign - apparently the latter was too busy signing cheques to fund the campaign promises. (I don't think Harry Lee's funeral was timed precisely to have his Speedoness out of the country for the final day.)  
  • Unfortunately the other MIA was the Leader of the Opposition, Luke - Who? - Foley.   
If he is still Leader in 4 years time I will be amazed.  By way of example consider this quote:
Opposition Leader Luke Foley's declaration that "normal service had to be returned" in NSW politics.
So getting thumped by the Coalition is now normal?

There were a dense crop of a-frames outside the booth where I was handing things out:
I was intrigued by the colours chosen by the Nationals: green for their posters and yellow with green writing for the t-shirts.
The red spots above are obfuscation not acne (although most of the volunteers at this booth (central Queanbeyan) were of a dermatologically-challenged age.  By contrast in this illustration of a Steve Whan t, the red eye indicates that I had seen the early results coming through:
The shirt is actually redder than it appears.

By about midnight on the day the swing in our electorate was a whole 0.1% to the ALP!  This probably reflects the efforts of John Barilaro over the past 4 years (as well as the two factors mentioned above). If he keeps that up he has probably got a job for life.  It will be interesting how many of the promised loin chops:
  • New Police Station for Queanbeyan

  • a squillion dollars spent on the local roads ...
 ... actually emerge from the pork barrel.

The biggest loser is the environment.  No ban on CSG but land clearance gets a big go ahead.  While the Greens seem to have done OK, their presence in the Chamber will do nothing to upset the greedy sods on the Government benches.  To make matters worse it looks as though the Shooters and Fishers Party will have at least one of their troglodytic members back in the Council.

Grrrrrr!

Having raised the minor partis this article about the No Land Tax Party is amusing.  I seem to recall tales in the Frank Hardy book "Power without glory" about the dead voting, but this is the first time I can recall hearing of them being a candidate.  Perhaps this will be a knew source of feigned indignation - concern about Dead People's Rights!

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