Comment by Geoffrey Churchman

Bye bye baldy: Peter Dutton becomes the first Federal Opposition leader to lose his own seat (Dickson in Qieensland).

My guess is that last night more Aussies watched the footy on TV than the election. With the exception of nuclear power, it was quite hard to distinguish any major issue where there was a major difference between the Labor and Liberal/National Parties so it came down to personalities and Dutton didn’t have what it takes to inspire the populace.

12% of electors decided ‘none of the above’ and voted for independents. I’ve watched ‘human computer’ Antony Green present results since 1993; this was his last time.

This shows the state of the Parties in the lower house, excluding 14 which are in doubt. Fortunately, Green pests are confined to only 3 of them. Labor has a comfortable majority. Because the preferential system in the 150 single member seats requires a lot of counting, doubtful seats can take a week to be finalised.

As we’ve commented before, Australia’s mainstream media is better than NZ’s (it would be hard to be worse) and conservative/libertarian viewpoints get catered for such as on Sky News, which is the opposite of its British counterpart, and in the main newspapers. On the main TV and Radio channels, News bulletins actually give you news and you have a pretty good idea of what is happening without the excessive Leftist editorialising that you get in NZ.

Vote for beer!