Today’s the day. After six years of Labor incompetence and obsession with leadership battles, Machiavellian sub-plots, the best-forgotten Gillard Experiment, and the finale of Rudd Redux, Australians today will finally have their chance to go to the polls and cast an unequivocal verdict on the worst government in our history.
All polls show Tony Abbott heading for a landslide win; yet his first term will mark him more as a winner by default, than in his own right. The electorate aren’t voting for a conservative government; rather, they are joyfully booting out Labor. Abbott hasn’t outlined any grand vision for Australia, he hasn’t captivated the minds of voters, and he will carry with him into government no mandate for radical change. His stump-speech mantras of stop the waste, turn back the boats, end the carbon tax and end the mining tax will be quite enough of an agenda for his first term anyway.
Polling booths open in just over ninety minutes; I’ll be around here more or less all day, then from the close of polls at 1800 AEST (2000 NZST, 0900 BST, 0400 EDT, 0100 PDT) I’ll be hosting an live online election night party here, plus random jottings, breaking news and any questions or comments you may like to add. Plus lots of Aussie music from the Juke Box.
So strap yourselves in for what promises to be an exhilarating ride! Where Australia goes today, the world will follow tomorrow 🙂
Be Responsible - Be Free! 
Polls open in the eastern states in 15 minutes. I’m off to vote – back in an hour.
OK I’m back. It was curious that Labor didn’t even have anyone outside handing out “how to vote” cards today. They must realize it’s all over. Early turnouts are huge, so if you’re voting today, get out to your polling place ASAP, as it could be a bun fight this afternoon.
Hi Ozboy. Wish you luck there. I got my son, wife and grandson there and I wish them and all you Ozzies a great future free of lies, damned lies and left-wing politicians.
I hope my next visit to NSW will be during a Gillard/Rudd-free time zone.
Maltesertoo
Thanks Malty; I’d say you’re odds-on to find just that next time you’re down this way – Oz
Got to disappear for about two hours – back later.
OK I’m back. Exit polls are confirming an Abbott landslide.
Less than half an hour to go in the eastern states; forget the west, this will be a fairly short night. Hopefully Tony Abbott can claim victory before 9pm and we can break out the bubbly.
Former Liberal Party Victorian State president Michael Kroger has called it already. so the only question left is, just how crushing will Abbott’s victory be?
Imagine if John Howard’s Treasurer Peter Costello (a close Kroger ally) had been persuaded to re-enter politics in the same position – an Abbott-Costello administration?!?!?!
4:30pm Sky News exit polls have the Coalition on 97 Seats. Catallaxy’s SamuelJ has them on 99. A landslide in anyone’s language.
The Senate is anyone’s guess, but that’s where tonight’s real battle will emerge.
OK folks, we’re live here at the Bar and Grill Election Night Party; it’s 6pm in Australia’s eastern time zone, and polls have just closed in Queensland, New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory, Victoria and Tasmania. Polls in South Australia and the Northern Territory close in 90 minutes, Western Australia in two hours.
We should have some early counts for you in about an hour. I’ll be making numerous references to the Australian Electoral Commission’s Virtual Tally Room, which you can see here.
I’ve also got ABC TV’s election night coverage on in the background; despite their political bias, tally room broadcasts are something they do very well. All their panel are agreed it’s over before it’s started. Resigning Labor MP and former Defence Minister Stephen Smith is talking about the need for “generational change” in the ALP.
Gillard’s Health Minister Tanya Plibersek isn’t conceding the election (!) Fair dinkum, some people are living in parallel universes.
All early numbers confirm a Coalition landslide.
A thought has occurred to me; Tanya Plibersek’s apparent delusional optimism may actually be something else; maybe in the post-election recriminations and infighting which is sure to occur in the ALP, she fancies herself a chance of emerging as Deputy Leader of the Opposition, or even leader?
Wishing Australia a great future from the Lincolnshire Fens.
Thanks Fen. It isn’t the finish line, though; it’s only the start – Oz
Antony Green has given his first chamber prediction:Labor 56 seats, Coalition 93, Independent 1 (Bob Katter). He says plus or minus 6 seats, and with high confidence.
The ABC are calling my own electorate (Lyons TAS) for the Liberals – only the first time since WWII that a sitting member has been defeated. Antony Green has some doubts though.
Bandt the Marxist scholar and Greens candidate appears to have retained the seat of Melbourne. Not that it matters now.
Billionaire coal mining magnate Clive Palmer looks like he might sneak in on preferences in the Queensland seat of Fairfax. Now that will at least make the next parliament entertaining.
Well, looks like the inevitable has just happened and the magic number of 76 seats has been reached by coalition (with plenty more seats to follow). Congrats Aussies!
http://vtr.aec.gov.au/
Yep they’re home. The total number of Coalition seats may end up less than expected; possibly 89 or 90. There are a record number of pre-poll and postal votes, and these typically favour the Coalition. It will be several days before we know the exact number – Oz
No word yet about the Senate. Possibly some numbers in an hour or so.
Oh yes, and if coal magnate Palmer does get up it will be at least in part on the back of Greens preferences. Even more so in the Senate, where former rugby league international Glenn Lazarus stands a fair chance of sneaking in. The Palmer United Party will owe a big debt of thanks to the Greens – who will be wearing very red faces tomorrow.
Hooray! Well done Australia.
Looking forward to seeing what happens next, I know you’ll keep us well informed Oz’.
Rudd’s emerged at Labor’s Gabba headquarters…
Concedes defeat. Says he phoned Abbott. Carrying on though as if he’d won.
Still no word of whether he’s quitting…
Thanking just about everyone he’s ever worked with – sounds like bloody Oscar Night…
Finally!!! He’s not re-contesting the leadership….
Winds up – finally after 20+ minutes, the windbag. He didn’t say he’s quitting parliament. So he could be lying about his political ambitions.
Let’s wait now for Abbott to appear.
Abbott about to appear…
CLAIMS VICTORY!!!! MORDOR HAS FALLEN!!!
Makes direct attack on Rudd’s leadership intrigues…
Says he will lead a government that “understands the limits of power, as well as its potential”
My Libertarian sings!!!
Says he will govern for all Australians, including those that didn’t vote for him…
Wraps up – just 9 minutes. Compare to Rudd – less talk, more action.
Let the pigeons loose!
I’m cracking a cold one at this point. Cheers to everyone reading. Next stop will be to see how the count is progressing in the Senate.
No numbers yet, but there is general agreement the Coalition won’t control the Senate in its own right. But neither will the Labor-Greens alliance. It’s likely some right-leaning minors will hold the balance, which means Abbott will in all likelihood be able to defeat the Carbon Tax (after 1 July 2014 at least) without resorting to a double dissolution.
But what about Julian Assange and his bid for the Senate in Victoria? Time will tell.
Antony Green reckons Arthur Sinodinis (3rd on the Liberal Senate ticket in NSW) will be elected, despite the Liberal Democrats polling 9%, courtesy of their drawing column A on the NSW Senate ballot paper. Clive Palmer’s party looks like getting the last Senate position in both Queensland and Tasmania. Interesting times.
That’s it from me tonight. I’ll be back tomorrow with some post-mortems.
Oh shite!
Left wing – right wing – centre, it doesn’t make a lot of difference, it’s the same eye pecking thieving carrion crow.
with a big majority, the way is clear for legislation which blatantly rewards special interest cronies at the expense of everyone else to be pushed through.
until the paradigm changes and we can abandon coercion by a parasitic “ruling” caste, then far better they are tied up fighting amongst themselves, inefficeint, starved of funds, detested by all and unable to interfere with the rest of us.
Meet the new boss, same as the old was…
wrong vid
meant to post this one
Oz: ‘Mordor has fallen’: Heh heh heh
Ian: ‘Left wing – right wing – centre, it doesn’t make a lot of difference, it’s the same eye pecking thieving carrion crow’. ME: Profoundly disagree. Left versus classical liberal makes all the difference in the world.
Well a few different balls are set to get rolling shortly. Expect Abbott to call a Royal Commission into “registered organisations” – read the union movement – as one of his first major acts as PM. And if Pauline Hanson or one of the minor parties get up in NSW in the Senate on preference deals, you can expect electoral reform to be on the agenda as well.
A whole bunch of people will be getting very nervous right about now. Some may be making their way to the airport, even as we speak 😆
The ABC Senate calculator has thrown up some interesting provisional results. In NSW, the Liberal Democrats (yes folks, the Libertarian party in Australia!) is set to win a seat, courtesy of four factors: a) They drew column A on the Senate ballot paper, which picks up the “donkey vote”, b) their name looks a lot like the Liberal Party (The LDP changed their name some years ago from the Liberty and Democracy Party), c) the ballot paper font size was so small many elderly people couldn’t read the print and thought they were voting for the Liberals, d) convoluted preference deals including putting Pauline Hanson above the Liberals. Even though they didn’t mount much of a campaign, they polled an incredible 9% of the Senate primary vote. Effectively, the Libertarians have been elected by the public by mistake 🙄
The Palmer United Party appears to have two candidates in the Senate; In Queensland, former rugby league international prop-forward Glenn Lazarus (known as “the brick with eyes”) has been elected, and former soldier Jacqui Lambie has won the sixth Senate seat in Tasmania. It would be expected they lean right of centre and would support an Abbott government in most matters; but to what extent will these two be mere mouthpieces of their boss?
Over in Western Australia, former gridiron player Wayne Dropulich, representing something called the Australian Sports Party, has won through the preference maze; similarly in Victoria, another single-issue outfit, the Australian Motor Enthusiasts Party, appears to have got its man up. Xenophon is back in South Australia, as is the Family First candidate, and troubled indigenous sports star Nova Peris, Julia Gillard’s “captain’s pick”, will next year take up her seat in the national Senate, representing the people of the Northern Territory.
Unrepresentative swill, indeed. It really is time for reform of the Senate.
It’s interesting that Tony B. Liar (a critter described as a “little turd” by Irish senator David Norris, on radio, I think the term “murderer” was used too) stopped investigations into Thatcher era backhanders over the sale of military gear to the middle east, on the grounds of “national interest”, as a certain influential, and notoriously easily “offended” middle eastern royal house was supposedly getting – what it does best – offended.
I took that as a B. Liar buying indulgence for his own sins. perhaps it also bought him the job of mid east peace envoy as well? who knows?
I suspect that Gizzard & Co are a sufficiently spent political force that bringing out their past misdeeds, or failing to bring them out
won’t buy any more or less reciprocity from a future labour controlled administration, who are probably mostly still at university right now.
I don’t think so, Ian. Something structural changed in Australian politics yesterday; or, at least, yesterday was the first time it became apparent. Labor’s primary vote was just 34% – the lowest in 100 years. The number of seats Labor won (57-58) is an aberration, which will be corrected at the next House of Reps election. IMHO, history was made yesterday. Labor ceased to be a major party, and now sits in influence somewhere between the Coalition and the Greens. Labor isn’t a minor party – yet, that will take another generation – but the slide in influence is now unmistakeable. As former ALP President Warren Mundine said on the Bolt Report this morning, lifelong Labor voters are now getting used to voting for the Liberal Party (having done so in one state and one or two federal elections). Those university students you referred to are as likely to drift into the Greens or minor parties (which have been shown yesterday are as viable a route to power as any other) as they are into Labor.
We’re in uncharted waters here – Oz
Well congratulations with the absolute trouncing of the Labor party lets hope Abbott doesn’t do a Cameron.
New post….. http://knottedprop.wordpress.com/2013/09/07/flodden-field-500-years-of-scottish-humiliation/
An Aussie classic from the vault. How fitting too:
Congratulations Ozboy. A major victory for sanity. Dump green taxes, grow, and trade. Prosperity is the way forward. Lets repeat this in Britain.
Amen – Oz
The one down here was more slow-motion – Oz 😀
It may be interesting to see if the new Abbot in his eagerness to remove the carbon tax he ‘inadvertently’ supports the big energy companies rather than enabling the changing technological options that can alter the energy marketplace.
http://www.midwestenergynews.com/2013/09/06/in-unlikely-alliance-wisconsin-libertarians-back-solar-plan/
“On the matter of public utilities and their definitions, the Libertarian Party of Wisconsin recognizes that existing definitions and regulations can swiftly become obsolete as new technologies and service innovations come into existence. From our understanding, the Clean Energy Choice initiative seeks to clarify the legal status of contracts where a property owner grants an easement to a private company to build a small power station on their property. The LPWI is committed to the idea of free contract: individuals can do as they wish with their property provided they do not trespass on others. The LPWI encourages contracts among property owners, small on-site power providers and large off-site power providers, geared to their individual best interest as they define it without interference or distortion from government entities.”
LibertyGibbert will hold the new government to account as rigorously as it did the last. The first principles from which we begin are pretty straightforward, as you are aware – Oz
OT, but surely the comment of the week:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100235012/arctic-ice-melt-is-a-problem-because-right-wing-newspapers-smell-explains-guardian-climate-expert/#comment-1036039582
Antony Green laments the Senate outcome.
I agree with him completely.
Update: so did Andrew Bolt on radio last night.
Labor’s parliamentary leadership rules (redrawn just weeks ago by Kevin Rudd in an attempt to burn his bridges behind him and thwart any future attempt at another coup) require two votes, of equal weight: one by the parliamentary party and one by the party membership nationwide. The latter means, from a practical point of view, that we may not have a permanent Opposition Leader for up to a month.
Bill Shorten has put up his hand; though on election night most senior retiring Labor politicians, such as Greg Combet and Stephen Smith, favoured Anthony Albanese. Not sure which way that one will fall, but both have likely skeletons in their closets. I suspect Shorten’s skeletons may be a little bigger than Albanese’s.
Call it a hunch, but I’m guessing Kate Ellis is a sure thing for his shadow cabinet 😉
Just posted at Andrew Bolt’s: results of another prediction come true…
Not.
Just a few of the many mal investments made during the bubble, and which we will continue to pay for for many decades to come.