Regardless of the colour of the political party a hung parliament will be a painful experience. Too many sweet deals to be done.
We haven't found that over here in WA.
We also had a hung parliament after the last state election, and the chaps with the balance of power were dancing around for a week or two touting both Labor and Libs, but eventually fell back to grass roots and did a sensible deal.
Sure, they extract their pound of flesh, but being country representatives, the country folk get a bit of dosh thrown their way for a change....not a bad thing IMO.
My prediction is ;
LNP..............73 seats
Labor............72 seats
Independents...4 seats
Greens............1 seat
I reckon the group of 3 original indies will gather together and support the LNP. They'll extract huge pounds of flesh for the country, but that'll give them 76 and Govt.
I reckon they'll appoint Tony Windsor as Speaker, leaving 73 LNP plus two aligned Indys as the ruling voting bloc.
The Tassie Indy will either be forced to join them as a foursome, or be left out in the cold as irrelevant. He won't do that. By that token, he won't be able to extract not nearly as much as the other 3 for his voters.
The Green MP if sidling with Labor will now be out in the cold and irrelevant. He won't do that, but with enough numbers to govern, poor ol' Adam won't have any bargaining chips to play with. Melbourne folk will be shafted. He only got in due to LNP preferences, so he'll owe them something, not the other way around.
Labor folk will lick their wounds and wonder what the hell just happened.
Green folk will dance around saying how well they did, but 1 out of 150 seats isn't that spectacular, especially when it's not needed to form Govt.
Don't know what happened in the Senate. I suggest the LNP rush through Bills whilst they control the Senate. I know the Greens take over soon, but don't know when - anyone know ??
I thought the most intelligent comment last night was from Stephen Smith, the local Labor member for the seat of Perth, who impresses the hell out of me. He said ;
"In years past, it used to be there was 40% rusted on Labor, and 40% rusted on conservatives, and the election was about convincing the swinging 20%. Nowadays, it looks like there is 30% rusted on Labor, 30% rusted on conservatives, and the election was about convincing the swinging 40%, a much harder task."
True enough for the primary vote I suppose, but with the preference deals done, most of that swinging vote is going to the Greens and the vast majority of that, not all, flows back to Labor anyway.
It was pleasing for a change not to have a result before our WA polling stations closed.
