It is after 11pm EST and the Australian Federal is too close to call. 76 seats are needed in the Lower House to form government, but regardless of which news channel you follow, the seats won on either side has moved very little for the last hour. Some channels have the Liberal Party winning as many as 74 seats, others in the mid 60’s.
Partisan fights are starting to break out on the television commentary panels as everybody runs out of things to say. Peter Costello, while still maintaining gravitas and speaking very well, appears to be growing a comb-over, while for some reason, Maxine McKew still appears to be considered as a credible political commentator.
Either way, it is clear there has been a strong swing against the Liberal government.
Each side is attempting to put its own spin on why this has occurred, but it appears to confirm what The XYZ Viewer Poll, and many of the comments we have seen on our website, our Facebook page, and in private groups across Facebook, have been telling us: Many conservative voters are extremely angry at the Malcolm Turnbull and the Liberal Party, for its betrayal of Tony Abbott, and its swing to the left in the months since.
Nobody has put this better than Andrew Bolt, who has laid out the case against Malcolm Turnbull, in no uncertain terms.
“Malcolm,
You assassinated a Liberal Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, who’d won an election by a huge margin.
You promised to do even better than him.
You then treated the Liberal base like dirt, smashing it with a huge super tax, refusing to speak to conservative journalists, repeatedly humiliating Abbott.
You referred to the colonial settlement of Australia as an “invasion” and even held an end-of-Ramadan meal with known Muslim bigots.
You called an early double dissolution election on the excuse of needing new laws to tackle rogue unions with a building and construction commission, but with the true aim of getting rid of crossbench oppositionists in the Senate.
You went to the election with basically only one policy to sell – a pathetic 10-year promise to cut company tax.
And now look. Almost everything turned to ruin.
You have lost so many seats that you could even be forced into minority government, if pre-polling and Western Australia go against you.
You have, if anything, lost ground in the Senate, which will block most of your plans.
You will be unable to get the numbers to get your building and construction commission through in any joint sitting of parliament.
You have asked for no mandate for real reform, and will have almost no power to undertake any.
Your popularity, already plummeting, will fall further.
There is no way you can seriously claim that this result is better than anything Abbott could have achieved.
Abbott picked up seven seats at the 2010 election and another 15 in the 2013 election. You have lost between 10 and 15 seats and dumped key Liberal values in doing so.
You have been a disaster. You betrayed Tony Abbott and then led the party to humiliation, stripped of both values and honour.
Resign.”
As usual, most of the mainstream media are doing their best to attribute the swing, and the prospect of a second hung parliament in three elections, to anything but the obvious. There are times when seemingly intelligent people attempt to show how intelligent they are by listing every factor involved in a situation, when a sign of true intelligence would be to discriminate between key issues, and mere background.
Stay tuned for more,
XYZ.
Photo by purple camel 