Oz election aftermath and wordplays of 'hung' parliament

OK, so I was wrong! I was reading the wrong rule book. Parochialism has won the day in Australia. The country gets what it deserves. Nick Bryant of the BBC is yet again spot on with his assessment of the 2010 Australian election. This is what he had to say:

It is the great paradox of the 2010 election. Australia emerges from the most serious global economic convulsion since the Great Depression without falling into recession, and yet the prime minister who would have been expected to take at least a modicum of credit gets ditched on the eve of the election by a deputy who then slumps herself in the polls.

In explaining this apparent paradox, perhaps historians will follow the same analytical furrow that Donald Horne ploughed in the early 1960s - that Australia is blessed with an abundance of natural resources, but cursed by second-rate politicians.

Might we even one day call this The Lucky Country election? For many will agree with that great sage of the Canberra press gallery, the Nine Network's Political Editor Laurie Oakes, who described it as a battle between two "political pygmies".

And this assessment by Harvard academic Niall Ferguson about the parochialist nature of the election fits the bill:

"It is true to say that there is a quality of Australian political debate very reminiscent of local politics in Glasgow when I was growing up," he told Mark Colvin on ABC's PM programme. "There is a parochialism combined with, I'm going to say, an edge of nastiness that is very familiar."

"Now it may seem mean to use a term like parochialism but I think it is justified when you reflect on the magnitude of the changes that we are living through - massive shifts in the global economy, a radical transfer of economic power from the west to the east.

"And one listens to the contenders for the Australian premiership discussing in the most oblique and mealy-mouthed way issues about immigration and infrastructure that really, you know, sound more like Strathclyde Regional Council than a debate for the leadership of a major power in Asia-Pacific."

Certainly, it has been a very insular campaign, with hardly any focus on the rest of the region or the rest of the planet.

As I have said in previous posts, this election was focused solely on those 12,000 'swing' voters in Queensland and NSW. What happened is that the same 10% in Queensland who changed allegiance and voted for Kevin Rudd in 2007 went back to the Tories this time round and affecting the result nationally. Why? Well, parochialism. These people voted for Rudd in 2007 mainly because he was from Queensland. Since he was viciously deposed just months ago by a South Australian/Victorian, them Queenslanders decided to punish Gillard for what she did to their Queenslander.

Now this is not just a Queensland phenomenon. Labor leader Gillard was raised in South Australia (in the electorate of Boothby) and lives in Victoria. So where did the ALP made gains of 2% and even 2 electorates? Funny that - in Victoria. These people voted for Gillard purely for parochial reasons. And how about Boothby in SA? The safe Liberal seat is now on a knife edge... again, parochialism won the day.

WA voted Liberals because their mining company employers told to do so. While the only faint glimmer of hope was central Melbourne where finally the two-party stranglehold was broken and the Greens won. Let this be a shining example that voting for anyone other than Labor or Liberal is not a 'wasted vote' as many brainwashed idiots out there would want you to believe.

So there you have it. Australia is up shit creek without a paddle and navel gazing. A true reflection of the isolation it enjoys and encourages. All the signs of the 'lucky country' of old with no hope or little desire to move on. Tony Abbott, who looks most likely to form a new government (three out of the four independents are former members of the National Party) said that the first thing he would do as prime minister is get on the phone to (cashed-strapped) Nauru and set up the refugee reception centre. Judging by the parochial and backward wallow a majority of Aussies seem to enjoy, what really needs to be set up is a refugee reception centre in the UK for fleeing 21st century Aussies who have a vision of now and not of some 1950s wonderland that never was.