Now, maybe my last post was all wrong. I don’t know. I’m sure Jason or Ross or Jonathon will try to correct me the next time I see them, but really, this is probably a much better explanation of how it works than you could get out of 99.9% of the Australian populous, with the remaining, knowledgeable .1% being politicians or the people who work for them.
So, what happened this election? Well, it came down to this: Homophobe vs. The Ranga.
First off - just in case you were wondering - “ranga” is a word that Aussies use to describe red-heads. It’s sort of like “ginger” in the States. I digress. As I mentioned back in July, the party in power – the Labor Party – decided to have a mutiny and take down then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in favor of a new voice for the party – a voice with red hair, a slight Welsh accent, and a hairdresser boyfriend who she’s living in sin with. Julia Gillard became the first female Prime Minister of Australia and called an election shortly thereafter. While she was polling high to begin with, her lead slipped away as that fucking homophobe Tony Abbott of the Liberal Party made attack after attack at the little red-headed lady. Did I mention that Tony Abbott said some stupid shit about gays back in March? Well, he did. And he’s a idiot for saying – or even thinking - it. Why are people even listening to this jackass?
Anyway, election day was sure to be close as the polls leading up to the event showed a neck and neck race. And you know what happened?
They basically tied.
Great. What do we do now? Well, nobody seemed to know. It was the first hung Parliament since 1940. Labor and the Liberal/National “Coalition” won 72 seats each - both short of the 76 seat majority needed to assume leadership. The “balance of power” – as the media frenzy called it – rested in the hands of 4 independent candidates, 1 candidate representing The Greens, and 1 representing the National Party of Western Australia, which is apparently different than the National Party in the other states. WTF? After several weeks of Ms. Gillard and Mr. Abbott racing around trying to meet the demands of the independents – just pandering for their support – the remaining six candidates all finally declared their support in a big hoopla of a television conference last week. The Greens candidate and 3 of the independents declared support for Labor and one of the independents and that dude from Western Australia foolishly declared their support for the Liberals.
So, the ranga gets to stay in power and officially becomes Australia’s first elected female Prime Minster. Phew! Can you imagine a stunt like this being pulled in the U.S.? With a few people holding the fate of the nation in their hands?
Oh yeah. That happened in Florida in 2000.
And we see how well that turned out. Crikey!
And just for kicks, while the media was covering the election non-stop and most Aussies were starting to get annoyed, somewhere in Sydney or Melbourne, a clever employee at an advertising agency came up with this as a better way to cover the hung Parliament…
And that’s why Durex is the world’s #1 condom brand.
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