Shorten's Marathon - 8 Week Election 2016: Pollies as You've Never Seen them as they Drop Guard on MEdiaDragon

A Hung Parliament is still in play as Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten await the results 

 

Linda Burney wins Barton, becomes first Indigenous woman elected to House of Representatives ..

Bill Shorten said again and again during the election campaign that he was not interested in an honourable defeat, an honourable second place. At the Moonee Valley racing club, late into the night and into the early morning, it seemed Shorten hadn’t come second, even as it became obvious that Labor could not win government in its own right. He had, according to the booth workers and volunteers slinging back beers and, three course, party pies, achieved an impossible victory – uniting a party torn apart by the Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd years and demoralising a government that had gambled that switching to Malcolm Turnbull would crush Labor under the new prime minister’s charm and confidence. Bill Shorten declares ‘the Labor party is back’ after Australian federal election

Pretty quickly after the Brexit referendum there were calls for a second vote as some who voted Leave spoke of their "Bregret." Now Cabinet Secretary Arthur Sinodinos, an influential figure in Malcolm Turnbull's government, is suggesting a re-run of the Australian election might be necessary. Read more from our political correspondents on this extraordinary call here.
Federal Election 2016 day two, live coverage: Cliffhanger result for Coalition, Labor

It has never been entirely clear why so many people like to draw penises on ballot papers. What is it, exactly, about being asked to turn a tiny wheel of our grand democracy that prompts this response? Do Not Cock Up Your E*ection Vote

"There were a lot of bed-wetters in the Liberal Party and you seem to be the captain of the bed-wetters" 'You are actually a grub': Alan Jones in on-air barney with Malcolm Turnbull backer

THAT smell of onions and barbecued meat wrapped in bread? That’s the sweet smell of sausagocracy  Voting on a full Stomach: Sausagocracy the real burning issue  ;The democracy sausage may be an Australian tradition,   but for some voters, #DogsAtPollingStations were the star attraction on election day.

Voters walk away from Malcolm Turnbull, results on knife's edge  

In Australian Election, Discontent Is the Front-Runner New York Times

"It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," Macbeth might have commented. Says Elgood: "It makes you wonder if any of the sound and fury has cut though. You could either argue that it's extremely closely fought, or that we've all switched off."  Federal election 2016 it is 50 / 50 half of the ads are wasted but no one knows which half ...

Beloved ABC election analyst Antony Green has cautioned people that the Australian Electoral Commission's official seat counts are wrong and are causing confusion as the results of the 2016 election wait to be finalised  Antony Green Veteran

*Election live coverage .....

One of us

Matraville resident, Matt Thistlethwaite is a local who grew up in Maroubra, went to school in Pagewood and attended the University of NSW in Kensington.

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The battle for the seat of Higgins has spilled into violence with police investigating the alleged biting of a Greens volunteer by a backer of assistant treasurer Kelly O'Dwye Bitten During E*ection: greens volunteer

Comedian Barnaby Joyce thanked Johnny Deppfor the publicity which he says helped his campaign.

Election 2016 and beyond: the best Australian podcasts for political nerds 

The Turnbull government has pledged to spend $859m on 73 infrastructure projects in Coalition-held seats and only four Labor-held seats benefit

Coalition spends up big in its marginal seats and small in Labor electorates

"We are trying to humanise the politicians"
The concept was simple, but the execution was delicate.
The idea was to take portraits of politicians that revealed their true feelings, to capture split seconds of real, reactive emotion before the mask came down and the politician-subject put on a face for the camera. Walkley Award-winning Fairfax Media photographer Nic Walker, in a joint project with Instagram and Facebook, wanted to take stop-motion images that would go together to make a "moving portrait", in both senses.

 "We are trying to humanise the politicians"

"Usually they are staring down the barrel of the camera or pulling a nothing 'powerful' face. This took it to a different level."
The question was, how to elicit emotion from politicians who are as practised at posing as they are at reciting slogans? And during an election campaign when the politicians (and their teams) obsessively control their own images?
Walker hit upon the idea of showing his subjects photographs of people or things that would elicit an emotional response.
He used a tele-prompter to flash the politicians images of their children and grandchildren, their partners and their political nemeses, both from the other side and from within their own parties.
Julie Bishop was shown a picture of the women from Sex and the City. One politician was shown a glamorous shot of pop star Mariah Carey.
Another (you can probably guess who) got a pic of former prime minister Kevin Rudd.
Some took the experience more playfully than others. Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce was happy to have gotten off lightly.
Federal election 2016: Politicians drop their guard on Instagram 

 WHAT happens in the polling booth usually stays in the polling booth. Not this time. Overheard at the polling booths

Malcolm Turnbull's marriage equality Faustian pact is unravelling

The 2016 election is remarkable in two ways. First, more than at any time in the past 20 years, the two parties have presented strongly opposed policy platforms reflecting underlying ideological differences on economic policy, symbolic (bankers vs unionists) and substantive (upper income tax cuts) class issues, climate policy, equal marriage and more. On the other hand, having set out these differences, the parties have run campaigns that are (because of the eight-week duration) twice as vapid and uninspiring as usual. None of the big issues have been debated seriously. A policy-based election, a policy-free campaign

 [T]ax Office has told The West Australian that because the government has gone into a caretaker role without legislation it is unable to direct employers to deduct less tax. "On 9 May 2016 the Australian Government assumed a caretaker role. At that time relevant legislation for the personal income tax cut measure announced in the Budget had not been passed," it said in a written response. "The continuation of the targeted personal income tax cut will be a matter for the incoming government to decide." Federal election 2016 tax cuts for Australians earning more than $80000 in limbo


Edward D. Kleinbard (USC), Searching for Our Fiscal Soul (Presentation Slides):

This is an extended version of a presentation made at TEDx Livermore 2016, the theme of which was The Economics of Empathy. Searching for Our Fiscal Soul argues that democracy is an exercise in empathy towards fellow citizens we do not know, and, if we did, might not like. We express that empathy through government spending, because that is how we actualize values that are important enough that we are willing to pay for them. This is our fiscal soul in action. Whether measured against the values we all routinely recite, or against the social environments achieved by peer countries, the fiscal soul of the United States is in peril. The remedy lies in understanding the value of a complementary economy, in which government spending is properly reframed as purchasing investments and insurance that private markets do not, and cannot, reach.

A report in the UK Sun (Murdoch, but directly quoting a government minister, presumably accurately) quotes UK saying that “senior politicians in [Australia and South Korea] had called [seeking trade deals with the UK] in the past 48 hours“. If that’s true, it seems like a spectacular breach of the caretaker conventions. via johnquiggin.com

Cheat sheet for the Australian double dissolution elections 

How to identify a “push poll”

Allegations of Vote Fraud Emerge in Spain Michael Shedlock

'Baron Noir’ is a French political thriller series starring Kad Merad and Niels Arestrup as two backstabbing friends embroiled in the world of politics. The show provides a fast paced insight into the dirtier side of politics, where people act all in the name of revenge and, ultimately, success. From the beginning, viewers are swept into the darker side of the French primary elections as Rickwaert (Merad), the socialist mayor, attempts to clean his hands and protect Presidential candidate, Francis (Arestrup) from involvement in a large-scale housing fraud BaronNoir 

Hackers down House Democrats' websites

Politico June 28, 2016  

More than a dozen House Democrats’ official websites have been down for days, and the contractor operating the sites told POLITICO that hackers are to blame. The websites were hit shortly after Democrats ended an overnight sit-in to press for a vote on gun control legislation. With the exception of Perlmutter, all of the affected lawmakers have contracts with a company called DCS to manage their websites. 

After following politics and elections for over 60 years, it is quite extraordinary to see the Liberal party complaining about the Medicare scare campaign. In a downcast and confusing speech on election night Malcolm Turnbull spoke of the ‘well funded lie campaign on Medicare.’
In fact, I think the ALP is right on the threat to Medicare, although I would have used different arguments. Continue reading →

If revenge is a dish best served cold then surely schadenfreude is best when tasted hot and fresh. As when viewing the tattered remnants of the Turnbull camp following Saturday’s election. Continue reading →

Electronic voting in Australia 

AMERICAN JOURNALISTS COVERING THE TRUMP PHENOMENON COULD LEARN A LOT FROM this piece on Pauline Hanson by Margo Kingston. “Her supporters were by and large nice people with little money who were largely uninterested in politics. They were suffering badly from the effects of competition policy, which had seen basic services and jobs stripped out of their towns. They loved Hanson’s grit and plain speaking. Most of all, they loved that she listened. . . . When I tried to converse with supporters about politics I misinterpreted everything they said, and likewise. I thought they were racists and they thought I was a racist. Communication was impossible without getting to know each other first. . . . Western democracies are splitting up into warring tribes. I think Hanson’s return to our parliament is a chance to bring ours together a little bit. If we try.”

Via Instapundit