Maintain your rage and enthusiasm through the campaign for the election now to be held and until polling day.

- Edward Gough Whitlam, 11 November 1975

I probably haven’t been as deflated about a federal election result since Gough was kicked out of office and then beaten in a landslide 29 years ago. I was too young to vote then. I made my federal election debut in 1977 and the result wasn’t much closer. 1980 was a lost cause summed up in two words, “Bill” and “Hayden”. 1983 was a fantastic occasion, Bob Hawke taking the Labor Party to victory and Malcolm Fraser losing control of his lower lip during his concession speech. 1984, 1987, 1990 were victories, close, but still won by Hawke. 1993 looked doomed to be the end of the Labor reign, until John Hewson tried to explain GST to Mike Willesee:

WILLESEE: If I buy a birthday cake from a cake shop and there’s GST in place do I pay more or less?
HEWSON: To give you an accurate answer I need to know exactly what type of cake to give you a detailed answer, if it’s just a cake…

1996 it really was over. At least I had the India v Pakistan world cup quarter-final to drown my sorrows in that night. 1998, 2001… and now 2004. Some Labor pessimists are thinking towards not 2007, but 2010.

The Australian electorate as a whole doesn’t care about foreign policy or refugees and accept with a degree of cynicism that “politicians lie”. They get bluffed over the economy, accepting that things are good simply because the dictionary definition of “recession” hasn’t come into play since 1990. Does that really mean things are better off for all Australians?

We’re not the nation of racist anglophiles that we were, say, forty years ago. We’re a better people than we used to be. The legacy of the Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke and Keating governments collectively has been to make this country more tolerant and embrace the diversity of its people. Howard’s vision, consciously or unconsciously, has been to try and drag us back to the olden days of the 1950s or 1960s. That is, when Bob Menzies was Prime Minister. He reacted to Pauline Hanson by making her redundant. Why does Australia keep voting for him?

It comes down, in my view, to the lack of a trustworthy alternative. JWH played the election on the massive of “trust”, and “trust” was the decisive issue. The lack of trust in Howard’s ability to be honest seemed less important than the lack of trust in Mark Latham’s experience and demeanour.

To be fair, it would have been a miraculous task for someone to take on the opposition leadership and turn around a healthy government majority in a general election after just nine months. Latham is the most audacious leader of any major party in this country that I have seen since Whitlam retired - possibly with the exception of Jeff Kennett in Victoria. His thought processes can be erratic at times, but he is a thinker, and as a student of EG Whitlam, a follower of The Great Man’s maxim of “crash through or crash”.

Mark Latham crashed on Saturday. He deserves a trip to the panel-beaters and then back on the road again till 2007.

Much has been said of the Tasmanian logging, the Medicare Gold, the laughable “one free day a week of child care”, but the Labor camp did made three serious tactical mistakes during this campaign.

One was to focus too much on Latham the individual and not enough on the Labor team. The ALP front bench possesses a number of talented people: Rudd, Gillard, Swan, Smith, McMullen, Albanese, Tanner, Roxon, Faulkner and so on. Compare that team to Downer, Ruddock, Vanstone, Nelson, Patterson, Draper… and, of course, Abbott and Costello.

It must be said, though, that the scare campaign that Howard would retire and hand over to Costello mid-term was another mistake. It’s not saying a great deal, but Costello would undoubtedly make a better Prime Minister than John Howard. (I have a pair of old worn slippers on the floor that would make a better Prime Minister than John Howard, but hey.) Peter Costello would be a better choice than any one of Tony Abbott, Brendon Nelson, Andrew Robb or Malcolm Turnbull.

No, telling people that Howard will give way to Costello before the next election is an argument to vote for the Liberal Party, not against it.

Mistake number three? Simon Crean, Shadow Treasurer. Crean’s comparison of Howard to a drunken sailor is the only decent thing he did in the entire election campaign, and indeed before that. Ever notice how Bob McMullen is the one doing all the talking on economic policy? If only you had some charisma, Bob. The only place I would trust Crean in a shadow cabinet would be on his old stamping ground of industrial relations.

Crean’s performance as Opposition Leader up till December 2003 also deserves mention. The ALP needed to start making ground from the beginning of 2002, not in the middle of 2004. They needed to bore it up the government over Children Overboard, over private education funding, over its failings in economic management (consider just how bad a communications minister Richard Alston really was). They needed to show courageous and intelligent opposition to the war in Iraq, instead of falling into the “shut up and support the troops” trap. When Latham took over the stable, the horse had already bolted.

I’ll make a few predictions for now about changes in the Labor caucus. Mark Latham will remain leader, Julia Gillard will become deputy (although she has apparently ruled it out today), Jenny Macklin will stay in education but not as deputy leader, Kevin Rudd will remain shadow foreign minister whether he likes it or not (the IQ chasm separating him and Alexander Downer is frightening), and Lindsay Tanner will become shadow treasurer.

And in the wishful thinking category, Carmen Lawrence returns to the front bench, and Jennie George does something.

It will be a couple of weeks before we know the final composition of the Senate. Whatever the result, it won’t take effect till 1 July 2005. Before then, the current Senate (35 coalition, 28 ALP, 7 Democrat, 2 Greens, 1 One Nation, 1 Australian Progressive Alliance, and 2 independents) needs to be hostile, aggressive, diligent, and inquisitive. Let’s get SIEV X back on the agenda. Let’s start talking criminal libel over Children Overboard. It’s just as well we don’t have impeachment in our constitution.

This is my last post under the “Election 04″ heading. Once the senate, the cabinet and the Labor frontbench are sorted out, I’ll kick off “The 4th Term”. I’ll add some links to any interesting post-election analysis into the comments, and I invite anyone reading this to have their say in the comments section as well. And though I’ll keep thinking about what the hell was going on in New Lambton Heights, I won’t bore you with my conclusions.

Maintain your rage, maintain your enthusiasm. Australia is a great place to live. Still.

The Australian Electoral Commission’s excellent Virtual Tally Room website has a breakdown of the voting figures for Saturday’s election, not just electorate by electorate, but polling booth by polling booth. I’m not going through them all - there’s several thousand across the country - but I’ve gone searching for some interesting demographics in my electorate of Grayndler and surrounds. A good benchmark to pursue is the level of the Greens’ vote. Grayndler and Sydney, covering the suburbs to the immediate south and south-west of the inner city, have historically been two of the left-wing heartlands of Australia.

In 2001 the Greens received 569,075 primary votes nationwide in the House of Representatives (4.96%). Bob Brown was hopeful of topping the million this year, but with postal and absentee votes still to be counted, they currently have 690,550 (6.94%) this time. Belford Parrot and other galahs have pounced on this as some sort of failure, but the Greens have, in fact, outpolled the National Party (580,990 - 5.84%), which is a milestone that I haven’t seen any commentators point out as yet.

Family First, incidentally, have 197,945 (1.99%) nationally, while the Democrats (116,651 - 1.17%) and One Nation (114,074 - 1.15%) are both sliding into irrelevance. However, as I’ve already pointed out, One Nation’s voters have shifted across to the Liberal Party column. All these figures are updated regularly on this page on the AEC website.

State by state, the Greens are currently have 7.98% of the lower house primary vote in NSW, 7.30% in Western Australia, 7.16% in Victoria, 5.24% in South Australia, 4.89% in Queensland and 9.34% in Tasmania; also 10.39% in the ACT and 6.07% in the Northern Territory. Of course, none of this has translated into winning a seat, but has for the most part helped Labor to hang on in some tight contests. Of course, in the past, these Greens voters would most likely have actually voted for the ALP. That’s a story in itself.

Fourteen of the fifty seats in New South Wales saw a Greens vote of ten per cent or more. Three cleared twenty per cent - Cunningham (Michael Organ, 20.23%), Grayndler (Philip Myers, 20.57%) and Sydney (Jenny Leong, 21.56%). In 2002 Organ had won Cunningham in a by-election with 23.83% of the primary vote to Labor’s 38.13% with the Liberals not fielding a candidate.

Zooming in on Grayndler, and to the booth where I voted, Stanmore Public School. Here, Anthony Albanese polled less than his electorate-wide average, getting 48.62% of the primary vote. Myers got 26.97%, and Stephanie Kokkolis of the Liberal Party 20.61%.

I won’t go through all 44 booths in Grayndler, but it appears that Kokkolis’ vote was strongest around Ashfield, on the western extremity of the electorate, and around Lilyfield, both areas where she has appeared to surpass 30% of the vote. At Ashfield North she made it past 33.

Albanese’s vote was strongest in and around Marrickville, where his electoral office is located. At both Marrickville Town Hall and Marrickville Public School he polled better than 61%. At the Marrickville Uniting Church his vote reached 66%.

For the Greens, things get interesting as we head for the north-east corner of Grayndler. Enmore, 31.95%. Camperdown South, 31.97%. But it’s at the Newtown North polling booth, at the Newtown Uniting Church on King Street, where we see what is probably the biggest Greens turnout in the country - 40.23%. Poor old Steph barely made it into double figures.

The Newtown North booth was also used for the Sydney electorate, being on the border between Sydney and Grayndler. Sydney voters for the Greens registered 36.71% of the vote at that booth.

It shouldn’t be a big surprise that the Greens are so strong around Newtown, especially as they rode heavily on the same-sex marriage issue. You’ve also got Sydney University just up the road. The performance I find really interesting in this election is that of the Socialist Alliance. For all their posters on telegraph poles and walls, not just at election time but throughout, they struggle to get 1 to 2 per cent in some of the leftiest parts of the country. They’re just not connecting, are they?

Latest on other election fronts: final senate outcomes still up in the air until absentee, postal and below-the-line votes are sorted out. Best case scenario is that the Libs and Nats finish with 38, and that Steve Fielding of Family First in Victoria either misses out, or turns out to be another Brian Harradine (yes it’s not much of a best case scenario, is it?). John Faulkner looks like stepping down as leader of the ALP in the senate, and that would be a shame as he is one of the party’s best performers in parliament.

And John Howard is still telling porkies: “I won’t ride roughshod over the senate”, “I will respect the wishes of the people”, and so on and on.

I’ll finish with a word or two from JWH’s mate:

Australia had an election, as well. And I was honored to call my friend, John Howard, the Prime Minister, and congratulate him on a great victory.

- GW Bush, “Victory 2004″ Rally, Chanhassen, Mo., 9.10.04

As an aside, neither Howard nor the White House are yet to acknowledge Wangari Maathai for winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Sore loser, George?

How on earth could we have put this scheming, mendacious little man and his miserable claque back in office for another three years? Worse, how could we have brought them to the very brink of absolute control of the nation’s entire parliamentary process and authority?

Very easily, as things turned out, to the cost of the rest of us and our national self-respect.

For almost nine years this Government, incompetent in most everything except mediocrity, debauched its word and the people’s trust, along with voters’ gullibility, their ignorance, their taxes and, in the end, their greedy self-interest.

And so Alan Ramsey, the Sydney Morning Herald’s senior political correspondent in Canberra begins his column in this morning’s edition.

More from today’s papers:

Editorial in today’s Australian:

For the entire eight years of the Howard Government, the Senate has not been a chamber of review. Instead it has been two things: a chamber of special interests, and a chamber where hostile inquiries could be set up as a check on the power of executive government – for example, the children overboard inquiry. The fact the Senate will no longer be the latter is a loss, but can be compensated by the fact it will also no longer be the former.

Matt Price in The Australian:

Kim Beazley was gracious and correct to point out that when Latham took over from Crean, the entire party feared a catastrophic train wreck. After months of daring to dream of victory, Latham, Gartrell and Co have reduced the damage to a serious derailment.

Hugh Mackay in The Age:

John Howard neutralised his only real weakness going into this election - voters’ scepticism about his handling of the truth and his capacity to admit error - by effectively distinguishing between “truth” and “trust”. He knew many voters believed he had lied to them on various occasions, but he also knew they trusted him on economic management and respected his tough talk on security.

John Button, minister in the Hawke and Keating governments, in The Age:

At the next election Howard will be even more “experienced” than he is now. Mark Latham will be the leader of the ALP, most likely because there is no one else. He will be described in The Age editorial as “a work in progress”, a memorable phrase because it’s the most widely used and silliest journalistic cliche of the 2004 election. So it will be worth repeating.

What will change of course is the external circumstances: the global economy, international political alliances, attitudes to sustainability, the economic and political situation of our neighbours. But as Australians are not much interested in these things, the concentration will be on parochial issues.

Editorial, The Age:

Mr Howard is disliked by many Australians. There are many who believe that he is not open and honest, that he has not set the sort of standards in government that he promised he would set when he first won office in 1996. There are many who excoriate him and his government for their policies on refugees, for their commitment to the war in Iraq, for the tawdry children overboard affair. But the fact is that they are a minority.

Editorial, the Herald-Sun:

John Howard’s remarkable win has handed this tough and intuitive politician a well-earned place in Australian political history. But it is much more than a personal triumph: voters have also handed the Prime Minister a convincing mandate to press ahead with reform. There is much to do.

Editorial, the Courier-Mail:

The Howard Government has a more centralist, anti-states’-rights outlook than any government in the past 30 years. It has the power to implement these programs, beginning with its own technical colleges and with grants directly to P&C organisations for school improvements. It has a historic opportunity to make changes. What matters now is how it uses that opportunity.

Editorial, the Advertiser:

The Australian people have trusted him for the next three years. He needs to trust them enough to make his intentions for his own future clearer.

And, as matter of record, I give you a link to Belford Parrot’s spray on the Channel 9 Today Show this morning.

Finally, in business and finance: at 1pm Monday the ASX/S&P200 (almost, but not quite the All Ordinaries) is up 15.1 points to 3701.9, the Aussie dollar is worth 73.42 US cents, 40.90 pence, and 59.18 Euro cents, and Telstra shares have risen nearly 3 per cent this morning to $4.85.

This nation stands on the threshold of a new era of great achievement.

- John Howard, victory acceptance speech, 9.10.04

It is 3145 days since the Liberal and National parties were elected to government. Looks like we will have them for at least another thousand.

The best thing that can be said about the Labor Party’s performance in the House of Representatives is that they did not lose any major talent. Those Labor MHR’s who appear to be on the way out are: Michelle O’Byrne (Bass), Con Sciacca (Bonner), Sid Sidebottom (Braddon), Sharryn Jackson (Hasluck), Jann McFarlane (Stirling), Kim Wilkie (Swan), Martyn Evans (Wakefield). Sciacca was a junior minister in the Keating days.

For the Government, Ross Cameron has been uprooted from Parramatta, while Larry (son of Doug, grandson of Larry) Anthony has been rolled in Richmond. What will become of larry.com.au now?

The real chill comes in the Senate. The Coalition will have at least 38 seats out of 76, and possibly 39, if Barnaby Joyce of the Nationals can get the final spot in Queensland ahead of Drew Hutton of the Greens. (Pauline Hanson seems to be out of the hunt, thankfully.)

In Victoria, Family First (with 1.9% of the statewide senate primary vote) look like gaining a senator in the form of Steve Fielding. They have said they won’t support the Government in the sale of Telstra, but we’ll wait and see. Such are the nuances of the preferential voting system that they will probably beat The Greens (8.66%) for Victoria’s last senate seat. Either result will see Labor’s Jacinta Collins on her bike.

Also taking that bicycle ride into the sunset are all three Democrat senators who stood for election: former acting leader Brian Greig, former deputy leader Aden Ridgeway, and John Cherry, one of only two of the seven Democrat senators who has been neither leader nor deputy lleader of the party at one time or another. Farewells also to former Democrat leader Meg Lees (whose Australian Progressive Alliance progressed nowhere at this election) and One Nation’s last (and hopefully final) remaining representative in Canberra, Len Harris.

The Greens have at least a third senator now, Christine Milne from Tasmania. They might get others, possibly in Queensland and WA. John Kaye in New South Wales appears to be out of contention with the ALP likely to retain the sixth.

More analysis of the Senate and the preferential system later today (or simply later). I also want to look at the demographics of Grayndler and Sydney electorates (and a place still dear to my heart, Shortland), and a bit of a Where-to for the Labor Party.

The ALP is under threat of losing many long-term supporters permanently to The Greens. I should know, I’m one of them.

Australia entered a new era last night. Australians roundly rejected the once compelling appeal of ‘a fair go’, which must now be considered a relic of our past rather than an expression of our essence.

- Margo Kingston, SMH Webdiary, 10.10.04

It still feels the same this morning. Australia has spoken, and it’s given the wrong answer. Well, not really all of Australia, but it is sure to paint a bad image overseas. I’ll wrap some of the reaction internationally once the Sunday papers in Europe and the US hit the web.

But the scenario we were looking for just didn’t happen, ie, Labor regaining the support lost in the xenophobic election of 2001, plus those lost in the anti-Keating election of 1996. The truth is, they have barely recaptured any, picking up approximately 0.46% of the vote for a 38.30% share on current count.

The Liberals’ net gain (+3.20, to 40.20%) is almost identical to One Nation’s loss (-3.19, to 1.15% of the national vote). Why should there be any reason for One Nation to exist any longer when you have Howard Liberalism to vote for?

Those people who support a third party for the sake of it have deserted the Australian Democrats (-4.23, to 1.18%) in droves, choosing either the environmental Left of The Greens (+2.02, to 6.98%) or the religious Right of Family First (new entrant, 2.00%).

Independent candidates have picked up 2.45 per cent of the House of Reps vote nationally. Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party (0.62%) has been trumped by Family First for the fundamentalist vote, while Lyndon LaRouche disciples, the Citizen’s Electoral Council, scored just 0.35%.

Remember when the DLP were the Third Force in Australian politics? The Catholic wing of the ALP, which broke away from Doc Evatt’s party in the great 1955 schism, is currently recorded on the AEC website as receiving 1024 primary lower house votes nationwide. Is that called a kilovote?

It’s in the Senate where we should be afraid. Very afraid. It seems certain that the Liberals and Nationals will have 38 members of the 76-seat Senate. The burning question is whether Family First can gain a senator in either Victoria or South Australia. If so, they can be expected to side with the Libs to create a right-wing majority in both houses of parliament at the same time, something that has not happened since 1983.

Spot Satan’s strongholds in the areas you are living - brothels, gambling places, bottleshops, mosque, temples - Freemasons/Buddhist/Hindu etc, witchcraft…

- Election leaflet, Danny Nalliah, Family First candidate for Senate in Victoria

Why did John Howard win this election so decisively? I can’t remember who it was on the ABC last night (probably more than one person) who invoked the Clinton/Gore 1992 campaign slogan: “It’s the economy, stupid”.

This outcome has less to do with the “It’s the economy” bit and more to do with the “Stupid” bit.

I’m not going to offer congratulations or anything like that. Tonight’s election result is a worse outcome than I could possibly have imagined. The Liberal/National coalition led by John Howard has been returned to office with an increased majority.

Most disturbingly, there is a distinct possibility that the government could gain control of 50% of the seats in the senate. This would give Howard, certainly in his eyes, a mandate to pursue his neo-conservative post-Menzian vision for Australia to the hilt.

Malcolm Turnbull has made it into parliament, and that changes the dynamics of the post-Howard succession somewhat. The only frontbencher of consequence likely to lose his seat is Larry Anthony.

That’s democracy. Yes it is. But there is no doubt that this election, as with the one in 2001, have been fought on false pretences and on a limited range of issues. The overseas media has seen this election as a referendum on Iraq. The truth is that Iraq, and foreign policy in general, was swept under the carpet by both major parties and by a compliant media. This was a victory for Rupert Murdoch, Kerry Packer, John Laws and Alan The Parrot Jones.

In net terms, the ALP gained less than 0.1 per cent on their primary vote in 2001. They look like scoring about 38% of the primary vote, and I have heard more than one Labor Party heavyweight say tonight that they can’t win government unless their vote percentage has a 4 at the beginning.

Considering how badly they were struggling under Simon Crean last year, the ALP has still made a heck of an improvement from their standing in 2003. Mark Latham, while inexperienced, erratic, and individualist, is at times the most breathtakingly audacious politician I have seen in this country since, well, since Gough Whitlam.

There were a few flaws in the Labor Party campaign for this election. They were sucked in to an obscene multi-billion dollar policy auction that ultimately must have proved more counterproductive for them than for the Liberals. They didn’t focus enough on the failings of the government in economic management over the past eight years. There wasn’t enough comparison made between interest rates in Australia and interest rates in the UK, US and Europe. There wasn’t enough attention given to Howard’s failings in industrial development.

And his government’s outrageous conduct in foreign and humanitarian policy failed to strike a nerve with “middle” Australia. As a nation, we’re still xenophobic rednecks at heart. Hawke and Keating tried to change that. Howard has unravelled all of their good work since 1996.

We don’t know for sure yet if the Libs and Nats will reach the magic figure of 38 in the 76-seat Senate. While support for the ALP has remained static since 2001, we have seen in this election a shift in support from One Nation, almost as a solid bloc, back to the Coalition. Hansonism is dead, but only because Howardism has taken it on board.

The Democrats seem to be a spent force, victims of too much implosion over the past decade. Their voters have moved in two opposite directions - to The Greens, and to Family First. The latter seems to have shut the door on Fred Nile to assert itself as the fundamentalist Christian party of our time, the contemporary DLP if you will.

The Greens, while losing their sole representative in the lower house, are likely to do well in the senate, hopefully well enough to hold the balance of power. Their challenge for the future lies with their internal discipline as a political party, something the post-Janine Haines Democrats were unable to master.

I am very sad about the outcome of this election. A narrow majority for the Libs I could have accepted, an increased majority is deeply disappointing. I feel a sense of pessimism tonight about the future direction of this country. If Latham, or whoever is leading the ALP, is successful at the next opportunity, probably in late 2007, how much damage to our national fibre will there be to repair?

I don’t feel sorry for the 46.5% of the electorate who voted Liberal or National today. I feel sorry for the rest of us. I want an Australia for my daughter and for all the children of this country that is inclusive, diversive, peaceful, healthy and socially rewarding. John Howard’s retrograde vision won’t provide that.

Iron Chef Chinese has won the Bamboo Shoots Battle. Shane Warne is one off Murali’s world record and stands a great chance of gaining it in his own right tomorrow. And we have a new niece, born in Adelaide this afternoon.

Now back to that bloody election.

The Greens challenge is over in the lower house. It just remains to be seen how they do in the Senate.

They have lost the Wollongong seat of Cunningham, coming third with 20% of the primary vote. They’ve come third in Grayndler, also with 20% of the primary vote. Jenny Leong had high hopes of beating the talented Tanya Plibersek in Sydney, but has also finished third at 22%. They also had hopes of knocking off Lindsay Tanner in Melbourne, but he succeeded in picking up most of the former Democrat vote. The Greens came third here as well, with 19%.

Jennie George gained votes in Throsby. Goodness knows why. On the subject of dinosaur ex-ACTU presidents, Simon Crean has been returned in Hotham. There’s only one Bob Hawke.

The three independents have all been returned: Peter Andren in Calare, Tony Windsor in New England, and Bob Katter in Kennedy.

Malcolm Turnbull has gained Wentworth after a very acrimonious campaign. Incumbent Peter King has come third with 17%.

Mark Latham has gained ground in Werriwa, scoring 34% of the primary. The Greens’ decision to field an 18 year-old in this seat has backfired big time. Ben Raue has registered about 3%.

Kim Beazley has lost ground in Brand, but he will probably hang in there. Ross Cameron is rooted in Parramatta. Larry Anthony looks to be in serious trouble in Richmond, and would be the only cabinet member to lose his seat if that happens.

Latest call by the ABC is a Coalition majority of 24. It’s all a very disappointing result, and Mark Latham is about to concede defeat at 9.42pm.

Labor does not seem to be making any ground on the Coalition. If anything, the Libs have gained votes, although this does appear to be in direct proportion to the votes One Nation has lost. The rednecks are back home again. The Democrats have been decimated, their vote seems to be shared between the Greens and Family First, ie, chalk and cheese.

Currently the ABC are saying that the Libs have picked up four seats from Labor (Greenway, Bass, Braddon, Wakefield), while Labor have regained Cunningham from the Greens, who will be unrepresented in the lower house. They are calling a Coalition majority of 20. Bloody hell.

Albo has won Grayndler for the fourth time, and it looks like he won’t need preferences. Currently on 52%, a +3 swing. Steph Kokkolis has improved on Brett Kenworthy’s 2001 vote for Libs to 24%. Philip Myers has polled 21% for the Greens. The invisible Jen Harrison has 2% for the Democrats, a -7 swing. The Socialist Alliance display their continuing irrelevance at 1.2%.

John Howard is back in Bennelong, albeit with a -3.5% swing. Andrew Wilkie has 17% of the vote at this stage.

Labor has regained Cunningham from the Greens. Sharon Bird has 39% of the primary vote. Sitting member Michael Organ whose win in the 2002 by-election was, let’s face it, an aberration, is around 21% in third place.

As expected, Peter Garrett has pissed it in in Kingsford-Smith, twenty years after his failed bid for the Senate for the Nuclear Disarmament Party. He has given the ALP a +1.5 swing over Laurie Brereton’s vote in 2001.

“Ross Cameron: Rooting for Parramatta” read the sign at Chinnaswamy Stadium on Thursday. He’s not rooted yet, but it will be close.

I’ve given up watching the election telecast for now, the Bamboo Shoots Battle has begun.

The polls haven’t closed in West Australia yet, but I think we can call this already as a Coalition win - and possibly with an increased majority.

But there’s an interesting stat I’ve noticed. The Liberals have a swing of 3.3% on latest figures nationwide. The One Nation Party has a negative swing of 3.3%.

Wonder why….

India are crap - 19 for 3 just before tea to be precise (though Sehwag was out lbw to an inside edge). The Solomon Islands got flogged by the Socceroos 5-1, and Tasmania’s showing a swing to the Libs. It’s early days, but this doesn’t look good.

Live updates on the election at the ABC, Sydney Morning Herald (curious URL that), and the Australian Electoral Commission’s Virtual Tally Room. Live audio at ABC Newsradio.