Ummm.

[lizbee]

The cat is climbing my bookshelf in search of a certain squid he loves. This is going to end in disaster, but I can't bring myself to make it stop, because it is hilarious.

Also hilarious: the way, in the wake of the election, the mainstream media has magically decided that rural Australia's interests are newsworthy. I bet the National Party is really regretting letting their Liberal brethren screw over the bush for 13 years.

Comments

[nixwilliams]

magically decided that rural Australia's interests are newsworthy

it's kind of great, actually!

[lilacsigil]

I'm pretty excited! We might get doctors and psychologists and phone reception and fast internet and TV reception!

[st_aurafina]

I feel like I should stand in a paddock with a bucket and catch the money that will soon be falling from the sky.

[purple_smurf]

As someone who lived in rural Australia for 15 years, it's about bloody time. OMG imagine decent public transport! Buses that run more than every five hours!

[melengro]

Something similar happened when a lot of American rural areas went for the Democrats in 2008. Suddenly Nancy Pelosi found a lot of farmin' and minin' interests in her caucus and at least one (possibly both, depending on who you ask) of the parties actually started to give a damn about what kind of stuff goes down in Idaho or Oklahoma or West Virginia.

[philippos42]

The Liberals? That's the party that Oils fans like me are still bewildered Peter Garrett joined :looks it up: no, wait, he's Australian Labor Party. Crap, I've been remembering that wrong for four years, since he was was trying to discourage Green votes. (Still. Good grief.)

OK, I don't even know then. Sort of like the "moderate" GOP here, right? :looks them up: Yep, scum.

[philippos42]

OK, "scum" is a tad harsh. They just look a bit like the old "country clubbers" that used to lead the Grand Old Party here. These days the so-called Tea Party¹ is an attempt to rebrand some of that ideology in a more populist way (& downplay the Religious Right wowser² stuff). Obviously I'm on a different side; I'm not favorably impressed by their economic plans.

The "supply-side economics" in Wikipedia's Liberalism_in_Australia page is a red flag. Also I have a generally dim view of anti-trade-union politics given my own country's history. Hence the unhelpfully scornful epithets.

1 The Tea Party is really just part of the GOP--which is also the Republican Party; we have only two official parties but apparently proliferate names.
2 I rarely get to use the word wowser & I may have used it incorrectly. Sorry if this is offensive.

[myniamh]

I never understood why they've stuck with the Liberals, they don't actually seem to get anything out of it.