More on that election

This post is a crosspost from Jayeless, and can be read in its original location here.

Firstly, all the people finding this blog by Googling things like “doesn’t matter we’re all fucked anyway” and “I hate myself birds of tokyo”, I sympathise but you’re freaking me out even more than the people who found this blog by looking up my international studies lecturer… before I even wrote about him. Birds of Tokyo are there to ease our pain, okay.

Anyway…

Despite my pessimism late on Saturday night, Australia might not be as fucked as initially thought. The independents are demonstrating a little more antipathy to the Coalition than I was expecting, and while they are still conservatives and Katter is a nutcase, it means Labor still has a chance and that’s important. The fact that all three of these independents care so strongly about telecommunications in the bush is something that bodes well for Labor too, because Labor has its NBN policy that the Liberals have promised to scrap… which, I can well imagine, would infuriate rural MPs. The Liberals’ idea of throwing $6bn at corporations to “encourage” them to develop broadband would likely only benefit the cities, where the profits lie. Whereas a government-mandated network with a clear focus on rural areas — despite the $44bn cost — is going to be more effective and more equitable to rural populations.

So that’s good.

Too bad they’re basically still stupid-ass conservative hacks.

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