Boonta Vista - EPISODE 98: The Inaugural Gigantony Green Election Spectacular

Episode Date: May 14, 2019

Andrew, Ben and Theo give a dire pre-election warning from deep inside the cavernous basement of the AEC, stalked by a terrifying and formidable force of looming, eldritch electoral power. *** Support our show and get exclusive bonus episodes by subscribing on Patreon: www.patreon.com/BoontaVista *** Merchandise available at: boontavista.com/merchandise *** Twitter: twitter.com/boontavista iTunes: tinyurl.com/y8d5aenm Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2DBCXGA Stitcher: www.stitcher.com/s?fid=144888&refid=stpr Pocket Casts: pca.st/SPZB RSS: tinyurl.com/kq84ddb

Welcome to Bontavista. I am Andrew. We are here with Ben. Hello Ben. I was just really, you know, I'm confused. I'm ruddledless. I thought you would have maybe set the scene or described a location or a series of circumstances. Well, sometimes I do. Sometimes as on a recent episode, I come completely unstuck and I'm then made fun of for 15 or so minutes. You mean a recent future episode. Confidence shattered.

You can enjoy that on this week's bonus episode. Instead, today we're all, we're being very quiet because we're inside the Australian Electoral Commission. We can't just yammer on about it. We're in here to tear up a lot of votes today. So we can't, we don't want anyone to twig. We did the classic, we did the big trouble in Little China, we put on denim jackets and carried a phone with us through the door and started yelling about how it was raining outside and how we needed to look for the phone exchange because we're a phone repairman. We let ourselves into a room, waited until everyone left for the day and now we are hiding from a

security guard trying to record an episode in between tearing up votes for the parties we don't like. We do have to be careful and be quiet though because there is a colossal 18-foot-tall Anthony Green with lightning bristling from his eyes, roaming the halls looking for intruders and you do not want to let him catch you. I am enjoying the thought of an Anthony Green crypted. Lurking the halls. Just sorry and I know I just said Anthony Green then like a like a huge numpty of course it is Anthony Green. And he gets very mad about that. He would not immediately very slowly starts heading to your house, walking the entire way.

Lumbering, how this giant legs. Lumbering creepily, before electrifying you in your bed. He loves doing that one. But yeah, you don't want him to find you when you've broken in and you're doing some voter fraud. No, that's the thing that he hates the thing that he hates the most. He hates people that say the Malcolm Roberts 19 votes thing. He'll zap you for that one. He hates people not understanding preferential voting. He hates it when people haven't registered to vote, but vote a fraud. Oh. Extra mad about that one. He comes down on you

Well like an 18-foot man. Hmm I wonder if he's seen the Marbon tweet Definitely has yeah, if Anthony Green specifically has seen the Marlin tweet. It came across his desk. His huge desk and he wept openly just to clarify this is our enemy of the show Dear friend of the show and Mostly enemy of the show. Oh, mostly enemy of the show. Um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, well, well, well, well, well, well, th, well, th, th, th, th, well, well, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, well, um, well, well, um, well, well, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, like, th, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, the-a, the-a, like, like, th is our enemy of the show, dear friend of the show and Mostly enemy of the show. Mostly enemy Marbon, who tweeted about working in the Gladston pre-poles, tearing up every vote for Fraser Annings party that came through the door, which has been, I think it's been looked upon kindly.

We spoke on about it on the bonus episode, but I am enjoying the thought of Anthony Green just fretting his electric hands over seeing that tweet. I think there's a red phone on his desk with no dial on it that just rings when it happened to the last election when friend of show, Dow Nolan tweeted about, oh, not the election, sorry, it was the postal vote. Working at Chatswood Post Office, I believe, and tearing up votes for no votes in the marriage equality survey.

Anytime he finds out about these things, even though that was the ABS. A phone, a red phone rings in the forest completely empty forest Anthony Green answers it. Appears from behind a tree. He begins his lumbering journey towards them. It's like the March of the Antony the Antony Green. It's like a the March of the Rings, Anthony Green. You really pulled that one together at the last moment, didn't you? Well, you know, sometimes things just happen. Because it's real and what we're describing is true. Very real and true, folks. In case you haven't figured it out, myself, Ben and Theo,

we're here to bring you a special edition of the show. That's right, it's an election special. Now a lot of people are very confused now because that is specifically the boat watch theme. That's right folks. A lot of people are very confused now because that is specifically the boat watch theme. It's, it's the theme for a lot of things. It's the watch the the... that is specifically the boat watch theme. It's the theme for a lot of things, let's be real. There is no boat involved, I will put this out there. Well last week it was disgraced candidate watch and this week I

guess it's election watch. It's very versatile, very versatile theme. So yeah I guess we we thought, seeing as we are one week out from the election or when this episode comes out will be mere days, mere days away from the election. We thought we would weigh in with our substantial hefty throbbing election knowledge and lay some of that on you because if there's one thing we're all known for it's been extremely across the details of the electoral system. We are smart, technically knowledgeable, insiders in the political process,

and really we are sources of authority on this. So yeah, we're getting a lot of demand for help from us. That's true. That's true. The Anthony Green got in touch via his big red phone. Please tell the people. Tell the people how this works. How did he dial us using the red phone? Mainly telepathic energy. I believe. Yeah, no, that is actually. Form of the form of teleconesis. Via which he operates the very small switchboard with his mind. That's right.

The receiver just floats up from the cradle and hovers next to his head. His arms just lay limp at his sides. I like to think that he's in a sort of meditative pose, lotus position, hands open, facing upwards, absorbing the energy of the electoral process which is what fuels his body. He has one of the plugs from the Matrix jacked into the back of his head through which he receives a direct feed of all of like the ABS statistics and everything. I have to edit that out for the live broadcast of Election Night

and it is very expensive making him look small not that hard. Getting rid of the live broadcast of election night and it is very expensive. Making him look small? Not that hard. Getting rid of the matrix plug? Oof, whole thing. Especially if he's moving around excitedly. And he does. He's a very excitable man. It turns out that all they have to do is just build a colossal set for him to stand on. In which he then looks normal. It's very much the inverse of like honey I shrunk the kids just building you know giant thumbtacks and cockroaches and stuff on a soundstage it's almost like what's the what was the sequel where it was the opposite where they made it very big yes it's like it was it honey I blew up the baby. Or Honey I blew up... Someone got blown up. Honey I blew up the kid, singular.

Honey I blew up the kid, followed by the third and final movie, the diminishing returns, which I believe was, honey we shrunk ourselves. Oh, I didn't realize there were three of them. There is, there are three. There are three. It went from honey I shra I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I the the the the the the the the the th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. thu the the th. th. th th th the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the th th th th th th tho, was, was, was, was, was, was, was, was, was, was, was, was, was, was, was tho. Honey I blew up the. the. thoooooo. thtoo. the. the. thooo. thtoday the the the the, there are three. It went from Honey I Shrunk the Kids in 1989 all the way up to Honey, we shrunk ourselves in 1997. My favorite thing that I realized about, Honey I shrunk the kids on re-watching it pretty recently. As one does. As one does. The popular, popular popular movie. It was the thing I remembered watching a bunch of times as a kid. And I watched it to discover that it was written by Stuart Gordon and Brian Usner who made like all the reanimator movies.

And who made like a bunch of badass horror movies like Fortress and shit like that. Oh, Fortress. So there you go, that's it's strange connection to some of everybody's favourite horror movies. Stuart Gordon and Brian Rusner wrote the story, but they should have let Stuart Gordon directed so that like more, more arms got ripped off and shit like that. Interestingly as well, the screenplay was written by Ed Naha, who has written one of the seminal looks on the making of the film June from 1984. And good on him. We congratulate him. Well done, Ed. You did it. Soon to be overtaken, though, I imagine by a friend of the show, Christian McCrayer, said his last name.

Mm-hmm. Christian McCrae. I believe has a book in the works about that very film, and I can't wait to read it. So, in order to keep things moving along and reduce our chances of being discovered. Yeah, I would hate to accidentally fill up this entire episode with banter. About how many I shrunk the kids. As a cover for the fact that we don't know anything at all. Well, in order to prove, in order to prove that we do in fact know a great deal, we're now going to throw to Theo, at which point he's going to explain the introductory concept of preferential voting. Now, this is mainly intended for, say, international listeners, to thi. Well, that, that, the, to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to be to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to be, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, be, be, be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be the the the the the the the, the, thean, to be to be thean, to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be the the the the the the the the the introductory concept of preferential voting. Now, this is mainly intended for, say,

international listeners who don't really get what our whole deal is, why we don't vote for a president and so on. Oh, we don't have one. No, it's true. Although Scott Morrison has been out. I saw a little thing from Insiders from Barry Cassidy. They had a short segment that they had posted to Twitter in which Barry Cassidy was observing the fact that throughout this election campaign, Scott Morrison has basically been claiming

this to be like a presidential contest. The whole time he's been saying, like, like he there were all these clips of him talking about like labor's campaign launch and he was like oh they had their thing and it was just all about labor. It was just all about the labor party. I was like yeah that's the political parties. Well it's almost like they're trying to play it that way because the Labor Party is winning in the polls but Bill Shorten is losing in the the the the the the the the the the p p p p p p p p l l l l l l l l l l l l. l. l. the l. the l. the l' l' l' l' c. the l' c. the l' c. the c. the c. th. the's la' c. the's la' the' the' the' the' the' the' the' the' campe' campe' campe' campe' campe' campe's l' campe's l' camp's l' c. th. th's c. th's c. th. their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their the's c. ta'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'e'e'e' trying to play it that way because the Labour Party is winning in the polls, but Bill Shorten is losing in the preferred leadership. And yes, that was very much the conclusion that was drawn from this was that they're not really proposing anything in terms of policies.

They're just saying we're going to keep cutting stuff and not really doing anything ambitious. And the only point that they have is Scott Morrison is theoretically more popular than Bill Shorten on a preferred Prime Minister rating. So the whole thing Scott Morrison's trying to make it about is if you vote for us, you get me, if you vote for them, you get Bill Shorten. And that's true and that's permanent and immutable despite the fact that none of this is actually how our political parties work. So all that said, like I said, we want to help explain this to international listeners

and perhaps even, maybe you're a young person. Maybe this is your first election that you're voting in. You're just, you, all the things you've been afraid to ask. So. So. So. So th. So th. So th. So th. So th. So th. So th. So th. th. th. thi. th. thi. thi. th. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. th. thi. thi. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. the. the. the. the. the. to to the. to to the. to the. the. the. th all the things you've been afraid to ask. So here goes Theo with his explanation of preferential voting. Oh God. That's it. That's the whole tune. Yeah you should have been ready. You should have been ready. Oh God. All right. So, um, so, um, in, I'll just talk about federal parliament, just assume we're talking about federal parliament the whole, the whole way along, right?

We're not getting interstate elections here. That's not what we're here for. We're not, we're not here for that. You know, as you may expect, Australia's broken up into electorates. I am in, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, tho, tho, tha, tha, to to to to to to to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, th. tho, th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th. Yeah, th. Yeah, th. Yeah, tha, tha, tha, tha, tha, tha, tha. Yeah, tha. tha. tha. to to to to to to to to to to to to to tho tha, tha, tha up into electorates. I am in the Bona electorate of Brisbane. Sorry. Oh, and when you get to the booth, before you get to the booth, what happens is you are handed or attempted to be handed a bunch of how to vote cards and they will push them at you, kind of jabbing them into your into your soft hemophilic skin. You said no thank you. I know exactly how I'm voting.

You're cutting me. But this sort of brings me to the first to the first point and it's a very contentious part in Australian politics as far as PR goes, and that is delegation of preferences. So parties can choose in each electorate to delegate their preferences. And when this is sort of ringed out in the media, especially by other political parties who disagree with those preferences because it doesn't put them at number two. They will say, well, you know, labor is giving your vote to the communist party, which is not true.

So what that means is they will basically print out a how to vote card on the day, and it will list how to number each candidate preferentially when you get into the booth. And that starts number one, Labour how to vote card, and it might be, you know, two the Greens, three the beige independent for the Communist Party, five, you know, your liberal gnats, and then, you know, down through the, the, th-through the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the candidate, the, the candidate, the, the candidate, the, the, the, the, the candidate, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, the Communist Party, five, you know, your liberal Nats, and then, you know, down through the fishing, shooting, fascism, and racism parties all the way down to the bottom. You can take this card and you can throw it directly in the bin if you like. There is no forced preferential, like preferences.

If you vote for Labour, you do not get the labor preferences. When you get to the booth, you have a card that lists all of your, the half dozen members, also members who are up for, or people that are up for being members in your in your electorate. Unless you're voting for the Senate in which case there will be like 600,000 candidates. 294 million, that's right. Brief aside, there was a thing we still come out of the New South Wales state election where ex-leader of the Labour Party, Mark Latham, was running for the One Nation Party in the Senate in New South Wales and many people took to numbering him, to numbering every single candidate for the Senate, which is not mandatory. I don't want to get into that,

but you can either vote above or below the line in the Senate. And if you vote below the line, you have to give a number to every single Senate candidate that exists and they would go all the way down, finishing with, I think it's 246 Mark Latham. That is not the case with the House of Reps. You've got half a dozen candidates. You got a box next to each name, and you number. And you have to to to to to to to to to to to to to to the the to, and the number. And the number. And the number. And the number. I. I. I. I. I'm the the the the their. I'm their. I'm their. the number. the number. the number the number the number.coceck. the number. the number. the number. the number. the number. the number. the number. the number. the number. the number. the number. the number. the number. the House of Reps, you've got half a dozen candidates, you've got a box next to each name and you number them 1 to N for however many candidates that there are. And this means that if you vote for, you know, one for the Greens, two for whatever Socialist party hasn't, you know, actively murdered itself in the last

three months in your electorate, you know, three for labor, etc. You are not throwing your vote away when it gets to, you know, LMP victory in that, in that electorate. And the way that it works is this. If you take all of those, um, every single ballot in the electorate goes into a big box and they pull them out and imagine they all go into big piles and each pile is for a candidate. And you start off putting the number one votes into those piles, right? So you've got the first candidate, number one for each of the candidates and obviously one of these piles is going to be way smaller because nobody voted for for such and such person.

That pile gets basically just picked up and then everyone that listed number two on those cards, those things, those ballots then go to, the next candidate. So if you voted number one for some, you know, socialist party or whatever and they didn't get anything at all, and your number two was for the Greens, your vote will be added to the Greens pile, and that process continues, so the next smallest pile gets removed until basically you have a winner. What the upshot of that is is that if your number one preference doesn't get in and your number two preference doesn't get in, and your number thi th th th th th th th th th th th and th and th th and to to to to to to to to to to to to get anything to get anything, and to get anything, and to get anything, and to get anything, and to get anything, and to get anything anything, and to anything anything anything anything anything, and to get anything, anything anything anything, anything anything, anything anything, anything, anything, and to anything anything, and to anything anything, and to anything, and to anything anything, and to anything anything, and to anything, and to anything anything, and to anything, to anything, to anything, to anything, to, to, to anything, to, to, to to, to, to, to, to, to to to, to, to, to, to to to to to to, to to to to to to to to the, thi, thi-to thi-to thi-to thi-to thi-to thi-anyanyany-to thi-to anything anything, thi- upshot of that is, is that if your number one preference doesn't get in, and your number two preference doesn't get in, then your number three preference does get in, that's where your vote went. Right, so there's no such thing as throwing away your vote, as, you know, as we see the big fights in America where,

statistically insignificant, small, you know, a number of people vote on both sides for third party candidates in a two-party system. Yeah, just that whole idea of the spoiler vote? The spoiler vote. The Ralph Nader or Bernie Sanders ruined everything for everyone. That's exactly right. And so every every single election you people on, whoever is the losing side, right, whether it be the Republicans or the Democrats, blaming third party votes as part of, well, well, in this thing, you know, 30,000 would have gone to, you know, this candid or whatever,

we don't even get to go into that because that's not the way our voting works, despite the... Well, you say that we don't get to. People sure try. This is... Yep. As has been alluded to, we still have the Murdoch papers, just several days ago the Australian, I think, trying to spin it this way to say that

Greens votes are getting your your Labour per- like Labour in and it's not true labor votes are getting labor in it's just that that vote happen to appear further down but not so far down as the LNP vote on a particular ballot. Yeah so it would have been either a Greens voter saying well my first preference is to have the Greens in but if I can't have them I would rather have labor than the liberals or the racism party or whatever. But yeah like the way they framed that article was absolutely ridiculous which was you know the the the labor the labor had however many MPs elected at the last election, and they relied on Greens votes to do this.

So they were framing the entire thing in the context of, you know, they owe this blood debt to the Greens for delivering them to office in this particular instance, which is, as you said, it's not true and it's not how the system works. Yeah, it's not physically how the system works the system system system system system system system system system system system system system system the system the system the system the system the system not how the system works. Yeah it's not physically how the system works and it's also not politically how the system works. So coming out of like the upshot of all of this I think is there's a number of things like number one you can't throw your vote away right so I think we covered that that. Your first party vote you know it may not be the one that gets somebody in, but your vote still counts for one vote, regardless of whether it's number one or number five on the list that gets that person in. It still counts for a vote. Number two, those voting counts are available, right?

So we can see where first preferences went. We can see where preference flows went. And what that means is it gives a very real, very reliable indicator in a particular electorate that if people are voting one greens over over labor, even though the labor candidate got in, it is a sign that labor needs to appease these people, right? Especially if it's a vote that's increasing, right? Or a vote that's, you know, getting close to tiping, tipping the, you know, the labor candidate from second to third, for example, in an electorate. Right, so that, that means that they need to look at what's happening there and, and think about what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, th is thiaba, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, th is is th is the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, tha, tha, tha, tha, that, that, that, that, that, that, th So that means that they need to look at what's happening there and think about what keeps them in power in any particular

electorate, right? And that means appeasing those people that that voted for them but only through preferential flows. Particularly like you're saying, if the party is able to look and see over the course of the last X number of elections our vote has decreased and the vote for this other like the primary vote for our party has decreased and the primary vote for this other party has increased by whatever margin you know over a course of several elections they can say oh well we can see there is more and more appetite for this type of thing. That's right, and I think thirdly, it means that minor parties can, for better or worse,

actually get into government. Obviously, not as a majority government, I should be clear to, you know, overseas listeners or what have you, but and also, you know, not anything like the UK, I would say, or many other, you know, parliamentary systems. We won't have some sort of three-party system in the foreseeable future. Or, you know, a thing where we end up with minority coalitions, with the, the coalition aside, the LMP, which is sort of, mostly, mostly seen as one mostly seen as one entity in the political landscape. But it does mean that smaller parties and including, you know, the somewhat larger parties now,

like the Greens and One Nation, can actually get in and can affect the way the government works, you know, in the case of when we get a minority government, when, you know, for example, when Labor gets in and they don't have a clear majority and they need to listen to minor parties, including the Greens, to drag votes across the line. Now, I don't know whether this is a correct opinion or not, but while we've seen the major parties continually talk about, you know, don't vote for minor parties and don't vote for the Greens because it causes all this chaos when we have a crossbench of greens

and independents and minors and that sort of stuff. I think that we can look at the evidence of the last decade or so and say that when there has been a situation where, when there has been a situation where there is like a significant crossbench of minor and independent parties, particularly when Julia Gillard was Prime Minister, you know, the Labour Party could only form the minority government and make agreements with a cross-bench of independent and minor party senators. And to my mind, a lot of the time, that ended up with a, them being very productive in terms of the amount of legislation they actually passed and doing stuff. But also like rather

than having major parties who have you know control of both chambers and are just ramming stuff through or anything, you wind up in a situation where they can propose a policy, but in order for it to become law, it has to go past a group of people who often have quite different interests. But generally speaking, I think that people from minor parties and people from, you know, independence of minor parties, I think, are much more beholden to their individual electorates because these are the people who need to be able to go to a subsequent election and say everything I did, I did with the intention of directly representing your interests. It's way, way easier for someone from the Labour Party to say, oh, you didn't get this thing thatthat you wanted or we didn't act in a particular way on this thing that you wanted like, you know, climate change or treatment of refugees or whatever.

But you know, I'm obligated to tow the party line and vote in vote in favor of things that we agreed on at the party conference, so can't really do anything about that. And you know, your alternative is to have the liberals in, and that'd be way worse. So what we wound up with a lot of the time in that situation is having policies actually have to go through and pass a kind of diverse group of people, all seeking to be quite directly responsible to their electorates. And it wound up just kind of having all of those things have a bit of a sensible lens applied

to them in a lot of cases and then get past. And I don't, I honestly don't know how much of this filters down to, you know, everyday people with a how aware they are of how much of a majority of the government holds or what have you. You know I'd love to hear more the the th the th th the th th th th th th th th the th th th the th to th th to to th th th th th th th th th th to th th th the the the tho tho thi thi the the the the the tho tho tho- thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi th thi th th th th thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi the theeea thea thea thei thi thei thi thi thiiiiiiii thi thi thi. th of a majority of the government holds or what have you. You know, I'd love to hear more from the people that are actually involved in this. But I think in general, people like seeing the government's feet held to the fire. And that kind of serves as sort of a salve against the general sentiment that there are two major parties and they don't represent anybody, they're all just in it for themselves, blah blah blah.

And they just get in and they do. It's half the country getting what they want and the other one, half not getting what they want all of the time. And they just get in and they go, go, go, go, go, go. We'll put in all of this stuff and half the people is, yeah, like I said, just sitting there shaking their heads. I do believe that there is a sentiment that kind of comes out of governments where the minority parties and independents actually hold some sway that there is some sort of representative process going on. Well the other thing I guess to consider in that context is even though it does wind up giving us the odd independent or minor party person who is a big-time nutter or super racist

or whatever. And we do get them very often. I think in both situations over the past decade we were able to look at Julia Gillard working with a cross-bench of independence and Greens and seemingly you know do their best to kind of deliver some sensible reforms on things versus then when Tony Abbott got elected and he had done his entire election campaign making all these promises to deliver all of this amazing stuff to everybody and then the was it the night before the election that he that he made his promise on his notorious promise on on TV

no cuts to health education? Just anything you know that he that he that you know that he that, you know his promise on his notorious promise on TV. No cuts. No cuts to health, education, just anything. You know that somehow. Yeah, somehow he was going to deliver all of these amazing benefits to everybody. And there were going to be no cuts to any services and no increases to any taxes. So essentially just absolutely magical bullshit. And then they got elected and immediately set about saying, oh, what we're. any taxes, so essentially just absolutely magical bullshit. And then they got elected and immediately set about saying, oh, what we're actually going

to do is massively cut health spending, we're going to massively cut education, we're going to massively cut everything. All of those things that they explicitly said, we will not cut any of this stuff. And there was, I think it was a really big backlash, which is a huge part of what led to him being kicked-up, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, their, the, their, their, their, to, to their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, they, their, their, their, they, they, their, their, their, their, their, the, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, thea.ea, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, stuff. And there was, I think it was a really big backlash which is a huge part of what led to him being kicked out by his own party so early into his term. But the reality was that I think a lot of those things didn't get to go through because of that crossbench. Because everybody just went, well what the fuck are you talking about? You have no mandate for doing any of this stuff. I could could, I th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. I th. th. I th. I th. I th. I th. I thi, I thi, I thi, I thi, I thi, I thi, I thi, I thi, I thi, I thi, I'll, I'm thi. I thi. I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, thi, thi. thi. thi. thi. I, thi. thi. thi. th. th. th. th. th. th. I, th. I, th. I, th. I, th. I, th. I, th. I, th. I, th. I've, thi. I've thi. I've thi. I've thi. I'm just just just just just just just just thi. I'm just thi. I'm just theeeeateateeateeea. I'm just just just thi. I'm just just thi. I'm just just thi mandate for doing any of this stuff. I could be totally wrong on that one, as usual. Please write into, hey you guys at Wunta Vista.com, and say, Andrew, you big idiot, you fool. You rube of the highest order.

So I did have one other question about this theater before we keep trucking on, which is my sort of understanding of voting above and below the line in Australia is that as you were describing, if you choose to vote below the line, you can designate the order of your own preferences for your vote from the very first down to the very last candidate. So, so you know, that decision is not made for you. But if you do want to vote for a party and I guess basically give them the control of the flow of your own preferences you can vote above the line, you just put a big one above the line for your party of choice and they will then have made a decision beforehand about how they want to direct that flow of preferences. And I think that the majority of the time time, thime, the thime, the thime, the thime, thime, the thime, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, the the thi, the thi, the their their the the their their their their their their their to vote for to vote for their to vote, their their their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their their their their their their their their their their their thi, thi, their thi, the, the, theat, theat, theat, their theat, theat, their theat, theat, their their their theat, their their their their then have made a decision beforehand about how they want to direct that

flow of preferences. And I think that the majority of the time, this is done with the strategic interest of giving themselves the best possible opportunity of gaining office. Now, personally, I don't think that that is the worst thing in the world to do with the Greens or even Labour. I think that Labour can be a bit shitty about how they do it. But if you're planning on voting for like the Liberals or the Nationals, don't do that. Number below the line and please put the fascist parties last because the Liberal Party will

genuinely, they would genuinely rather have someone from Fraser Anning's Conservative National Party elected to the House or the Senate in order to make more let's ban blacks from coming into the country speeches they would genuinely rather have that happen than have another Green Senator or another Labour MP in the house. And that is pretty fucked up. So yeah, at least like I know that I know that I know that Labor do their own thing strategically and that there are probably tons of instances people could point to of ways that they've done it that have not been particularly kind to the Greens or whoever. But at least I feel like I can say with almost complete confidence that labor would still

rather hand a vote to the liberals than to like an outright fascist. So that's my understanding of that. Once again, write in and tell me if I'm extremely wrong. So, Theo, in the interest of moving on, is that your guide to preferential voting concluded? So I think on what you were talking about previously, if we're discussing the Senate ballot paper, if you vote above the line, you still need to number at least six parties. So it's just that you don't preference individuals, you preference parties. If you vote below the line, you must number at least 12 individuals.

And then your preferences will flow between them. So this is where the sort of source of, like you alluded to early, Anthony Green's frustration around the vote for big-time moon unit, Malcolm Roberts, where he only got 77 votes or whatever it was 77, which is utterly untrue because people vote above the line on the Senate paper and they vote for one nation and one nation people get in, right? That's just what happens. If you vote below the line, you can number individual candidates. I'm sure there's a good reason for this.

Someone will probably tell me. It's for this very important process, to me, it just seems like spiting people to manage to put them last, but you don't have to number everybody, you can just number down 1 to 12, and don't include someone that you particularly hate below the line. if you don't want to 12 and don't include someone that you particularly hate but follow the line if you don't want to and if you don't want to number every single fucking box down there. And so this concludes Theo's preferential voting explainer. Right folks. And now, continuing on, we thought that we would maybe try to give you a bit of a rundown of some of these minor parties floating around so you know whether or not you should direct your preferences to them.

Yeah, so... Hold on. Hold on. Okay. Sorry. I have completely forgotten to do a thi I'm left out. Hold on! Fuck! Okay. Sorry. I have completely forgotten to do a thing which we said before the show that we were going to do, which is that we were just going to remark upon Lucy's absence. Lucy has been traveling around the world, visiting places so exotic as Canada.

That's right. She'd been up there in the great white north, if that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's there in the great white north if that's what anyone calls Canada. Yep, does anyone call it? Okay. She's been getting around, she's been visiting a bunch of places. She has promised to produce some video content for our patrons, some travel, some travel videos and such. So expect to see a bit of additional content from Lucy soon to make up for her absence from the podcast over the last couple weeks. She sends her apologies, her kisses to the many wives of the show. Now that I have remembered to say that, half an hour into the show. Please, Ben, continue on.

Hey. Okay, so there's like 200 million minor parties going in this election. This is just a list of the ones where either they're the really bad ones and we're just reiterating that, or their name is ambiguous and if you're voting below the line or whatever and you see them or even above the line you're like, hey, who are these guys? They sound nice enough. So we thought we'd straighten out some of these. This list is partially cribbed from a larger list that the Guardian did.

So thanks to them for doing the hard work. But I've taken out the obvious ones that you would probably recognize. So let's get through these. First, we have Australian Better Families. What they mean by Better Families is Men's Rights. This is the political branch of the Australian Brotherhood of Fathers, which is... Run that by me one more time. The Australian Brotherhood of Fathers.

So we're talking uncles here. Yes, it's the Uncle Society. It's the Uncle's Party. They are entirely family court dads, which in itself, you know, we make a lot fun of family court dads because it is a big trope, largely among some garbage people. But these guys are closely affiliated with One Nation. They want a minister for men because they think it's unfair that there's a minister for women. It's that sort of deal, so probably chuck them somewhere down the bottom.

Next up is the Australian Christians. You can probably assume from that that they're bad, but hey, not all Christians. These ones are anti-abortion, anti-homestuality, anti-euthanasia, and of course the worst one. They're against porn. Come on, man. Let me have my skin mags. Let me go. I'm the one person. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, to to to to the one, I, the one, the one, the one, the one, the one, the one, the one, the the the the the Australian, the the Australian, the Australian, the Australian, the Australian, the Australian, the Australian, the Australian, the Australian, the Australian, the Australian, the Australian, the Australian, the Australian, the Australian, the Australian, the Australian, the Australian, the Australian, the Australian, the Australian, the Australian, the Australian, the Australian, the Australian, the,'re against porn. Come on, man. Come on! Let me have my skin mags. Let me go to the servo.

I'm the one person who's still out here buying picture magazine. Yeah. Yep, you're the one person that finds it erotic. I want to tear off that plastic packaging and flip straight to the hometown honey section. Oh, picture is th th th th th th th th thi thi th we th we th we th we th th we've th th th th th we've th th th th th th let ar off that plastic packaging and flip straight to the hometown honey section. Oh pictures not in plastic. I believe we've discussed this on the podcast before. Oh sorry. Because you don't have to be 18 to buy it. And just yeah. It's just like penthouse and shit. That's a gateway skin mag. Yeah penhouse because they got the full spread.

Oh don't. They let you look right in there. No, I mean, you can pull it out and pin it up. Yeah, we got it, Theo. You see the full spread and then you pull it out. Okay. All right. Moving on. So sorry that Lucy's not here, everyone. Australian Conservatives.

That is of course, Corey Bernardi's party, who used to be, uh, uh, uh, uh, the, the, the, to, to, that is of course Corey Bernardi's party, who used to be, he was briefly Australia's worst fringe far-right independent, and then Fraser Aining came and stole his thunder, but he still sucks a big fat turd, so... I will say that I really feel like Corey Bernardi. He's been a massively reduced presence in the Australian media and political life in general since he left the Liberal Party. Oh for sure. Like a really, a really great example of a huge shit he'll just accidentally deplatforming himself. Yes, it was quite phenomenal actually. He quit the party because he's, I'm sick of everybody not taking my extremely weird views seriously

and everyone went, oh, okay, bye. He went, come on guys, follow me. And then he turned around five minutes later and there was no one else there. Well, the two main things I remember about this obviously were, yeah, him making a lot of statements. Because he would threaten to do things th th thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi to to thi thi thi thi to to thi to thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi not thi not thi not thi not thi not thi not to to thi not to thi not thi not thi not thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi to do to do to thi, thi. toe. toe. toei. toei. toeei. toei. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi thi thi th. Well, the two main things I remember about this obviously were him making a lot of statements. Because he would threaten to do things like, you know, cross the aisle and vote against his own party's legislation. He would constantly be out there in the media saying that they weren't right-wing enough, and if they wanted very similar to like George Christensen from the nationals where they were both very, very outspoken and would constantly say, if they want my support to pass this thing, they have to make it, you

know, 60% more racist or whatever. So yeah, he was doing a lot of that and then he finally got to the point of saying, that's it, I'm announcing that I'm going to leave the party. And yeah, you left the party and then just no one gave a fuck or talk to him anymore because he had completely given up any influence that he had over making a major party do anything. He was now just you know one one independent vote on the crossbench and I distinctly remember an article appearing at some point where somebody was talking to him and he was lamenting

the fact that no journalists want to talk to him anymore. so good he's like he, he, he, he, he, he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he had he had he he had he had he had he had he he had he had he had he to have th. He had he to have to have to have to have th. He had th. He had tho. He thi heed the the he he he he he he he the th. he had he th. he had th. He had the th. He had th. He had th. He had to have to have to have th. He had the th. He had the the the th. He was the th. He was thi. He was thi thi, he was thi thi to the to to to to to to to to to to to to to theeeeeeeeeeee. He was to the. He was to thi thi the where somebody was talking to him and he was lamenting the fact that no journalists want to talk to him anymore. Oh, sorry God, he's like, oh, now that I'm just one guy with no power, no one pays the they attention to me. No one gives a shit. Instead of when my complaints were steering the direction of an in-government major party, ugh. I think, I'm trying to remember if, I'm th. I'm th. I'm th. th. to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to the the to to to to to to to to to to be, toldld the the the the told, told, told, told, told, told me, told me, tolde. I was, the fact, the fact, the fact, the fact, the fact, the the their, their, their, the the the the the the the the told. I was, told, told, to do, to do, to do, to to to the the to to, the the the the to, to, to, to, to, to, to me, to me, too. too. too. too. too, too. too. too. tolde. tolde. tolde. tolde. toe'm trying to remember if I'm trying to remember if so Kira Lee Smith the very racist and anti Bendigo Mosque mom so so she's I'm pretty sure Just a candidate at this point. She still hasn't actually been elected. So, yeah, like, again, his whole thing was he quit and he made a big show of the fact that he had this massive outpouring of support from Australians due to the fact that he had managed to get like 40,000 people to sign up for his HTML newsletter.

And it turned out that I don't think that translated directly into like mobilized political volunteers and grassroots donors. I think it was just I think it was just a bunch of cranks and 30,000 journalists who wanted to see what he was going to say next. So yeah. Moving on from Corey, Sorry, just an update. Anti-Halal, anti-Islam, anti-transgender rights campaigner Kirilly Smith has withdrawn from running for a spot in the Senate of the upcoming federal election. Just days from an announcement she had declared that she will no longer be standing

on the Australian Conservative New South Wales Senate ticket. So yeah, there's a whole bunch of reasons that she would not elaborate on. It's probably the fact that she's fucking horrible. So, so yeah, basically Corey Benarney, he was hoping to add one person to his stable of elected representatives in his political party, but he's sticking with one for the moment, I guess. Let's keep it that way by having nobody vote for them. Continue. Next is the Christian Democratic Party, that is Fred Nile's party.

Fred Nile, a huge fuck. Absolute, massive fuck. So just massive social conservatives, don't vote for those guys. Climate action, exclamation mark. Immigration action, exclamation mark. Accountable politicians, exclamation mark. I thought that might have maybe been an initialism or an acronym, but it's not, because that would just be...

Cuy up. And I don't think that's... It's just a weird name. But anyway, there, they're, um, they're a, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, their, their, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, the, the, the, the, the, the, their, the, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their but it's not, because that would just be... Cuyahp. And I don't think that's... It's just a weird name. But anyway, they're a direct democracy, fucking party. Used to be called online, direct democracy or senator online. And it's... I hate this dumb fucking shit so much. Direct democracy is the fucking worst. Don't. Don't do it.

But Ben, what if politicians, but on the blockchain? What if you're a like with a representative whose job is nominally to understand stuff better than you understand it and to see what they're doing in a larger context, was simply a mouthpiece... Ideally to explain it to you as in a larger context was simply a mouthpiece. Ideally to explain it to you as well. Yeah, was simply just someone who was a fucking bum on a seat who had an app. No, thank you. Yeah, what if your locally elected member for parliament was instead the surrogate guy from arrested development.

A camera on his head and a microphone in his ear. No, that is exactly what I was thinking of. I couldn't put my finger on it. Yeah, very much. It's just a whole bunch of people sitting, you know, ramrod straight and they all wait for just some beeping to happen. And they go, I cast my vote. And occasionally the guy just says, rights for gamers. Yeah, yeah, no, I completely agree with this in a sense that, um, that this is one of those things like, you know, why don't, why can't we all vote online and shit?

And it's just like, because we have a system that works and has, you know, astonishingly little voter fraud in it and all that sort of shit, compared to, yeah, a lot of the stuff like you're saying, Ben, it's just this whole idea of, what if we all just, you know, pick from a poll on a website? And yeah, I guess, I guess the party just kind of isn't involved anymore. Yes. There's also I mean the obvious other objectionable thing about it as well is that like if the idea is that you know they were to just put up potential policies or potential policy responses to you through an app, you know, it's all just like people fucking voting on a Snapchat story or whatever. This idea that that's going to produce the best result,

but I think that an innate part of the, of, you know, democratic representation in an ideal world, not how it has been going for a while, is that you should have, you know, political, political leaders that are willing to say, here is a thing thi, thi. that that that that that that that that that thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi- or thi, thi-orou thi- or thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, or thi, or thi, or thi, or thi, or thi, or thi, or thi, or thi, or thi, or thi, or thi, or thii, or thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii. their thi. thi, or thi, or thi, is that you should have, you know, political leaders that are willing to say, here is a thing that isn't actually that popular with everybody, but we really, really genuinely believe it is the right thing to do in this case. I mean, a perfect example of that is I'm pretty sure that at the moment, if you went out and polled every single Australian about their feelings about like, you know, border control and keeping people in offshore gulags and all that sort of shit, you would probably get more than 50% of people saying, yeah, we need to keep our island prisons going in order to serve as a deterrent, we need strong borders and all the other shit that we've had drummed

into us over and over for decades now. But what it's clearly going to take to break to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, their, you, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, the the the the their their their their their their tho, tho, tho, thoauuuuuoauoa' their their their their their their their their their their the all the other shit that we've had drummed into us over and over for decades now. But what it's clearly going to take to break that is for someone to come along at some point and say, you know, this has been the accepted status quo on this issue for a while, it's been an entirely politicized issue. We need to be brave enough to try and to try and change the narrative on this and shit like that just would never happen if you said oh well it's easy let's just make it a thing on that. So fuck those guys. Democracy is a mistake. Democracy sucks. But well like like said it's just it just runs completely counter to to the concept of representative democracy. Yeah. You vote for a person on the concept of representative democracy.

You vote for a person on the basis of trusting them to go and make a decision that represents generally your interest or your alignment with their politics. Continuing on. Yes, next up we have the Democratic Labour Party, which is a socially conservative, I think economically centrist Labor Party. They are against same-sex marriage. I have a note here that says, too late suckers! Because they are. They support indefinite regional, regional detention, I should say. They reject politically imposed multiculturalism and instead believe in fostering a cosmopolitan community. That doesn't

really mean anything. And they want to fix the family court system. There it is again. So yeah they suck us as well. Next up we've got Deren Hinch's Justice Party. Is he running any candidates? I mean, I assume he's running again. Oh, wait, no, his term probably isn't even, I don't know. Let's find out. No, I can't be bothered.

Let's not do that right. If it's on the paper, it's Darench. It's Darren Hitch. He's just naming and shaming pedophiles, that's all he does. Fraser ratings Conservative National Party, don't vote for that one. The Health Australia Party? Now, they're literally like their whole policy platform now is explaining that they're not anti-Vax because they very much seem to be, and every time they're in an election, people write articles being like, hey, it's the anti-vax party and they're like, no, no we're not. We just, they're against the no-jam, no-play legislation and they believe that the risks

of under-vaccination aren't as bad as the risks of over-vaccination. So they're not, they're not anti-vax, they've just formed an entire political party around the concept that maybe vaccines aren't good, aren't necessary. Vaccines aren't as great as they're made out to be. Yeah, basically and then all their other stuff is about like getting alternative medicine, equal coverage under Medicare and stuff like that. Which just recently, no sorry, the private health rules just changed around alternative medicine where now most health cover funds won't cover it under the same rules.

So I guess if that sort of stuff matters to you and you know, you have some doubts about vaccinations, still don't vote for them. Oh, I only just got the name of the next party. Oh yeah, the help end marijuana prohibition party. And what's that acronym? Why that spells out hemp, dear Andrew. They have literally no other policies. Not a single other policy anywhere.

Like, I looked on a bunch of different websites, try to be like, okay, but you know if you get voted in, surely you have to have some beliefs about other things. Nothing. And I love weed as much as the next man, possibly much more than the next man. Almost definitely more. I would put myself in maybe the top, I'm in the 97th percentile for weed love. I don't think that's enough of a belief that you should be in government. Well not in government, imagine if they want government. But it leads me to another point though about single issue parties, right? Which is, right, th, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, th, th, th, th, not in government, sorry. Imagine if they want government. But it leads me to another point, though,

about single-issue parties, right? Which is, and just generally speaking for myself, I wouldn't vote for a preference, a single-issue party. On a very simple ground, which is, you are basically committing to, if that person happens to get elected, as you're saying, they have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, the to, the the the the the the th.e. the, the, the, thii. the. the. thi. the. tooooooo toe. toe. toe. toe. toe, toe. to, if that person happens to get elected, as you're saying they have no other policy positions presented on anything, which means that you are entering into a complete crapshoot as far as what their position is going to be on any given thing. Yes. Yeah, you could find, for example, that someone from the hemp party who only cares about being able to smoke heaps of weed, you know, there's an absolutely, their, there's the policy. policy, their policy, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their policy, their, their policy, their policy, their policy, their policy from the hemp party who only cares about being able to smoke

heaps of weed, you know, there's an absolutely non-zero chance to that person is a massive conspiracy theorist or like... Or also is anti-vax or whatever. Like maybe they spend all their time just getting roasted and watching the Joe Rogan show and that's going to affect all of their votes on things. And the problem is that you don't actually know what any of those are gonna be until they start coming up, which makes me think of Ricky Muir, a couple of terms ago getting voted in. Yeah, getting voted in from a single issue,

car enthusiasts party, which I believe was mainly just, yeah, single-issue thing about like car registrations and rights to drive in certain areas and shit like that. And it was like a genuinely sort of captivating narrative throughout that term, to see this person who was clearly, incredibly unprepared for even the idea that he could be elected and then looked to to have a position on these various issues. And there were things that he would come out and say something pretty dumb and everyone would roast him. And then unlike a lot of other politicians, he would just go away for a bit and then come back and say, all right I didn't really know anything about this thing. And now I've gone away and try try try try try thired thired thi thi thi thi thi thi thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. tho. And, tho-a. thi. thi. And, thi. And, tho' tho' thoom. And, tho-a' tho-a' thi. And, th. And, th. And, th. And, th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. He, th. And, th. And, th. And, th. And, th. And, th. And, th. And, th. And, th. And, th. And, thi. And, the. And, the. And, thea. And, to the to the the the the the this thing, and now I've gone away and tried to learn about it, and here is a relatively reasonable position.

And I think for a lot of people, were able to go like, oh, compared to generally what you see from national parties, that's actually a fairly, like a fairly sort of humble, a humble approach to a lot of that stuff. That said, still just a total gamble. That's why I'm voting for the next party, the next one. Oh yeah, now, see I like they spell out their beliefs very clearly in the name of their party

with a parenthetical statement inside it. So this is the actual name of the party. This is the official registered name of the party. Involuntary medication medication vaccination, open bracket vaccination slash fluoride closed bracket party. So... You're very clear what they're about. Yeah, they want fluoride out of the water and vaccinations out of the children. I want my teeth to crumble when I bite into a soft apple. Hey, if you want that, just move to Queensland.

Next up, I've bundled these ones into one thing because they're essentially the same. The Jackie Lambie Network and Catters Australian Party. They are socially conservative, economically a bit to the left. They both fucking suck. Horrible people. Don't vote for him. Although I mean, Katter's had his seat now for like 30-something years so he's probably not going anywhere anytime soon, but if you happen to be voting, he's not a senator, no he's an, isn't he? Wait. Kind of? Yeah, no, is he? I don't know.

Who knows? Anyway, don't vote for either of them. Liberal Democrats, formerly the party of David Lienheld, but he got fired, I believe, from the Leeds. Did he? Did he? He quit? Well, he got not elected and then he quit, I believe is the series-fired or did he did he did he quit well he got not elected and then he quit I believe is the series of events sorry but he but but I thought the whole

thing was that he he resigned from his Senate seat during the term announcing that instead he was going to run for a seat in the upper house of New South Wales because he believed that he would have a better chance yeah and then he didn't get voted in he didn't he he thi th. th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the- he the the the. the- he the. the. the. the. the the the the. the the the. the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the. the. the. the. the. the. the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. he he he the a better chance and then he didn't get voted in. He didn't. Which is very funny and he's also still in the middle of getting sued. He's still in the middle of his defamation trial against Green Senator Sarah Hanson Young about all of the fucking horrible stuff that he has said to her and about her on TV shows and in interviews and all that sort of shit. And it looks like he is getting absolutely fucked up in the middle of that one because I was reading some transcripts from the court case the other day and They've they've got him like just admitting on the thing, you know, do you actually believe this thing that you said about her?

And he's like no, not really despite the fact that the entire defense that he is running with is the defense. the defense. the defense. the defense. the defense of the defense of the defense of the defense??. the defense of the defense of the defense of the defense? the defense? the defense? the defense? the defense? the defense? th th. th. th. th. th. th. th. thu thi thi. thu, th. th. th. th. th. th. th. thu, thi thi thi thi thi thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi thi th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. thi thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi thi thi thu. the thu. the thu. thu. thu. thu. thu. thu. the thu. thu. thu. thu. thu. that you said about her?" And he's like, no, not really. Despite the fact that the entire defense that he is running with is the defense of truth, the defense of, I'm allowed to say this thing no matter how derogatory or defamatory it is because it happens to be true. And instead, they got him in there and he he's saying, he said, thi thin, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, ththe, ththe, oh, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, the, thi, their, the, their, their, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the defense, the defense, the defense, the defense, the defense, the defense, the, the defense, the defense, the, the, the defense, the, the defense, the defense, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, they, they, they, they, thr, thr, thin, thin, the, the, the, the, is, the, is, is, the, thi. the, the, the defense, the defense, the defense, the Young effectively said that all men are rapists and they said, do you actually think that's true that she believes that all men are rapists? And he went, no, not really. So, um, so yeah, I'm guessing he's going to be buying her a small house or something?

So, good, fucking. Oh, yeah, they're libertarians, don't vote for him. Libertarians bad because sometimes you're going to agree with to agree with to agree with to agree with to agree with to agree with to agree to agree to agree to agree to agree to agree to agree to agree to agree to agree to agree to agree to agree to agree with to agree with to agree with them about like legalizing weed and then you're not going to agree with them about lowering the age of giving every yeah giving every creepy dude a taser and then lowering the age of consent to eight you know I think we all spend most of our lives asking ourselves you know we live in a society with just a question mark at that whereas they are brave enough to ask the question, what if we don't?

What if we don't? Why should we have to live in a society? What if actions don't have consequences? What if that was true? Yep. All right, we better blast through some of these so that we can make time for some questions before we go. Love, or leave? Oh I just want to say it's it's truly incredible that in the year of 2019 in Australia we literally have a party whose whose name is just fuck off we're full. Yeah I think I

assume that was what they put in first. And I also assume that when Labour wins this election they will all be leaving. Yes, because they do not love Australia. Because they don't love Australia. Because they don't love Australia. Because they don't love Australia. Hmm. Next up? I don't even know why I put the putting One Nation in there, everyone knows One Nation don't vote from. Uh, Republican Party. Who cares?

I just don't know if anybody who listens to us has a strong position on it, I just don't give a fuck about the Republican thing at all. I have a vague sensation that we should be a republic, but no one has ever given me a concrete argument as to like, we should do this right now because... Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what I mean in the sense of like It's it's not like in like England and shit where people are like hey Why are we still spending billions of dollars on the Queen and like all this weird shit whereas in Australia it's it I I really struggle the vast majority of the time to see any instance in which it actually has any effect on the political process or you know day-to-day life or anything like that. So as

always, hey you guys at Wood Divisitor.com tell me I'm wrong, whatever. But yeah it just it just seems like as far as the things we have going on in this country it's so fucking low down on the list of things to care about. Next up rise up Australia. fucking low down on the list of things to care about. Next up, rise up Australia. They are very anti-gay, very anti-Muslim. It's a Danny Nahlia's party, I believe. Sure. Big pile of shit.

Very bad. Do not vote. The science party, I put this one in because their name is ambiguous enough that you might read it and be like, oh I don't know, this might be about like brain size or something, but they're quite good. They just want like, they're great on climate change, they're pretty progressive social issues, they want to end offshore attention, and they want a bullet train. Well done to them, because I want one as well, they're cool. Trains. Trains. Trains. Trains. Seniors United Party. They want. th. th. th. th. th. th. T. th. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. Train. T, th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. the. the. the. the. the. the. the. the. the. they they they tha. they they they're trains. Seniors United Party, they want their franking credits. Don't you take their franking credits. Fucking hell. Shooters, fishes and farmers.

I love outdoor sports as the next person, as much as the next person. But they largely want to loosen gun laws and they want to have a more American-style approach to public land where you can just the the train train train train train train train train train trase tre tre tre tre tre tran tran tran tran tran tran tran tran trains. trains, trains, trains, trains, trains, tran's, trains, trains, trains, trains, trains, trains, trains, trains, tran, tran, tran, tran tran tran tran tran tran tran tran tran tran tran tran tran, tran, tran, tran, tran, tran, tran, trains, trains, trains, tran, trains, trains, trains, trains, trains, trains, trains, trains, trains, trains, trains, trains, trains, trains, trains, trains, trains, trains, trains, tra, tra want to have a more American style approach to public land where you can just go on there and shoot and do whatever the fuck you want, hunt shit and stuff which I think is bad personally. Well I mean I think that, and again I'm not the most qualified person in the world, but from all of the reading that I've done about it and the people I know who do similar things, like the ability to hunt hunt th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th thu thu thu thu thu thu thu thu thu thus thus thus thus thus thus thateateat thateatlars. that they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're thu. that-like, that-like, that-like the. their the the the the the the the th. they they they they they they they they they're they're they're they're th. they're that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that the reading that I've done about it and the people I know who do similar things, like the ability to hunt and shoot and shit like that in Australia is not wildly restrictive at the moment anyway.

If you want to get a rifle, if you want to get a gun license, you have to go through like background checks and reasonably rigorous training and all that sort of stuff. And if you want to shoot shit, you can go out to anybody's farm and say, hey, is it all right with you if I come on to your property and shoot a bunch of rabbits or deer or whatever. Yeah, you can shoot an unlimited number of like pest animals and that sort of stuff. It's just for people who are wild about shooting ducks, basically. Like I didn't know there are any big time restrictions on fishing or whatever. But yeah, like as a country, I think that generally speaking, you know, we do have hunting seasons for different animals.

We have regulation around like overfishing and that sort of stuff. And, you know, if you care about having a nice sustainable habits how to continue your hunting and fishing in then let's just keep that going you know don't vote for it don't far from agreed agreed on agreed on all counts next up we got sustainable Australia this one those tricky ones we're like like oh maybe they're talking about climate policy or crop rotation. Yeah, you know, it's the crop rotation party. Good stuff. It's not. It's anti-immigration. They don't want those immigrants coming here and using up our precious resources.

Do not vote for them. Next one is one of my favorites in terms of don't vote for them still. The Great Australian Party. This is Rod Culletan's splinter party. This is the super disqualified former Senator Rod Culleton, who is in trouble for declaring himself to be a senator when he wasn't. He has this weird party where he believes that by some quirk of the Australian Constitution, no Australian law is valid.

Only Commonwealth law applies. He is a very disturbed man, very entertaining, but he's a huge sham and also obviously he was in One Nation formally so his beliefs aren't great. Yep, too cooked for One Nation, as is the standard for the vast majority of One Nation candidates anyway. Yeah. Next up. The Small Business Party, they want to get rid of payroll tax, land tax, stamp duty, all that sort of stuff. They just don't like paying taxes and they also want to reduce immigration levels. I don't know why they want to do that when that provides a large space of employees for them to exploit but you know. Yeah if you're into this shit I don't don't th. I don't th. Don't th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi. the thi. thi. thi. the thi, their thi. thi. their thi. their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their, their, their, their, their their their their their, their their their their thi, thi, thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. the. the. toda. toda. ta. ta. ta. ta. ta. ta. ta. ta. ta. ta. the. the know yeah if you're into this shit I

don't know why you wouldn't just be voting for the liberal party anyway because it's all the stuff they're always trying to do. Yeah next up so this one isn't a bad one it's just got a very ambiguous name this is the Together Party this is how the Guardian described them created by the lawyer and performer Mark's swivel I gotta say swivel because it's th th th th th th th th th th you th th you th you th you th you th you the th th th the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the they wi the they wo the the tho tho tho tho tho the the the the the the the the the the th th th th they wouldn't wouldn't th they wouldn't they wouldn't they wouldn't th they wouldn't they they wi they they they they w they w they wouldn they w they w they w they wi they wi they wi they wi they wi they wi they wo they're the the the the the the thoooooooooooooo' the the thooo' the the the the lawyer and performer Mark's swivel. I've got to say swivel because it's more fun. Together advocates for a national ike, wants to protect the ABC and SPS,

take action on climate change and opposes the privatization of public services. So it doesn't sound bad. I just hear the words to get a party and I'm like, what are you hiding? You mean like white people banding together? That's what you mean, right? United Australia party, that is obviously Clive Palmer. If you're in a state that doesn't have one of his billboard on every corner, maybe you're not so familiar with it, but Queens' art. Oh, I envy you. Oh boy, cannot fucking move without banging your head into a giant yellow billboard with this grinning fuck on it.

I never see any of them and I'll love it. Oh God, they're fucking everywhere. But don't vote for him. He's a fucking grifter and a shithead and he's fucking whole party is filled with 4chan Nazis. I think the thing that's most perplexing to everybody about it is that like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like the the the their, like, like, like their, like their, their, their, their, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, I'm thi, I'm thi, I thi, I thi, I thi, I th, I th, I th, I th, I th, I th and I th and I th and I th and I th and I thi, I thi, I thi, I thi, I thi, I thi, I thi, I thi, I thi, I thi, I thi, I thi, I'm not thin, I'm not thin, thin, thoan, thoan, thoan, thin, thoan, thoan, thin, thoan, thoan, thi, thi, thi, I'm thithe thing that's most perplexing to everybody about it is that like there's genuinely just no apparent reason for him to run like other than I want to get in and have a direct influence on like you know reducing corporate taxes and shit like that or the ability to accept foreign donations like I can't

like obviously there's a lot of parallels between him and Donald Trump particularly in that he's very very clearly just aping the entire Donald Trump campaign down to the you know wearing a red tie and doing double thumbs up and greening like an idiot everywhere. He's also like I don't know how you manage tie and doing double thumbs up and greening like an idiot everywhere He's also like I don't know how you managed to be like a more unsubtle version of Donald Trump I don't I don't get that, but yeah, they've had him out on the news ranting and raving about How independently wealthy he is I have four thousand million dollars. No one can tell me what to do? You think I care what??? I care what? the to to to to to the the the the the the the the the the the th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th tho tho tho that that. thin. thin' their their their thoom. their their their their their their their their their their. their. their. their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their th. toy. toy. tea. tea. I's tea. I' today. I's today. I's te. I'll today. I's their their the. No one can tell me what to do. You think I care what anyone says about me or tells me what to do? No one can buy me.

And that's why I'm running. And like, he doesn't seem to actually have any interest in improving the country beyond just making outlandish claims about it. Yeah, every single one of the banners has like, the tax head th-up. the banners has like some shitheads face on it and like the tagline of like what if you had a nice car? Yeah it's all just like you won't pay taxes anymore like it's all just things that are like patently untrue and they are unable to deliver in any way. Yeah it's all extremely what if what if you voted for me and then I came around your house and I gave you $500 in an envelope and a tall frosty beer.

You know? So again, like it's just, it's really not apparent why he's even doing it other than because he likes attention and he's a big born grifter. And I would imagine in the case of a lot of people who are politicians anyway, they're all people who are independently wealthy enough that they could just fuck off and do something else, but they just like to be seen and looked at and be in a position of power. So fuck them. Fuck them right in the eyes.

Agreed. Next up. Vote flux vote flux.org. They are another direct democracy party. New it. What if an app? I've definitely been... I think we've talked about vote flux before we have. I believe... I discussed getting haranged by one of their candidates at the West End markets one time. Actually it was it would have been three years ago which is just about when George and I started dating which makes sense because it was the last election. Yeah and like again with this whole thing it's you can just see them pop like every time there's some some moderately famous centrist Ospole

dip shit on Twitter there's you, oh we need to improve, we need to improve the political system in this country because no one's really, you know, representing general interests. Centrism is good. And then immediately one of these dipshits pops up and says, yeah, would you be interested in getting together to talk about helping promote our app? And I go, ugh! And finally, oh, the yellow vest Australia party. So, you know, the, I can't say the French name for that shit, but the stuff the French people did because of the cost of living stuff because there was going to be some taxes that were on increases on, it's like car registration or something.

Where they were just like, fuck you. I can't afford to pay to pay to pay to pay to pay to pay to pay to pay to pay to pay to pay to pay to pay to pay to pay to pay to pay to pay to pay to pay to pay to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their. their. te. te. te. tod. te. today. te. te. today. their. their. their. their. their. their. to be some taxes that were on increases on. It's like car registration or something? Where they were just like, fuck you! I can't afford to pay for anything. Eat my turds! It was all vaguely European. It's very European. But they're, for some reason, in Australia, people have tried to pick up on this momentum, but making it about Islam. So they're like they're they're they're they're they're they're like they're like they're like, we're they're they're like, we'm sick of knowing that a mosque is near me.

So don't vote for these guys. They're big-time fucking racists. Hmm. And there you have folks. Let's I run down of all the different parties you shouldn't vote for basically. So let's let's take it to the mail bag. Let's jump over to the old mail bag, take some questions here, because our beautiful, beautiful friends and listeners have bothered to write them in, so we should at least look at them, I think. Um, all right, we've got some questions from a friend of the show, boldermis, who says, is it worth running up to my local liberal national party member campaigning at peak friend of the show, Boldemus, who says, is it worth running up to my local liberal national party member campaigning at peak hour along the main arterial road

in my area and egging them? And if you can do that without getting snatched up by anybody, do it. Yeah, absolutely. Just fucking do it. If you got good enough aim, and you you know they're not like a popular enough candidate to have a bunch of security around or anything like that do it crime pass yeah I pass for this week egg the shit out of some conservative

candidates folks yeah just do your absolute best to not get snatched up by anybody in the process where your best a ninja outfit perhaps maybe not the full balac clava. Try and make yourself look not a lot like you're an assassin. He's probably my advice. Because that could go worse. So don't dress up like an assassin slash antifa. Yeah.

Let's see here. Friend of the show. Love her of the show, Matthew Rana the show, lover of the show, Matthew Rana says, which candidates could you personally best in a death match? All of them. Clive Palmer, oh, imagine kicking his knee backwards through. There's one that I could not. Did everyone see that story about the One Nation candidate who was just extremely ripped? Like the thing where, so his like his like, like his like, the, like, like, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, uh, the, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, the, which, the, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, which, which, the, which, which, the, which, which, which, which, which, which, which, which, which, which, which, the, the, the, the, the, the, story about the one-nation candidate who was just extremely ripped?

Like the thing where, so his like social media digging through his posts backlash thing was that he posted a bunch of photos to his Instagram where he's only just covering his dick and he's naked, but he's like extraordinarily ripped. That guy looks like he could fucking beat me into a pulp. Could not beat that man. I think it's really depressing to consider how many people would probably lose a fight to Tony Abbott. Oh yeah, true. But yeah, lots of other folks, I reckon. I reckon I could take him. Malcolm Roberts. Probably beat up.

Malcolm Roberts. Oh God, he'd fucking... I reckon, I don't know how much you guys remember from Guillem-Dell Toro's first helpboy movie, but the character in that whose blood had turned to dust. Oh yeah, yeah, Baron von something. Oh, I believe he was Karl Ruprecht Cronin in his earlier life, but then he was brought back. Well, I guess, no, he kept that name when he was undead.

Yeah, I think if you punched, fucking Malcolm Roberts, that's what would happen to him. Just turn the dust. little trickle of that, like that, like that, like that, like that, like th, like th, like th, like th, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, tho, thoom, thoom, their. tho, tho, tho, tho, I's, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, their. their. their. tho, tho, th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I, th. I, th. I's, thi. I'm, thi. I'm, thi. thi. the. I'm the. And, I'm thi. And, I'm thea. And, I'll, I'm thea. And, I'll thea. And, I'll, I'll to him. Just turn the dust. Little trickle of that. Like the head Skexus dying in dark crystal. Okay, yep. Friend of the show, Liam, Liam Reeves asks, will Bill Shorten actually make anything better when he wins? To which I say probably moderately yes. Yeah. I think at the very least, um, at the very least, the the that, the the, the the the the the the the the the the the the the their their their their their their their their their their their head their head their their head thi head their thi thi, thi. thia' thi. thi head thixt. Yeah. I think at the very least, even though they are just very very centrist, I think that the Australian Labour Party has committed to some things that are like obviously going to be better than having the liberals in there. I think as a party generally

they're not super interested in just endless austerity. They're not super aligned with like trickle-down economics or anything like that. They, you know, they've committed to like raising the minimum wage, they've committed to restoring the minimum wage, they've committed to restoring the penalty rates that were cut under the liberal party and also making part of the legislation be that they can never be cut again. So you know there are things that would just be an improvement whether or not they can be pushed further to the left on things like immigration

and on things like, like they do want to raise the refugee intake, but also I think the general deal is that they've said that they're not looking to reexamine the Malaysia solution at this point, which is keeping people in offshore gulags. I really do think the immigration issue for them will be just one that they just won't touch because that's been their that's been their big partisan Achilles heel for so long. But like I said I mean nominally it's got to be better than the Liberal Party and the Nationals just constantly doing scandals and massive, massive bouts of graft and wrought and,

you know, constantly cutting taxes for the richest people in the country. Yeah, I think it's also about like, there's a certain element of stemming the bleeding as as well, where even if labor just holds steady on some things that, you know, it would be disappointing for them to instead of moving, moving left, it's, it shouldn't be forgotten at any point just how destructive this government has been to uh... you know to to people that that are that are less fortunate right uh... well just working working people in general working people in general you know i

think perhaps not so much uh... this budget but the but the previous budget you know uh... we have uh... the robo debt stuff going on targeting the most disadvantaged people in Australia. And like you alluded to, the constant cuts. And even just putting a stop to that process for another four years is a significant win for the less advantaged people in Australia. I think, you know, potentially we could hope, very much hope, that if they can get in with like an absolute landslide, which is very possible, I think.

I think that if you look at what the swings have been against the liberals and the nationals across the country in all the different state elections over the last couple of years, it really looks like people are just hanging out to absolutely punish the liberals, even though the polling tends to remain pretty, pretty steady in terms of like, you know, 52-48 kind of stuff. I think that all of the all the state elections and everything show that once people actually get in the booth They're just absolutely Go into town and the liberals with a big metaphorical baseball bat. So you know you can kind of hope that if if labor gets in

with like a big mandate and does what I guess they have been doing for the last several years, which is being quite, you know, consistent and unified compared to the liberals, they haven't had a great deal of internal strife, maybe that'll be different if they get elected to office. But, you know, maybe if they're in there with a big enough margin and people were receptive to how they were performing and all that sort of stuff that they could be pushed further to the left of the next election. Maybe they would be brave enough at that point to say we need to recastthe debate around immigration and some of that sort of stuff. I'm not holding my breath for it, but I think you've got to hold out a bit of hope for these things, you know.

Let's take a few more here. A lover of the show, Sean Kemp asks, what do you think would be the funniest result? Not the best result, the funniest. What do you think Ben? Um, I'm not really sure. Hmm. What if it was, what if the only people who could form, um, could form government was just a big coalition of all of the wildest, um, single-issue parties? What I really want is for the wildest single issue parties. What I really want is for the Hemp Party to form government and for

Australia to deal with the fallout from that, which I believe would be catastrophic. The planes fallen out of the sky. Everybody's eute getting repossessed. It'd be much like the film Happy Hour also released as sour grapes in which a company releases a beer that is addictive and everyone's drunk all the time in society collapses. But for weed. Um, I feel like my answer is really boring in the, like I said, I just want, I want the Labour Party, not out of loving the Labour Party, but I would like the Labour Party to

be elected with an incredibly strong result that is hugely condemning of the liberals and the nationals, and then I want the nationals and the liberals to just fucking collapse. A lot of people have been writing and speculating for some time about it. And then I want the nationals and the liberals to just fucking collapse. A lot of people have been writing and speculating for some time about the potential for, you know, maybe there will be a split between the liberals and the nationals because the nationals have been getting destroyed at every state election because I think people are extremely sick of them being, I guess, just shackled to the liberals on every policy, but they just don't do anything for people in rural areas.

I mean, you can look at all of the stuff that's happened around like the, about the, around the Mairey Darling with all of the massive, massive deaths of all the cod and all the fish there and everything, and all of the scandals around You know buying up water and Giving all the preferential treatment to irrigation Over farmers and all that sort of stuff and they are getting absolutely punished now granted people in those areas are instead giving their votes to you know the right-wing parties they don't want to vote left and they don't want to vote green so they give their vote.. the the their, their, their, their, their their their their their to their to to to their to to their to their their their their their their their their their their their their their their. their. their. their, their, their, their, their, their, their. their. their. their. their. their. their. their. their. their. their. their. their. their.. their. their. their their their their their their their their their their the. thea. tea. tea. tea. tea. tea. tea. tea. tea. tea. tea. tea. tea. tea. te. te. tir votes to, you know, the right-wing parties.

They don't want to vote left and they don't want to vote green, so they give their vote to like the shooters and fishes and all that sort of shit instead. But like in the New South Wales election, there were like, you know, 15, 17% swings against the nationals in like all of their seats. And I just keep watching this with the very, very curious to see how long do they have to go just getting annihilated and losing all of their seats before they say, well if we keep ourselves chained to the liberals, then they're like, we'll just cease to exist as a party. You know, we could, we could break apart from the coalition

and have, you know, maybe we would theoretically in a short term have less influence in the major sort of two-party system, but if we keep going the way that we are, we will cease to exist as a party. Like, as far as I know, they are close to the threshold of like not even having enough seats to be to be to be to be the to be to be the to be to be a to be the to be a to be to be a to be a to be a to be a to be a the to be a to be a the the the the the the the the the to exist as a party. Like as far as I know they are close to the threshold of like not even having enough seats to be able to sort of be considered a major party. There's something about the number of candidates you have to run to be like a you know a partner in a coalition. So you know that that is what would be both the best and the funniest result to me is just thi, like the thi, like th. like th. like th. like the, like the, like the, like the, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the that is what would be both the best and the funniest result to me is just all-out civil war within the liberal and

the national parties and between those coalition partners themselves. I would love for the right wing of the liberal party to split off and say we're all joining Corey Bernardi's conservative party. I just want the entire thing to get fragmented and splintered into small offshoot parties that then have extremely minimal influence. That's what I want to happen. I want to see Bill Shorten poop himself in his maiden speech. Yep. And then everybody calls him Bill Shitten for the rest of the term. Bill Shitten. Yep.

Although finally it would be some real representation for several members on this podcast I think. Yeah, well, true. Ooh, should we take a, should we take a tough one here from lover of the show, Travis? Sure, I know what it says. Are you all campaigning or handing out cards on the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the to to to to to to to to to the the the to to be to be told told. Bill told. Bill. Bill. Bill. Bill. Bill. Bill. Bill th. Bill thi. Bill thi. Bill th. Bill to be to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to th. Bill to th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. the. thea. thea. to thea. to toea. toea. tea. tea. tou tea. tea. tea. tea. tea. tea a tough one here from lover of the show, Travis? Sure, I know what it says. Are you all campaigning or handing out cards on election day or are you scabs? He has asked me and I have said yes. You are going to have to go outside to do that though. You have to talk to people.

Talk to people. When we say, when we say outside, it is, as Ben can attest to talk to people. Talk to people. When we say when we say outside it is As Ben can attest to literally like 15 meters away Very close very very very close. It's right there I have not done anything. I've not done anything or volubleed to do anything because I'm a big piece of shit big lazy piece of shit. And also, I just, I'm at a point these days where I genuinely don't even know who I'm supporting in any significant way. I think usually my deal is just vote like greens and then labor and then on down. That's generally my deal. I feel like a lot of people probably are getting the vibe in this election of like, I would

like to give my first preference to labor because I really want them to get in and fucking stomp a big mudhole in the Liberal Party. I'd be very curious to see how it all shakes out and I've done very well with not answering the question properly, Ben. You know, I'm loathe to call myself a scab, certainly, but I have done absolutely nothing and who knows if I will. It's not true Ben, you're doing this podcast right now and that's real activism. That's how it's braver than the troops.

Yeah. Who knows? I might change this. Travis, if you hear this before the election and you... I want to kick my ass. Come over and kick it. Come over and fucking kick it, dude. Ben's ready to be punished. It's been a bad boy. Bent over, pants off, slightly crouched so that it's the foot's going to land in exactly the right spot. That's it

Ooh, okay. Okay. We got a we got a really hairy one here Lover of the show Liam Liam McCuller says who gets your last preference? Disregarding Fraser Annie, so obviously open Nazi phrase ranning should be dead last for anyone and everyone and anyone from his party. But who gets your last preference out of the following? A, Pauline Hanson's One Nation, B, United Australia Party, C, Great Australia Party, D, Love Love Australia or leave or E, Rise Up Australia. Who you put in dead last of all of them?

It's a tough one. I think Love Australia or leave maybe, just because the name is the most evocative of someone that's a complete shithead. Yep. Yeah. I've got to go with Rise Up because it's clearly the most fascist option, right? Like, it's one step away from being like, the rise up because it's clearly the most fascist option, right? Like it's one step away from being like the crystal-knocked party. Yeah, yeah, yeah, to me rise up Australia from what I know about them, they are like all of the worst parts of being like a hardcore, hardcore evangelical Christians and their primary issue being Islam is going to murder us all. Islam will kill us all in this country and we must

combat the spreading insidious threat. And then they have a whole bunch of fucked positions outside of that. But yeah, they are definitely the most openly naked, like, you know, Islam is a disease and we have a cure type, type position. They're pretty fucked up. I feel like the Great Australia Party has some terrible positions, but also it's a rod coales and joint, so it's kind of, it's just automatically like charmingly disheveled. Yeah, they'll just trip over their own deck all the way to the... Yep, just bumbling foolishness.

If there was like some freak chance that he does get elected, which won't happen, he will find himself disqualified almost instantly. Yeah, you should probably th a th a and then see exactly how he trips over his dick. Like gets into Parliament and accidentally kills a guy. Oh shit, I'm out. Oh okay and we're gonna close on this one because we have some we have a number of other questions which are like variance on things that we've already answered. But here's what we're going to end on. Friend of the show NAND says when during the night will hulking 18-foot crypted Anthony Green call the election. The winner is the closest minute without going over. So we are all to

offer a time at which we think. Closest without going over. I want to be really bold on this one. I think because I think the liberals are going to get totally fucked. I'm feeling really optimistic about this. Because as we all know the classic trope oppositions don't win elections governments lose them and I think that this government more than any in recent years just has absolutely nothing to offer anyone and they are just really in their flailing death throws and all of the other state election results combined make me think that there is a just a huge anti-liberal sentiment in the country at this point.

So I'm going to say like, I could be say that it's going to take him three days to call the election and during the entire time he's going to be like a pregnant person laboring to give birth the whole time he will spend it sweaty and in pain, uncomfortable, screaming at all those around him just to put an end to it, but he can't. Because the elections, the results coming out feet first and we've got to spin that around. It's going to take a very long time and then when it eventually comes out, we're all going to be disappointed by the results. Well, um, yeah, I can really imagine all of the, all of the, uh, all of the to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to put to to to put to to to to to put to put, just to put, just to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put to put, just just just just just, to to to to to to to to to to to to the the the the the be disappointed by the results. Well yeah I can really imagine all of the all of the creatures and birds of the forest flying away in fear at the loud

guttural moans of gigantic Anthony Green laboring away in the deep dark woods. So Theo's prediction is not on the night. Three days and disgusting. Well, I think that we can say that if it passes midnight and the election hasn't been called, then it'll be yours. Ben? Wait, can I just get Theo to say three days and disgusting again? Three days and disgusting. Hey, I thought we were talking about election night, not your honeymoon.

Wow. Betrayed. You've been betrayed by your friend here. Anyway, I'm sure it was lovely. What time is the cutoff? When do they say, tools down? We'll pick this up in the morning, boys. I think that's when you fall over.

God damn. You come for the's when you fall over. Oh, God damn. You come for the king. You better not miss. Is it like 11? Is 11 when they stop? None of us know. I'm going to say 9.37 just to add a little pizzazz. All right. 8.45, 9.3737, 3 days and disgusting. Those are the predictions. We will give it to Theo if we hit the tools down for the night. Ben has fallen and he can't get up.

Portion of the evening will be awarded to Theo. I don't know what the award will be, perhaps just some kind of trophy. I'd like a trophy. Yeah, you get to be democracy champion. You get to take Anthony Green's place and power in the forest. Hell yeah. So, that's it for this bumper edition of Election Watch. Thank you for joining us.

I guess we'll see how things shake out on the night of nights, which somebody asked when is the election, and I believe it is the upcoming weekend. So get out there. Cast your vote, exercise your rights, ignore all the people pushing those cards in your face, eat a sausage afterwards. You know? It's all for a good cause, and that good cause is democracy. You're absolutely right. So thank you for joining us. As always, if you want to support the show or get some extra bonus episodes or get access to the discord or watch some movies with us, see Lucy's additional video bonus content whenever that turns up, all that kind of jazz. You can sign up on the Patreon at Patreon.com forward slash Punta Vista. We appreciate the support. We love you all dearly. Thank you so much. Big kisses to all the friends, lovers,

wives of the show. I'm also kissing Ben and Theo. Mwuh. Okay. Weted than I thought. Yep. My beard is sopping wet. Uh, no one's explaining why it's unclear as to what the fluid is. It's alarmingly viscous. And that will do us.

Thanks again. And we'll see you next week, I guess with the results. We'll see how close we were. We will declare one do us. Thanks again and we'll see you next week, I guess, with the results. We'll see how close we were, we will declare one of us the winner and the other two will be pelted with the rotten tomatoes and run out of town. So we can all look forward to that. Bye-bye, everybody. you