Election 2016: Australia Doesn't Decide

A diary about half paying attention to the election.

I tuned into ABC24 about thirty minutes before polling closed. I pride myself on being punctual.

Looking at the ABC panel, the first thing I had to do was remind myself Annabel Crabb is actually a serious political journalist, and not merely a person that lobs pollies questions in the comfort of their own homes that are softer than the desserts she presents them at the end of a meal.

At 6pm, there was a countdown from ten on the screen to signify polls closing. It was only missing the fireworks at the end, otherwise I might've thought it was New Year's Eve.

I actually voted by post for the first time, due to the possibility of having a child born on election day. 

I do not recommend it.

When you are not confined to a tiny booth in a sweaty, Rudd-built school hall, instead of getting in and out quickly you can take time to actually research all the candidates on the ballot. So voting takes thirty minutes instead of thirty seconds. While you can argue that this means being better informed, all being informed reveals is that all the minor parties you were ignorant of are entirely comprised of lunatics with insane ideas.

I've never had so much trouble counting to six as I did trying to complete my Senate ballot.

Immediately after 6pm, the panel spends a lot of time analysing a series of electorate results based on one polling booth at a rural school averaging about 35 ballots.

Attention then turns to Bill Shorten's inability to eat a sausage on a roll correctly. Crabb makes the call that he was worried about being pictured eating it vertically. So by early evening the ABC election coverage is already working blue.

Don't try this at home.

At exactly 6:39pm, Antony Green manages to mess up using his touchscreen for the first of 792 times on the night. This is his lowest error count in election coverage history.

At this point, based on those one booth results, the panel are maintaining the narrative of the last week of the election campaign, where Labor has lost momentum and the Coalition retain government with a slightly reduced majority. I decide to spend the next half hour getting my kids fed, bathed and in bed.

Two hours later, I'm back watching the coverage, expecting the contest to be over. Instead that silver fox Barrie Cassidy is raising the prospect of a hung parliament! Nobody else on the panel seems onboard that bandwagon yet.

Next I get to see Michael Rowland in the rafters and his disco floor graphics. Discos floors usually conjure up images of fun, or at least stickiness from spilt vodka mixers mixed with vomit, but Rowland is a man that uses the term with the enthusiasm of somebody analysing election results. The whole setup is in a big white room, which may be a vacuum, but for charisma rather than air.

Tristraya.

Aside from the disco floor, there is also a map where the geographic shapes on the electorate map are replaced by triangles. So the triangles represent the average geographic size of each electorate in each state. This is quite useless. It still gives the impression that the Libs are killing it because they are winning in Western Australia.

I now start losing both interest and track of time. I check footy scores, flick channels, check out random stuff on the Internet.

For the next two hours the election coverage is a blur between those distractions and... Antony Green repeatedly swiping left instead of right... Chris Uhlmann making errors that would suggest he's a person that read a cheat sheet five minutes before going to air, instead of a highly respected professional paid a lot of money to follow this election for two months... Leigh Sales and Annabel Crabb both getting increasingly tangential and giggly... Scott Morrison becoming unhinged and desperate as he tries to spin the Coalition slide... Penny Wong getting ignored and interrupted repeatedly. 

Somewhere in this descent into madness, there is an interview with my new local MP, Linda Burney for Barton. She is quite impressive.

In the previous Federal election I was located in Grayndler, the fiefdom of Anthony Albanese. But like its current sitting member, my residence was redistributed out of the electorate. Not by much - I did still have to sidestep his campaign volunteers at my local train station each morning for the last two weeks of the campaign.

I knew the Libs were in trouble in Barton when I got four letters in two days, signed by either Turnbull or the now former local Libs MP Nick Varvaris. The letter campaign failed. It appears no amount of material highlighting the installation of additional CCTV cameras to prevent local crime is enough. Burney is swept to power with a huge swing to Labor. 

His name is Ronald Poulsen.

Perhaps Varvaris should have door knocked. The only person to do so in my electorate was Ron Poulsen. He was a candidate from the Communist League filed under 'other' on the very far right of your NSW Senate ballot paper. I did not vote for him, but appreciated his campaign effort.

Burney is not the only new Labor member of parliament, and by 11pm it is quite clear we are heading towards a hung parliament, or very small Coalition majority.

Shorten gives a speech that is triumphant.

Turnbull eventually makes an appearance after midnight, and also gives a speech that is triumphant. He also threatens to call the cops.

I updated Facebook at the time to say, "full credit to Malcs, this is the most spirited attempt to turn abject failure into triumph I've ever heard." Reading the papers news online the next day, this is actually a mild criticism.

Leigh Sales then notes that the record for ABC's longest election coverage has been broken, and tells Kerry O'Brien to "suck on that". I call it a night.