Never ignore the elephants.

A lot of people are scratching their heads wondering what happened in the Australian 2010 Federal Election.  Some of them are even asking “wtf?”  But it’s really not that hard, it went down something like this.

An elephant was sent to tell Labor that they weren't listening to their voters. Julia laughed and said "always nice to meet an elephant.”  The elephant went to see Tony, but he wouldn’t listen to it either.  Everyone on telly kept asking Julia about the elephant, but she didn’t seem too concerned.  No one was super interested in what Tony had to say, because everyone knows he thinks elephants are “absolute crap.”  There were a lot of other things people were worried about, like equal rights for same sex marriage, healthcare, education and the environment.  These were all raised clearly, but Labor shrugged and said they might be red team, but they wanted the blue voters.

Then there were an awful lot of particularly stupid ads on telly.  The best of them had a catchy jingle and featured people “getting whacked” by an imaginary object that was never ever seen.  Ironically, this was not made by either party.  Red team had broadband, but blue team would stop the boats.  Not to be outdone, Julia said she’d stop the boats too.  She said she’d “move forward” for red and Tony said he’d get “real action” for blue.  But under no circumstances would either of them allow a man to marry a man, or a woman to marry a woman.  Especially not on a boat.

So in the murky purple that followed, everyone got so confused they couldn't remember which party was Labor, Liberal, in power, in opposition, lesser of two evils, or in fact, red or blue. A lot of people didn't understand how the voting and preferencing system worked, and a whole bunch of idiots listened to Mark when he said "donkey vote."

The monkeys locked away in the big room are still counting, and they may have to decide the winner based on who was placed last the least, but that would all come down to preferences, which no-one bothered to learn about.  It would be done quicker, but the monkeys keep getting distracted trying to figure out if a vote should go on the "donkey" or "horse" pile.

"Your vote is a valuable thing."

So thus far the result for red and blue: DEAD HEAT.

I think this means slightly more people "hate boats" than "love broadband," but it depends which channel you were watching or what time you last checked the web.

The people that didn't get get so confused, didn't like the colour purple and wanted good things for Australia like country services, dental in medicare, no bank fees, ... (there is a big list) swung to the Greens or voted in independents. 

As a result of that, one of the two major parties is gonna have to give in to all the Greens and Independents wildest dreams, or be unable to govern.  

And all of them have enormous herds of elephants that need to be fed.


Pre-PS.
Seeings as Hitler is down, maybe you'd like to meet the AYCC Climate Change Elephant.  As occasionally seen in budgie smugglers.
Never doubt that a small, thoughtful, committed elephant can change the world.


PS.
I was particularly surprised at Hitler's response to the election outcome.  The sad thing is that I might have preferenced him over Labor if he'd been running - he seemed to have a good idea as to how the campaign should have been run:
Hitler responds - "it's a colossal farce." - I hope you saw it while you could, it was brilliant, and now:
"This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Constantin Film."