Friends don't let friends vote for Tony Abbott. Or do they?

For those of us who followed the election campaign with a handy serving of “wtf” on facebook, this page was one of our great hopes.  I don’t know who created the page, but it got some pretty cool media coverage and ended up with over 110000 “likes.”  Of course we all got schooled in the fact that clicking “like” is nothing like true democracy.  And for those of you still commiserating on the page, NO the AEC won’t pay any attention to the fact that FDLFVFTA has so many “likes” because they did a more extensive survey on the “likes” of the Australian people on Saturday.  They even asked the people who don’t have facebook.

We did all get kind of cocky about how many hits this site had, and the fact that Tony’s own facebook was lagging so far behind with only around 10 000 “likes.”  Julia ended up with 60 000 or so, and neither of them bothered to update their pages for pretty much the whole campaign.  Actually, that’s not entirely true, Julia did put up a plea for Twibbons on election day, but of course by then we were all wearing “This Saturday, I’m voting Greens.”  When I say “all,” I mean those of us who’d chosen to flee the major parties sinking ships with our dignity intact.  Not those who presumably wanted to vote for Labor.  For some reason a lot of Labor voters chose a picture of Tony to profile.  I thought this was a little “wtf” quite frankly, and I do mean “why THAT face?”

He doesn't look that bad...

I still swear a Liberal troll planted that red, white and blue “NOPE” image of Tony on FDLFVFTA.  Patriotic colours, fairly flattering shot, and everytime it thumbnailed the “NOPE” disappeared completely.  All these rabid anti-Tony folk were left with profile pictures that may as well have come from Liberal HQ.  Ditto all the poorly thought out profile photos of Tony looking silly, or faintly crossed out.  All anyone saw was Tony, Tony, Tony.  And much as I hate to admit it, passionately hating one candidate is not actually a valid reason to vote for someone else.  I think this has all become rather apparent from the result of the negatively run election campaign.  Policies may have helped us tell them apart.

If you didn’t want Tony in power what you really needed to do was propose your alternative and give valid reasons why they were better.  For sure, democracy is based on a secret ballot, and if you don’t ever want to tell anyone that is your right.  But if you really want someone running the country, it might help if you tell your “friends” who you’re voting for.  This is where the Greens kicked arse.  The Australian Greens facebook was on the cause early with the tiny green triangle Twibbon.  As the polls kept flip-flopping and the Green vibe increased they brought out the “This Saturday, I’m voting Green.”  It was big, it was bold and it made it really hard for us to tell our posts apart.  But it got the point across.  There were people out there voting Green.  We were visible.

Those of us who’d made the decision to swing could feel it was going to be big.  We plugged GetUp and AYCC endlessly.  We discussed how we felt about the issues and watched The Chaser and Gruen Nation like hawks.  I flogged The Age’s vote-a-matic like a dead horse, because even if people didn’t lean Green, I wanted them to vote on something resembling policy.  Ironic that the most policy we saw this election was embedded in an online quiz.

Of course as it gained momentum, FDLFVFTA became more and more Labor dominated.  Red team supporters spent a lot of time whinging about the Greens, thus dividing any united front the page may have originally had.  There are still some doing it there now, playing the blame game with the Greens.  At the end of the day I didn’t see much support for Labor on facebook.  All I saw was Labor voters whinging about Tony, and Liberal trolls returning equally stupid fire about Julia.  Not one person on my friends list changed their photo or status to show support for either Labor or the Liberals.  Two friends went all out with “This Saturday, I’m voting Greens” and probably about five others posted their intentions to vote Green and encouraged their friends to do the same.  As I pointed out to mine, I thought it was important to tell people what was going down, because otherwise they’d feel like they’d missed the invite to the party.  Still more of my friends are coming out about their Green vote after the fact, no doubt thankful they’ve dodged the Lib-Lab bullet, more or less.

So I guess the morals of this story is that “Most Friends on Facebook Don’t Actually Care Who Their Friends Vote For” and they’d rather click “like” than have a political discussion.  It’s also now apparent that facebook users would rather post their Farmville cows than their political ideals.  “I don’t care about your farm*, your fish or your mafia” but strangely, I do care who gets to run our country and why.

*I do care if you have an actual real life farm, especially if it’s located in the electorate of Bob Katter, Tony Windsor or Rob Oakeshot.

All the gays on boats are getting married.

“Look at me, I’m on a horse, I’m on a high horse.” 

I will never be able to fathom how it came to pass that the Lib-Labs thought they were going to get this one by us.  I mean it takes the very ideals of equality, of a fair go, of an inclusive world view and basically shoves them in a closet, locks it and throws away the key.  The only thing I can think is that they thought this was a “gay issue,” and that gay people are a minority who keep to themselves and don’t have much voting power.  Could they have been more wrong?

When a Liberal voting Vietnam veteran gets up on Q&A and asks Tony what he should do about his gay son, you know it’s just the beginning of an uncomfortable discussion.  Because if a Liberal voting Vietnam vet can accept homosexuality as okay, you can safely assume most people can.  But neither Tony nor Julia thought gay marriage was an issue.  Apparently it would have been an issue to let same-sex couples get married.  I’m not sure how it would have torn the fabric of society asunder, but clearly they thought it would.  Welcome to the fallout.

Gay and lesbian people don’t just live in “Gayland.”  They don’t just know other gays, they actually walk amongst us.  “Some of my best friends are gay” is not just a stupid cliché, it’s a fact.  Not only that, but some of my other best friends are probably gay, and if and when they come out I want them to have the option of getting married if they so choose.  

Because we live in the year 2010 and ultimately, that is what is right.

So once you get past the blatant homophobia it’s time to dissect the “civil union” bullcrap.  I mean seriously, what is that?  “We both take gay people very seriously and we believe they have every right to live together in a recognised civil union, but it’s just not marriage?”  Well then what the hell is it?  I mean sure, a lot of hetro-folk don’t like to take the risk of getting married (not naming names, Julia) but if people want to give it a shot, that’s surely their business.

Besides, the big unspoken issue is what are our same-sex friends going to put on their "non-wedding" invitations?  “Tony and Barnaby are getting civil unionised!”  Or would it be more like “Julia and Penny are getting married!  Please don’t tell the PM!” 

If my friends, gay or straight, want to get married then I want to go to their weddings.  

I cannot fathom a future that denies me this right.

PS.

"Look at me, I'm on a horse, I'm on a high horse."

I’m still not absolutely sure what The Chaser was saying and I think that’s because I didn’t undertake an arts degree.  I think the gist of it is “red and blue think that if they allow gay people to get married it will turn out that all the “straight” husbands will run away to marry their gay lovers on boats, thus destabilising the very fabric of society.  And we like horses.”

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."