EXCHANGE INTERFACE

The new members (the known ones at any rate) were sworn in today, and the Prime Minister (Anthony Albanese of the Australian Labor Party or ALP) presented his cabinet.

Yes, we do politics just that fast around here. Elected one week, sitting the next.

There are still a handful of counts taking place, some of them are going down to the wire. And I do mean the wire. The final date for ballots to come in (from remote and distant places where Australians have cast their votes) is this Thursday, I believe.

--

The conservative party in Australia, having lost their leader after he lost his seat, have been doing the whole 're-elect a new one'. Now, in Australia, party members choose who the new leader will be, not the voters. So there's a lot of in-party factionalism and back-and-forth.
 
Our options were: far right faction white guy with history of corruption who refused to resign from his ministerial position, moderate white woman with history of corruption who did resign from her ministerial position after being found out. There were assorted minor possibilities but they were all an outside chance, compared with these two.
 
Incidentally, white corruption guy came with an indigneous deputy minister in tow - an indigenous deputy minister who is far-right wing, opposed the Indigneous Voice To Parliament, and has just jumped ship from the "country" conservative party to the "urban" conservative party, leaving the "country" conservatives without a leader...
 
This is a party that has 'a woman problem'. They don't do quotas (unlike Labor) and it shows. They stuff female candidates into marginal seats, or anywhere where they think that a woman might beat another woman.
 
(Incidentally, one of those electorates where they put a woman they thought might beat another woman? They're up by a mere 56 votes in an electorate where over 100,000 voted! HOLY WOW. It's being recounted. Poor AEC workers, what a job!

I did say some of them were going down to the wire!)
 
Anyway, they voted on who was going to lead the Aussie conservatives in the coming months (at least until someone stabs her in the back) and it's the white female moderate. Who, if you want an idea of what 'moderate' entails, once gave a speech about how Australia would amount to nothing if not for colonisation.

Yeah.
 
We can't let the Americans have all the white supremacists, I guess...

There are, of course, those who will herald the election of the first conservative party leader as a master stroke. Every conservative female politician in the country (there aren't many of them) was photographed with a big grin and a positive note about how the conservatives have changed and how they listened to Australia and, and, and...

...think I'm gonna wait and see about how the conservatives have changed. Not that I'll ever vote for them again.

Actually, speaking of 'wait and see'-ing when it comes to leaderships...someone on Threads posted a picture of a whole lettuce...

Morning after the election.

We rejected Trumpism and Americanism, as represented by the conservative party and their leader, the 'Temu Trump'. THANKYOULORD.

The conservative party leader lost his seat.

That is, he didn't get re-elected into parliament. Just as in the UK, a party leader still has to hold their seat in order to lead the party (and so lead the Government or the Opposition). I have no idea if we've ever had a party that got into power but the leader lost their seat. I don't think so, because otherwise I'd have heard of it.

Anyway, Mister Dutto:

AM I EVER GONNA SEE YOUR FACE AGAIN??

[waits for some 15 million voices to rise with the response – the other 13 million being too young to remember the song, or oblivious to the relevant answer]

--

Not only did the 'centrist' party stay in power, they gained seats. So now they don't just have a majority government (as compared to having to make a deal with independents outside their parties and other small parties to form a minority government) they have a HUGE MAJORITY government.

( not what I wanted, but I'll take it )

There are good outcomes which are possible from this, the question is how it all fall out going forward.

–

My candidate didn't make it.

( the good, the bad, and the unfortunate )

By and large, it was wonderful to work with these volunteers, to chat and share and commisserate, to discuss politics and what we thought about this and that, to make the jokes that you can make with people who feel the same way about the variou politics and political candidates, and to, yes, 'trauma-bond'.

So, it seems I have another social circle...

-

This morning I woke up at 6am as my body alarm roused me. I lay in bed for a while and scrolled social media. I got out of bed, drank some coffee and thought about going somewhere, and instead kind of...frittered the day away until hockey.

Hockey was fun, although we were playing against a team who dropped from A-grade. They were good and cunning, but we were young(ish) and energetic. They beat us 3-1, but our goal was a lovely one.

I had a great run down the side – one handed, with a former coach yelling 'both hands, Sel, both hands on the stick” in my head – and got it into the circle, but couldn't get it fast enough across to the woman in front of the goal. DARN.

Nevertheless, a few people clearly thought I did a decent job. I actually had some marks down on the MVP sheet.

I skipped church. So tired.

And now (at last!) I'm going to bed.

My last act for this campaign – at some point when I wake up in the middle of the night - will be to take down the corflutes we stuck all over the area. Unfortunately, it means the smug bastard MP's face will remain everywhere after we take my candidates posters down. UGH.

Still, it's gotta be done.

–

Finally, I'm grumpy at a friend who commented (generally, on his FB, not aimed specifically at me) about the corflutes still being up.

There are two hundred of us, only fifty of us were really active on the campaign, and I'm FUCKING EXHAUSTED, Fraser. I think 'by the end of the weekend' is not too much to ask!

I love him, but frankly, he can be an asshole.

Chook troubles again. I don't want to go into it too much. It's just..tiring. And troubling. Everything is tiring and troubling right now.

The major issue with the chook issues is that B1 is moderately invested in making the chook survive. Not because she's particularly attached to it, but she feels bad about having to tell the vet that she wants the chook put down, and so she goes the medication and the care option. It's the whole "I'm a bad person if other people think I'm a bad person" issue.

We have spent entirely too much on this chicken. She's not even one of our favourites!

--

The independent is going hard, but the local candidate is going harder. Apparently he has ambitions of being Prime Minister someday, which obviously he can't be if he loses his seat. But he didn't need to defend it before, so now he's angry that he's having to work. He has the incumbent advantage, too - it's not a guarantee against the toxicity of the party leader ("Temu Trump") but it is an issue when we're talking about how has access to the resources of the electorate - emails, addresses, a party structure for contacting people.

A particularly significant downer is that the independent's campaign manager has hardly been seen, and apparently is not accustomed to running something on this scale. Nice guy, just maybe not up to the challenge. So we have a few old hands who are running things. A lot of old hands, in fact. Including the wife of the man who was the previous MP of the electorate - from the conservative party, dyed conservative to her toes. I may have mentioned her before, and have come to the conclusion that she's both admirable and terrifying.

But seriously, we're wearing out, and the election was only just called.

I'm doing some doorknocking this afternoon. New section of the electorate that's been rejiggered. We're hopeful of getting these people to think of voting for the indie.

I'm also offering to do some doorknocking in an area that's got a high percentage of East-Asian voters. Finding someone who looks like them on their doorstep might give us those few minutes to ask questions.

I need to put up the corflute for the indie on my driveway. It might deter people from using it as a turning point. But also, if they're going to use it as a turning-around point, we might as well get some use out of it!

--

Work is busy and getting busier. Lots of meetings this week. I hate meetings. I'm going away this weekend with some women from church, but I also have some work to do on the Saturday. Which I can do remotely (although I'm technically not supposed to, we're all turning a bit of a blind eye on that.

--

Still prosecuting the case of card fraud. ARGH.

--

Garden is going well. Did I mention I had a glut of persimmons? Sent a bunch away with a friend this morning for her to dry, return some and keep some. But wow. That was at least 100 persimmons, possibly more.



I also managed a capsicum! Never managed that before, so that's exciting. And the capsicum is pretty tasty, too!

Next year: eggplants!

Actually, before that: BRASSICAS. I have made a good start by starting them growing, and planting them out in beds, and watering them with nutrient rich solutions: seaweed solution, compost tea, biogrow, and cauliflower tea.

The 'cauliflower tea' is interesting: it's basically cauliflower leaves left in water until they've rotted away. Because Australian soil is so low in boron, it makes growing cauliflowers and other brassicas difficult unless you add boron for them to form their heads. At least, that's what I've heard. Any rate, I have an assortment of weed teas and the garden is getting fed micronutrients through them.

Okay, I have a meeting in 15 minutes. Another one. *sigh*

1. Did the house where you grew up have a newspaper delivered regularly?

Yes, I think so. This was back in the 70s and 80s and a newspaper was a standard delivery to most households. I think there were even a few 'free' newspapers around the area at the time.


2. Have you ever subscribed to an actual print newspaper?

Probably back in my 20s - the 90s, when newspapers were still very much a thing.


3. When was the most recent time you physically picked up and read a newspaper?

I sincerely do not remember, it's been a while. I saw someone on the train the other morning who had a full broadsheet, opened it up, and shook it out. I was transported all the way back to the early 00s again, commuting in to the city and having to contend with all the guys who thought that because they were doing important things like educating themselves on the state of the world, they had the right to shove a newspaper corner in your face.


4. Do you pay for news online now?

I do, in fact, pay a subscription for The Guardian Australia, because I do believe in paying for some news so that it's not all funded by billionaires. In Australia we still have ABC and SBS which are relatively sane and unbiased (where 'relatively' may be doing quite a lot of heavy lifting). I was subscribing to the NYT and the Atlantic up until the US Election 2024, and then gave up. No hope of sanity there and I couldn't be bothered.


5. Do you have any saved newspaper clippings?

Not I. What would I have clippings about?

B1, however, has newspaper clippings from the 90s about...topics she was interested in then, and which she intends to read. Someday. (Like all the other things she intends to read/sort. Someday.)

--

Sitting in a section of the local pub with a glass of wine, my laptop out and trying to write. It's a bit of a lot.

I'm slowly getting more involved in the local independent candidate's campaign. Delivering pamphlets. Going to trivia nights with the team. Stuff like that.

I think we have a real chance if we can persuade people to put her first, and then their preferred candidate second. And we could. We really could. And the current MP is definitely running scared. They have dodgy tactics, stupid fwittery going on, and no sense of humour. So much brusque shooting down and angry internet postings going on, really. it's pretty sad.

Tomorrow I'm going to do some flyer deliveries up and around my street to raise her profile. (Or maybe I'll do that on Monday? IDK. Have to decide.) I've booked in to wander around the markets with her on Sunday. And I'm contemplating helping do point-of-contact at the major train station junction on Monday morning. I think they could do with at younger, visibly Asian helper for Hornsby - a lot of East and South-East Asians will likely actually think about it if they have someone who looks like them stumping for her. And there's a pretty high percentage of people from those backgrounds in the area...

I can hear B1 complaining about how I'm doing too much again. So maybe let's see how Sunday goes, eh?

Well, that was sure a day.

( us politics stuff )

--

I went and signed up to hear more from the independent candidate who's running in our federal election later this year, up against the conservative incumbent. I might join her campaign; we'll see. She's got some good points, and so far as I can see, I could back her.

Call me bigoted; I wish her hair wasn't so blonde. (I have nothing against blondes. But that white-blonde colour? Like, 'my hair bleached for 50 minutes' blonde. No.)

I'd like to get some conversations going with locals - people in the street, church friends, community groups. Talk to people about what is it that they want? How can that be achieved? Can it even be achieved?

( the politics of people )

Anyway, we'll see what the indy has to say, and work from there.

--

Personal Health News: cw digestive virus

I went to Emergency last night. I had a cafe breakfast, planning for it to last me through lunch. While I was swallowing, I swear I felt something in it that didn't feel like food. I swallowed anyway. And then I felt nauseous all morning, and threw up almost all of it by 9am.

I drank a little water, ate some fruit. Threw that up about 30 minutes later. I tried a few things, but couldn't really keep them down.

Went home about 2pm (I was debating whether I should or not) and then thought about going to emergency because my throat still felt like there was something in it, and bits of my chest were hurting.

I ended up drowsing away the afternoon, tried to have dinner, then threw that up, too.

Went to emergency around 7pm. Walked out at 11pm, having had an EKG, blood tests, and an X-ray, all of which could find nothing unusual or out of the ordinary. So they think it's a virus, and I should rest. (Yes, timespirt, I know...)

And here I am this morning, having logged on. Virus is still going. I think I'm only going to do a half-day, a couple of courses that are needed for compliance sake. Better let my colleague/supervisor know.

--

Finally, social media is exhausting. And today is going to be rather warm. Just a smidge.

Don't think I have many Brits reading this anymore, but looks like you're going to be having a 4th July party, too. Good luck! (Also: isn't it nice not to have years of political advertising at a time?)

Meanwhile, I'm trying to explain to obliviates on TikTok why "vote for Jill Stein" (with the person promoting it claiming that she can fix the country) is not, in fact, going to fix the country.

Sheesh.

I bet I know more about the American electoral process than at least 50% of American citizens.

Also, if you've never heard of Gina Rinehart before this week, lucky you. (Ironically, the portrait style is just the way the artist does portraits; it's not a commentary on her - or it didn't need to be.) But I do hope someone has since explained "the Streisand Effect" to Gina.

Finally, no, building more houses is not the answer (making the component of home ownership that promotes rental income less attractive is one part of the answer), and the problem is not social media technology being used by kids but the way the adults programming the SM tech know too much about how to use it against kids while the parents trying to manage their children don't know enough about how it can be used against their kids.

Small but significant things! I was starting to get worn down by the washing of dishes.

It turns out the blockage was in the actual connection to the kitchen sink pipe. So fixable at any time, just didn't spot it. ARGH.

--

Still really tired. Wondering if I should get a PCR to check my status. I wouldn't at all be surprised to find I have COVID and my only symptom is fatigue. (Wouldn't be at all surprised to find that I don't have COVID and I'm just exhausted either.)

Tattoo is feeling a bit 'sticky' today - I think that's mostly the bandage film over it. It's probably going to be really annoying tomorrow though. Four days to keep the bandage on (unless it comes off of its own accord, but it seems pretty stable right now).

--

Hockey is FINISHED, BABY! It was a hard year for the teams - so many absences, sicknesses, and unable-to-make-its, but we had fun playing together.

( games )

--

Independents' Day: ABC Four Corners did an episode on the new Independents who've been elected to Australian Federal Parliament, and after the introduction blurb, they opened with a worker scraping the window banner off the offices of the member for Kooyong, the former Federal Treasurer who got voted out in the election in May.

The former MP was once billed as 'the future of the Liberal Party' but is entirely out of parliament now (and, I believe, already promised a cushy little exec job somewhere).

The worker is working with what I'd say is a distinct enthusiasm.

I mean, I love the name - kudos to whoever came up with the clever title for the episode.

One of the interesting things about this episode is that everyone major in it is female. The interviewer is female and all the independents being highlighted - both House of Reps and Senate - are female. (9 new independents in the federal lower house, 8 of them female.)

--

I finished a work thing today. It was very simple, but I couldn't seem to get my brain around it ALL LAST WEEK. Ugh.

Well, we're back to painfully cold mornings. 4C at 7:30am this morning, when I went to get a pathology blood test at a clinic that allegedly opened at 7:30am.

There was no clinic that opened at 7:30am. There was one that opened at 8am, so I wandered around intending to wait until the clinic opened. Except that by the time it did, my request for pathology had vanished. I think I dropped it while wandering around. I retraced some of my steps, but couldn't see it. Not sure if someone will return it or try to contact me about it.

The blood tests were all standard health blood tests, nothing particularly useful against me. Usually, I'd have gotten the blood taken at my doc's but he wasn't able to find my veins the day I went in, so he gave me a sheet for a pathology blood draw instead.

--

Still not feeling 100% on the chest. I'd almost like to take a test to see if I had COVID without realising. I'd also like a test for something like mild aspergillus? I work with soil and dust, and our house is dusty and my room is very dusty. Something to look at next week.

More COVID-related, our death toll is crazily high given how long we managed to keep COVID at bay, and our case levels are climbing. At this point, COVID booster shot #2 (shot #4) is available in NSW, and everyone above 30 is being encouraged to get fully vaxxed.

--

Also, our conservative state government is actually behaving itself and working with the centrist federal government regarding the state flooding instead of belligerently posturing. Mind you, the issue with the floods in March was that it was the (then-conservative) federal government who were belligerently posturing while electorates that didn't vote for them drowned.

It was a really bad government, and they've left the country in a really bad state. That said, the current centrist government are unfortunately doing Bad Government Lite. I am not surprised, exactly, it's very much like watching the Democrats being only able to hold the ratchet in the US instead of winding it back. Still, given how 'commie leftist' the PM was as a young bloke, I would have hoped for better. (Back in the day, mind, Labor was a lot more 'commie leftist'[*] than it is today.

[*] Not Actually Communist for anyone who's freaking out. *eyeroll* 'Commie Leftist' is probably pretty damn close to my own perspective on the world: the strong help the weak, the rich help the poor, those with help those without - and they do this through the vehicle of the government. Which, yeah, not a great vehicle, but has a considerably better chance at the scale of operations required and without having to subscribe to an organisation or company's "mission statement" (whether that's "MAKE ALL THE MONEY, SAVE ALL THE COSTS" or "MAKE THEM SUBSCRIBE TO OUR BELIEFS BEFORE WE HELP THEM"). And once the money or assistance is given, that's when I think that the government should step away. Adding conditions is what adds bureacracy and wasted. Give and don't look back.

FTR. I give a large regular sum to at least one organisation who regularly and publically dismisses and belittles the Christian faith and Christians. It's not comfortable, but the things they are fighting for are good things, and the people working towards those things have been burned by society and the church and religious people - as have many - and I don't begrudge them their bitterness. Do I wish they weren't quite so "everyone who is so stupid as to be a Christian"? Yes, I do. I've thought about saying something, but that feels like holding my donation over their head. I give because they do good work; I wish that they were doing good work while not belittling me and my faith, but I figure I and my faith can take it. If God is in control, then I don't need to react to them about their stings of dismissal, however much they twinge. Their prejudice is on their own head; however justified they feel it.

--

I am picking up, um, about 2L of ice-cream from Gelato Messina today. Their 'Greatest Hits' sale, which ran out of some flavours within, oh, fifteen minutes.

I think I'm going to put a label on these containers, though: "$0.50 per spooful! DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I PAID FOR THIS?" Because I regularly start with a full tub of ice-cream, and only get to eat about half of it, because the rest of it slooooowly disappears, spoon by spoon, until there is a thin scraping on the bottom of the tub. Which is left there, because it's rude to finish the ice cream that someone else bought (but not, apparently, to eat half of it).

--

Ugh. Back to the floods. It's the same old story. Suburbs built on floodplains in recent decades, with people presuming that if the land was being sold it then it must be safe to build on! And certainly, some places were safe...until the last couple of years. And then weather instability thx to climat change means higher highs, lower lows, stormier storms, rainier rains. All of it, everywhere, all at once.

--

Good news for the Brits. Except that whoever replaces him will likely be worse.

But full kudos to Hugh Grant, actor of one of the most delightful fictional British Prime Ministers, who, via the medium of Twitter, inspired a protester with speakers to put on the Benny Hill Theme just as the announcement were being made. Which meant that when you watch both Boris' resignation speech, and the announcement of it to the networks by one of the ministers, it's raucously and hilariously playing in the background...

--

I've jiggled my dwircle around a bit. Subscribed to a few people to broaden my horizons, although these days I mostly talk about my life rather than my fandoms. All my fandom favourites are dead, dying, or dismissed. Yes, there is an exceeeedingly slim chance that Maria will have something significant in Secret Invasion but I kind of doubt it. Nobody actually thinks she's interesting except me and a couple of people I've dragged along the way.

--

I have temporarily put 'The Nullifae' on hold (a woman working for an org that deals with Fae on Earth turns out to be utterly, completely, and totally immune to magic). I think I'm going back to Queen of the Night ("Joss Whedon got it wrong: there are plenty of slayers, but only one Queen of the Night"). I have the plot simplified for Book 1 of 3, and a chunk of it already written.

--

Okay, time to lead the chooks out to The Promised Land (ie. across the grass and up to the fenced-in garden).

It feels almost unfair to think of how much my country has changed in just a week - of how the faintest threads of hope have woven themselves through what was looking dire.

( musings )

--

I Don't Just Want Fewer Guns, I Want A Country That Cares For My Family

I'm writing this on the Sunday night after the Australian Federal Election.

Thank God, I think to myself. Thank God.

( for those looking for more explanation than 'the Aussies are fucking relieved today' )

Too confusing?

The short version in US political terms: the equivalent of the Democrats won, along with a bunch of Green Democrats, and while I have no doubt that politics will still get us nowhere very fast, we might now be able to start getting somewhere slowly.