The cycle continues… the Free Trade party merged with the Anti-Socialist party, and then with the Protectionist party (ironically enough) to form Deakin’s Liberal party… enough Labor dissidents fused with that to form the Nationalist and then the United Australia Party (no relation to Clive’s party). When the United Australia Party became so politically unfavourable, they completely dissolved and rebranded into the current Liberal party.

Either the coalition re-emerges in the near future (by far the most likely option), or we will see another shake-up/rebranding/fusion. Labor look set to hold power for several terms now, but the longer this continues, the longer the power vacuum for opposition stirs up. There are a lot of independents in the house now, and when they realise they may have collective power against Labor in a coalition with the Liberal party, they may end up uniting. Possibly within the decade. I think it would look very different to the Liberal party of 2025.

Bills still have to get through the senate to get passed at least, so the party with a lower house majority still does have to cater to that third option somewhat.

I want to put Skype’s corpse on a banner and wave it around to all the software that’s currently undergoing enshittification.

Durack has a 7% swing away from Labor (against the trend of the whole state), I think it’s safe to say that Keep The Sheep was successful in regional areas. However it doesn’t seem to have had much effect in the metro, aside from Canning if you include that.

Actually, now that I dig deeper, I see that Canning has an 8% swing to One Nation, dayum…

As a Perthlet, I’m pretty happy overall. Only real disappointment is Canning; would have thought it’s within Labor’s grasp but currently looks like a 5% swing against Labor, even after sitting MP Andrew Hastie said we should give our mineral stockpiles to Trump to stop the tarriffs. Any Mandurah locals have some insight into the sentiment - is it the Keep The Sheep campaign maybe?

Fwiw, I wish the two parties were more cooperative, but it takes two to tango. Greens aren’t obliged to blindly pass every bill that Labor proposes, the burden is also on Labor to negotiate their proposals to gain majority support.