Australia: Those devastating Queensland Election Results: Voters hate lies and the Carbon Tax

UPDATE: Is this a record? Has there ever been a loss this bad in Australian history? Conservatives likely to win 74 seats of an 89 seat parliament.

Labor was reduced to only 11 seats in 1974, and on latest counting tonight appeared set to retain only nine seats. Some analysts put the figure even lower, at seven. This would mean Labor falling short of official party status and relying on the incoming LNP government to grant it party offices, staff and resources. The Queensland Greens failed to win a seat and suffered a fall in support. [The Australian]

This is thread for all those who want to comment on this election. According to Bolt, things are not just bad, they’re seriously awful for the Labor Party. Newspoll says LNP (conservatives) 55%, Labor 26%. Channel Nines polls says Labor could be left with less than 10 seats!

For non-Australians, Australia has seven states (technically 6 states and 2 territories), and in 2007 all the States and the Federal Government were Labor. Currently Liberal (meaning conservative) governments have won NSW, WA, and Vic and now look like taking a landslide in Queensland. These are the four largest states.

First of all, there isn’t a ban on firearms - there are restrictions and regulations, but law abiding citizens can own firearms. I do.

But, yes, it’s likely that some of the restrictions and regulations will be relaxed. That is currently happening in my own state of Victoria which has had a conservative government for about a year and a half at this point.

There won’t be dramatic changes, simply because most Australians don’t want dramatic changes. Our history is different from that of the United States and that affects our culture. Most Australians - including conservative Australians - are comfortable with the idea of a degree of regulation of firearms. We do not have an equivalent of your second amendment which makes it a constitutional issue. We’ve never had to fight a revolution to remove a government (beyond a couple of single incidents in the nineteenth century where people stood up and the government almost immediately agreed to fix the problems that were limiting people’s rights, such as the Eureka Stockade - one small scale gun battle and a colony was granted self government - partly because lessons had been learned by Britain from its experiences in America - than when people started demanding rights, it was better to give them to them because you could not stop them in the end), we’ve never had a civil war. Importantly, Australian criminals are far less likely to carry guns than those in America and it’s considered desirable to try and keep it that way by not starting an ‘arms race’. If people want guns and have a reason they need them, they can get them - but it is deliberately not easy - in the same way that getting a drivers licence is not that easy.

They have too many venomous critters for my peace of mind, and they don’t all stay out in the outback. Some actually like urban living (funnel web spiders) or suburban living (brown snakes, tiger snakes). Plus taipans, king browns, red-bellied, etc. The only venomous mammal(!) in the world (platypus).

And that’s before stepping a toe into the ocean. Yikes!

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