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Sunday, October 26, 2008

I previously stated that the ACT election was a two-horse race and that the ACT Greens were less than impressive.

At first glance, it would appear that I was wrong. Labour and Liberal won an equal number of seats, with a 7% swing against Labour and almost 4% swing against the Liberals. The Greens have gone from one seat to three. But...

As a political commentator has commented elsewhere (I'm sorry but I forget who and have to admit that I mislaid the publication his column appeared in), when compared to the ACT results for the last election for the Federal Senate, the actual proportion of the vote won by the Greens has also decreased. The vote all over the place was frankly wasted on independents who didn't win seats. So it wasn't only the majors who lost ground with the electorate.

The Greens did briefly try to pretend that they were not decided who they would support to form government. Give me a break - since when did they support the Liberals on anything? There was never any doubt that Labour would lead a minority government with the Greens.

In reality, this is no different to the years of the Liberal-National Coalition leading the country, when neither won more seats the the Labour Party. But would they dare to admit that they were also a minority government? Not bloody likely.

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