Last night, I confess to awaiting for Australia’s election results with some trepidation. This morning, I am feeling significantly relieved, but of course, that’s because the side I didn’t want to win, didn’t. Obviously, I am not everyone, so others will be feeling completely the opposite.

I’m typing while listening to a program called ‘Insiders’ which is focusing on an post election analysis.

I live in what’s called a ‘safe seat.’ It’s been held by a National Party politician called Barnaby Joyce for years. (Sadly, to my way of thinking.) The National Party generally works in coalition with the Liberal Party. (For those who don’t know Australia, you may be surprised to hear that the Liberal Party is considered our major conservative party, contrary to common usage of the term.) The Nats (or Nationals), purport to speak for rural Australia, and they do generally win in rural areas.

For me, they don’t necessarily represent me, as I’m not keen on nuclear energy, and also not a climate change denier, as many Nats are.

But this morning, Australia has repudiated a major party that (in my opinion) failed to understand the concerns of the electorate. While Labor focused on their historical strengths – Medicare, equality (particularly for women), equal wages for equal pay, childcare, education etc, while pointing to the future, the conservative parties as a whole, focused enormously on divisive and negative policies, and unfortunately they have persistently ignored their talented women, and sidelined them. Then there was the focus on nuclear energy, and the complete lack of any costings for any of the hastily and reactively developed policies that appeared to ‘happen’ throughout the campaign.

Also, somewhat concerningly, there is a chunk of Australia who are welded on to further right parties, like One Nation, who clothe racism in ‘we are one’ rhetoric, and ‘reverse discrimination.’

Also, in my opinion, watching from afar, what appears to be a train wreck conservative government (or maybe authoritarian government?) in the US, has assisted in the defeat of an Australian party whose leader has sometimes been referred to as ‘Temu Trump.’ There has been a lot of discussion of the ‘Trump effect’ in the media and on social media today.

Most Australians now believe the US is an unreliable ally. More and more Australians believe the current US economic policies will damage Australians – and indeed the world. But more importantly, a couple of weeks ago, polling demonstrated that more Australians would trust Albanese’s (Labor) approach to Trump vs Dutton’s (Liberal) approach to Trump.

While I’m sure many US citizens are happy to see Australia stepping up and taking more responsibility for our own defence, (and Australians too), the fact is, that we have a landmass similar in size to the continental US, with a population of 26 million. That is, the US has twelve times the population of Australia. Most Australians now (given the perceived unreliability of our US allies), are keen for more local alliances because we know we need allies for defence.

Bizarrely, we are now picking up the US trade deficits with China. We’ve always traded heavily with China, but now more of our beef exports are going there. It’s a bonus for our farmers, but an unexpected one.

It will be an interesting few years, now that Labor has such a majority, and the Liberal party is in complete disarray. And by disarray, I mean that Dutton, the leader, lost his seat, along with a chunk of his shadow cabinet, and those who are left, are tarred with interesting comments, being backseated, and poor showings during debates with their Labor counterparts. But that aside, we have three years more or relative stability in what is now a much more turbulent world.

Onto something else.

The nicknames for the Trumpets of Patriots, are things of beauty. Trumpets of Patriots were funded by Clive Palmer, who is a billionaire best known for his extreme right views and self interest, and who spent large sums of money to elect precisely no candidates, but did in fact annoy almost the entire population of the country by relentlessly texting them. (Except me. I missed out.) In fact, the one in my electorate appeared to have no policies at all, but was very keen to share his ancestry and nothing else and apparently has delusions about succeeding Charlemagne….

See below for a curated selection of the least offensive nicknames. If you want to, google the others and giggle. They are typically bluntly Australian and not necessarily polite.

Flugelhorn of Failure, Crumpets of Apricots, Foghorn of Flatulence, Spunk Rag of Spammers, Bumtrumpets of Flatulence, Coterie of Cockwombles, Bagpipe of Blowhards.