So what do fellow reds down under think about the election results last night?
Bit like Brexit. Pensioners concerned about losing a tax concession swung it over the younger generation worried about the future of the planet.
You had city slickers in the more affluent areas moving towards the environment while the bush (Queensland) just want jobs and that's through coal mining. Queenslanders seem to forget that the Great Barrier Reef, Daintree Rainforest and their pristine beaches form the base of a $25b industry that employs 215,000 people. There is only 20,000 jobs in coal mining and that's expected to drop to 15,000 over the next few years due to automation. On that issue alone I feel like we're becoming the Kodak of energy. We've got 7.7m sq kms (2.9m sq miles) of land where we could lay out wind farms and solar panels.
The Liberals will have their tax cut implemented within the first few months and then they have nothing. If they don't come up with some decent policy then in 3 years they'll get smashed.
At the end of the day negative politics won.
There's a small lesson in this for the upcoming US election. Clive Palmer a mining 'billionaire' spent $80m of his own money and won no seats in either house of parliament. Some would say wasted money, but he stopped an anti-coal Labor party from winning so that's all going to come back to him in business. The Dems need to be mindful that someone like Howard Schultz could pull votes away from their base and leave the door open for Trump to win again.
