What happened would be comical if it wasn't so darned serious. At the very least it's ironic.
(For those folk not living on the flip side of the planet, we have two major parties. The Liberal Party which has never been "liberal" but is so conservative that the Tea Party would welcome them with open arms; and the Labor Party which once represented organised labour but hasn't done so for at least four decades: They are now a liberal party.
Liberal prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, called an unusual election by dismissing not only the House of Representatives but also the entire Senate, (Normally only half the Senate is re-elected each three years. This was done to remove the splinter-party mavericks in the Senate who conspired to pass his legislation. The irony? He ended up with an even more hostile Senate that he had before.)
As a result the conservatives (that is, the Liberal Party) lost their overwhelming majority in the House of Representatives (Oz version of Congress) and may not even gain enough seats to form a majority government.
Labor fared no better than they will certainly not gain enough seats to govern in their own right.
The outcome is so close that whichever party wins they will have to form an uncomfortable alliance with the Greens and various unaligned independents who have won seats.
There's a parallel between the Oz Federal Election and the upcoming US Presidential vote in November. Only two thirds of voters (voting is compulsory in Oz) voted for one of the major parties. The others registered protest votes for one of the minority parties -- none of which had any chance o f winning government. Never before has such a protest been registered about the dissatisfaction with the two major parties.
My immediate thought was that with Clinton and Trump going head-to-head in the US, the election there may turn into a similar debacle. Neither canduidate is remotely inspiring.
