Australian federal election today! We will probably (hopefully) have a change in Prime Minister - meaning we'll have had six in a five-year stretch. I love a stable democracy.

one tyime a jet lagged me and it didnt fgeel good at all

Result: surprisingly, the incumbent party still won. I'm disappointed, but hopefully they can at least govern effectively this time.
Ended up getting in an argument with a friend about the result - and for those who want to know what it was like: as much of a radical leftist uber-queer as I am, they put me to shame in all that.

---

Anyway, we're having a Respectful Relationships day at school on Wednesday. It's amazing how many of the guys I know get upset at essentially being told 'a lot of men rape people, don't do it yourself'.

well your currency reacted well to the news. there was a sizable gap since market close on friday to when sidney opened at 7am your time.

im no fan of fucking evangelicals but the people want a healthy economy before anything else i guess

you got 5.25% unemployment or something?

anyway the spike clearly visible in the 5 day chart right now. things will change in the future ofc

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AUDUSD=X

A lot of the talking heads in the media (ignoring the fact that whatever they say is confirmation bias) have argued that climate policies and the economy were a major factor. The Coalition (ironic) basically argued that Labor's climate policy would lead to plenty of job losses, which may or may not be true (I plead ignorance).

I think the best hope is that a few of the crossbenchers are really big on that and will play hardball on any legislation. However, the tip is that they'll have a majority and thus be able to do whatever. But then again, our clusterfuck of a senate will 'fix' things.

yeah i’ve been catching up with the news since the surprise— the nyt and the economist already had writeups about it this morning. coal, queensland, pies in the sky, etc.

and apparently shorten is highly disliked as well?

TBH I don't know what that's about, I have no real opinion on him. I think it's probably just union politics and stuff, something that I'm clueless about

ah. when do you start voting? next year?

I turn 18 in February, so I will be able to vote from then. I could be on the electoral roll by now (let me tell you a really funny story from the same-sex marriage postal vote sometime later), but I'll need to be in the next twelve months.

Unfortunately, because state elections are every four years and we had one last year, and federal elections are every three-ish, I don't get to vote on anything until I'm 20

ah...

but if you’re a parliamentary system you could have snap elections yes?

the other think i’ve been mulling over (nobody really is talking about it right now but im just learning so i’d like to shoot the shit as a learning reinforcement) is that one of the big reasons for australia having no recession in 28 years is you’ve been feeding china’s growth with raw materials

and now with the risk of trade wars and a weakened chinese economy you run the risk of stalling right along with them.

probably not the best time for free money giveaways to the masses, i’m thinking...

We could, but it's unlikely.

The only way we're going to have Parliament cleared out is if we have a double dissolution, which is generally only done if we've got a completely deadlocked Senate (although once in 1975 there was a constitutional crisis). The 2016 election was one, which backfired completely.

This would make sense; we're geographically closer to China than any other Western nation (unless you count Russia :D) so it's best for us if we're able to make a mint from their economic growth. Not sure about how this'll turn out for us in the future though.

There were conspiracy theories Turnbull was soft on China because his daughter in law comes from over there XD

---

Oh, and on Shorten: he's standing down as party leader, so now everyone else is jostling to be in the box seat

I have made my decision: Lee is my favourite SY member.

:D

Probably the worst opinion I've ever heard. Fact is that with Sonic Youth the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Take one member out and it doesn't work (snort)

counterpoint: i’d most like to have a beer with lee

eta: kim scares me
and steve prefers pepsi

thanks for that explanation

so it looks like your central bank might cut interest rates in june to stimulate what appears to be your momentarily weakening economy?

I agree with you on this one. His solo career is not the most spectacular one, however I've always enjoyed his tracks the most on SY albums (Skip Tracer, Mote, Eric's Trip, Rats,...)

So the respectful relationships thing we're doing at school is going okay. We've had a few interesting discussions about stuff, and I have massive respect for my old physics teacher.

---

Unrelated comment: is it poor form to be texting a girl at the same time as you're writing a song about her?

Good lord:D :D :D Bless yer