Horse 3457 - In Which I Predict The Winner Of The 2025 Federal Election

The 2025 Australian Federal Election is in theory the hardest to predict the result for, since the 1906 Federal Election. The reason for this is the same though. Before 1910 when the two big massive flocks of political groups starting flying in the same kinds of directions, the Westminster System which is both apathetic and agnostic to the results that it throws up, produced a series of parliaments where the wedge between the two flocks was so big that government was hard to form.

Australia since about the time of Howard, has had an increasing amount of displeasure and distrust in the two big flocks, such that the spread and scope of the wedge has grown. In 2010 when Ms Gillard took Labor to victory, the wedge was smallish but because the two big groups were perfectly poised, it was a crossbench of 4 of 5, which returned the Labor Party to government.

In 1906, the wedge between the Labor Party led by Chris Watson and George Reid's Anti-Socialist Party, was mostly made of former Prime Minister Alfread Deakin's Protectionist Party and former Premier of Western Australia John Forrest who led a party of two. In 2025, the wedge consists of 16 seats. 

I have a spreadsheet which by taking the results of the previous election and the results of the NewsPoll, YouGov, and Morgan polls, assumes a uniform swing across the country to determine what the outcome is. The problem with this kind of methodology in 2025 is that it has as it's base assumption that a Two-Party Preferred (2PP) basis is good enough to calculate uniform swing, and then populate the results downwards across the board. The wedge is now so large, and the expected primary vote for both of the two big flocks, that my spreadsheet is now spitting out #DIV/0 errors in 22 seats. That's larger than the wedge, and larger than any possible sensible set of calculations for the result can handle. 

So in producing my prediction, I have had to override many of the equations which go into the various cells; then use the 2PP basis to calculate the result, even though I know full well that the result is going to be idiotic. This is a "Garbage In, Garbage Out" set of calculations because the the quality of any output is directly determined by the quality of the input. In this case, even though the equations used to generate a uniform swing calculator are perfect because the data is in essence flawed, the results are also flawed. You can not make a silken purse from a sow's ear.

Be that as it may, this is my prediction for the 2025 Australian Federal Election. I have an 80% success rate for picking Australian Federal Election results in broad terms (definitely not numbers); which I put down to the fact that it becomes really obvious late in the piece as to whom is unelectable.

Labor 79 (+2)

L-NP 64 (+6)

Green 1 (-3)

Other 6 (-5)

I think that the Liberal Party in particular will claw back seats from the Greens and the Teals, but I doubt that even a single Labor held seat will flip from red to blue. 27 seats did not even come close to finishing as winnable contests in 2022 and ironically, given that the wedge of votes is getting wider, I think that that hard core unswingable base will only grow on both sides. I think that Bennelong is the seat that will flip back to red and that Eden-Monaro will retain its status as bellwether. Kennedy will remain Bob Katter's seat. Warringah will remain Zali Steggal's seat. Dr Helen Haines will remain as Member for Indi.

If there is going to be any surprise on the night, it will be if Peter Dutton is so on the nose that he loses his seat of Dickson. Nominally it would take a swing of 1.5% to displace him which is less than 1700 votes. He might survive because of name recognition or fall precisely because of that same thing.

What would be really weird is if the wedge proves to be massive and blue at the same time. If the wedge is bigger than 9% across the country, then as many as 43 seats could be in play; which means that government might swing on the basis of 3rd and 4th preferences. There is a remote possibility that Ali France wins the seat of Dickson for Labor but the Labor Party loses. If that happens, then there is a chance that Peter Dutton would be given the commission as Prime Minister but with no seat, and then either win a seat in a by-election or take up a seat in the Senate upon the resignation of a Liberal Party sacrifice.

Always the ticking time bomb in the background is Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2025-2026; which currently has a status of "Not Proceeding" and "Lapsed at dissolution" upon 28th Mar 2025. As it was introduced on 25th Mar 2025, then the six months given for the Senate to reject or fail to pass it, ends on 26th Sep 2025.

https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r7327

This means that the weirdest possible timeline of all is a Labor Government, with Peter Dutton as Leader of the Opposition from the Senate, blocking the budget, to send us back to the polls in October or November. 

I think that the most likely scenario is either the Labor Party winning majority with a margin of 3 or less, or having to negotiate with the big wedge, hoping to scrobble about for the 2 or 3 seats necessary for a majority on the floor to secure supply and confidence. 

Ho and Hum.

Horse 3456 - The Youth Are Not "Strongly Attached" To ANZAC Day? GOOD.

As the Murdoch press gradually loses its cultural reach over normal people, mostly because newspaper circulation is falling and the number of people who actually watch Sky News is numbered in the tens for some programs (not tens of thousands, just tens); after having tried to cause moral outrage over Australia Day and Easter, the Daily Telegraph and the Courier-Mail tired to attack Gen-Z over its apparent apathy over ANZAC Day.

Citing a Newspoll, the papers concluded that less than 25% of people in Gen-Z, presumably Generation Alpha, and probably all of Generation Beta (the oldest of those being about four months old), were "strongly attached" to ANZAC Day, whatever that is supposed to mean.

To that I say... good.

Tired old men, from a tired old war.

And the young people ask:

"What are they marching for?"

And I ask myself the same question.

...

And the band played 'Waltzing Matilda'.

Let's put this in perspective shall we?

VJ Day, was the 9th of September 1945. If someone had turned 18 on the very last day of WW2, then they would be 97 years old now. That means that although there are a few people who might be veterans of the Second World War, there are not many. If someone had turned 18 on the very last day of WW1, then they would be 124 years old today. As there are no people who are that old, the actual memory of the First World War has not only faded but been extinguished entirely. There are no dodecagenarians.

This means that the right to claim who gets to decide what kinds of moral outrage should exist, and who gets to claim that same moral outrage, is certainly not owned by the Murdoch press. About the only moral outrage which can or should be claimed by anyone within the Murdoch press, was ironically Keith Murdoch himself; who expressed shock at the conditions endured by the soldiers at Gallipoli. He bothered to turn up and report what he saw on the battlefield itself.

In fact, isn't that the very point of ANZAC Day itself?

25th April was was declared 'ANZAC Day' by the federal government in 1916. They knew full well of the bloody pointlessness of the campaign which saw 12,401 ANZAC soldiers die for literally zero gain whatsoever. This was not the glorious dead but a campaign which saw at minimum 480,000 people flung at machine gun fire, merely to result in an Ottoman victory. So for the Murdoch press to somehow make sport of the "ANZAC Spirit" or whatever they were trying to do, is not only to completely misread what the whole deal was about, but also to spit in the face of their own former proprietor.

The fact that younger people are not "strongly attached" to ANZAC Day is testament to the fact that the people who saw the horrors of war, twice in some people's lifetimes, didn't want to revisit that again on their children and grandchildren. Organisations like the EU and NATO, now decried by the children who were born in the peace and prosperity that their parents created, were designed not so much to be glorious pieces of cooperation but to gum up the gears of war so that they didn't revolve in the first place.

A few Baby Boomers fought in Vietnam but by the time that the two Iraq Wars and the Afghanistan War arrived, the armed forces were entirely run by professional soldiers. Those wars at least from an Australian perspective, were not fought by conscripts or en masse volunteers. That makes a massive difference. 

The people of Gen-Z who were born from 1995-2009, and Generation Alpha from 2010-2024, have only really come of age within the past 10 years at most. Of course they will not be "strongly attached" to a commemoration for a thing which happened 80 years before they were born. In the case of Generation Alpha, the entire generation was born after the last World War I veteran died. The light had already gone out. For them, the First World War and ANZAC Day is only ever going to be something that they will see on film and in print. There are no veterans left to share any experiences.

For Gen-Z, not being "strongly attached" to ANZAC Day may as well be like me not being "strongly attached" to the Battle of Hastings in 1066. I literally can not remember anything before I was born either and 912 years may as well be 100. I was friends with a veteran from the Second World War who flew Liberator B-24 bombers in Italy and had three battle stars, but him relating stories to me was not the same as something that I could actually experience.

Quite frankly, younger generations should not be "strongly attached" to ANZAC Day. In fact becoming increasingly apathetic to the First World War and to its cause, is actually the best policy. We should be horrified when politicians send soldiers off to die. People's lives are the coin of the battlefield and I find it downright horrible and evil that men behind desks and who end up being decorated, spend that coin of the battlefield as though it means nothing to them; especially considering that they are the ones who never actually have to pay.

But as year follows year, more old men disappear

Someday no one will march there at all...

GOOD!

Horse 3455 - When All Cussing Is Pointless

In what will be the very Last Family Law matter that the firm I currently work for will ever do before it closes its doors due to the boss retiring, we have encountered a particularly delightful piece of 'elegant variation'. Yes, that it the genuine term for this.

A 'sobriquet' is when you replace a name/nickname for a specific person; such as "The Bard" for William Shakespeare. A 'metonym' is when a thing stands in for the whole; as in "Washington" standing in for the US Government. An 'elegant variation' is when a word stands in for another word, or multiple other words; which is distinct from a placeholder term which is designed to conceal.

The Elegant Variation in the case of Apple v Banana (2025) is 'cuss' for every single cuss word which is being said by both Ms Apple and Mr Banana. We have sat through multiple days of cussation which would make sailors blush, which would give rise for ejection from parliament under standing order 94A for being unparliamentary, and which would spray so many blue steaks across the sky that they would write letters a thousand feet high.

There has been so much cussing used of the word 'cuss' that even the cussing lawyers and the cussing judge, have taken to using the word 'cuss' in their replies. It as been abso-cussing-lutely fan-cussing-tastic. Moreover, the transcripts of the case have instead of merely censoring the proceedings, have been inserting the word 'cuss' as an elegant variation into the official transcript. 

The really curious thing about the use of the word 'cuss' as an elegant variation, not only in print but as a spoken device, is that the number of cusses has decreased as the case has gone along. This very much suggests that the micro-culture built up within the case has been enough to change people's behaviour. I do not know how long into the future that this will last but if Ms Apple and Mr Banana have been changed by this, then perhaps they might be more pleasant to be around.

I do not know if the lawyers and judges are aware of the stop-motion animated film of Roald Dahl's 'Fantastic Mr. Fox', which was directed by Wes Anderson in 2009 but it has been around long enough that it must have entered at least someone's subconscious by now. Again, I do not know exactly how many times that the word 'cuss' is used as an elegant variation in the film for the various cusses by Messrs. Fox, Badger, Mole, Boggis, Bunce, and Bean, et. al. but as best as I can determine there are 17. Wes Anderson himself said that in the initial drafts of the script, that there were three times this amount; which means that the elegant variation in the film was designed to be a running gag from the outset, and then pulled back for comedic timing purposes. Ms Apple and Mr Banana are not even remotely comedians.

As someone who has wrangled many words and has forced them to dance in my strange menagerie of sentences and paragraphs, I quite like the elegant variation of 'cuss' in place for cuss words. While I think it is useful to have cuss words and parts of speech that are generally taboo, continued use of them in everyday conversation, especially to the degree that Ms Apple and Mr Banana were using them, is just gauche. There are different devices and far more pointed turns of phrase that you can use if you want to spit bile and acid at various targets. 

I actually wonder if Mr Banana's rampant cussing actually contributed to the break-down in their relationship. By laying the formwork of this case through the use of language, Mr Banana cussed his way to a new tone. Ms Apple probably though "cuss that" because she had enough, and decided to get the cuss out. That's probably a good thing as Mr Banana has repeatedly demonstrated that he is not a nice person; which probably explains the colour of his language. I am not suggesting that he does not know any better how to behave; in fact quite the opposite. All of this seems like a choice.

So it goes I suppose. Clearly Mr Banana has long been desensitised to his own use of language to the point where all of his cussing may as well be meaningless. It doesn't seem to act as an intensifier or even as a modifier of language, rather his cussing is being used in the same kind of way that "Um" or "Like" are used primarily as a filler words, to buy time and signal to the listener that the speaker is still thinking and hasn't finished speaking. Maybe this kind of temporary placeholder is actually being used in during moments of uncertainty and/or while Mr Banana is trying gathering their thoughts. Then again, he doesn't seem to actually think very far ahead; or else we wouldn't have been here in the first place. 

Horse 3454 - Dystopias, Dead Worlds, Detritus, Death

As the number of days that I have remaining left in my current job very quickly winds down, my thoughts have once again turned to the realm of literature and the idea of the Dead World. 

I do not mean a Dead World in the sense of a dystopia like 1984, Brave New World, or Fahrenheit 451, but in the sense of Night, Till A' The Seas, Hothouse, Rainworld, Waterworld, or The Gone World. A dystopia tells the story that the world exists but is bad. A dead world, which is either placed towards the end of time or after some hideous apocalyptic event, tells the story where the kosmos itself has either ceased to function or the kosmos which used to function now no longer does so.

Science fiction generally likes to tell stories of worlds imagined; either based upon some glorious and amazing future which will go wrong, or some future which has already gone horribly wrong and someone is trying to cope. The reason for this has to do with the fact that narratives are constructed on the basis that you need conflict in order to move forward, and conflict and complications that need to be solved because that's how stories work. Even children know that all stories have a beginning, middle, and end, and in order for the end to work, the middle needs logical points of order to swing upon.

Dead worlds though in telling stories of worlds imagined, usually come pre-packaged with conflict and complications with either describe how the world got to be that way and/or how to either restore or solve the problem, or how to rebuild the world after if has been destroyed. In some cases, the world is so irreparably gone, that the characters who inhabit it, will come to realise that they like the world are already doomed, and that the conflict and complications are resolved by them coming to realise this as fact.

Why do we like to tell stories like this? Science fiction generally, dystopias in particular, and dead worlds in minutiae, reflects a little of the hopes that we hold, and a lot of the fears that we carry. Humans are highly limited in both space and time, in that they can only live in the hear and now; and although we really hate to admit it, this thing that we call 'life' is merely only temporary and fleeting and can be snuffed out in an instant. Religion in general holds out a hope that this is not all there is, but a dead world in fiction certainly does not. 

The biggest existential horror that we have is that none of us know what it is actually like to die. Dead people almost never come back to report what they have found on the other side of the veil. A dead world though, is when all the people who would have reported what it is like on the other side of the veil are gone, and all that is left is the detritus that has been left behind. In some respects, a dead world is semi-analogous to history, which is a different kind of story telling where the world that has been left behind has not only remained alive but we are left in the alive kosmos to receive the stories of the past.

When my current job dies and I move to a new one, the world that I will used to inhabit will be dead. I will have to carry forward the detritus to some degree but most of the old kosmos will only live as a memory on my head. Almost certainly it will not only be dead but closed to everyone except me and even then only living on in the archives of my mind. I am hardly unique in this. Moreover, when I die and my place remembers me not, even the archives of my mind will be closed; which leads us straight back to that central point of existential horror.

The dead world in principle, holds the mirror up to our existential horror and forces us to stare at it. Good fiction, good scripture, good ideas, good facts, good lore, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, all have the property that just like a piece of grit which is trapped inside an oyster, forms a pearl of wisdom. A dead world in fiction makes us to face things like mortality, pain, disappointment, and maybe even our responses to those things like anger, sadness, ennui; and then forces us to either decide what we intend to do with those responses or manufacture new ones.

That is maybe just as big an existential horror. All evidence that we have thus far suggests that being dead is actually pretty easy. Being alive on the other hand, is sometimes hard. When we point the mirror at ourselves, we often have to consider what (if anything), goes on within our interior life. Some people at least from the outside, show no evidence that anything goes on behind blue eyes. Great philosophers try and take the various pieces of the things that they have manufactured as a result of their interior life and build them into some kind of schema. I think that I am too stupid to do this. I like to be entertained by the horror itself.

Additional and Aside:

I do not understand what is actually so bad about living in the classic dystopias.

Mildred in Farenheit 451 although she does try to commit suicide is probably an edge case to contrast Montag. For everyone else in the novel, being constantly entertained and being totally untroubled by the kosmos, seems like a kind of lovely existence.

I do not understand why The Matrix would not give the people who are stuck in the simulation, a lovely time. What is actually to be gained from giving them horrible experiences? If the intent is to keep them unaware and they have literally no other inputs, then wouldn't the The Matrix want to keep them inside? To that end, giving people a lovely existence seems like the best way to do that.

In Brave New World, what would be so bad about being an Epsilon semi-moron? It is in the interests of the people who want you to work in the factories to keep you happy because that way the system perpetuates. If you are actually too dumb to know what is happening to you, then that's probably a semi-lovely existence, isn't it? Likewise if you are an Alpha-plus, wouldn't that also be nice?

Everyone in the Inner Party in 1984 is clearly having a lovely time because they already control everything. Also, most of the proles in the prole sector also seem to be happy enough. It is only Winston Smith who thinks that he has a problem.

Depending on where you are in the classic dystopias, you are either having a lovely time because you have everything you want, or you are either having a lovely time because you have everything you want by virtue of having your expectations blinkered so very much that you don't want very much. Combine all of them, who wouldn't want to be a prole with Mildred, watching the Screaming Clown Show, drinking Victory Gin, and occasionally going on a Soma Holiday... wouldn't it be lovely? 

Horse 3453 - Prime Minister Peter Dutton, Senator for Queensland?

If I plug in relevant polling data into my swing calculator, then I have results of the May 2025 election as thus:

77 - Labor

68 - Coalition

6 - Others (KAP, Green, IND)

That means that the Coalition claws seats back from the Independents and Greens but that practically no Labor seats move at all.

If there was a swing towards the Coalition, then it is possible that there could be a Coalition but that the current member for Dickson would not be returned. The balance of probabilities for Dickson suggests that Peter Dutton would hold the seat but it would only take a swing of 1.7% for the Labor candidate Ali France, to topple him.

If this unlikely outcome happens, then we are in the unique position of a Leader of the Opposition losing their seat but the party winning government. 

So what would happen in such a scenario?

Section 64 of the Constitution states that:

https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Practice_and_Procedure/Constitution/chapter2#chapter-02_64

The Governor-General may appoint officers to administer such departments of State of the Commonwealth as the Governor-General in Council may establish.

Such officers shall hold office during the pleasure of the Governor-General. They shall be members of the Federal Executive Council, and shall be the Queen's Ministers of State for the Commonwealth.

Ministers to sit in Parliament

After the first general election no Minister of State shall hold office for a longer period than three months unless he is or becomes a Senator or a member of the House of Representatives.

- Section 64, Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act (1900)

As the "Governor-General may appoint officers to administer such departments of State" and they "shall hold office during the pleasure of the Governor-General" then there is absolutely nothing wrong with the Governor-General appointing literally anyone and anything in the world to the office of Prime Minister. The Prime Minister has no other definition at Constitutional law other than being a Minister of State. This means that as there is no other definition, then the Governor-General may appoint anyone they like.

If a minister lost their seat at an election they would no longer be a member of parliament. They could still be the Minister, provided that they were then able to attain a seat within 89 days. Likewise if Mr Dutton were to lose the seat of Dickson, then presumably he could contest some other seat in a by-election assuming that a Member of the House resigned, or be appointed to the Senate provided that some other Senator resigned.

https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Practice_and_Procedure/Constitution/chapter1/Part_II_-_The_Senate#chapter-01_part-02_15

Where a vacancy has at any time occurred in the place of a senator chosen by the people of a State and, at the time when he was so chosen, he was publicly recognized by a particular political party as being an endorsed candidate of that party and publicly represented himself to be such a candidate, a person chosen or appointed under this section in consequence of that vacancy, or in consequence of that vacancy and a subsequent vacancy or vacancies, shall, unless there is no member of that party available to be chosen or appointed, be a member of that party.

- Section 15, Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act (1900)

The idea that a Senator is Prime Minister is unusual but not Constitutionally invalid. In the current arrangement of the Albanese ministry, there are 10 Senators who are either Ministers, Assistant Ministers, or Special Envoys. The idea that a Senator is Prime Minister is also not new.

When John Gorton was appointed as the 19th Prime Minister of Australia on 10th January 1968, after Harold Holt's disappearance in December 1967, he became the first and thus far only senator to assume the office of Prime Minister. Granted that he did contest and win the seat of Higgins which Harold Holt previously held, but there was no Constitutional demand for him to do so. Gorton was even Prime Minister without even holding a seat in Parliament for 38 days; which is longer than Frank Forde and John McEwen's time in the office put together.

Nominally the Prime Minister, as the leader of the government, would want to be a member of the House of Representatives because this is where government is formed. However as there is no mention of the existence of a "Prime Minister" and no rule that the Prime Minister can not be a Senator, then this is only by mere convention and tradition. As we saw when Scott Morrison became minister for Health; Finance; Industry, Science, Energy and Resources; Home Affairs; and Treasury, then even within the 20s mere convention and tradition holds only as long as mere convention and tradition holds.

Prime Minister Peter Dutton, Senator for Queensland is not beyond the realms of possibility because out there in the unknown future and if your dare, all things are possible.