Horse 3462 - Unchain The Indy 500

 In an act which has been quite rightly seen as 'cheating', the two cars of Joseph Newgarden and Will Power were pulled up before qualifying for the 2025 Indianapolis 500, were denied their runs and will start from the last row of the grid.

Joseph Newgarden and Will Power, both of Team Penske, were found by the IndyCar technical inspectors to have filled a seam to close off airflow over the rear attenuator.

The rear attenuator is a safety device designed to absorb and reduce the force of impacts. Most likely the seam was filled in an attempt to gain an aerodynamic advantage; in a sport where even a thousandth of a second makes a difference.

One thousandth of a second at 200mph, is about 4 inches. Multiply that over the course of the Indianapolis 500 and you have the length of a cricket pitch.

Of note here is that IndyCar is a spec series which uses spec parts and the rear attenuator is one such spec part that is not allowed to be modified.

Now while I understand the desire to create a level playing field because we want to maintain the veneer of sporting competition, I think that the Indianapolis 500 in particular is a race looking for a series and the very act of trying to make the sport fair, runs counter to what the spirit of the event should be.

When the Indy 500 started back in 1911, the rules set was such that the bound box which competitors found themselves in was massive; and they basically got to play with whatever they wanted. 

Various engine capacities limits have come and gone, in some cases there was turbocharging and supercharging allowed, but probably the most impressive things that were ever raced in the Indy 500 were Freddie Agabashian's Cummins Diesel Special of 1952, and the series of gas turbine cars which culminated in the Lotus 56 'red wedge' of 1968. The fact that Joe Leonard's Lotus 56 retired from the race while leading; just eight laps from the finish was enough to scare the organisers into regulating gas turbine cars into extinction.

As someone who is interested in the history of motorsport and how that relates to what we get on the road, that's tragic. Companies like Chrysler and General Motors both experimented with gas turbine cars and the fact that this line of innovation was semi-killed by motorsport, kind of resigned us to missing out on what could have been a jet car future. 

If I was Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else, then the rules set that I would run the Indianapolis 500 by would be to give the teams a central safety cell, a set of standard tyres and maybe brakes, and then tell them to have at it. 

I think that the Indianapolis 500 should be the laboratory of speed where the most bonkers mental hatstand ideas should be allowed to flourish. If you can build a car which uses the safety cell and can rip around the famous two-and-a-half mile speedway at 307 mph, and you can find someone daft enough to sit in the driver's seat, then go for it.

Because if the rules set is so loose that practically anything is possible and allowed, then not only does this remove the entire argument about cheating, but we'd get to see the actual greatest spectacle in motorsport. 

Horse 3461 - Nobody Sensible Is In Charge: Let's Eat Milo Out Of The Tin

 If you'd have asked me a week ago, who the worst leader of the Liberal Party was, I would have said Peter Dutton. As a leader, he led the Opposition to the lowest primary vote in the party's 80 year history, and also the fewest number of members on the floor of the chamber, ever.

However, it turns out that the Liberal Party had even lower to fall, and in their attempts to scrape the bottom of the barrel in order to find a new leader, they picked upon Sussan Ley.

Apart from being an absolute punkwomble and a cussgibbon, she has proven to be so bereft of actual leadership ability that under her tenure, the Opposition has snapped in half.

The relatively new leader of the National Party, David Littleproud, stunned Canberra this afternoon, when he formally announced that as of 20th May 2025, the Coalition would be suspended.

This is not necessarily a new thing in Australian politics. In Queensland the National Party decoupled itself from the Liberal Party under the tenure of Sir Joh Bielke-Petersen, and ruled in Queensland in its own right for a while.

In contrast, in the 2001 Queensland State election, the Liberal Party won a paltry 9 seats, and in 2004 they actually achieved complete electoral extinction. By the 2007 election in Queensland, the Liberal National Party was not just a formal enmeshing of the two parties, it was the admission that the Liberal Party was unelectable but still had the necessary resources to be able to run a political party. The Queensland LNP is essentially 100% National Party members using the Liberal Party's stuff. 

It is therefore not surprising at all that David Littleproud and the National Party has decided to bail on the Liberal Party. Littleproud is a Queenslander; so this means that this is nothing special to him. 

Naturally it left Sussan Ley fuming. Having just realised that she was not in control of the smaller of the two parties of the coalition, her reactions to the press were both curt and acrid. Being Opposition Leader was already a pretty horrid job, being the first Opposition Leader after a party has just lost an election is a degree worse; this is one step beyond.

So what does any of this mean for the numbers on the floor of the parliament?

93 - Labor 

28 - Liberal

15 - National 

1 - Green 

1 - Central Alliance 

1 - Katter 

9 - Independents

Take note of that. 15+1+1+1+9 = 27

The absolute insanity of how the numbers on the floor currently sit, is that all it would take would be one member of the Liberal Party to slide up the chamber and join the National Party, and suddenly the Green/Green/Orange/Brown/Teal/Grey peloton could form their own spite coalition. Remember, a Westminster parliament cares not even an iota about the makeup of parties or members who sit inside it.

In fact, if I had a seat in the whole sort of general mish-mash (WSOGMM), then I'd seriously be canvassing for the most hilarious thing of all - to form the WSOGNM Coalition and install Bob Katter as the Opposition Leader. 

If politics is a game, and all the men and women merely players, then why not go for the most hilarious outcome possible. If we don't do it then Australia faces untold horrors because "in the meantime, every three months, a person is torn to pieces by a crocodile in north Queensland."

... if not politically by north Queensland. 

Horse 3460 - Forbidden Chocolate Milk

 I am now ten days into a new job; which is interesting because already my mind has become accustomed to the fact that the world looks different. Just like my previous workplace, where although the world that waits outside exists, because I mainly look at a wall and screen, the only indication that I have of time actually passing is the occasional glance at the bottom right hand corner of the screen and noticing that the numbers have changed.

I have the immediate job of transferring information from one accounting system to another and for the most part, this first task is either a series of cut and paste jobs, or trawling through 30 years' of documental detritus to find someone's email address, or phone number, or company number, et cetera et cetera cetera. Already I am the "calm" one of the office. As I am used to having to fend for myself for most jobs, then if something doesn't make sense, or doesn't fit, or can not be explained, then I just see that as a mere puzzle piece that has to be found. Quite literally, nobody else can help me in this case because they do not understand the systems which I previously used; nor will they be ever asked to do so.

The weirdest thing though is how my perception of time has changed. Time used to be a thing which swung one way and then then other. What is really curious about time now, is just how much it drags while I am aware of it, and how much it just doesn't exist when am not. To go from 0830 to 1230 is like every minute is extracting teeth; then 1230-1330 passes in an instant, and then 1330 to 1645 is equally infuriating; before in an instant the clock jumps from 1646 to 1707.

Some of this is likely due to the threshold effect, where having entered a new environment, one's brain does an immediate info dump of what went before and tries frantically to absorb everything which is new. Except in this case, I not only need to retain the information which I previously held, but as I am now responsible for holding and transferring information which I previously did not need to know, I guess that my brain is trying to accommodate all of the change in circumstances through some kind of mental time dilation. 

I imagine that this kind of thing is what Formula One drivers report when they say that they can slow down time while in the motor car. With so much information screaming at you constantly and the pressure to deliver, my guess is that this is what is happening in their mind. It is actually probably easier to be a Formula One driver, if you consider the fact that they generally are paid many millions of dollarpounds to do what they love, whereas in comparison each of my seconds are remunerated by less than a pennycent. The other major difference is that a Formula One driver otherwise lives quite a comfortable existence when they are not at work, whereas I like the great grey glob of people who have to do work to keep the rent collectors away, am decided not.

I am also not quite at the stage where my lunch hour is sensible. Notwithstanding the fact that I have the CBD of Chatswood which is perpetual funland of a thousand businesses all wanting to sell me something, which I can not afford to buy; and which tries desperately to vomit a thousand colours into every single possible space. This for me is not a sensory overload problem but rather palace after palace of pure irrelevance. I have found a bookstore, a post office, a park, and the rest of it need not bother to exist. I am not prepared to spend as much money for lunch, as the myriad of places want me to spend.

What has made this all the more irritating is that on top of having a body which constantly screams out in pain (which likely isn't even real) because of an accident from three years ago; my guts have decided all on their own, to rebel and hold some kind of mutiny. Anyone who has worked on a motor car knows that when you see the forbidden chocolate milk coming out of the tail pipes, then something has gone wrong. In my case, when forbidden chocolate milk is coming out of the tail pipe, then something has also gone wrong.

Once again I am confronted with the fact that in many respects, I am a consciousness enclosed inside meat, with a mind/body/soul/spirit set of operating systems, which I do not understand and which I am mostly not conscious of. It is also weird that a great deal of the biome which also lives within the bag of meat, shares no DNA with me whatsoever. This is the kind of thing which aught to drive essayists and novelists who deal with the metaphysical insane, but it does not. I find it frustrating that there is precious little literature which is able to even deal with what it is like to feel pain, in any meaningful way at all. In fact, the only major work that I have ever read on anything like this is by Virginia Woolf:

“Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to view, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness…it is strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.”

- Virginia Woolf, "On Being Ill" (1925)

Perhaps the weirdest thing of all about this current bout of unpleasantness is that I now have a mental map of where all the toilets at at home, a Blacktown, Parramatta, Strathfield, Central, and Chatswood Railway Stations, where they are in the new building where I work, and in the juggling game of time, where I need to be in order to make best use of any of them. Both time and my guts are currently broken... which indicates that something has gone wrong in operating systems which I do not understand.

Horse 3459 - Why Preferential Voting And Instant Run-Off Voting Are The Best

Say what you will about the policies or complete lack thereof of the various political parties, the 2025 Federal Election has returned Albanese's Labor Government with a resounding majority. Even as I write this on Monday morning and the dust is beginning to clear and the dregs of pre-polls start to have their influence on the final tally, Labor will surely hold government in its own right; without needing to rely on the crossbench for supply and confidence. 

There is one thing about this election which none of the newspapers will even dare to look at, as Nine Ent Co and News Corp are even loath to admit that the election even happened; that is that Preferential Voting is not only good but overwhelmingly excellent.

It is only partisan hacks who think that First-Past-The-Post voting is good for anything, because they are motivated by the raw numbers which suggest that their particular football team should have one. In any Tweet, Skeet, or Toot online where the person expresses a preference for First-Past-The-Post voting, it is never based on the fitness of purpose for the system. 

Likewise, there appears to be a cohort of psephologist cheerleading that thinks that Score Voting/STAR voting, is also a good idea. When you boil both of these down, what you actually get is a modified First-Past-The-Post and maybe with an additional run-off which is based upon the existing votes cast. While I understand why people might like this, usually the reasons of fitness of purpose involve some degree of outright lying (which is bad).

What Preferential Voting and Instant Run-Off Voting has done in the 2025 Federal Election which neither First-Past-The-Post nor Score Voting/STAR voting are capable of doing, is that one thing which is essential in an election and that is, determine the level of consent of the governed. 

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"

- Declaration of Independence, 4th July 1776

Setting aside the various "He has" statements within that document which are mostly lies, the United States' Declaration of Independence contains occasional nuggets of truth within it. If we assume that the principle that governments deriving their from the consent of the governed because this is just, then it follows that the best method of conducting an election is not to ask "who do you most want to govern?" but rather "who will you eventually agree to govern you?". Neither First-Past-The-Post nor Score Voting/STAR voting are either capable of doing this, nor do their advocates seem to think that this is a goal worth pursuing.

If you just look at the raw numbers of the 2025 Federal Election as a whole, what we see is this:

34.8% - Labour

32.0% - Coalition

11.9% - Greens

 6.2% - One Nation

 1.8% - Trumpet of Patriots

13.3% - All others

First-Past-The-Post and Score Voting/STAR voting will tell you that these blocs exist. They may even tell you which one of these blocks people like. They do not tell you which one of these blocs that the electorate has a visceral hate for. Marking an X or even some kind of Score does not actually give you a value for discrete hatred from a voter. 

It can not be stated enough but the 2025 election was not won by Labor. The result did not swing on the 1s of the roughly 1/3rd of the electorate who put the Greens/One Nation/Trumpet/Others as their top pick. This election mostly swung on the 2s and 3s across a vast number of electorates. This result is far more granular and precise than First-Past-The-Post and Score Voting/STAR voting could ever hope to tell you.

The actual meaning of this result, is that as roughly 9% of the electorate has moved to a more nativist position, and about 14% is quite progressive, the number of Teal Seats within urban areas and the swings to Labor on 2s and 3s in the outer suburbs of cities, tells you that the electorate HATES the coalition more than it hates Labor.

This election was not a clash of two great iconoclastic parties fighting for control of some ideological future. This election was a fight between Winnie The Pooh and Skeletor. That's fine. People are allowed to like Skeletor. What the 2s and 3s have delivered is the result that people hate the idea of Skeletor being in charge of anything. Moreover the result of Peter Dutton losing his own seat of Dickson, was a rejection by his electorate personally; who have collectively decided  that he is not for them any more.

What preferential voting and Instant Run-Off Voting has done, is tell us who the 33.2% of the electorate would eventually agree to, to govern them. They objectively do not like either Labor or the Coalition as their first choice. What they will eventually agree to though, is that they will accept a Labor Government and they will do that time and time again across the country.

The really idiotic thing is that people on the political right in Australia, still complain about media bias despite and in spite of the fact that all of the newspapers, and most of the TV and Radio stations, are either owned by and/or toe a Coalition line. News Corp, Seven West Media, Nine Ent Co, all lined up behind the Coalition and most of the ABC was either too afraid or not concerned enough to properly question them. The people on the other hand, have spoken differently; with some indicating with their vote that the Coalition weren't nativist enough and some indicating with their vote that the Coalition were too far to the right. The hard core seats basically always remain with their respective parties, but it is the great cloud in the middle that has swung this election. 

Ultimately, the Coalition has not been consented to; which given that incumbency is an advantage is probably to be expected but the degree which they were shown disdain, both in the lowest number of 1s in their history and the flow of preferences which went the other way, shows that Preferential Voting and Instant Run-Off Voting have given us a more discrete view of the level of that disdain; which is something that neither Score Voting/STAR voting are capable of doing.

Horse 3458 - Election 2025: Bin Night

 1930

ALP 29

L/NP 26

GRN 0

OTH 6

At half past in the evening, when the first 5% of the vote has been counted, there is already a 9.9% swing against Peter Dutton; which means that not only is he unlikely to be the next Prime Minister but he is in real danger of losing his own seat. 

The 'wedge' of voters who have decided to vote for someone other than the majors is now standing at about 37%; which is the largest since the 1910 election.

2000

ALP 29

L/NP 26

GRN 0

OTH 6

At 8pm there has not been any vast change in the projected seats that the parties are likely to win. 

As for my seat of Chifley, 'Red Ed' Husic is holding a staggering 74% of the primary vote; which means that in all likelihood the seat isn't even going to go to second preferences at all. 

If in fact Eden-Monaro retains its position as the bellwether seat, then at this stage of the count, then the Labor Party retains government but it is still unknown in what capacity.

2030

ALP 76

L/NP 34

GRN 3

OTH 10

At Labor HQ there has been a lot of bouncing about as Antony Green declared that there is no way for the Liberal/National Parties to form government.

The big question at this point is whether or not the Labor Party wins government in its own right, if it can form some kind of coalition of supporters for supply on the floor, or if the Governor General will simply give Anthony Albanese the commission@ for the Premiership despite having only minority government.

Based on only 22% of the vote, while I can not project out the full results, it is reasonable to assume that most of the votes that follow, also follow the same trends.

2100

ALP 77

L/NP 33

GRN 2

OTH 10

This late into the evening it is entirely possible that the swing was so bad, that the wipeout of coalition seats is enough to lose even those already tallied.

Probably the most interesting thing which I did not predict was that the L/NP did not gain ground against the teals and the independents.

If you ignore the swing towards the Greens on primary vote (which is now standing at about 13%) then the swing towards the others generally (which includes One Nation and the Trumpet Of Patriots) is tracking at at least 20% and well on the way towards 25%.

Bob Katter in the seat of Kennedy has such a grip on primaries, that he is likely to waltz in with more than 75% of the vote. 

Ian Goodenough who was disendorsed by the Liberal Party in the Western Australian seat of Moore, might very well win as an independent. With only 7% of the vote counted, it is still not enough to declare anything with any certainty. I would expect though that without the Liberal Party behind him, it will be unlikely that he scores more than about 15% because brand recognition is often stronger than personal reputation.

2130

ALP 78

L/NP 33

GRN 1

OTH 9

At half past nine, Peter Dutton gave a concession speech to the nation and I have to say that if we saw this level of graciousness at any point during the past three years, he may very well won his own seat and led the party to victory.

If Peter Dutton is not in the parliament, then the immediate question is who is going to lead the Liberal Party. Apart from the obvious problem of who actually has a seat to be able to do the job, I do not think that there is an obvious leader. Maybe Dan Tehan is the most senior member? Who knows?

2200

ALP 87

L/NP 39

GRN 1

OTH 9

It has become obvious that in Tasmania there has been a double digit swing towards Labor and that all five seats are likely to be held by them. 

More generally, with Tasmania and Victoria where the Labor Party is not popular at state level, this kind of result is unheard of. This is not so much a Labor win but the worst result for the Liberal Party since its inception in 1944.

This late in the evening, the possibility of there being a minority government has faded. Even if all of the remaining 14 seats still in doubt by my count fall to the Liberals, then Labor still holds government in its own right. 

2230

ALP 87

L/NP 39

GRN 0

OTH 11

By my count through Wikipedia, apart from Stanley Bruce and John Howard, I think that Peter Dutton is the first Opposition Leader to have lost his own seat in 125 years. 

Albanese actually becomes the first Prime Minister since 2004 to have won back to back elections. Admittedly it should be nominally easier to win an election with the benefit of incumbency but the fact that since 2007 we have had knives out all the time, suggests that maybe the idea of doing boring governance might have returned. 

Since I last plugged the AEC data into my spreadsheet, although Sarah Witty is not ahead in Melbourne, she has so many 1s that I can no longer call Greens' MP Adam Bandt as retaining the seat.

I am not Albo's biggest fan by far, but I don't think you can pin this result entirely on the failed campaign of the Coalition. You don't win 80+ seats just because the opposition is useless. Although having said that, Peter Dutton is officially the most damaging leader of the Liberal Party in federal history.

2300

ALP 87

L/NP 40

GRN 0

OTH 12

Perhaps the craziest result in this election was that former Labor Senator Anne Urquhart has been pitted against Mal Hingston for the seat of Braddon. The AEC is currently reporting that this is a 15.1% swing against the Liberal Party.

Broadly speaking, what we have seen is that of the 18 million voters in this country, 12 million have voted for the majors but 6 million have not. Those 6 million are likely to be Gen-Y and Gen-Z, who have long been thrown overboard by the major parties. 

2312

ALP 87 (86)

L/NP 51

GRN 0 (1)

OTH 12

This is how I think that the final count will shake out.

I do not see any new seats flipping to Labor but even so, this is a stonking majority for the Labor Party. Is this a landslide? Maybe.

I have no idea who is likely to attempt to be the Liberal Party leader after this, and it may even be that the immediate Opposition Leader could very well be David Littleproud as the National Party hasn't seemed to be affected at all.

Either way, Albanese has boringly been reinstalled as Prime Minister and the Australian people have decided that it was bin night and have chucked out a potato.