The first numbers coming in of the night seem to be all over the place. Particularly the scrutineers numbers. The Liberals (Nick Minchin) seems to always show “no change”, and for Labor (Julia Gillard) we see massive swings. Assumably the truth is somewhere in between.

7.02 pm Antony Green, the human election machine has called the first East Coast swing of 4.8 percent, which is right on the cusp of a change of Government.

7.16 pm On three booths the Swing against John Howard in his seat is about 1 percent more than required to turn the seat.

7.30 pm Eden-Monaro has had a swing on but it is unclear that it is enough to turn the seat over. However as the Labor candidate says, the count does not include the Queanbeyan booths, which are going to be more labor.

7.36 pm. Kerry is reporting on the seats called by “The Computer”. How does the computer call seats? At least with Antony Green, you know he is an expert, but what is the skill of The Computer? They seem to have had problems with The Computer not having the most up to date figures, with Antony reporting more recent figures (although where does he get them – except from a computer?). Maybe they are over-reliant on The Computer?

8.08 pm The swing is on, but it seems unlikely that it will a call can be made yet, The Computer doesn’t have a final position yet.

9.10 pm The ABC is calling the Election for Labor with at least 81 seats. It is not clear what the role of The Computer in this, but assuming some humans were involved I would say this is it (although they are calling Bennelong for the ALP which I don’t think is really able to be called at this time).

9.20 pm WA is just starting to come in, and it is all over the place. Who knows how it is going to turn out. Regarding the seat of John Howard, it is difficult to see how it is going to turn out. The ALP has got a swing on, but it is so close, that it could come down to pre-polls and postal votes (what is the difference – I don’t know).

9.50 pm The two party preferred vote is now at 5.8 percent. Not quite my predicted 8.5 percent, but at least enough for a Government change. The reported predicted (by The Computer) is 87 to labor (although the AEC is only reporting 71 – but they are more conservative).

The Green vote seems only to be up 0.6 percent. I was hoping that they would win Melbourne, and they did poll 20%, above the Liberals, but obviously the Liberals directed their preferences to Labor.

11.05 pm Kevin Rudd walks up to give his speech. I am happy with the change, but hoped more would have come from the third parties.

Well, I have had my vote. The State Voting Centre was well run and I got in and out in about 10 minutes. Why you would put a polling booth on the 12th floor of a building I do not know. Surely the State/Commonwealth Government owns a building somewhere in the CBD somewhere that is better than the Victorian University building.

My estimate is a 8.5% swing to Labor.

I am still not sure of the source of the Green Dodo ad on TV, but the recent report regarding the exclusive brethren in Tasmania campaigning against the Greens leader Bob Brown, raises the question – are they responsible for the Green Dodo?

I was out shopping the other day and wanted to get a coffee, I was right next door to a Starbucks so I went in there. I have never been a really great fan of Starbucks, but I wasn’t after a cultural experience, I just wanted coffee.

I learnt my lesson.

I had to stand in line for what seemed like ten minutes to order the coffee. OK that is not the longest time in the world, but I never have to wait long to order a coffee, the process is usually pretty easy. Despite having a few staff, they seemed to have established a system that required the entire transaction to occur at one spot – coffee order, money paid, food – thus creating a bottleneck.

I asked for a regular late. But no, they do not sell regular coffees, the smallest seemed to be large, going up to something called a “grandee”. So the coffee was big and milky.

And they burnt it.

An oversized, milky, burnt coffee that cost more than anywhere else (because they do not have regular) and with bad service. I really do not know what niche this shop is filling (well I guess I do, it had lots of tables, chairs etc for uni students/young people to hang out in for hours – I guess the coffee is the lesser part of their offering).

PS I had a look at the Starbucks homepage and they were advertising a Pumpkin Spice Latte. I am not joking.

Someone asked me quizzically if the public knew anything about what has been causing the interest rate rises, because if they did, what could they possibly think about the spending spree the political parties have been on. I think the honest answers is that most of public don’t see the link.

They do not necessarily see the link, with the election promises pumping bazillions of dollars into the their pockets, which they will rapidly spend, further pushing up inflation, with the RBA pushing up interest rates to try and dampen the inflationary pressures.

But the politicians do. Thy know the link, which is why it is confusing to see them spout line about good economic management and about keeping interest rates down, but at the same time promising bazillions in tax cuts and expenditure promises (and mostly not infrastructure, but rather further direct transfers to individuals). Either they don’t really intend to meet their commitments (there are probably already committees going through the promises and sorting them into “core” and “non-core”), or they are not being truthful about keeping interest rates down. Either way they appear to be lying.

In their defence we must recognise the amazing ability of the human mind for self-deception, rationalisation, and especially for cognitive dissonance. There must be a lot of that going around in politics at the moment.

I saw this bizarre advertisement on TV this morning. Admitedly I do not watch much commercial TV from Australia, and when I do I try and skip the ads, so I may have unrealistic expectations for advertising.

During Meet the Press there was this ad.

Obviously it is political ad as it had the “read by…” disclaimer, but what was its political message? One can only assume that the green animal is the Greens. And that if you vote for the Greens, they will transform from an egg to a Dodo. And thus you shouldn’t vote for them.

I know it doesn’t make sense but that seems to be the message. Why call the Greens a Dodo? An extinct flightless bird killed of by humans? Maybe “dinosaur” I could understand – after the election the Greens will reveal themselves as some kind of old school unreconstructed socialists who will destroy the country (of course I don’t think it is particularly true, the Greens have been pretty straight in saying what they will and will not do, it is the mainstream parties who are chasing the middle voter who would appear more likely to change spots after the election – WorkChoices anyone?).

But we have a Dodo. The only cultural meaning behind the Dodo is that they are dumb and extinct. I guess this is what they are playing to in the ad as the Dodo does appear to fall down dead. So voting for the Greens and they will die? (it is not clear wht the causation is – whether the act of voting is what kills it- although the fact that the Dodo comes out of the egg implies that the voter is surprised to see it, and surprised to see it die.

In the end the message seems to be – don’t vote for the Greens because they will disspaear as a political party (“die”). Makes no sense whatsoever.

More intriguing is the makers of the Ad, the Focus on Australia Foundation, authorised by G LeBon. Neither appear to have any web presence, as they do not turn up in google.

They also do not seem to turn up on the Australian Electoral Commission site as either a political party, associated entity or donor.

The only reference I could find was this record in ASICs company register, which may or may not been the entity behind the ad.

I hpe they didn’t pay to much for the ad, because most of it is wasted. It wold have been cheaper, easier and more effective to just flash up “don’t vote for the greens” for 3 seconds and just not bother with all the Dodo crap.

I went to JB Hi-Fi today, and I realised something that I had not realised before: I no linger like JB Hi-Fi. When it was started JB-Hi-Fi (I went to the one on Elizabeth Street) was a run-down place that sold cheap stereo components and had a great range of CDs. It was crowded, run-down, but had a great range of CDs. No matter what your tastes they had the goods in rows and rows and boxes full of CDs. I found that they had a better range of classical minimalist composers than anywhere else in Melbourne, including the specialist retailers!

But since they have expanded they have gone downhill. They have included DVDs, they sell laptops and phones and ipods. Printers and playstation 2 games. And to fit it the CDs have shrunk. They no longer have the range, they no longer have the diversity. They have essentially become just another electronics retailer, of which there are many, and none very good.

I imagine that there is a bit of pattern to this as small businesses find a niche in the market and thrive, this success attracts capital and businesses and business people invest in the firm, new managers are brought in, they search for growth opportunities, you have to serve the mass market, inevitably you change to look like the other mass retailers. Kind of like Schumpeter?s creative destruction in reverse.

While researching the below post on US pennies, I cam across the odd fact that the Australian dollar was nearly called the “Royal”. With the introduction of decimal currency, it was considered that the name should be changed from the Pound, and while their were no stand-out alternatives the Government decided on the Royal, although public pressure soon turned that decision around (but not before specimen notes had been produced). See this RBA article.

In many ways the US is a country of innovation and progress but in many ways it also deeply conservative (of a kind). There are many aspects of the US society/economy that most of the world have moved from, and yet the US still keeps (guns, for example). In a sereis of posts I am going to start with a simple one: pennies.

Monetary reform seems to be somewhat routine for most nations. In Australia we have gone through a number of reforms in the last few decades: the replacement of the one and two dollar notes with coins, the abolition of one and two cent coins, the transfer to polymer rather than paper notes.

Other countries, most notably the EU have also gone through currency reform of one kind or another. In the US however, change to the currency seem to be difficult to implement. While the US one dollar coin has been introduced, it has been impossible to get rid of the one dollar note (and the notes are all still the one colour – very twentieth century).

As inflation erodes the value of a currency the lower denomination units become less useful and it becomes more appropriate to abolish them. Pennies are practically useless in the US, vending machines do not accept them, they are not used for trade except for exchange when you buy a product for $X.99, and yet it still hangs around. This one sided transaction means that while coins come out of the mint and into the money system, they never make their way in the opposite direction, so the US seems to have periodic penny shortages.

According to Wikipedia attempts have been made to abolish the coin but have not made it through the Congress. The quirky nature of the congressional system may be some influence, but the bigger factor seems to be an innate conservatism (see here).

WinterSpeak puts forward a (limited) defence of supply-siders.

“supply-side economics” is a economic/political theory that suggest that economic growth is best spurred through tax cuts and the like, in its current manifestation in the the US involves saying that tax cuts pay for themselves because it promotes growth (and thus higher tax revenues).

I think that any economist would agree that the income tax rate might have some impact on incentives to undertake additional work (and would be influenced by total tax structures, workplace arrangements etc), but it is highly unlikely that it would have in any way balance out the actual tax cut itself. So much so that really anyone advancing supply-side positions would practically, by definition, be a nutter.

Anyway, WinterSpeak is not per se defending supply-siders as such, but rather putting forward a Gedankenexperiment on the supply effects of a tax cut:

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As stated in this Canadian National Post article, a group in Quebec is advocating the banning of the Hijab by teachers in public schools (the Hijab is the item of Islamic dress that covers the hair and neck, but does not obscure the face). As the article states:

The Quebec Council on the Status of Women, a 20-member body that advises the government on issues relating to women, is urging the province to force public employees to remove visible religious signs when they are on the job. Aside from large Christian crosses, Sikh turbans and Jewish yarmulkes, these also include the hijab, a veil that generally covers the hair and neck, and the more controversial niqab, which covers the face, leaving only the eyes exposed. The council argues that equality between men and women trumps religious freedoms, and that the symbols oppress.

I have always found this debate interesting and consider that the answer to these issues are not at all straight-forward, as they deal with the intersection of two different kind of rights, the right to self expression and freedom of religion, and the right to freedom from oppression.

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Bob Brown was on the Insiders. The greens are getting the preferences of labour in all the mainland states.

This guy looks like the cat who swallowed all the milk!