A friend of mine, visiting from Melbourne, and I decided to go to the
Tally Room that the Australian Electoral Commission runs at the
Budawang pavilion in the Exhibition Park centre in Canberra. Part of
the motivation was the talk that they may be closing down the tally
room in future; it is a big process to do all the security, the displays
are small, manual and hard to read, and all the TV stations now have
all the live links and stuff sorted out. The other part was wanting to
watch the result, knowing that it might have been a ghastly loss but
still too interesting to miss. So we went.
Overall it was really interesting for several highly significant
reasons:
- The demographic was very diverse, with a huge number of young
people 25 and under attending. Great to see that kind of
interest in the process of voting from a demographic that I think many
commentators disparage as being too self-centered to care.
- Most of the crowd was centred around the ABC booth, and screamed
every time they saw something exciting (usually meaning themselves on
the TV broadcasting at the front of the stand). This seemed at several
times to be putting Kerry O'Brien off his stride, but who could talk
coherently through all that cacophony? Hah boo sucks to 7 and 9 -
you might set up lovely fake offices with books and wood panelling but
the people want the ABC.
- Despite the many times you will hear "Canberra decided today" or
"New laws passed by Canberra", we do not actually do or support any of
that. Both electorates here heavily support Labor, and there was a definite
feel in the air at the Tally Room that people were really enjoying seeing
the Coalition defeated.
- We got there at about 4:30 and there was a small line up before the
gates opened at 5. When we
left, at around 9:30, the line had extended all the way down to the
front gate. A vote of support for having a tally room!
- Watching the figures from Bennelong was gripping and intense. Most
of the time Maxine only lead by 500 votes.
It was a great night, but made in part because of such a historic
turn of the tide. I cannot help but feel smug that not only has John
Howard caused the worst swing against Liberal in many decades, but that
he has lost his own seat. To use your own words, John: the people of
Australia want change.
