willedoo

There's some interesting numbers in the upcoming Victorian election. The lower house has 88 seats currently consisting of Labor 56, Liberal 19, Nationals 9 and Greens 4. That gives Labor a buffer of 11 seats, meaning they could lose 11 seats and still govern in their own right with a majority of 1 at 45 seats. If it came down to the wire they've always got four greens for minority government support if the Greens retain their seats The blokes from Redbridge are constantly crunching numbers and polling figures. Kos Samaras has identified 11 seats with very similar demographics to the wipe out of Labor in Secret Harbour, WA. According to him, Labor can almost safely write those 11 off to One Nation, with a twelth seat being one to watch as the demographics of diversity split between the north and the south half of the electorate. His partner Tony Barry is tipping a Labor loss and that the Coalition will get a majority in their own right without needing the support of One Nation. He said a lot of the eastern seats that were formerly Liberal heartland are swinging back to the Liberals, and that is the problem for Labor. Seats with a high diversity (high migrant population) are polling up to 70% primary vote for Labor, so they should have no problem holding those. Victoria is the only state where the Liberals are polling better than One Nation.

Speaking of MAGA, I was reading a news article on one of the recent elections and it had a file photo of what was obviously some enthusiastic ON supporters on election night at wherever their campaign function was being held. A couple of them were wearing blue MAGA hats which I hadn't seen before. At first I assumed they might be ON caps with a take-off of the Trumpian caps, eg: MAGA being Make Australia Great Again. I zoomed in on the photo and could see the smaller lettering underneath; the caps represented MAGA - Make Albo Go Away. They've probably been around for a while, I've just never seen them before.

Here's another good old banger, a 1943 Chev Blitz winch truck listed on marketplace not far from here. It would come up good, cleaned up and oiled or waxed. It's a pity it didn't have just a bit more OD on it. The interior still has a bit, and the back of the cab. It would have been SCC No.15, fairly similar tint to the later American FS 34088 which is a nice colour. I can remember back in the 80's, a cane farmer I knew had a 4x4 ex-Army AB Inter with a similar big Army winch mounted on the front. That thing would pull Christ off the cross. One day we had a cane harvester that had gone through a bridge and was sitting bellied out on the bridge stringers. There was no planking left on the bridge; the harvester spiral points had picked up the first tranverse plank at speed and sheared the lot off before it came to rest on the stringers. The farmer got a tractor with a ripper implement, sunk the rippers into the ground for an anchor and chained it to the truck. That winch sucked the cane harvestor straight off the bridge stringers like it was a Mini Minor.

It's a shame people can't debate politics in a mature fashion without resorting to name calling.

Yes, unless the status quo gets enough of a shock, continuing to support them is like giving an alcoholic a beer in the vain hope they will give it up. It's put the Coalition between a rock and a hard place. They're losing support to One Nation and to try and counter that, they're talking about One Nation when they should be talking about Labor. The Government could end up losing quite a few seats as well. They're a very broad church these days, but the cocktail set won't get them over the line. They still need their traditional base of the blue collar worker, and that's the main demographic heading to ON. Another thing to ponder is this - Coalition voters who have gone to One Nation will not likely go fom there to Labor in the future; if they move from ON, they will most likely go back to the Coalition. On the other hand, the demographic that is deserting Labor for One Nation, would they be more likely to go straight back to Labor in similar circumstance? I'd tend to think if they've left Labor and leapfrogged the Coalition to ON, they might be tempted to go to the Coalition in the future if the Coalition came up with some appealing policies and narratives. It's a potential problem I see for Labor.

It amazes me some of the places that don't have mobile phone coverage. Ten years ago I went for a visit to Tasmania and visited people in the Upper Esk Valley. They had no coverage and had to drive to town to get a signal. As far as I know it's still like that. I would have thought with the number of people it would service, it would be a fairly simple matter to put a tower on one of the hills there.

For anyone still pondering why so many people are turning to One Nation, the easiest way to find out is just go down to the pub and talk to some concretors or brickies or truckies. People from a variety of walks of life are making the shift, but the biggest demographic is the working class blue collar workers. They'll tell you all about it.

On the subject of voters no longer listening, it has a two part effect. On the one hand, they no longer trust or believe the incumbents and stop listening to the sales pitch. The other factor is that the only way the majors can dismantle the One Nation juggernaut is to point out the faults and weaknesses of ON. That's where the second part comes in; people stop listenening to that as well and basiclly couldn't care less about the party's faults if it means getting rid of the status quo.

Jerry gets it. What is happening with the swing to One Nation is a movement to burn down the house and start again. The problem for the incumbents is that at some point, people are so fed up that they just stop listening. The federal Labor government has long ago realised that this could hurt them, and not just the Coalition as they initially thought. The government is and will be trying to turn it around, but once people develop a deaf ear to them, the government is done. Maybe it's reached that point now, but if not, it's not far away.

Yes, it could be. I think some of those in denial are hoping the string of One Nation wins are just the result of a few isolated bogan electorates that didn't know what they were doing. They're hoping it will just all go away but I think it might keep repeating all over the country. The test of it will be the Victorian election. That's the state where One Nation would traditionally have the least success, so if they take a swag of seats there, you would think a few heads would finally pull out of the sand.

Among that parade of cars I saw a fairly ordinary old station wagon drive by with a few passengers and a heap of gear in the back. Still not sure whether they were meant to be part of it or just someone like the Griswolds who had taken a wrong turn and got caught up in it all.

I guess with the low initial cost of the bike, it would be an economical thing to mod one like that.

There's a lot of good low mileage second hand Royal Enfields on the market for very cheap prices. The fact that the new price is relatively low has some bearing on their used prices. They usually don't have much on the clock for a couple of reasons. First one is that a lot of people that own them are only occasional riders, and a lot of old blokes get too old for riding and sell them, still with low k's. With second hand 650 Interceptors, it's often the case that someone has bought one and not far down the track realised they're not a speed machine, so they sell to upgrade to something a bit racier. You can pick up Interceptors with 4,000 k's on the clock for half the price of a new one.

I came across this video of a bunch of rat rods at the Beatersville Rod and Custom show in Kentucky. It shows a big variety of contraptions, even some Volkswagens.

All the attention will be on Victoria now. Just under three months to go for that one.

Premier Roger Cook would be glad there's another three years to go before the state election. His neighbouring electorate is a similar demographic, so the way I see his margin, even though it's 12% higher than what Labor had in Secret Harbour, if the same thing happened ie: losing half the vote to ON and ON also picking up a third of the Liberal vote, Cook would be rolled as well. Three years is a good buffer.

I haven't seen any updated figures, but the count as of this morning was 57-42 after preferences with 74.5% of the vote counted. Compared to the last election in 2025, One Nation increased their vote share by around 8,000 votes. 6,000 of those were taken from Labor and 2,000 from the Liberals. Labor's vote roughly halved compared to their last result. It's shown that One Nation can take very safe traditional Labor heartland seats. If you go back to Secret Harbour's former entities of Warnbro and Peel, it's been very safe Labor territoty since 1989.

It's a big call for a party to claim victory when the vote count is still below 50%. What they're basing their confidence on is the fairly large pre-poll booth that's yet to be counted fully. Exit polling at the pre-poll booth showed ON getting a better result than what they received today, so they're assuming the booth will go their way.

One Nation has claimed the seat, finished all the speeches and started the victory party, but Labor hasn't conceded defeat yet, saying it's too close to call. If confirmed, it will be the first seat ON has taken from Labor since the Queensland election in 1998.

A big swing to One Nation in the WA Secret Harbour by-election. ON is on around 35% primary vote, Labour has a 22% swing away from them to give 25% primary vote. It will come down to preferences, currently TPP giving ON 53%, Labor 47%. It will be a bit hard to predict with WA having optional preferential voting.

It's the big brother of the FJ ute we had when I was a kid learning to drive. I've never forgotton the squeaky steering wheel those FJ's had.

Nice old Studebaker. I like the current culture where unrestored or minimally restored cars are as popular as full restorations. It makes it a lot more financially accessable for more people. For too long the main goal was to restore back to as new condition, and that was a very labour intensive and expensive process. It's horses for courses and the full resto people get great satisfaction doing their thing, but it's also nice not to see the history rubbed off or painted away on a lot of these old vehicles. I like the lived in look.

The same bloke has this '51 Chev ute for sale. As would be expected for a Chev ute, it's about four times the price of the Plymouth posted above.

Spotted this old '51 Plymouth P-22 Concord on Marketplace. A bit of a rare bird in that all the chrome trim, metalwork and badges are all there, plus the body is good. It's a western vehicle out at Chinchilla so not a rust bucket, just sun-baked surface rust. The interior trim is cactus and the motor is a total rebuild or replacement job. It would make a good semi-ratrod and would be a shame to lose that beautiful patina to a full restoration and paintjob. It's good buying at $3,400 for someone living close enough to keep the transport costs down.

Thanks Grumpy, I was wondering what they were. Didn't look close enough.