WA's biggest local music event for the year. Anyone going? What bands are we keen to see?

So much respect for Mitch, knowing that he's had a history of dealing with homophobia throughout his career and he'll cop even more after this announcement. But his decision here makes the sport so, so, so much better for everyone in the long run.

Pretty upsetting to hear the anecdotes about homophobic teammates. I hope this is less normalised now.

Hello! First timer for Dark Mofo here, very keen to get amongst it. Curious to hear what are the don't-miss events or any other tips! I already have tickets to the Night Mass, Baroness, and Imperial Triumphant.

Tachikawa, Japan

Hello! Maybe this is the wrong place as I'm sure there are a lot of political aficionados here, but I did a little write-up on the little quirks, key seats, and unexpected results of Saturday's election. I've personally found it kinda annoying to trawl through ABC and Poll Pludger on a seat-by-seat basis, so I thought I'd give more of a state-focused overview on what's happened for those that haven't really looked into the finer details of the results yet.

NSW

• Labor retain all of (and grow their margins in) their marginal seats, and gain marginal seats of Banks, Bennelong, and Hughes (thanks to a big redistribution of the district area) from the Liberal party.
• Independent (and former Nationals member) Andrew Gee has gained Calare from his old party.
• Independent Nicolette Boele is likely to gain the seat of Bradfield from the Liberal party.
• Independent Dai Le retains her marginal seat of Fowler.

VIC

• Labor gains the marginal seats of Deakin and (probably) Menzies from the Liberal party. Labor also have a good chance of winning Melbourne back from The Greens, partially due to a redistribution of the district area.
• Labor risk losing their (formerly) safe seat of Bendigo to the Nationals.
• Another safe Labor seat, Calwell, is challenged by multiple independents (making the count difficult/slower), but Labor are likely to retain.
• Similarly, the Liberal seat of Monash has a close, complicated count, but is likely to remain unchanged.
• Goldstein remains a toss-up between incumbent independent Zoe Daniel and the Liberal party.
• Independent Monique Ryan is fairly likely to retain Kooyong.
• The marginal Liberal seat of Casey has bucked the trend and been retained, with a modest swing away from Labor.

QLD

• Labor has won marginal seats Bonner, Dickson, Leichhardt, Forde, and Petrie from the LNP. Longman may join this list, but still remains a coin toss.
• Labor has gained Brisbane and Griffith from The Greens. Ryan should be retained by The Greens. A lot of these big swings are shaped more so by the 2CP count rather than changes in The Green's primary vote.
• Flynn is the one marginal LNP seat that has bucked the trend, being retained with a strengthened LNP vote.

WA

• Labor has claimed the marginal seat of Moore from the Liberal party. Probably helped by ex-Liberal incumbent MP Ian Goodenough running as an independent against his old party.
• Labor have also held onto (and strengthened their result in) Tangney, a key marginal seat they swung in their favour in 2022.
• The new seat of Bullwinkel is likely to be claimed by Labor in a very close contest (currently only 85 votes difference, out of 89000 votes total!). This seat is perhaps one of the more curious ones in Australia atm, it looks like one of those American gerrymandered districts - the area is largely around the conservative Wheatbelt and Perth Hills region, but contains a thin sliver of Labor's stronghold suburbs to the far east of Perth.
• Forrest will likely be retained by the Liberal party, although independent Sue Chapman has given them a good challenge.
• Regional areas showed very strong swings towards the Liberal party, even in the semi-metropolitan area of Canning. The 'Keep The Sheep' campaign has been very vocal and this likely reflects their efforts (although this is only really relevant to Canning, the only seat possibly within Labor's reach this time).
• Fremantle (one of Labor's safest seats nationally!) looks like it could be lost to independent Kate Hulett. A super thin margin on this, so we'll need to wait and see. I think this would be the first example of a "teal independent" targeting a safe Labor seat - to my knowledge all others have targeted safe LNP seats. If Kate gets in, this could really shape the way people see this political movement going forwards.
• Kate Chaney has held on to retain Curtin as an independent, but only slightly improved her narrow 2022 margin. This seems to be the case with many returning teal independents - a strong Liberal performance in 2028 could see them as some of the first seats to fall.

SA

• Labor has gained the marginal seat of Sturt from the Liberal party, and strengthened their lead in all other seats.
• The Liberal party holds on to two seats; Barker and Grey (the latter in spite of a strong effort from independent Anita Kuss)

TAS

• Huge swings to the ALP has seen them secure the two Liberal-held seats of Bass and Braddon. Labor will also retain their safe seat of Franklin despite a decent challenge from independent Peter George.
• The only non-Labor-held seat is now Clark, held comfortably by independent Andrew Wilkie.

ACT

• Very likely no changes, with ALP retaining their three seats despite a bit of competition from independent Jessie Price in Bean.

NT

• Labor retain their two seats. There was a considerable swing against them in Solomon (Darwin/Palmerston), but a roughly equal swing towards them in Lingiari (the rest of the NT).

SENATE

• The senate takes longer to count, so this is more of a preliminary analysis. Long story short, nothing too drastic has changed. ALP is likely to gain at least 3 senators; LNP has likely lost 5 senators. One Nation may gain up to 2 of these senator positions lost by the LNP, but Labor are probably front-runners for these spots. The best case scenario for Labor would be that they only have to rely on the Greens (and not other crossbenchers) for a majority.
• In each of the 5 big states, the LNP appear very likely to lose one senator. These spots are likely to be gained by ALP senators, but One Nation could potentially compete for this spot in both WA and SA.
• ACT and NT unsurprisingly remain unchanged. The Liberal party has plummeted to 15-20% of the primary vote in ACT - maybe threatening to sack a large portion of the population of the territory wasn't a great idea.
• Other parties are probably unaffected in the senate (QLD looks like they're going to re-elect Malcolm Roberts for One Nation :/). There's an outside chance that Jacqui Lambie loses her spot to Labor in Tasmania, but it's too early to say.

Summary

• Labor gained a lot of seats from the Liberal party, strengthening their position in the House Of Representatives. The Nationals seemed largely immune to this swing.
• Independents also did fairly well in this election, with incumbents retaining and newcomers gaining several seats, continuing the huge rise of independents we saw in 2022.
• The Greens would be concerned that their primary vote has stagnated following a decent rise in 2022. Their big loss of seats was mostly out of their control (due to changes in 2CP counts, plus the redistribution of Melbourne), although there was still a considerable swing against Bandt.
• One Nation are still a fair ways off having much power, but their primary vote grew in every state, about 1-3% of the total vote. Considering they only have ~6% of the national primary, this is a fairly decent increase for them.
• Australia continues to ignore Clive Palmer. God bless this country.

Let me know your thoughts/insights! I'd love to hear any personal experience/vibes from seats you know about.

Here's a random guy's overview of what to pay attention to for the upcoming federal election, looking at the WA seats for the House Of Representatives. I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts and insights about these seats.

--- KEY SEATS ---

BULLWINKEL: A new seat introduced for this election, covering the extreme eastern suburbs (think High Wycombe) and the communities in the hills out to Northam and York. Based on the results from polling centres within this boundary in the previous election, ABC predicts it's currently "held" by Labor with a margin of 3.3% (largely supported by a strong Labor vote in the suburbs east of Midland). Recent YouGov polling basically shows it as a coin toss between Labor and Liberal. A recurring theme in some of these seats will be the success of the Keep The Sheep campaign, and to what extent it galvanises more rural areas to vote against Labor. For example, a drop in the Labor vote in Northam (which had ~52% 2CP in favour of Labor in 2022) could see the seat 'swing' to the Liberals. The former state opposition leader Mia Davies is also running in this seat for the Nationals as a relatively high-profile candidate, and I imagine most of her votes will preference Liberals also. For these reasons I think the Liberals have the slight edge in Bullwinkel, but it's still anyone's game.

CANNING: This seat incorporates Mandurah and the surrounding region. This includes some rural-ish areas, so again the Keep The Sheep campaign may have some influence (I'm really not sure if it will prove to be effective for them, or a complete flop!). Liberals won with a 3.6% margin in 2022, but this year's redistribution (now cutting ever so slightly into Labor's Rockingham stronghold) has narrowed the predicted margin to a mere 1.2%. As a ballpark, ThePollBludger is currently showing a statewide 2.2% swing towards Labor since 2022 within WA - obviously different areas will vote differently, but this seat is definitely within Labor's reach now. However, YouGov polling is still showing Liberals maintaining their slight lead, so I'd only expect this seat to flip to Labor if we see a big Labor win on Saturday.

CURTIN: This seat basically covers the Golden Triangle, and is historically one of the safest Liberal seats - but is no more, being currently held by independent Kate Chaney with a slim margin of 1.3%. Liberals have thrown a lot of funding into trying to get this seat back, and it feels like Chaney has been campaigning a bit less actively than in 2022. There's a risk Chaney has alienated some of her voterbase by backflipping on live export (she was initially in support of the ban, but ended up voting against the ban). However, despite ultimately voting against the ban, the Keep The Sheep campaign still seems to be campaigning against her, which seems like the worst outcome for Chaney. But there's still hope for her - incumbent independents generally tend to be more resistant to swings than the major parties, and both YouGov and RedBridge polling predict Chaney to hold her slim margin.

MOORE: This seat includes Joondalup and the nearby coastal suburbs from Trigg to Currambine. Despite being fairly safely held onto by the Liberal party since 1990, the 2022 election saw them only barely hold onto this seat, with a margin of just 0.9%. Again, if ThePollBludger's 2.2% state swing towards Labor holds up, Moore could be theirs for the taking. It gets even more complicated for the Liberals - the previously sitting Liberal MP Ian Goodenough lost preselection, but is still running for the seat (now as an independent), which will pull a chunk of the primary votes away from the Liberal party. I'd expect most of Goodenough's preferences to flow to the Liberal party anyway, but in such a marginal seat it could have a real impact on the outcome! However, current YouGov polling still shows Libs holding onto the majority - this one will go down to the wire.

TANGNEY: This seat covers the area to the south of the Swan and Canning Rivers, from Bicton to Canning Vale. Similar to Moore, it's been held comfortably by the Liberals for most of the past 40 years, but a huge 13.9% swing in 2022 saw Labor claim this seat with a narrow margin of 2.8%. Both parties are throwing everything they have at this seat - the streets are absolutely littered with corflutes. Labor are probably the favourites here; statewide polling would suggest that a 2.8% swing away from Labor is unlikely, and both YouGov and RedBridge polling both predict Labor to hold on.

--- LESS INTERESTING SEATS ---

• Brand: Labor stronghold.
• Burt: Labor stronghold.
• Cowan: Safe for Labor.
• Durack: Fairly safe for Liberal, will be a good barometer for the Keep The Sheep campaign.
• Forrest: Liberal probably the favourites, but could end up being one to watch. Liberals currently hold by 4.2%, but their sitting MP is retiring and they now face opposition from a new independent Sue Chapman, who has a chance to make a real splash.
• Fremantle: Labor stronghold. Worth watching the Greens performance here; this is definitely a seat they have their eye on in the future and they're a smokey to make the 2CP count. They're still a good while off genuinely contesting for the seat though.
• Hasluck: Safe for Labor, especially after significant redistribution of the boundaries.
• O'Connor: Safe for Liberal, Nationals might make the 2CP.
• Pearce: Fairly safe for Labor, who received a huge 14% swing in 2022 following a big resdistribution of boundaries.
• Perth: Labor stronghold. Greens best chance of making the 2CP should the Liberal vote collapse further.
• Swan: Safe for Labor.

I think the big stories to look out for will be if the Keep The Sheep campaign hurts Labor much, if we see Labor grow or shrink their margins, if the Liberals can recover any of their 'strongholds', and if the teals are still in fashion. Curious to hear anyone else's thoughts or insights!

Grumpy, dumpy, and gorgeous! I'm so lucky to have these nearby. They spend most of their lives underground but when it rains in October-November you can hear them call as they start to emerge.

First of all, see what candidates are on the ballot for your electorate - most electorates only have about half a dozen, so please do your own research and make up your minds.

That said, I've spent a while trawling through the various party websites, so I thought I may as well share a brief overview to help you avoid the 'cookers' if you so wish! I'll try not to be too biased but to be fair, some of these parties/independents are hilarious.

Legislative assembly (your electorate may have some independents too):

• Animal Justice Party: What it says on the tin, their policy mostly resolves around reducing animal suffering. Aside from being understandably preachy, they have some light but sensible policy around housing, transport, corruption, and health.

• Australian Christians: I'm shocked at how openly homophobic, transphobic, and misogynistic their website is. But yeah, pretty horrifying overall, their sole environmental policy is to "wisely steward the environment God has given us". Also want heavy regulation of the internet (i.e. to ban porn).

• Legalise Cannabis Party WA: It's in the name, they're a one issue party that want to legalise cannabis. Worth mentioning that they are no longer affiliated with Sophia Moermond.

• Liberal Party Western Australia: Well, you probably know about them even though they're a minor party for now. They haven't actually released much state-level policy to the public as far as I can tell, which is super weird before an election. Worth noting that the candidate for Central Wheatbelt refused to unfollow a white supremacist, and one of their flagship candidates is a TV show presenter known for getting on the bags in Perth nightclubs in the 2000s.

• Libertarian Party: Guns, crypto, cookers. Pretty woeful housing/environment policy, plus their website is openly transphobic and has kinda racist undertones. Doesn't really have much in the way of state-level policy, but calls to "abolish the federal department of education". I guess if you like what Musk is doing to the US, this is the party for you...?

• Pauline Hanson's One Nation: Pretty openly racist and transphobic, big on guns and conspiracy rhetoric. I was kinda surprised to see that they're big supporters of social housing and increasing hospital funding, but yeah, probably doesn't make up for the rest of their policy.

• Shooters, Fishers and Farmers: They don't use an oxford comma in their name, but aside from that they're true to their name - they really like guns, fishing, and agriculture. Very light on any environmental, social, economic, or housing policy.

• Stop pedophiles! Protect kiddies!: Formerly the Democratic Labour Party. A bit of a loose unit of a party, but generally pretty anti-environmentalist, anti-drugs, anti-vax, anti-abortion. Not much in the way of relevant state-based policy such as housing, but they support high speed rail between the capital cities.

• Sustainable Australia Party - Anti-Corruption: Their policy is remarkably similar to the Greens, generally supporting science-based practice and pretty leftist policy. Their main difference with the Greens is (a) being less focused on social policy, and (b) supporting reduced immigration. They seem to be pretty anti-immigration rather than anti-immigrant though, which is a pretty important distinction. I haven't gotten any problematic undertones from their website but curious to know what other people reckon.

• The Greens (WA) Inc: The major leftist party; supports climate action, the arts, indigenous rights, social housing, diversified economy, education funding, more accessible public health, corruption reform, and transport infrastructure. Pretty aggressive advocates for socially progressive policies. Generally a big 'science' party, although they haven't shaken a few minor "hippy" stances that have been around since the inception of the party (mostly being anti-GMO, anti-nuclear). I will say they have, by far, the best website for communicating their policy at easy-to-read format but with a very high level of detail, and they really do have policies for everything.

• The Nationals WA: They target regional seats and their policy is all about the regions. That said, they're pretty unclear on what their policies are other than pretty vague notions of "looking out for the regions". They are very pro-gun though.

• WA Labor: The incumbents that have been in power since 2017 - not much needs to be said. They have pretty detailed policy but it's hidden in a 300-page PDF filled with jargon. IMO the big notable omission is any corruption or integrity policy.

Legislative council independents:

• Louise Kingston: Ex-nationals, left due to 'bullying'. Very little policy publicly available, but seems to be a kinda "protect your freedoms!!!" kinda vibe.

• Sophia Moermond: Ex-Legalise Cannabis, left due to her disdain for offshore wind power. Seems to be running a campaign mostly based around anti-vax rhetoric, although still supports drug reform and has a few sensible policies about housing and education.

• Wilson Tucker: Ex-Daylight Savings, and currently holds a seat with only 98 votes despite living in the US at the time of the last election! Despite being an 'accidental politician', I'm actually kinda sold on this guy, has pretty solid environmental, economic, and social policy. Also has a big focus on the housing crisis and getting mining money out of state government. It'd be pretty hilarious if this guy got voted in again.

• Aussie Trump: The name tells you all you need to know. Was once involved with Labor, then joined One Nation but got kicked out for 'being unprofessional'. Doesn't really seem to be have any policy as far as I can tell, but is pretty vocally anti-vax and has a violence restraining order. Delightful.

• Christiane Smith: Pretty vague about her policy but it seems to have fairly conservative/christian undertones. She's big on agriculture and "cutting red tape".

• Adrian McRae: God there are some characters here. This is the Putin guy. Used to be involved with the 'Great Australian Party', and is yet another anti-vax candidate without much clear policy.

This wasn't meant to be too serious. Feel free to let me know if I'm wrong about anything, not going to engage with any cookers though (Lemmy seems to be a pretty down-to-earth place however!)

They get their name because their call sounds like a banjo! A commonly heard, but not often seen frog native to Southwest Australia. They spend a lot of their lives burrowed underground or under leaf litter.

Maybe not his proggiest album but I'm still really enjoying PowerNerd and this is the highlight for me. It feels like the most lyrically direct album Devin has made in a good 20 years or more.

Looking perpetually angry 😠

Aka Bleating Froglets

Now that we've had some time to digest Flight b741, curious to see how it ranks for everyone!

Of course it varies a bit day to day, but I'll have a go... honestly I really like them all, bar the bottom two!

• I'm In Your Mind Fuzz
• Polygondwanaland
• Nonagon Infinity
• Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms, and Lava
• Butterfly 3000
• Omnium Gatherum
• Petrodragonic Apocalypse
• Changes
• Fishing For Fishies
• Murder of the Universe
• Flying Microtonal Banana
• Quarters!
• Float Along ~ Fill Your Lungs
• Infest The Rats' Nest
• K.G.
• Flight b741
• L.W.
• Gumboot Soup
• Sketches of Brunswick East
• Laminated Denim
• The Silver Cord
• Paper Mache Dream Balloon
• Oddments
• Made In Timeland
• 12 Bar Bruise
• Eyes Like The Sky

This album came out yesterday! All the music is written by Arjen Lucassen so it should be of interest to Ayreon fans.