It's over. It's finally, finally over.

News

Does Australia have a Government yet? Yes! Sometimes there is news that is so significant that it can only be communicated in acrostic form.

Lord be praised, the election is over
Abbott will not be Prime Minister
Because the independents sided with Julia
Oakeshott and Windsor made really long speeches
Rocko's Modern Life (You better believe that's a callback to yesterday's post)

There is obviously a truly immense amount that can be, and will be said about this in every publication from Bacon Busters up, so I won't go on too much here. Suffice to say, I'm finding it very odd for this to actually be, y'know, over. I can barely remember what it was like not to have the election saturating every aspect of the media spectrum. Although I'm sure given the very delicate and partial and conflicting nature of the arrangement that has finally deposited the Government in Julia Gillard's lap - one Green, two country independents, one Liberal/Green/miscellaneous Taswegian), I doubt that the political commentators of Australia will be out of a topic of conversation for long.

I think one of the best observations I saw yesterday came from Twitter, where infoholic wrote "17 days of negotiation. No violence. No deaths. No injuries. No civil war. A new parliament decided. Not a bad system really." Word.

Oh yeah, and TONY ABBOTT ISN'T PRIME MINISTER!



Israel is going to extend the moratorium on building settlements in the West Bank, giving these flickering peace talks some semblance of a chance. Of course they'd never come out and say that, but apparently they're just going to drown prospective settlers in forms and bureaucratic diversions for the next ten months. Customer service indeed. Alongside reports that Israel may be willing to divide Jerusalem, this is a remarkably positive start to some decidedly fractious negotiations.

More intrigue in the Wikileaks case, with reports that Assange's on-again/off-again rape charge has been leading various members of the group to try and remove him as spokesman. Because nothing says reliable media organisation like an unresolved rape charge. International conspiracy? Only time will tell.

A Florida church is courting controversy and/or violent retribution by holding a Koran burning on the anniversary of September 11. A gesture that could only really be described as being literally inflammatory. Terry Jones, head of the ironically named Dove World Outreach Centre, has been quoted as saying "Why don't we send a warning to radical Islam and say, don't do it. If you attack us, if you attack us, we will attack you". It might just be me, but I'm almost positive that's why we ended up in Afghanistan. And isn't that just going gangbusters for us?

The Pakistani Taliban continue slaughtering women and children in their bid to win the hearts and minds of north-western Pakistan. I want to know who their political strategist is.

Features

Doug Hendrie at The Drum on why all this electoral chaos has been a good thing for Australia.

A list of the "best"(?) moments from this horrifically dreary campaign and kinda exciting post-vote limbo. Ah, memories. Awful, awful memories.

Oddities/Curiosities

A Melbourne mobile phone thief has been adding insult to injury by taking photos of his penis with the phone and sending them to everyone in the address book. I'm sure there's space for a police line-up joke in there somewhere. Shane Willis, the burglar in question, said he's been "off his head for a while... so ... on drugs, so I couldn't tell you what I've done.", although did say he'd been "running amok". Quite. Oh yeah, and in February he escaped police by jumping out of a second storey window.

The peril of boat people: this one survived on coconuts alone for three whole weeks. Will our borders never be safe?

Video

I'm kind of disappointed that this out of date and poorly edited video is the only thing on YouTube where Tony Abbott gets played off by Keyboard Cat. Lift your game, Internet!