Further to my earlier post, the news today announced the result of the recount in the Victorian seat of McEwan. This time, the Liberal sitting MP, Fran Bailey, was declared the winner by a margin of 12 votes. I wonder what Mr. Mitchell thinks of the "very very clear" message he got last time around?

I've been hanging out a bit on Zazz lately Zazz is an online shopping site, that only sells one type of item every day. From their site:

We feel that online stores are too bogged down with items. You know what it's like, you go to a major internet department store and unless you know exactly what you want it's near impossible to find something suitable for your 3rd cousin's 65th birthday. And if we were going to just sell one thing for the rest of the company's lifetime we don't think we'd make very much money, so we keep things fresh by selling new things every day.

One of the best things for me is that the rollover between items is at midnight EST, so only 10pm over here. This makes checking the daily zazz a nightly ritual.

So far I've bought a 400GB external hard drive, and a USB digital TV tuner, both of which are (hopefully) somewhere between here and Melbourne at the moment. Now I'm just hanging out for them to arrive :S

EDIT: They've arrived!!!! Yipee!

Reading the news last night, I noticed that the ALP (Labor Party) had won the Victorian seat of McEwan by a margin seven votes. This is an extremely close result, but what I noticed, was the Labor (winning) candidate's response:

Definitely the message is obviously very very clear that people want Labor, they want Kevin Rudd, they want the new ideas and fresh thinking...

I'll just repeat that, and add my own emphasis:

Definitely the message is obviously very very clear that people want Labor, they want Kevin Rudd, they want the new ideas and fresh thinking...

So a seven vote margin constitutes a very very clear message to Mr. Rob Mitchell? Considering that this electorate contains in excess of 100 000 voters, this is a margin of less than 0.007%. There are many things this may be, but it is certainly not a clear message that the people of this electorate want Labor. I would have expected someone who will be representing Australians in Parliament to show a little better judgment than that. If there is any message that Mr. Mitchell can get from this result, it would be that the people of his electorate are evenly divided, and he should be working hard to show that he was worthy of receiving this seat from the Liberal incumbent.

EDIT: The margin has now been reduced, first to five votes and then increased to six, and the Liberal candidate has requested a recount.