{"id":369,"date":"2007-11-25T10:39:25","date_gmt":"2007-11-25T01:39:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/2007\/11\/25\/did-the-government-fall-last-night\/"},"modified":"2007-11-25T10:39:25","modified_gmt":"2007-11-25T01:39:25","slug":"did-the-government-fall-last-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/2007\/11\/25\/did-the-government-fall-last-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Did the Government fall last night?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mondegreens<\/strong><\/p>\n

Back in the late 80’s, an Australian band called Little Heroes<\/a> had a song called One Perfect Day<\/a>, where a lovelorn chap was singing to his girlfriend in far off “Eng-a-land”. There was a line that I always thought was “Did you get a man for last night?” – which I thought was rather liberal of him. Years later I found out it referred to the coal miners’ strike<\/a> in Thatcher’s Britain and the line was actually “Did the Government fall last niiiiiight?”.<\/p>\n

Yes, our government did fall last night, and yes, we are now rather less Liberal. I’ve had a couple of non-Australians ask me what I think about it. Here’s some random musings…which are biased personal impressions rather than anything informational \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

The Parties <\/strong><\/p>\n

In Australia the two major parties – the conservative Liberals<\/strong> and the more liberal Labor<\/strong> (which tends to represent labourers) – are really rather similar and economically conservative. The Liberals team up with the more conservative Nationals (which aims to represent rural voters) to form the Coalition<\/strong>. Historically the major difference is in:<\/p>\n