Election Reflections and an Andrew Elder rant

Well what to say about the election.
Here are my thoughts in no order or importance.

• Malcolm Turnbull was worth about 3 percentage points in the Liberal vote. They would have been thrashed if Abbott was Leader.That is why he was replaced. 
• The clamps put on Turnbull meant the public would feel aggrieved. Turnbull was never Turnbull. Mouthing three word slogans made him look like Abbott lite
• Are 'conservative' commentators so stupid that they believe without any evidence at all that Abbott would have won the election. It appears so.
• Parties do not get seats on their primary vote bout on the 2 Party Preferred vote.Primary votes must fall with the Greens, Xenophon and other Independents.
• People did not think Medicare would be privatised but thought the Coalition would  amputate it ( pun intended) policy by policy. The problem of costs is not at the GP level and most people are aware if they need a specialist they would be paying quite a bit by paying for a referral by the GP, the Specialist and any other services..
• It will be very hard gong for the Government. They will need to negotiate both in the lower house and upper house and they have consistently shown they are not capable of this.
• Malcolm Turnbull will not be leader at the next election but who will replace him. Morrison was quite impressive!
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• Turning back the boats did not make it as an issue for two reasons. There were no boats and people know Vietnamese are not muslims. You take them back to Vietnam a Communist state they go into re-education camps,
• The polls were correct and rarely changed. As John Quiiggin pints out the betting markets were wrong.
• We should have an early election

Putting my Andrew Elder hat on the journalists really did let people down in this election.Take Fran Kelly. She thought the ALP had made a blunder by having larger deficits. A deficit or 2.2 or 2.3% of GDP is essentially the same. Thus both the government and the opposition wee talking porkies but no journalist understood this.

No budget repair had been undertaken. The structural deficit was still around 2% of GDP. Only Leigh Sales tackled this head on and only once.

Why do Journalists talk about internal polling which almost always is claptrack and at odds with public polls. Why don't they ask about this contradiction.

The polls were essentially the same all though the campaign given their margin of error  but we were told of various things when a poll changed by ONE percentage point.
Why would any sane person ask if anyone would challenge Bill Shorten for the ALP leadership.
Why did they allow cost of living pressures to be an issue. Inflation is low and the RBA is woried it is too low yet we keep on hearing about cost of living pressures. Why because the public only remember price increases not decreases.