RESULTS: Upper House Surprises // Two DLP Candidates Win? // OC's Prayers Answered with Thornley's Win

Nothing official but word buzzing around has it that two DLP candidates have emerged successful from the count in Western Region and Northern Metropolitan, with Thornley sneaking over the line in Southern Metropolitan. Yes, we can confirm that Evil Thornley has been elected to the Red Morgue, the Legislative Council where he will no doubt be as inspiring as the last multi-millionaire in that chamber Lidia Argondizzo.

THE DLP ARE GOOD PEOPLE
The re-emergence of the DLP is a big story with their policies and people to face considerable attention in coming days. Contrary to the propaganda in The Age, the Democratic Labor Party is to the left of the Labor Party on many issues. For those seeking to understand where they'll go on the issues, they'll be more like Family First and Brian Harradine, socially conservative in the same way perhaps as the Prime Minister but basically measured and balanced on many other issues.

The assumption that The Age and other socialists will make is that it is an ultra conservative group because their members generally oppose abortion, that isn't the case. They will be certainly less inclined to extremism and loopiness than the Greens and not be inclined to oppose for opposition's sake either so they really could emerge as playing an extremely useful role in the upper house and a vitally useful foil to the Greens.

HOW DID THE DLP DO SO WELL?
That said clearly there is a mistaken identity issue here. There appears to have been a pattern where the DLP polled strongly in the upper house poll when it appeared to the left of the ALP on the ballot paper, suggesting that many DLP voters thought they were voting Labor.

And as disgraceful as the circumstances were that led the ALP to expel a majority of its own members in Victoria and two thirds of its branches in 1955, it is a bit of stretch probably to allow a continuation of the use of the Labor brand some fifty years on. But as one wise ALP member pointed out to the OC, there was much litigation on this point decades ago and it is unlikely to be revisited now. Indeed, the Supreme Court back then held that the DLP was actually the legally valid ALP and as such retained the assets, minute books and so on. The legacy of Doc Evatt, Labor's most destructive federal leader ever, continues to cost it dearly. His lunacy cost the ALP tremendously and cost the nation a viable alternative government for many years.

WORDS OF HATE MP MIKAKOS ALSO COST LABOR DEAR
The ALP is certainly also paying a price for running the Words of Hate MP Jenny Mikakos in Northern Metro, where some 15000 voters of Turkish heritage reside. As the OC reported during the state election, many leaders in the Turkish community were aghast at having to support someone who is clearly racially hostile to them. This makes the apparent loss of Nazih Elasmar all the more tragic as he has paid the price for the race-hate and bigotry of someone he doesn't think very highly of at all. The dumping of Mikakos needs to be high on the agenda for the ALP going forward, and needs to be a cross-factionally agreed position.

As things stand now, there is concern though that the northern metropolitan count may be flawed in some respect and the OC can confirm that a recount has been requested from the ALP although no-one is even particularly sure how that would occur.

Developing.

Game on.