I wanted a pic of Suzie Wright here, but all I could find was pix of Lee Rhiannon - so here's another green.

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Well, the Penrith by-election came out as expected – with the flogging of Labor by the worthy Liberal candidate Stuart “Stu-boy” Ayres.

And what a flogging it was.  While pundits have been evenly divided over the underlying cause – assuming that it was just one cause, adding a touch of “can’t get to work for under $80 a week – if the public transport ever shows up” to “our suspicions about the incumbent being as crooked as a dog’s hind leg being confirmed” and maybe just a dash of “time to change the pigs at the public trough” should just about explain the massacre.

Local versus national issues ?  See the previous paragraph !

When the ABC interviewed a few locals this morning to get their take on the blood-letting, I found one response particularly interesting.  A former Labor-voting woman put the boot into the Liberals for wasting so much paper morning after morning at the railway station (so much for a cyberspace campaign debate, folks).  This woman voted “Green” of course, but she went one further than that.

She voted “Green” and then “Exhausted” her vote.  Now personally, I usually find voting exhausting – and even debilitating if it was not for the local P&C cake and coffee provided as a public good and fundraiser for the school.

But in this sense, in NSW, at least, one can simply put a “1″ next to the party of one’s choice and nothing else and nobody gets a preference after that.  It’s a way of raising the middle finger to the major parties.  And when I cannot bring myself to vote Liberal no matter how vomitous the candidates or the totality of my traditional roots party are, in the NSW election coming, at least I would like to simply do as our Penrith sister did.

Admittedly a by-election voter backlash is not unusual – democracy being such an imposition particularly when the Panthers are playing away, or the Wallabies are set to cough one up to the Lions (thanks, Matt).  But this one has the hallmark of an avalanche to come.  In Penrith, this time, 3% of the 88% voter turnout  voted informal and the exhausted vote count was 62%.

The people of Penrith were pretty clear about their preferences.  In some traditionally Labor booths, the Liberal candidate out-polled Labor 2 to 1.  Labor’s vote set the new record turn around of minus 25.7% of which the Liberals scored plus 18% and a bit and the Greens (not traditionally well rewarded in the Western Labor heartland) were rewarded with a gain of somewhere around 8 % – just for showing up.

I don’t know about you, but given the incumbents and the alternatives, vastly talented O’Furball team, I’m feeling exhausted already.

* Apparently “optional preferential”  voting only works in NSW single constituency by-elections.  Disappointing, huh ?

something quite  like this appeared over at the daily bludge a few minutes ago….