The rules under which Australian elections happen are very different to those in New Zealand and make the results hard for Kiwis to interpret.
The very high level of participation - 90 per cent-plus of Australians vote - is a result of a law (which is enforced) making voting compulsory, and the apparently solidly two-party results are because of the preferential vote counting system.
Under the preferential voting system, the voter does not just pick one candidate as in New Zealand, but lists his or her choice in order of preference.
When the votes are counted, if a leading candidate doesn't achieve 50 per cent of the votes cast plus one, then second preferences come into play.
The second preferences of Green Party candidates, for example, flow heavily to Labor candidates.
This can have some bizarre consequences. Any Aussie political junkie will tell you that, in the 1961 federal election, the right-wing government of Sir Robert Menzies was saved by Communist Party preferences in the Queensland seat of Moreton.
Compulsory voting and the preferential counting system disguise some deep rumblings in Australian politics.
Minor parties did well, especially in the upper house or Senate poll where voting is also proportional.
This includes the awful Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party which seems to combine every conceivable prejudice with plain lunacy.
Hanson once put her name to a book predicting that in 2050 Australia would have a lesbian president of Chinese-Indian background called Poona Li Hung who would be a cyborg.
I'm not making this up.
Despite its idiocy, the book's sentiment was genuine: it expressed, in shorthand form, the anger and bewilderment of those left behind by the economic changes of the 1980s and '90s, people whose lives had been transformed without their consent and by forces they didn't understand.
Hanson later disavowed authorship, but you get the drift.
This party could have as many as three senators.
Minor parties have turned a toehold into a foothold in the lower house of Parliament where governments are formed and may end up deciding which big party governs as they did following the 2010 federal election.
In that election, one Green MP and three independents supported the government of Julia Gillard, giving her a knife-edge advantage.
These results, to some degree, reflect the success of Donald Trump in winning the Republican Party nomination for the US presidency and the decision in the UK referendum to bail out of the European Union.
Australia remains a prosperous "lucky" country but just as in the US and Britain, there is an alienated group of voters who feel left behind and ignored.
These people are lashing out at the political and economic elites, who they perceive as out of touch and hogging what wealth the country generates.
There is no doubt that such a group exists in New Zealand politics and almost certainly currently finds its home in the 25 per cent people who enrol to vote, but then don't.
No one has the faintest notion of how such a disaffected group would jump if they decided to participate, but Australia might give us a clue when all of the votes are finally tallied.
Last year's Northland by-election may show what might happen if some normally disengaged punters get involved.
During this portentous period while the fate of yet another Australian leader is decided, it's worth cruising the web and enjoying what our Aussie mates are really good at: humour.
Amongst other gems, The SBS "Backburner" site lampoons the Australian Electoral Commission's apparently slow vote count thus: "The Australian Electoral Commission has released a statement admitting that they have been forced to start the count again, after getting distracted by an interesting looking bird.
"A spokesperson for the AEC told The Backburner that, despite getting very clearly close to finalising the vote count on Sunday evening, they briefly lost track of what they were doing when a bird flew into the room and completely forgot where they were up to."
Mike Williams grew up in Hawke's Bay. He is CEO of the NZ Howard League and a former Labour Party president. All opinions are his and not those of Hawke's Bay Today.
