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Australians. I don’t give a flying fuck who you vote for, but if you vote for the liberals get the hell off my blog! Thank you

(For the non Australia’s who are going to be like “oh so u like trump” in Australia, the liberals are the conservatives. Don’t get it confused, fuck trump.)

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In the barbecue of Australian political life, this federal election would have to be the vegetarian sausage: obligatory, but inevitably failing to arouse much interest and afterwards leaving you wondering why you even bothered. Even the apparently neck and neck polling of the Labor and Liberal parties seems to speak more to the virtual indistinguishability of the candidates than it does to a hard-fought political contest.

Indeed, for all the bombast and feigned indignation, there is a furious consensus at the heart of this campaign. Supporting business, increasing productivity, attracting investment, maintaining Australia’s triple A credit rating: these are the gods unto which nothing is too important to be sacrificed.

Both major parties have vowed to return the budget to surplus by 2020-21 and oppose increased spending, including for much needed social services. Both support cutting money from universities and lowering the threshold at which students are forced to repay HECS debts. Both support giving massive subsidies to private health care providers, even while they make unconvincing assurances about preserving Medicare. Neither promises any improvement in living standards for workers.

In apparent defiance of the laws of physics, most of us are left entirely unmoved by the budgetary black hole. Instead, poll after poll indicates that what most people want to see from government is better funded and higher quality hospitals, schools and universities, and proper support for the unemployed and elderly. A poll taken by the Australian National University in April found that 55 percent of people preferred higher taxation over cuts to social services, while only 36 percent favoured the opposite.

READ MORE: Despite the bluster, election reveals parliamentary consensus

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Five prime ministers in five years. None serving out a full term. Each more right wing than the last. First term governments defeated in Victoria (for the first time in 60 years) and Queensland. Official politics in Australia has been in a state of turmoil.

Malcolm Turnbull was supposed to end it. Made desperate by falling polls, the parliamentary Liberal Party, a majority of which despised his apparent adherence to post-mediaeval views about women and homosexuality, decided he was worth a try. They were backed by corporate screeches that Abbott had not done enough to wind back workers’ rights, cut taxes on the rich and slash spending that benefits the rest of us.

But under Turnbull the Tank Engine, the Liberal train has continued rolling down the same tracks.

While business may be pleased that the Coalition is finally taking action in the union-bashing spirit of Abbott’s royal commission by going to an election over industrial relations, Turnbull’s increasing unpopularity has hampered the government. And corporate Australia is not happy that the promised pro-business “reform agenda” has again been stalled. So one of its Fat Controllers, the director of the oldest conservative think-tank, the Institute of Public Affairs, has complained:

“If Turnbull raises taxes and doesn’t cut government spending, one of the reasons for him being leader disappears. Turnbull presented himself as a reformer and an economic liberal. So far, precious little of that has been seen.”

READ MORE: Staring into the void of Australian politics