Postscript The 2019 Election Campaign may have been boring, but the results on polling day were anything but. All the main pre-poll forecasts were wrong, and the unexpected outcome was a surprise to most observers. Maybe a good result for anyone doing research on sampling techniques, but not very helpful for people using the current methods to predict results. My take is that the Election came down to a Morrison v Shorten contest. Morrison said very little of policy substance, but delivered his words well. Shorten’s words were usually good, but the way he delivered them was anything but persuasive. As with many previous elections it came down to the perceived outcome for the voter’s back pocket. The retirees in Queensland did not want anyone touching their franking credits and they killed any chance of a Labor victory – slam dunk, game over! As John Hewson found in 1993, with his 650 page comprehensive economic Fight Back package, logical arguments and sound evidence do not win elections. It’s all about whom you trust. This is a pity, because if Australia is going to continue to prosper, we need rational debates about big issues such as the environment. It doesn’t matter very much if the GDP rises, but we don’t have enough water and we are still polluting the atmosphere. We need a sustainable healthy environment, but the leaders said very little about water resources and the Murray-Darling Basin, Climate Change, or pollution in the rivers, the oceans and in the air. In the health sector there was talk of huge investments to treat diseases, but nothing much about preventing them. Maybe no votes in cutting back on sugar and alcohol? Nothing about improving our higher education system, boosting research funding or (to get down to just one detail) about our woeful internet connections. The latest Ookla Speedtest Global Index came out at the end of April and Australia is continuing to fall down the international table. It is now ranked 59th at 38 Mb/s, putting us far behind many other developed economies. For example, Russia’s download speed is 52 Mb/s and, of course, Singapore and South Korea are at the top with 198 and 145 Mb/s respectively. We should be able to do better. There is a lot of work to be done by the new government and hopefully ScoMo will be able to heal the rifts and deliver good policies that achieve national benefits. Table 1.  Science agency funding 2015–2022 Agency* Government appropriation in $m & (average staff numbers) Financial year 2015/16 2016/17 2017/18 2018/19 2019/20 2020/21 2021/22 AIMS 40 (208) 42 (221) 42 (223) 47 44 45 46 ANSTO 181 (1257) 183 (1277) 198 (1303) 214 (1275) 235 (1356) 220 226 ARC 821 (128) 778 (128) 789 (136) 793 (133) 818 (136) 833 849 Bureau of Meteorology 315 (1581) 300 (1602) 250 (1565) 296 315 294 265 Antarctic Division 158 179 (383) 176 (378) 188 (384) 185 (392) 225 233 Geoscience Australia 121 (584) 193 (590) 208 (600) 238 232 226 228 CSIRO 750 (5056) 787 (4995) 794 (5063) 834 839 834 844 NHMRC 934 (185) 927 (179) 938 (177) 946 926 943 943 ABS 489 (2871) 622 (2894) 431 (2486) 401 413 187 192 CRCs 141 150 161 167 184 187 192 DSTG 464 438 435 436 447 455 432 National Parks 41 43 47 47 46 44 44 *AIMS (Australian Institute of Marine Science), ANSTO (Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation), ARC (Australian research Council), NHMRC (National Health and Medical Research Council), ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics), CRCs (Cooperative Research Centres), DSTG (Defence Science and Technology Group).  Canberra observed 31 PREVIEW JUNE 2019