Having said that, report the sunstantive stuff. I totally applaud Ley's opposition to the FOI changes (although it might just be politicking of course) - but so much reporting seems to be about reporting banal parroting rather than engaging with the content of the discussion/issue.

Yep, can totally see that. Classic online review syndrome, only posting when you're so pissed you want to complain.

It might be unconscious bias, but it does feel like they're overplayed a bit. Agree you need to cover what's going on with them, but it feels at times that, if let's say Hastie farted, there'd be a write up on it.

Rereading your original post, you say "skews election outcomes" - this statement can only be true if the system itself were meant to reflect proportionality, which it's not. Totally agree our system doesn't do proportionality well in the lower house, but why is that a bad thing?

I guess my point is that our system explicitly handles this. It does not pretend to provide a system that reflects people's first preference. So, no one should expect a lower house that reflects those proportions. And as you say, with a different system, people may vote differently anyway.

Is it flawed to compare seats won with proportion of first preference, given the full preferential system doesn't claimed to be proportional? It's as you say, 1 elected MP per division. So the point is I vote to get my "next best" candidate.

AEC site seems to say 332 votes left to count (id I read it correctly).

Exactly. No qualms when you're winning, the system's rigged when you're losing.

Clearly there was negotiation on how this could help the majors. You're nitpicking "colluding". It has specifics that puts independents in less favourable positions. They could have worked with Indies but didn't because that would have meant curtailing benefits to the major parties. Hard to deny.