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It was all so much simpler back in the days when I did my school assignment on the Gorton Ministry. The most complex part then was having separate ministers for Army, Navy and Air Force. Even the Minister for Munitions was long gone by then.

All matters relating to communications were handled by the Postmaster-General. We had (and indeed, still do) an Attorney-General, although never a Surgeon-General - and alas, no Witchfinder-General.

Welcome to the premiere of Sky News Australia's kinder, gentler, interactive political talk show and weekly engineering tutorial all wrapped in one, "Building Bridges with Warren Truss".

This week's special guests:

Tony Abbott.

"we will hold them ferociously to account because that is what the Australian people will expect of us." *

Barnaby Joyce.

"You do it once, you do it right and you do it with fibre."

- The Member for New England, Tony Windsor, on the National Broadband Network as one of his reasons for supporting the Labor government, Canberra, 7.9.10

Two weeks since the Australian federal election. The voters have done their job, and done it well (except perhaps for those who followed the Mark Latham "blank vote" line). The numbers have fallen in almost a complete tie. So be it.

August 27, 1990 - one of the great guitarists of the era, Stevie Ray Vaughan, was dead at the age of 35, his helicopter crashing shortly after completing a concert in Wisconsin.

Twenty years after his passing, here is a brilliant live performance by SRV of Jimi Hendrix's "Little Wing" (and more about its composer as September 18 rolls around). Got seven minutes to spare right now? Enjoy this.

For those who came in late, here is NMA World Edition's comprehensive and accurate preview of Saturday's federal election. I can't wait for their coverage of our hung parliament.

It's almost midnight on August 21. Australia has spoken. Something along the lines of "bugger off".

A hung parliament is the fitting outcome to the worst election campaign in my lifetime. Neither side deserves to win, and it will probably be days before we know who will form government, and how they will do it.

For federal elections in the recent past, I have followed the Greens above-the-line ticket. This time, I chose not to, bit the bullet and voted 1 to 84 in the bottom half of the senate ballot. Making sure that I did my research first.

My main reasons for this were that I wasn't too keen on the Greens' flow of preferences (especially their high ranking to the Australian Sex Party), and that I wanted to choose the six people who I wanted to be my six New South Wales senators. (Is that too crazy a thing to ask?)

I voted yesterday at the pre-polling booth in Ashfield. Which leaves a strange feeling of personal anti-climax this morning. Nonetheless, It's Time to Turn On The Lights, Move Forward and See It Through with my traditional "How I Voted" blog entry. (See previous posts from the 2004 and 2007 federal elections.)

For the House of Representatives seat of Grayndler, I voted thus:

Just think - sometime next week, this man could be one of the most powerful people in Australia: