As customers come and go in her shop in Auburn, Western Sydney, Rukhsana Raza isn't spending a lot of time reflecting on the election.
She's more focused on selling Pakistani clothes and gifts to dig her way out of the months of rent debt built up after COVID lockdowns devastated her business.
And she has one message for the new Labor government:
"Not only me, everyone. Everyone's suffering and small businesspeople also need help, not only the big person."
Auburn is in the seat of Blaxland, one of the most multicultural electorates in Australia. For more than 70 per cent of its residents, English is not the main language spoken at home.
Ms Raza is a long-time Labor voter, and this election was no different.
However, after two and a half decades in Australia, she is still not entirely confident with filling out her preferential ballot.
Blaxland was won easily by Labor, although both main parties suffered small swings against them. Yet, the informal vote in the seat – votes cast, but filled out incorrectly – was 10.9 per cent, more than twice the national average.
Voting 'not to get a fine'
Not far away in her cafe is Gulay Karci, a Liberal voter — but not on account of ousted prime minister Scott Morrison.
She thought the ad campaign against him was an effective move by his opponents.
"I don't like Scomo. [You know] the marketing they did on 'that's not my job'? I reckon that cost them the election."
Despite this, she said she was prepared to give Anthony Albanese a chance, in part because he grew up in public housing.
"He's done so well, and that's beautiful," she said.
"Hopefully he'll do the right thing."
Ms Karci is well known in the local Turkish community, with regular customers coming and going.
Like Ms Raza, she also believed many voters were confused when it came to filling out their ballots.
"I don't believe that the people understand how this voting system really works," she said.
The high number of informal votes is not a new problem.
In fact, when it comes to advanced democracies, Australia has one of the highest levels of spoiled votes in the world.
Experts say it comes from the high number of voters from non-English speaking backgrounds, combined with compulsory voting and complicated ballots.
Ian McAllister of the Australian National University said most informal ballots were not actually deliberate.
"By far the largest proportion [are] people incorrectly completing the ballot paper," Professor McAllister said.
"At some stage, somebody is going to have to fix all of this and just make it a lot easier for voters.
"[The] electoral system is designed for the convenience of parties, not for the convenience of voters."
'Politics is politics'
Only hours after the election, the result was already fading from view for people in Dandenong in Melbourne's outer east.
Reverend Tut Yoa from the South Sudanese community hosted church services on Sunday morning.
He said few people in the congregation were talking about the momentous political shift seen the night before.
"The reaction is that, of course, people are not even aware of what is happening within the politics because there's nobody that is caring about the community," he said.
Dandenong is in the electorate of Bruce. Both main parties suffered significant swings against them in the seat, which delivered a big win for Labor on preferences.
Minor parties performed well, polling more than 18 per cent — almost doubling the Greens' vote of 9.3 per cent.
Reverend Yoa said the disassociation in politics was due to many South Sudanese being frustrated with little to no progress on issues such youth unemployment and racism.
"They want to see what Labor will bring," he said, although he understood "politics is politics".
But he also thinks Mr Albanese's background will mean more empathy for those who are struggling.
"He can be a person who really will understand the essence or the difficulties and the hardship of the communities. And when people yell hard, he will listen better than maybe the former prime minister."
'It'll take a while for things to change'
Thurbill Pouk, who is from a South Sudanese background, came to Australia 20 years ago.
The 25-year-old is a project coordinator with Community Abundance, an organisation which works with the South Sudanese community. She few people in her friendship group paid attention to the election.
"I don't think people care," she said.
"It's very relaxed and I think that's the same with a lot of my friendship groups. That is just like, 'Oh, they'll take care of it.'"
Ms Pouk said she was not expecting the election result to change much.
"I'm pessimistic only because I think generally policies tend to stay the same or sway within the same rhythm," she said.
"I think it'll take a while for things to change, only because how Australian policies and politics has worked has remained similar for quite a while."
Most people in her peer group are not only disconnected from this election, but from politics in general.
And few expect many of the promises made in campaign advertising to be kept.
"I think the challenge is to close that gap and actually perform a lot of the policies that they are saying, especially for minority communities within Victoria and Australia."
