Election Special!

Comrades,

God, it must be good when yr the Govt. and you suddenly find a shit-load of extra shekels in the coffers that you didn't know you had so you can work up an absolutely you-bewt number-one rip-snorter of an Election Special on the "she'll be right, Jack" principal.
Woot!
It's the best in years, with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, The Lord ScoMo, in a cracking mood, throwing cash at everything and everyone like it's confetti; why not pork barrel anything you can find with a vote in it to save yr own political skin?
Pensions up! Taxes down! Free money galore! Cheap craft beer! Manna from heaven! Anything.
Promise everything to everyone...it's a well-worn time-honoured winner.
No mention of stagnant wage growth, the spectre of deflation, woeful welfare, global warming, crumbling cities, or a myriad of other such inconsequential matters.
Nope.
And of course the whole shebang was kicked off with no need to raise the Medicare Levy, as Canberra is now so awash with moolah, the crippled can just toddle off and suit themselves.
It's impossible to know where to start on this absolute corker, so why not with a bit of sweet political bastardry?
The Tories must just love to death the "up you for the rent!" stripping $84M out of the ABC's $1.1B budget over three years, as everyone knows the National Broadcaster is infested with Commo's from top to bottom, there's Pinko's at every microphone, and you'll find plenty of Reds under the Beds in the sheltered workshop, all drawing massively bloated stipends.
Oh well, video killed the radio star and as Michelle Guthrie keeps on harping on about "appointment television for the under 60's is dead", so sometime very soon you'll be only able to get Aunty streamed to yr Dumb Phone anyway.
Doesn't matter, there are only so many votes in public broadcasting with the vast majority of electorate happy enough with food-porn like My Kitchen Rules.
The Special Broadcasting Service has an entire channel devoted to it.
In the "jobs and growth" sector, the Govt. is employing more spooks down at ASIO and there will be a need for more Federal Cops if the powers-that-be are to be successful in their plan to "raise $3.6bn over four years through a crackdown on illicit tobacco."
Good luck!
That's a helluva lot of chop-chop.
No mention, of course, of the medagwindfall that would flow in taxes from a well-regulated recreational cannabis industry, oh no siree.
Take it out of the hands of organised crime, and put it towards building hospitals, schools, and roads'n'shit, nah, that would just be way too sensible for any politician worth their salt to consider.
Allow me to mount one of my other personal hobby horses here; there are no votes in foreign aid, so who cares if it's at an all time low...but it's pleasing to see a few hundred extra mill extra going to our cousins in the South Pacific, but that's only a knee-jerk reaction to the Santo wharf in Vanuatu beat-up, it's all about the perception of growing Chinese influence next door, in other words, fear and loathing of the Yellow Peril.

Speaking of Yellow Peril, while the Lord ScoMo and Mr. Trundle were trumpeting the Election Special Budget, the learned judges of the full-bench of the High Court [sitting as the Court of Disputed Returns] were quietly handing down yet another judgement in the s.44 imbroglio.
As everyone knows, the Founding Father's were playing the race card with that one, absolutely determined to keep any feelthy foreigners out of the Corridors of Power, and the High Court still agrees, absolutely, taking an extremely narrow and technical view of the section of the Constitution at hand.
Katy Gallagher, Senator for the Australian Capital Territory, did not meet the "take all reasonable steps" test to renounce her inherited Britarse citizenship, even though she could produce a credit card statement saying she had paid the Poms to let her go, but the Home Office decided to take their time and didn't formally register her 'renunciation' until after the 2016 election.
Near enough is not good enough for the High Court, so four other MP's followed her out the door, and the good burghers of Perth [Tim Hammond resigned last week because of work/life balance issues, but that's by-the-by], Fremantle, Longman, Mayo, and Braddon all now go to by-elections to stir things up before the next general election, which constitutionally, must be held no sooner than 4 August 2018 and no later than 18 May 2019.
And won't everybody be sad to see the back of the politician with the best example of nominative-determinism...Rebekha Sharkie!?
And you can be as sure as hell that there will be no referendum put to the people at the next poll to amend s.44 to keep the dual-citizens in, as there are two chances of that getting up by a majority of the popular vote and in a majority of the states - None and Buckley's.
Said it before, say it again...let's face it, we're racist to the bootstraps - yr either Strayan, or yr not.
End of story.

Cripes, it's been a busy week for the the Miracle of Democracy.
Only this morning has news filtered through that 92-year-old Mahathir Mohammad has been swept back into power in Malaysia.
After the previous Govt. was ripped apart by corruption scandal after corruption scandal, the Malaysian electorate were obviously looking for a tried and tested Big Man to come out of retirement and lead the way, and, boy, hasn't he got some form in that department?
You've got to remember that Mahathir don't like the White Man [you'll remember he called us bullies, and worse, and Paul Keating called him a 'recalcitrant'], this was the dude who hung Barlow and Chambers back in '86, and he locked up his main political rival on trumped-up charges of buggery, not once, but twice.
But in a most curious state of affairs, Mahathir has now forgiven that very same sodomite, Anwar Ibrahim, promising to spring him from the jail house, and then make him Deputy Prime Minister!
Excuse me, but what the fark is going on there?
Clearly the Malays have gone down the populist route, electing an old leader in charge of a new party, and soon enough they will wind up with "authoritarian democracy" just like back in the good old days, as more and more of the region falls back into the hands of the traditional "Strongman" - that's just the way the game's always been played in those parts
Nothing to see there, situation normal.