the days of the Ol' Red Finger have gone away

Comrades,


It was somewhat saddening to hear of the demise of the seat of Port Adelaide, which has now be redistributed into extinction by the requirement to slash South Australia's representation in the House of Representatives from 11 seats to ten, on account of a complete lack of population growth compared to the rest of the nation [NSW, in contrast, has 47 seats].
The Federal Electoral Commissioner sat down with old mates, the South Australian Surveyor-General and the South Australian Auditor-General, and after banging their heads together for a while and looking at a helluva lot of maps, determined that Port Adelaide just had to be abolished, even though it's been rock solid Pinko since being established in 1949.
To fit about 105,000 voters into a seat without too much gerrymandering, the redistribution leaves Boothby as the only marginal seat in the state.
So, for all intents and purposes, the vote in the South Australian rustbelt from now on will be of very little or no consequence at all at Federal Elections - and the state will be simply dismissed by major party politicians as a given.
Sorry folks, but there will be no pork-barrelling or fresh French submarines for you anymore - none, ever.
It's a only a shame for me because I have fond memories of the late Dr Alan Finger, who was the perennial Communist Party candidate for the seat of Port Adelaide, safe in the knowledge that the Commo's would get their best vote there among the ship-builders, stevedores and warehouse workers, even though he knew he'd never have a snowflakes of ever getting elected.
Dr Finger was the much-respected decades-long head of Adelaide Hospital's Venereal Diseases Clinic.
Nominative determinism at its finest - this was a Commo who poked all the orifices of sickly mad rooters every day of his professional life for 40 years.
While all the time in public service, he espoused his straight Marxist-Leninist [he was no fan of Stalin] rhetoric on the stump when elections rolled around, and he had a strong personal following and fine reputation among the downtrodden proletariat as the best pox doctor in all of South Australia.
But, no one seemed to have any problem at all with the fact that if Doc Finger had cured you of the clap on the public purse, you would probably not have much hesitation in voting for him, no matter his political stripe.
That's proper democracy, right there.
When I was a mere child, I remember my father perusing the paper when the list of candidates for up-coming elections was still published in the press [as political party affiliations were not allowed on the ballot paper, just the name] and saying with faint amusement "oh, I see Dr Finger is running for the Commo's again..."
But the days of the Ol' Red Finger have gone away - a long, long time ago - and now the memory fades to almost complete oblivion with the wiping of Port Adelaide off the electoral map, so it must be the end of some kind of era, surely?

Enough of that nostalgia, let's do some more yearning for the past in downtown Hobart and consider something I pretend to know a little bit about - when the arts and the Miracle of Democracy collide.
It's always great fun!
You've gotta love the Lord Mayor of Hobart, Alderman Ron Christie, being given a slap-down by the Tasmanian Chamber of Business & Commerce for being a "throwback to the 1950's", after saying rude and reactionary things about David Walsh's DARK MOFO thingo, that brings in real honky dollars by the bucketful from odd, strange, arty-party types from the mainland.
And talk about Hobart City Council being over-represented to buggery by a swill of freeloaders.
With just 19,128 valid ballots cast in the last non-compulsorary election for 12 alderpersons [a turn-out of just 51.7%] - each local Govt. pollie in that neck of the woods has little more than fifteen hundred active punters to represent.
And all the alderpersons are either Greens or Independents - the major parties just couldn't be bothered with it, as it's such a non-event.
Christie reckons hundreds of fools leaping nude into the Derwent on the winter solstice definitely does not "preserve the unique history and beauty of Hobart".
Fair enough, you might say - goose-pimpled soggy bottoms, pert nipples on sagging breasts and shriveled old todgers with nutsacks forced back up into the scrotal cavity by the freezing cold is never a good look.
Maybe next year, just to liven things up a bit, they could beat each other with birch sticks in some S&M action before they dive in?
But I digress; Cranky Christie obviously hates all these cashed-up weirdo strangers coming to town as he doesn't like their "unhealthy culture" and doesn't want Hobart to go "down the same path as the larger internationals like Rome, Barcelona and Paris where citizens are screaming enough is enough — go home, don't destroy us", and is pining for a return to the good ol' days of "Slowbart".
Hobart and the "larger internationals", eh?
I've got not idea where he got the "Lord" in Mayor from, but Riled-Up Ronnie is very small beer indeed, up against one of Tasmania's richest men, the entirely 100% eccentric Walsh.
I've been to his architecturally extraordinary Museum of Old and New Art which houses his considerable personal multi-million dollar art collection on the banks of the mighty Derwent, and I've read his autobiography A Bone Of Fact - both of which I can recommend highly.
For decades, Walsh has been, by his own admission, obsessed with ending the evil and corrupt Farrell family's casino monopoly in Tasmania, and building a 7-star "high-rollers only" hotel/casino next door to his Museum - he reckons simply to fund the joint that's costing him an absolute poultice to run and remove the admission fee for non-Tasmanians - and that's where his interest in politics begins and ends, because he don't need no Govt. funding for Y'arts.
He's paying for the whole shooting match out of his own pocket.
Walsh is one of the very few independently wealthy people who truly could not give-a-fuck about who says what about him, let alone what they might think of his taste in art.
He has said nothing about the brouhaha; he's a loyal Tasmanian and would dismiss Alderperson Christie - who's up for re-election in October, btw - as beneath his dignity, let alone worthy of his consideration.
If he did give interviews, Walsh would probably call Christie out for being the golden-chain bedecked backward redneck clueless philistine dickwad local politician that he is.
Not meaning to be "looksist" or anything, but, I mean, just take a gander at the bloke - I rest my case.

[The Rt.Hon. Lord Mayor of Hobart, Alderman Ron Christie]