Comrades,
The opening salvo's of the campaign didn't amount to much, just the usual skirmishing, no defences were breached on either side, especially with not one, but two ceasefires being called to mark the death of Jesus and the resurrection of Our Glorious Dead. Both sides are sitting in the trenches hoping for a flaming torch issue to come along to captivate the hearts and minds of the natives, before the real stoushing begins. Better still, a stupendous gaff or humongous blunder that kills your opposition stone dead. Given the fever-pitch excitement elicited among the general populace by the opening Great Debate, it might as well have been scored as a nil-all draw. Bring back The Worm, I say.
For the first time, probably, the youth vote matters and it will be of real interest to see the way it swings. And its another era; it's not back in the day when party platforms for election campaigns meant policy, now it's the side that best manages its 'platforms' to speak to the Yoof of Today. The image of ScoMo with a lump of finest black coal in the Parliament has been memed endlessly and will come back to bite him on the arse with the millennial vote. There's always a chance young folk could be sucked in by lies, damned lies and statistics, who knows? The term 'fake news' now "calls out" blatant propaganda, when it used to just mean rabid rumour, wild speculation, and scurrilous scuttlebutt.
But in the final paralysis there's no beating the joys of retail politics. One of the marvellous attempts at small talk made by Uncle Bill on the hustings was when, on introducing himself to a clearly elderly gentleman, he asked "so, how have the school holidays been treating you?", to which the smart arse bludger replied "Doesn't affect me". The commentariat on yr SoShul Mejeeh held the Opposition Leader up to be some kind of eejit for asking that question, when for all they know the poor old bugger might be suffering under the yoke of being forced to look after his grand children all day long for no pay, and no thanks. The Senior Citizen could well have replied "Shithouse, thanks mate". Uncle Bill could have then reminded him of just how little childcare workers actually get paid, and point to the injustices of it all.
That's the way, go with the flow, roll with the punches Shortman, but whatever you do don't rock the boat or upset the apple cart, watch out for incoming artillery and keep your head low. At all times remember the proverb about the Drover's Dog.
The Country Party are of course desperately trying to avoid heading towards being a Parliamentary rump on their way to oblivion, and things were not helped when former leader Barnaby "Mad Rooter" Joyce, the former Minister for Sleaze and Officially Sanctioned Water Theft said "I am absolutely confident that I did absolutely nothing wrong" viz-a-viz the deaths of millions of fish that washed up on the banks of the mighty Murray-Darling. Them's is fine words coming from a joker who's done wrong plenty. All the Pinko's are calling for is a Royal Commission, and why not? It seems we are going back to the heydays of lawyer's picnics back in the 30's & '40's anyway, when there were Royal Commissions into bloody everything. And folks forget South Australia has already had a Royal Commission into the joint New South Wales/Victorian threat to build a bloody great dam at the border, and be buggered with the lot of ya downstream. The learned judge came down hard with a finding that the whole shooting match is a hotbed of waste & mismanagement, corruption, stealing, vandalism, skulduggery and worse The radical vegans would have Barney the Ol' Rooter stitched up on charges of fish murder, nay, endangered species genocide, for which you go to the jailhouse with no possibility of parole. They're probably all wearing Cubbie Station cotton. Sensibly for the Tories, the Inbred Tomato has been told the only thing he needs to worry about is New England. My oh my, some crazy batshit goes down west of the Divide.
Forget Clive "Jabber the Hutt" Palmer and the $30M he's given away to conventional commercial media [the fraudulent fucker's Twitter account is utterly incomprehensible and the dead-head won't know what WeChat is], the size of the cross-bench won't change all that much. There's always been that 10-15% of voters who wouldn't have a bar of the two-party Westminster System, and would never cast their ballots for either of the big two.That's it. It's just the nature of the beast, and the only thing that will happen is the stripe of the 'independents' will likely be different, again. The Pinko's only need to hang on to the heartland of the greater west of the Emerald City because that's where all the people are. They've got the vote, and they like to back a winner. The Eastern Suburbs returning Doc Phelps and the Northern Beaches sending exulted Olympian Zali Steggall to Canberra tells you more about those places than anything else. There will be nothing like a hung Parliament or a balance of power this time around.
Perhaps the best splash of the week was the exclusive in the Sunday fishwraps about some contretemps going on with the French, who are building our brand new Shortfin Barracuda $50B fleet of submarines in a dockyard in Adelaide. Remember that one? The one that a Defence Minister of not so recent past recommended highly..."I wouldn't trust them to build a canoe". Seems like we are having a touch of trouble with the contractors in regards to the uncouthness of Australians in general being incapable of comprehending the importance of lunch. Unlike Strayan public servants, who are happy enough to have a ham sandwich or a sausage roll in a bag with a squeezie of sauce while hunched over their typewriters, the Frogs, quite rightly, for their déjeuner demand plat du jour [which in my experience used to be a legislated maximum of €18 for entrée, plat, followed by entremets or cours de fromage]. Do they have any idea how long it takes to work your way through a three course lunch every day? The other gripe about punctuality for meetings in the afternoons goes out the window after a glass or three of Bordeaux. Surely a nation of piss artistes who are well used to pouring over the gin-soaked plans like us should understand that. Cultural confusion? Get used to it. It's included in the multi-million dollar contract 'variations'. The average punter would read that story and chafe about the endless opportunity for waste & mismanagement on the Gravy Train to Davy Jones Locker, and move on. Heard that one before. I hear the whistle blowing and it plays a happy tune.Toot! Toot!
Being a resident of a very solid Pinko electorate, I don't get much election material dropped in the letter box except from the sitting member Linda Burney who's been saving up on her Postal Allowance. However, I was surprised to find some literature from the Australian Democrats in there the other day. Ah, the fond memories...Cheryl Kernot and Gareth Evans immediately sprang to mind [OK, the mental image of those two on the workbench is not particularly pretty, I'll grant you that] but really you have to go back to the Year BBB...before-Bob Brown...to find the Democrats labelled as the "third force" in Australian politics. Printed on the front of the brochure in bold font is ol' Don Chip's famous saying "Keep The Bastards Honest". I thought that's quite clever of them to retain the copyright, but on closer inspection, the words were accompanied by a small symbol ™. That's where they lost me.
And remember, it's to the barricades, comrades, as pre-poll and postal voting opened yesterday for the rusted on - so as they say in the classics...vote early, vote often.
Shortfin Barracuda Block 1A Variant (artist's impression)
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