vote for the funny guy!

Indonesian President, Joko Widodo, mobbed by supporters outside the Badung Market, Bali, last week. Photo: Bryan Denton/New York Times.

Comrades,

If you think some crazy bat-shit went down in The Wide Brown Land last weekend, it's perhaps worth taking a passing interest in the brave beserking that's been shakin' with the Miracle of Democracy in other parts.

It was pleasing to see Jokowi re-elected to a second term as President of Indonesia. What's not to like about a youngish moderate technocrat with a penchant for heavy metal on the stereo? It's ironic that his victory was announced 21 years to the very day since mass pro-democracy protests toppled Suharto. There's been some argy-bargy on the streets of Jakarta with a bit of isolated rioting here and there, but the local cops say that's down to a paid rent-a-mob, and six violent deaths in a day is small beer in a town of well over ten million. In any case, it was, according to international observers, a "free and fair election", and with the Electoral Commission declaring Jokowi a comfortable winner over Prabowo Subianto [who was once married to Suharto's daughter] with about 85 million votes to his name, there's no room for any serious challenge to his authority.

To his credit, Jokowi's been on the education and social welfare case as well as pouring mountains of infrastructure cash into the provinces, and he's even started work on the decades overdue Jakarta Underground [and conveniently opened the first 16km of track just before the election], while talking ever-so wistfully of moving the capital out of Jakarta to a purpose built city. Yeah, right, mate. Never mind that the "very fast" train from Jakarta to Bandung will now be a "medium fast" train, after realising the scope and complexity of the project was beyond them, even with the injection of Chinese billions. Jokowi was sensible enough there not to set himself up to fail. He's on a mission to produce a thoroughly modern Indonesia and the world's 4th largest economy by 2030, and his push for the acceptance of cultural and religious diversity has of course seen him labelled as a "secret Christian". So, it was a very smart political move to pick the elderly and most revered Islamic cleric in the country, Ma'ruf Amin, as his Vice Presidential running-mate. All bases covered.

However, Jokowi has at least one thorn in his side that won't go away - West Papua, and his point blank refusal to do anything about it. The Free West Papua movement is not a sexy subject, but the UN Human Rights Commission and the UN Committee of 24 (Special Committee on Decolonisation) have finally lost patience. The Indonesians were taught very well in the ways of Imperialism by their former colonial masters, the Dutch. The occupation of East Timor was as plain as day for all to see, and Portugal and Australia were not only compliant, but complicit by default in it, and after 29 years of war, and 16 years of independence it still deeply haunts the joint. I have never been to an 'edgier' place in my life. The West Papuans, of course, haven't been as militant as Fretilin, as they know they've never been a match for the Indonesian military, so without intervention, they're snookered. Good luck to UN Secretary General António Guterres - who's just done a swing through the South Pacific Islands - telling the ni-Vanuatu he'd like to go visit their Melanesian brothers and sisters in West Papua and have a snoop around some day. The last outsider to do that was a Polish dude, Jakob Skrzypski, who snuck in there under the radar for a look-see last year, and is now doing five years in an Indonesian jailhouse. As it stands, West Papua is simply off limits to the outside world.

In India meantime, the Himalayan avalanche-style of a landslide re-election of Narendra Modi will be an terrible tragedy for the country, as hard-line Hindu nationalism will continue to be given a free ticket to ride, at the awful expense of the Muslim minority and the Untouchables. It will set the jewel of the East back decades, despite Modi bringing electricity to virtually every village in the country that wants it for the first time. There's votes in that. There are dire warnings that the unique Islamic Indian traditions and institutions will be destroyed and their history will be erased, as the mob shouts "if you don't love it here, fuck-off to Pakistan". There's even an anti-intellectual back-lash against the English speaking bureaucracy, and the highly educated classes of young professionals are leaving the country in droves as fast as they can, as they see no future for them at all in a Modi India. Don't get me started on their attitude towards women. Any dreams India ever had of being a significant player on the world stage are now gone, cactus. There's troubles ahead on the sub-continent.

meantime, up there in Japan, the Prime Minister has changed his name. From now on he is to be known as Abe Shinzo, not Shinzo Abe...restoring the Japanese tradition of putting the family name first. With a new monarch on the Chrysanthemum Throne, an emeritus Emperor, and a new name for the next Royal dynasty, you have to fear it's another continuation of the return to Japanese nationalism, that will make the country more insular than ever. They've got real demographic problems as time marches on, but they're in denial - no worries, a bit of myth and ancient magic will do the trick.

And over in the Ukraine, the TV comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy, best known for his portrayal of a fictional President, is sworn in as the real President after campaigning on a platform of VOTE FOR THE FUNNY GUY! and some vague promises to rein in corruption, after winning in a veritable landslide at the polls. Populist politics gone mad. Good luck with that, son. Old mate Vlad The Impaler in the Kremlin will be as happy as Larry dealing with a feather light-weight, knowing that his annexation of the Crimea is now complete and unchallengable - speaking of imperialism.

Oh, and in late breaking news, it seems the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Telfon Tessa, has been given the tap on the shoulder and told the game's up. How she survived this long is anyone's guess, as the British continue to get themselves tied up in untanglable knots over casting themselves adrift somewhere in the direction of Iceland. Isolationism at its finest. And who's next for No.10? The Turnip Man, Bonkers Boris?

So, in the grand scheme of things, the inevitable navel gazing and factional infighting in the ALP to find a new leader pales into insignificance and is both inane and utterly and totally predictable. DJ Albo will get the Opposition Leader's job for the time being. He can cast himself as a Miracle Victim, and get to work on the only hobby he lists in his Who's Who entry - "beating Tories". As much as I love Comrade Albo to bits - a seasoned veteran in the Dark Arts and a number cruncher par excellence - I am truly sorry, but that bobble head, that face, and especially that voice...oh dear...simply un-electable. That said, and in Albo's defence, the nation in its infinite wisdom has voted ScoMo back in, and his dial is very plainly less than attractive on the "fuckability" scale, his balding bonce actually benefits from a baseball cap and you have to shove a foaming frostie in his gob to stop him yabbering on in tongues. With the amount of grog he knocked back on the hustings, soon enough, Scotty will take a leaf out of the Albo Ale book and get his own Scomo's Sherbet Suds, with a flatttering portrait of him on the can. Albo'll take the Poisoned Chalice for the time being, because he might not get another chance, but he better watch his back - in fact he better be constantly pirouetting around in circles 24/7 looking over his shoulder for lurking danger, otherwise, ten months out from the next election he'll get knifed by Tanya. The Tories have set the precedent, and the Pinko's are just as brutal as that other mob, don't you worry about that.

Australian Labor Party factional war lord, Anthony Albanese, following election defeat. Photo: Dean Lewins/AAP.

people hate change

Comrades.

You can say all you like about a golden opportunity squandered, an election stolen by a hyper cashed-up classic blanket campaign of dirty money, spreading lies and disinformation designed to sow fear and loathing among the populace, how the Opposition unwittingly made themselves a slow moving target, how gerrymandered-to-fuck western and far northern Queensland snapped the rough end off a pineapple and shoved it clean up our unsuspecting collective arse, and bang on and on and on; but when it all comes down to it in the final paralysis...people, hate, change.

Hate it, with a passion. They will do anything at all to avoid it. Fuss is the last thing they want. People have a primal urge to stay the same. What? Me? Out my comfort zone? Forget it. So when the ALP party machina came up with the [now inexplicable in hindsight ] late campaign slogan urging the punters to "Vote for Change", they were asking for trouble. No one will vote for change. "It's Time" never asked anyone to change. As PJK famously said "people will always back the horse called Self Interest". So we went through five weeks of dirty low down shakin', and all that happened was this great Commonwealth of Federated States of ours voted for the status quo; vote Saturday, wake up Sunday, and nothing has changed, absolutely nothing. When all the autumn leaves have been swept into the gutter and burnt, and the gigantic abacus is finally put away you will find that, give or take a seat or two, the Parliament will remain exactly the same as it was. And so will the Govt. They won't change. They've promised not to.
The born-to-rule know they will never get the numbers to govern in their own right and I hear the Country Party apparatchiks bark from the sidelines "it was The Regions who came to save us". People have always underestimated the country-city divide, big time. Anyone who has ever lived for a time in the bush will tell you it is an utterly different planet out there. After doing two-and-a-half hard long years west of the Divide, it scares me. The romantic myths are just that, myths, and there are many adjectives you can use to describe the joint: parochial, insular, opinionated, self-interested, reactionary, prejudiced, bigoted, etc etc et al, but there's always one word that comes to mind - 'backward'. They might be dumb, but they're not stupid, they've got clout at the ballot box and they know how to use it. At this election, Country Party voters showed more solidarity than any bunch of lazy fair weather Pinko's in town. And that shits me to tears.

Only the bookies are laughing, all the way to the bank, about the opinion polls being way off the mark - they never forecast DJ Trump! or Brexit, because they use all the wrong out-dated metrics and assume the unassumable. Even a cursory study of the algorithms on yr SoShul Meejah would tell you a helluva lot more than ringing up random punters on an old fashioned telephone to ask them which fib they like to tell about their voting intentions. When RJL Hawke came to power back in '83 it was another world altogether. 36 years ago was a primitive epoch, never mind the future. In any case, the miracle in the Miracle of Democracy is you can never predict it. As Honest John was fond of saying "the only opinion poll that counts is the one on election day". A tired old truism if ever there was one.

There was a rare final moment where I agreed with Christopher Pyne; he was right when he said "I feel very sorry for Bill Shorten", and it is an unexpected blow and disappointment to us old Trots [rtd], but one thing is for certain, the days of the good old union men have gone away - forever. In this age of the 'gig economy', did the Labor movement die with Bob Hawke? The Pinko's could take a decade or more to re-invent themselves as the party of the Left, with genuine political muscle, or they could even fade from view into obscurity. The fundamentalist right-wing extremist take over of the Liberal Party is now complete, and unchallengable. The middle has gone missing in action, and if the Greens had any sense they'd go back to their roots and again become a single-issue party - climate change. As it is, young folks are being told the rich get richer the poor get poorer and to be a real Strayan it's now Us v Them, and it's every man and woman for themselves. Bugger the rest of them.

That hoary old chestnut "people get the politicians they deserve" couldn't ring truer this time around, but I'll leave it to the psephologists to rake over the smoking ruins, the Libs to count the dead, Labor to bring in the casualties, and the pundits to proffer profundities on the action, as I've already booked my one-way ticket to French Algiers. For three more years. And I'll lumber the final say with Uncle Bill...in his own eulogy..."thank you, and good night".

Photo: Mike Bowers/The Guardian.

"a simple, but elegant solution to Australia's political difficulties"

Comrades,

With RJL Hawke gone, and the outcome of the Campaign now a fait accompli ["one for the true believers"] there's not much point at this late stage in contributing any further to the felling of acres of old-growth forest that have been rolled into newsprint to cover the hostilities.

As my dear departed dyed-in-the-wool Tory father always used to say before going to the polls on Election Day "I'm just going down to strike my blow for freedom". And so should you...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1LLsw1lcuA

As that Commanding General of the Campaign Trail, the Great Silver Bodgie once said "you'd be out of your cotton-pickin' mind if you don't vote Labor" - to the barricades, Comrades. The enemy are at the gates!

Vote early, Vote often.

R.I.P. Robert James Lee "Bob" Hawke

Comrades,

R.I.P. Robert James Lee "Bob" Hawke. Australia's longest serving Labor Prime Minister 1983-1991. Died at Sydney, 16 May 2019 aged 89. A statesman, consumate politician, charismatic leader, national icon, history maker, showman, , scholar and gentleman. Legend and folk hero of the Australian Labor movement. Vale, Bob. You did us right. You will be remembered as you wished "I love Australia, and Australians."


Prime Minister, Bob Hawke and visiting General Secretary, Chinese Communist Party, Hu Yaobang arriving in Whyalla, South Australia, 1985.Photo: National Archives of Australia No.A8746, KN23/4/85/21.

Australian Prime Minister, Bob Hawke (r) in Moscow on an official visit to the Soviet Union to meet General Secretary of the Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev, in 1987.Photo: Australian Broadcasting Commission.

Bob Hawke, during the 1983 Election Campaign before being elected to the first of four consecutive terms as Australian Prime Minister. Photo: Fairfax Media.

Former Australian Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, in 2018 aged 87. Photo: News Ltd.

"this is not free money"

Comrades,

Found myself watching the morning news on the telly today to see how goes the battle, when I was alarmed to hear Our Great & Glorious Leader promise that the long-suffering tax payer will pick up the bill for young folk's mortgage insurance in a desperate bid for the Millennial Vote. The clown has clearly gone barking mad, as it sounds like a misguided socialist policy for mine. "This is not free money". Really? Under Scomonomics, a 5% deposit on a million bucks is still fifty grand. In Sydney, that wouldn't buy you much more than a broom cupboard, and no Millennial I know has that much in lazy cash to stuff under the mattress. And in any case, the thieving banks won't have a bar of it. Back to square one. Perhaps ending more than a decade of wage stagnation might be another way?

"After taxing you to death, Labor wants to reduce the value of your home. Across the board". I have a simpler way to do it, ScoMo. What if I came around this week and sat on the front lawn of your place down in The Shire? That would instantly reduce your property value, by plenty. Guaranteed. No lie.

In the meantime, the pre-poll voting places are abuzz as the rusted-on and the Too Busy On Saturday wander in and out in dribs and drabs to cast their ballots, but the word on the street is that everybody wants your vote.

As an example, just in the inner-west of the Emerald City, you can see what I mean here:

And remember, for democracy's sake, vote early, vote often.

ScoMo the BoZo

Comrades,

What a week it was on the campaign trail!

ScoMo hasn't been having a great time of it, with our Great & Glorious Leader being marked down at 0-3 by the Official Adjudicators in the Great Debates. And didn't they get on to some truly bizarre topics to captivate the nation, with the Tongue Speaker in Chief at one stage banging on about how good Big Mac's are for the economy [although, perhaps not so great for the bowel movements]. Everyone's been waiting for the "defining moment" on the hustings, but who would have thought the Tories' coup de grâce would come that most unlikely of quarters - Old Mate Rupes in NYC. News Ltd's bald faced blunder to go for Uncle Bill's jugular by delivering a way below-the-belt low blow to his dead mother was a classic example of a Dirt Unit bereft of dirt. What were they thinking? Unless yr a filthy sleazebag or a kiddie fiddler, the Australian voter does not like nasty personal politics, doesn't like it all.

And that's after the party apparatchiks had wheeled Uncle Bill out onto Q & A, with strict directions "Shut up Bill. If you have to talk, for goodness sake try to sound human and don't go off piste. And whatever you do, don't be yr old union leader self and start haranguing them - as soon as you do that, people will never listen". He did OK with his Instructions from Trades Hall.

So, as it stands, the Pinko's are a dead-set shoe-in, with the Poll Bludger currently giving Labor an 15 seat majority based on a scientific analysis of the latest opinion polls down to the third decimal point, and Uncle Bill is a raging red-hot odds-on $1.14 favourite [ScoMo $5.50] down at the books to become the next PM.

Never mind Solidarity Forever, everybody loves a winner, so take the tip from this traffic light control box seen yesterday deep in Commo Country down in Enmore: