"we don't want to examine the entrails before we have gutted the chicken"

Uren on Albanese "I love that boy".

 

Comrades,

Acres of old growth forest have been wasted on newsprint so the commentariat could do their mostly uninsightful post postmortems on The Election, but it's not really the seismic shift of tectonic proportions in politics that everyone's been talking about. There's always been room for a "third force" in Australian politics...just ask the Country Party, without whom the Liberals would never gain power. Ever. Then there's the spectre of the DLP for too many years, eons ago now, Don Chip's Democrats kept the bastards honest in the Senate for longer than they rightly should have, and then the Greens came along and bought the unreformed Trots with them, but hardly anyone else, and now with 12 Senators (that's a full state, btw), they have a sizeable bloc of votes and now some clout to go with it in the lower house. The Teals are obviously not, in Lil' Johnnie's famous last words, "Labor groupies" nor are they a "fake party", Honest John. They are independents with three pillars of policy in common, we know that much, but elsewhere on the legislative agenda, who knows? Where do they stand on foreign policy, given there used to be no votes in it and now there are, by all accounts? They can't even agree on a colour scheme, one of them uses pink and should be sued for trademark infringement by the Pinko's. But the Teals cashed in big time on the sense of disenchantment that festered like a pustule during the Pando. People had had it up to here with the bullshitting and realised it's just not worth putting up with anymore when times are tough. What the Teals have also done exquisitely well is put privately educated privileged professional North Shore & Eastern Suburbs women right into the political frame, while a grand majority of "working class" women can plainly see Labor as their only hope for affordable child care and thence the pathway to good employment and money. And they voted that way, whipping those Pinko's arses back to Canberra with what will be almost certainly an outright majority.  While the Teals as a "loose unit" might not be a new third force on their own, their staggering success just emphasises the absolutely critical importance of retail politics. Not only do successful independents have to pick the timing of their run impeccably, but to have any chance at all of winning against the Establishment, they must go in with all guns blazing - knock on every door, put a pamphlet in every hand, plaster your face all over the place, and now you have to be constantly in everyone's very well targeted Facebook face, as well. The Soschuls are a gold mine for these people. Just ask Jacquie Lambie who uses it superbly, and now has a friend in the Senate to join her in being professionally furious about everything all the time, particularly if it's got anything to do with Tasmania. And that's from a very small base of barely half a million people. On inquiry, the Stats Guru suggested drawing a circle ten kilometres in radius from my gaff here on the outer edge of Sydney's inner-west on an electoral map, and that's the entire population of TAS, man, woman and child, right there. Crikey. No wonder the land is unaffordable. Apart from being a fuckton of local by-elections, Federal elections always have had that curious Federation flavour, unsurprisingly.

Pleasing to see that for the first time in decades, QLD didn't decide the outcome, despite the Greens having a startling clean-up of inner Brisbane seats they reckon they'd targeted as good prospects two years ago; if they have indeed rounded up the Yoof Vote which appears to be the case, then well done them, at what would have been very long odds indeed. Well thought out strategy gets you respect. Augers well for the future, you'd hope, if the young folk are that politically engaged. Climate is now not the "single issue" of old hippies or the Greenie Lefty past, it's right here, right now. Meantime, over in the Golden West, the cavemen and women went into the polling booths with their baseball bats swingin' and chainsaws whirring and tidied up the Tories in suburban Perth good and proper, annihilating ScoMo's rabble over there on the say-so of the WA Premier. Such was the Pinko's popularity on the other side of the Island - after being kept safe there during the worst scourges of the Pando - the good burghers of the West Strayan capital even elected a socialist former Malaysian dolphin trainer fluent in ten languages against all expectations. Few, if any, gave him more than two chances at being elected - none and Buckley's. If someone were to write some treatise of the Election they need go no further than "How The West Was Won".  In Melbourne, where the Conservatives have no compunction whatsoever in eating each other alive for breakfast, the Tories were dealt a fell blow in the Tealslide as notions of affluence and leafy streets were rent asunder. A lot of really silly shit went down in Sydney, on both Shores, but nothing much at all was happening in the vast Greater West parts where it was simply tit for tat. SA and TAS continue to elect unrepresentative swill, as usual.

After ScoMo tested the Federation to breaking point during the Pando, it's still there, with all it's curious inconsistencies, local mysteries and strange politics. If memory serves, Albo is having one final meeting of the" National Cabinet", where abolishing it will be the first item on the agenda. Then when all the states turn Pinko next year it'll be back to the bi-annual "Premier's Conference" just like back in the day. Scomo's only legacy after leading the worst do-nothing Govt in living memory will be the complete & utter destruction of the Liberal Party as a serious political force. We know that. The final images of Scotty from Marketing scuttling away from Kiribilli House were telling. There is just nothing there, nothing behind the facade. Said it before, say it again, but from the very moment the Kid President Macron called him a liar, any political capital ScoMo had left was gone, spent, finished, evaporated in seconds - bouffée!. He was unelectable from there on in. Can't see any biography of ScoMo's time in office selling all that well. Someone with too much time on their hands would have already mocked up the book cover in a meme, no doubt. Even some scandalous scribbler with a sensational tell-all would struggle to get an advance on the book. The progressive/moderate/centre - and here's a new one, wait for it - the "modernist" wing of the Libs gutted and eviscerated at the polls and all they have left is an old hard right former Queensland cop as the new leader? Spare me. What short term hope have they got? None. The Tories lost 20 seats in the Ruddslide 15 years ago, and will lose a minimum of 18 this time out, so they're due for some extra time in the political wilderness. It's a long way back from there.

In the final paralysis, the best line of the night in the tally room came from some feckless faceless Liberal Party apparatchik who was asked for their opinion on where the conservatives may lurch after their monumental flogging at the polls and remarked "well, look, we don't want to examine the entrails before we have gutted the chicken".

There always has been room for a third way; as the Guru pointed out, the collapse in the primary vote of the two major parties has been going for a long time now and in the glowing light of hindsight shouldn't come as much of a surprise. But, as Labor have found out to their immense profit, when you effectively fan it out over six very different states all with their own distinct agendas, it's now possible to win majority Govt with just 33% of the national primary vote. The challenge now is to hang onto it, and that's a big ask in the current climate. 

With folks more than ever seemingly worried about the future, Albo's over arching plan appears to be to have Straya in a "better place" at the end of three years, aka "the future", and says it might even take two terms given it's such a shocking time to be taking the reins of Govt. An absolute shocker, with everything at the whim of world events, the Honky dollar, and inevitable hard times on the way. It's a tough brief. So, a straight stride onto the world stage first up to shake the hand of Old Mate Uncle Joe - Mr President himself - could not have been better optics for Albo. While the road ahead will be long and the way will be hard, the honeymoon will be short. But in a twist of fate, it's just the opening stanza in the next political cycle of the Miracle of Democracy. The new Prime Minister knows that better than anyone. Three years to get it right, son. Solidarity forever.

 

The Four Amigo's perform the Royal Wave, Tokyo, Japan, 24 May, 2022.

the greatest country on earth!

 

Screaming Believers,

Could hardly resist going on a pub crawl through the heart of Alboland yesterday, inc. a stop at the newlyish re-opened Marrickville Hotel, Marrickville. Why the hell not - it's only next door...one for the ages...

 

 

 

 

Vote the Bastards Out!

 

Comrades,

An oldie, but a goodie always comes out at Miracle of Democracy time...coming at ya live from Conway Hall, London, August 2007...three months before Kevin07 came to visit...

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

You know it makes sense.

Vote early, vote often.

 

bull in a china shop

 

Comrades,

What a week! The last working week of the Campaign ahead of us, and the Miracle of Democracy has been stretching its legs all over...Bong Bong Marcos gets swept to power in a landslide as President of the Philippines to "fulfill my family's destiny", whatever that is. Never mind that his father made off with billions from the state treasury that were never seen nor heard of again or that his mother was a kleptoshoemaniac...that's all in the past now. At least they are rid of Roddy "shoot 'em up first and ask questions later" Duterte (even though his daughter has been elected Vice President, for Chrissake!). While straight talkin' Roddy was term limited, it's still the old lesser of two evils conundrum. Saw a woman on the TV get right in the face of the Kid President during a walkabout in the recent French presidential campaign to tell Macron that his run against Le Pen was "like you giving us a choice - what do we want? Cholera, or the Bubonic Plague?!". Then Sinn Féin pops up and gets elected in Northern Ireland. You'll remember them as the political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the old "Armalite and ballot box strategy", and all that. Joisus.  While having a single United Ireland at the top of their platform as always, Sinn Féin's win was credited to campaigning hard with local level retail politics on problems like the cost-of-living, housing and education. Sound familiar? And then Mike Gunner gives it away as Northern Territory Chief Minister and no one bats an eyelid; the Member for Fannie Bay saying he's no longer got the "head or heart" to carry on in the Top End's top job. It's the wrong time of year to "go troppo" up there, so he must be one of the few sane ones left. It's hard just to keep up.

Hammering down a number on a minimum wage rise el pronto as soon as they win Govt (via the tried and true method of a formal Govt. submission to the Fair Work - formerly Industrial Relations - Commission and in the good ol' Australian way, the umpire makes the call and everyone gets on with it) looked like a basic, but first-rate, Pinko tactic. But this can get you called a "loose unit" apparently. Seeing the Miracle of Democracy is - in the final paralysis - a numbers game, I thought I'd wake the Stats Guru from his slumber over there in Sportsworld to flip the beads on the abacus on this one. He's landed on the 735,000 folks who are on the minimum wage (annualised at $40,175 before tax) compared to the number of "small businesses" (defined by the ABS as having 1-19 employees) at roughly 215,000. So, you can shimmy shammy all you like about how that translates directly into votes, but the Guru scratched the pimple on his arse and came to the conclusion that there are at least twice as many votes in the minimum wage as there are chits in the ballot box from those engaged in low-level capitalism. Albo's no loose unit, he counts those kind of numbers in his sleep, and whatever way you look at it, he wins the class war! The proletariat and the rank'n'file have not been to the University, the rent's too high, the grocery bill is horrendous and on and on it goes - so instead of peanuts, promising even a sniff of a good pay rise is always a winner. You don't need to know the price of a head of lettuce to heed the sage advice of PJ Keating, who's made a point of subscribing to the view that the mug punter "will always back the horse called Self Interest".

ScoMo hasn't learnt a single thing from the last time around; high-viz and beer-swilling have no appeal to the vast swathe of the electorate who have zero interest in either. Being like a bull in a china shop called Bloke's World is not a vote winner. We're three years down the track here, mate, the world has moved on. So, Scotty from Marketing then proceeding to shoot himself in the foot while on the hop by admitting he can be a "bit of a bulldozer" after all and that he needs to change was a zinger of a shocker (have you ever tried to change a man?). That of course implies that he has a weakness, and that's the very very last thing you should admit to on the Campaign Trail where everything is about projecting strength. All it does is produce a collective eye-roll from half the electorate - women - whose deep loathing of the do-nothing snoozer's guts should be enough on it's own to see ScoMo cast adrift from The Lodge. They won't forget the likes of the former Hon. Christian Porter, and the "where's Tudgey?" game of late has been right up there in the realms of farce. And the attitude and general demeanor of that home wrecker, nose bleeder, and Deputy PM - the Inbred Tomato - is well known, as is the fact that the increasingly irrelevant Country Party rump has been cut loose from the Campaign as a liability, and left high and dry on the farm. And speaking of ideology, the take over of the Liberal Party by hard-right evangelicals will be exposed for what it is in the inevitable bloodbath after an election loss and there will be a whole lot of trouble going down in conservative ranks. Just before the election was called, you'll recall, the Libs were falling over each other while queuing up to bag ScoMo and call their own Big Kahuna all kinds of names. Imagine what it'll be like when the thing goes the shape of a very large pear on Saturday. Hang on to yr hats.

Never mind the open to all kinds of rorting cynical ploy of buying sub-prime housing with the super you didn't spend during the Pando. Remember that? The 3.5 million Australians who accessed their super during the time of plague spending $36B will. They have nothing left, but they have the vote. DOFUP (DOn't-F-uck-It-UP) should be the ALP's cry for the final week. Especially since the Tories' "miracle" showing last time out, when Labor magically managed to contrive snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. While the Masters of the Dark Arts ply their dubious trade and the party's Dirt Unit works overtime on the socials, the Good Ship Pinko just needs to hold a steady course on a tight trim sailing close to the breeze. It's a pretty shitty time to take over the reins of Govt., but with hard times on the way, any time is a good time to fracture the Coalition three ways, forever.

 

the end of free money

 

Comrades,

Everyone knows what happened last time there was an interest rate rise during an election campaign - Lil' Honest Johnnie Howard got smashed in the Kevin07 landslide and lost his own seat. That's a harbinger for you, if ever there was one.   

I've been banging on for a year at least about the economy being awash with the slosh of lazy money as dollar bills flew off the printing presses at an astonishing rate during the Pando. That waterfall of Govt. cash fueled runaway inflation from the very moment the pedal came off the fiscal stimulus metal. The inevitable end of free money will have all kinds of unintended consequences, not the least of which is in real estate and housing. I've lived in this town for more than 35 years and seen some bat shit crazy stuff go down in the real estate market (which is all Sydneysiders ever talk about, allegedly), but the Boom Boom of late last year was beyond insane. A bad case of FOMO was a big part of it, but they could see hard times are a comin' and the bandwagon just took off rapidly in a northerly direction. No-one has lived with "normal monetary policy" since the Sydney 2000 Olympics apparently, and I know voters who were not yet living their born days back then, for Chrissake. The opposite of "quantitative easing" is unsurprisingly "quantitative tightening", and that does not auger at all well for the Govt. Six million pensioners and dole bludgers will be more than happy to take their free $250 off the taxpayer courtesy of the generosity of ScoMo, and then vote Labor. No wuckers. Thanks sucker. A nice little sausage to celebrate you going out through the back door without so much as one. Pop the corks. You'd hope.

Howard's "anti-Liberal groupies" line sounded like something out of a twisted student politics fantasy where all the pretty, interesting girls were in Young Labor. Old Man talk, that. Putting aside my deep ideological differences over far too many years with Lil' Johnnie, and my general detestation of the bloke, if there's anything HJ can do right, it's know how to read the political barometer and then take a look at the tea leaves. He wouldn't have been in power for 11 years if he couldn't. Honest John predicted that if just one of the hitherto unelected so-called "Teal" candidates manages to flip a single seat off the Liberals, then "the Government is finished". Just one seat. He was probably talking more about a Climate Commie takeover in the event of a hung Parliament, but he's dead right. As the Libs complain long and loud about the Teals conveniently doing Labor's dirty work for them, on the day, it will come down to who has the best looking picture on their placard outside the polling station. All of the Teal's are very presentable people for a reason. If you don't believe me, Hunter S Thompson in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72  presented very sound evidence that fully 20% of the electorate don't have a clue who they'll vote for until they turn up on the day and pictures of the candidates have a very important role to play. These folks are not early voters.

Then there's the curious case of Zoe Daniel who has the best chance of any of the 15 or so Teals of getting elected (the bookies currently have her as a raging $1.55 odds-on fave to take out the Liberal's Tim Wilson, who's worse than even money). Leaving aside her tawdry former trade, journalism, she claims to have raised more than a million bucks in campaign cash. Half comes from that most mysterious source known as "the community" (anything under $14.5K does not need to be declared), while eco warrior Mike Cannon-Brookes has tipped in the other half believing she'll give it a red hot go. Guessing most of that will be spent on Facebook advertising and misinformation (same thing?), but the Teal's chances will all come down to who looks the best on the corflutes and gets the retail politics right on the ground - just ask Maxine McKew who ousted Lil' Johnnie in '07, and claimed her victory could be put down solely to her personally knocking on every single door in Bennelong. Whether that's humanly possible or not, who knows, but you get her drift.

Integrity in Govt. is one of the Teals' three general planks in their shaky platform as far as I can make out, so ScoMo's doubling down on the scary concept of a Federal ICAC was foolish at best, disastrous at worst. It was refreshing then to hear one of the Commissioners down at the NSW ICAC, Rushton SC, have a lash at those who think public corruption is no big deal, going so far as to call them "buffoons", which is not yr usual lawyer speak. People really care about this low-down dirty shit, he reckons. Of course Rushton was splitting legal hairs saying that it's impossible for an ICAC to be, in Scotty's famous last words, a "Kangaroo Court", because an ICAC is not a "court", it's an "investigative body with Royal Commission powers". But it is a "Star Chamber" no doubt, and many have fallen by the wayside in there, and that's because these people can do whatever they like with the full protection of the law if they decide to go after you. They would also not hesitate for a single second to cook a corrupt Labor goose, either. Just ask Eddie Obeid, he'll tell you. It's a truism "if you are ever called to give evidence at a Royal Commission, be afraid, very afraid", but a good one. Never mind living in perpetual fear of Climate Commies, ScoMo, your lot are next, with Albo committed to setting up a Federal ICAC by Xmas. Just saying. Might be a bit of biting yr own arse going on here?  Especially if you don't even know the meaning of the word "autocracy" because putting the word "public" in front of it makes it entirely meaningless. Hit forehead with palm of hand.

Two weeks is an eternity in politics. Last night's free-to-air shouting match achieved nothing for anyone. Some clever dick described the upcoming exercise in the Miracle of Democracy as "effectively ten by-elections", but any psephologist could tell you that. The Masters of the Dark Arts are all over it. It's tightly reflected on the Campaign Trail, where, for instance, the importance of South Australia has been reduced to a single contestable seat while the votes in the outer west of Sydney and metro Perth are being wrung out like a wet towel. Queensland is another planet altogether. Little Tassy? Unrepresentative swill. Albo has been the best 'numbers man' in the business for decades and he's proud of it. He knows from long experience as a back room boy the importance of keeping your head low when the shit inevitably hits the fan in the final fortnight. In the meantime, he can be effusive in his private generous praise of the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Half Full Phil, for taking care of that week for him.

 

khaki or carbon?

 

Comrades,

With Albo out of the race and confined to quarters in Marrickville during the 3rd week of the Campaign, ScoMo was forced to admit that it'd been a quiet week. That's a big concession to make for someone so charismatic. Albo did have time in Iso though to have a quick dash at a "women's magazine cover" and go through his underprivileged childhood for the thousandth time. We've heard it all before of course, but it's a nice feelgood story, so why not use it? He's a good working class boy who's risen to the top of the froth. Make that plain.

In the meantime, both sides have been letting their attack dogs out on the streets nipping at the ankles, but they better make up their minds on whether its going to be a khaki or carbon election, or if any of that really matters at all, when it's votes yr looking for.

Dick "Warhope" Dutton has been a tremendous hawk with the "armed conflict is inevitable" line. Not looking at you China and not talking "yellow peril" here, oh no siree. But, it'd be a top idea to put the Australian military through it's paces, wot ho? An army that's got too many APC's and wants new tanks? After they were effectively made redundant outside Kyiv? They'd be better off investing in heavy artillery and killer drones, the way things are swinging, instead of retiring useless helicopters, as they are. An Air force finally flying the aready off the pace, highly problematical F-35's on a wing and a prayer after more than a decade of delays in old slow defunct planes? And a Navy in complete & utter disarray sailing dead-set rust-buckets, with no hope of any submarines or other kind of new boats in the foreseeable future. Red China would be quaking in their very boots at that arsenal. We'd be rolled over, shot outta the sky, and sunk in 5 minutes against a "determined enemy". But we have a piece of paper. They had to trash ANZUS to get AUKUS, so you can forget ANZAC - that's all finished. Still, Warhope would love nothing more than to see it all tipped into some shooting match, with a bigger standing army for more cannon fodder. Labor, sensibly, is staying as completely bi-partisan as they possibly can be under provocation, while trying to make sense of the Brave New World. Takes the fuse out of it. The Red Baiting is like water off the electorate's back. Since when has the Great Unwashed ever been outraged about what's going down among the swaying palms out Honiara way, let alone what's shakin' in the Spratley's?

Not much of a sound or fury coming from the gentle woosh-whosh of the wind turbines as much this Campaign, did you notice? The haunting spectre of a "carbon tax" hasn't gained any traction, maybe because it's a good idea. Perhaps that's because we never reached "Peak Oil" before its terminal decline in the first place, and still we get "oil shocks". A solar panel on every rooftop might solve a few problems, and you can pitch that to the electorate, along with a couple of free bales of Mr Fluffy's pink bats for every house! Brilliant! Never mind that the newly minted phrase "global heating" is already with us - you should try out the La Niña weather phenomenon here on the East Coast just for a start off - after two years of isolation and difficult & uncertain times, folks just don't want to imagine the whole planet going completely to fuck as well, just when the joint got a right going over from some mutant disease. The Pandemic rarely gets a mention. Recent survey's suggest 1% of people rate the Corona an election issue. How is such a seismic societal shift so easily forgotten? Voters would rather hope it all goes away or buy an electric car if they had the money to assuage their green guilt. Or maybe go half way, and catch a gas powered (hydrogen) bus? Or catch Covid. Or something. Or another.

But camoflauge uniforms and carbon credits are not what you'd call 'hot button' issues at the minute; they rarely are. Negative wage growth for a decade, and the impending threat of the dreaded Stagflation - where spending power gets brutally punished - is front of mind for most everyone. "Albo out of Iso" was the headline on Albo's twitter feed with a nice pic of him and the dog, Toto, in the park. A stark counterpoint to Scomo having a lark at Lark's distillery down there in marginal little Tassie, while tipping in $4.5 of lazy taxpayers cash to build a new plant knocking out a million litres of whisky a year (that's a helluva lotta pork barrells) saying it was an excellent example of how he understood "Australians doing it tough" - and enjoying the on-brand beverages - it's be rude not to. Not that Scott from Marketing would be looking, but it pays to pay attention to the now rare vox pops you see on the TV news these days, but there was one the other day where I saw a Chinese bloke who was asked his general opinion of Scomo and replied in his well-developed hallmark halting English "He doesn't give me money to buy food, why should I vote for him?". Remember the price of lettuce, son, and know that soon enough the cost of pineapples will be prohibitive.

The arguments are endless and circular, and it's smart of the Pinko's to avoid any real or bold defence or environmental policies and stick to platform, while pointing to ScoMo's unwillingness to hold the hypodermic needle because it was "not a race" as the bodies piled high, not to mention the sorry saga of "HoseGate" in the Happy Isles of Hawaii, go him for his dishonest shared blame game and the "it's not my job' line. Sill, incumbency is a very difficult object to shift, Albo's electability (that face, that voice) remains under a cloud, and ScoMo just being an incompetant weirdo is not enough. You more or less have to prove that the Govt. of the day is "not fit to govern". So, best to start going straight for the testicles with a few low blows this far out from the Miracle of Democracy's judgement day. Always looking for the Squirrel Grip or the Christmas Hold, with a twist. Now's the time for some genuine fear & loathing.