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.