Federal Election Hottness 2007
Post mortem deception
Brian Loughnane, in his National Press Club address the other day said:
Labor has been given a clear mandate by the Australian people based on specific promises and this will be the basis on which they will be judged at the next election.
Labor has set high expectations, and voters will expect the new Government to live up to them. They made very specific promises to prevent grocery prices going up, to prevent petrol prices going up and to prevent interest rates from going up. Our research shows the Australian people are watching carefully to see whether Labor’s promises are just more spin or whether they can deliver. The Coalition intends to hold Labor to the standards it set itself. Mr Rudd declared the buck stops with him – it will not be good enough or acceptable to the Australian people for Labor to try and blame the previous Government when times get tough. The Australian people have given Labor a go based on very specific promises and they expect them to be delivered. (Emphasis added)
Incredible really. The Libs are trying to say that the ALP made the same mistake this election as the Libs did in 2004.
Orangutans Revealed as Non-Core Promise
Remember that creepy election campaign video of Howard being conspicuously affectionate towards young Daniel and his toy monkey?
As it turns out, Daniel’s father is now shocked, shocked to learn that his disabled child has been ruthlessly exploited for election propaganda and then tossed, tossed aside. Apparently the promise to Save the Apes will not now be honoured, as it is rightly viewed within the bureaucracy as a last-minute barrel’o’pork:
Heritage Strategy Branch assistant secretary Greg Terrill withdrew the funding commitment in an email.
“The minister’s decision to provide new funding to support the work of the orang-utan protection units was made during the caretaker period and is considered by the department to be an election commitment,” he wrote.
I suppose now Rudd will make moves to override the public service and honour the promise, because it’s a fairly impossible PR situation, but REALLY. Sad for the kid, and probably for the apes or whatever, but do you know what? The video was and is foul, its intent was obvious, and more fool/shame on the family for letting it go ahead.
Into the Shredder!
You see what you miss, the one night you decide to go out? I can’t believe it took me until now to find out about this. Apparently Channel 9’s Election Night Gimmick was something called “The Shredder”, wherein pictures of members of parliament who looked likely to lose their seats were periodically fed through a shredder, to the delighted screams of the public. Witness The Shredder!
In response, Channel 7 went only slightly more tastefully into that good night and introduced something called “The Tower of Power”, which was a rather less detailed and more sexy version of the Mackerras Pendulum. As you can see below, the party that made it to the top of the Tower of Power first was the winner!
Hottness.
The Kerb Stomp
As we on the broadly-defined Left slowly wait for our well-celebrated livers to dry, like so many vinegary gerkhins left out after thorough pickling, it’s probably time for a bit of digestion of the moment. I don’t necessarily share premature disappointment over Kevin Rudd’s conservatism, because George Bush after all won his 2000 election on a platform of moderation, though I’ll certainly concede that his acceptance speech was a bunch of bullshit hyper-cliché that would have shamed a rugby league coach. All it needed to complete the scene was Tim Gartrell having a bucket of ice poured over him in the background, and Laurie Ferguson scratching his balls through tracksuit pants.
A the election result was an annihilation, and it’s not hard to savour the schadenfreude. The question is, for a Left so unused to electoral success (and so unwilling to mention the unfortunate State level of Labor Government, kept by a discursive Grace Poole in a locked room of the progressive soul), how best to scratch the insatiable itch of triumphalism?
To follow the current fashion of cliché: history is the best teacher. We should look forward from our past, secure in the future, and always twirling, twirling towards freedom.
Here it is, straight from 2004, the most right-wing piece of writing ever put to publication and made infamous by social bookmarking websites: Adam Yoshida’s masterfully terrible Four More Years!
Despite all of their tricks, despite all of their lies, the people have rejected them. They mean nothing. They are worth nothing. There’s no point in trying to reach out to them because they won’t be reached out to. We’ve got their teeth clutching the sidewalk and out boot above their head. Now’s the time to curb-stomp the bastards.
Oh yeah. That’s how you do it.
Libs show they've learnt nothing from Leaflet-Gate
Imagine saying this to a room full of journos:
As the Liberals drowned their sorrows on Saturday night, one former senior Liberal adviser blamed the result on “the f—ing Chinese”, an apparent reference to Asian voters in Bennelong turning against Mr Howard.
If that was the case in the end, I wonder why?
If this is the calibre of mind that ran the election - not to mention the Government - then we were even worse off than previously thought and you can bet that there will be hidden, lingering piles of shit to clean up that no one ever dreamt of. Stuff you, we’re through with you and your little dog too.
O Frabjous Day! Callooh! Callay!
Early this morning I danced the Peter Garrett to the Jackson Five’s “I want you back” (refrain: “We’re coming back”. Yes, yes, I know.).
It was pretty ace, realising suddenly that Tony Abbott and Mal Brough were gone and probably wouldn’t be back. I mean, people around me were fixating on the whole Howard seat loss thing, but for me the most important aspect of The Change really was getting rid of these fanatics and their fringe politics, putting them back in their boxes where they belong. It is highly satisfactory that freak fundo groups like Catch the Fire and Pastor Danny Nalliah will no longer have outrageous access to the highest echelons of power to deliver their messages of support from God. I cannot conceive of what the country would look like in three years’ time, had the Howard Government been re-elected, and this kind of influence continued.
Today, sober, I pause to reflect on the fact that the senior Coalition member in the country may well be Karlene Maywald, a National and Minister for the River Murray, Water Security, Regional Development, Small Business, and the Minister assisting the Minister for Industry and Trade, in the SA State Labor Government. I don’t know what that means, really, but given the shit state of the NSW Labor Government especially, this probably won’t last for long.
I hope that Labor’s Government will do their best to steer Democracy away from the current near dessication brought on by a double house majority, and not be distracted by the plush carpet in the ministerial wing. In the meantime however, I will celebrate the revitalisation of democracy by a Labor Government and a tricky upper house, with a sad note reserved for the loss of Andrew Bartlett. Also, our new Lady Deputy is making history of the kind that we with Lady Parts have hoped for and dreamt of. I ask any male readers to reflect on this especially, because in a time of nominal equality it’s sometimes necessary to ram home the idea that a big part of realising that one can do, is seeing that others have done so first.
Howard declares victory!
When on earth did you ever hear a politician predicting that they would win the upcoming election? Never, that’s when, and for the good reason that nobody likes a tosser.
I mean, we’re all pretty familiar with the “still a long way to go yet”, the “the Australian people will have their say at the ballot box”, and the ubiquitous “quietly confident”. We even have the opposite end of the spectrum, with these dreks scrambling to prove that they stand a high chance of losing, the “we’re the underdog”, “we face annihilation”. So I was pretty surprised that this is how Howard is choosing to roll:
He said the impression he had gained while campaigning around the country was that people were “broadly happy with the fundamental direction” in which he had taken Australia.
“I don’t believe we are going to be defeated, I believe were going to win,” he said.
Alex Hawke: Don't.
From today’s SMH:
“The fact is that he really didn’t need to campaign,” Allison says. “Hawke will win, and from the springboard of a safe seat like this, who knows where he’ll end up?”
WE HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Marginal Hearts and Minds
The Australian website has been producing a series of little clips following the “hearts and minds” of one voter in various marginal electorates, and you get a good insight into who’s going to decide on our next Government. It’s actually pretty interesting, if sometimes in a car-wreck kind of way.
The most recent clip, from Monday, shows David, Sharon and their two kids Dylan and Braden, who are a third-generation timber working family in Braddon. Marvel at it.