Oh Australia, you capricious little minx. Look what you’ve done.
I understand you couldn’t make up your mind. It was difficult. You weren’t given enough to choose between. Nauru or East Timor? Super-clinics or mental health reform? Broadband or wireless? No significant action on climate change or… no significant action on climate change?
But look what your indecision has produced.
This guy is now in charge:
Do you really think that was a good idea? Do you think he’s going to treat parliamentary exchanges any differently to the way he’s treating that fibreglass croc?
And I hope you realise that you’ve given the major parties license to act like children. Well, even more than they did before.
Julia won’t let Mark Arbib go out and play anymore, Malcom Turnbull’s been getting round in a flipping bomber jacket and Bill Heffernan is prank calling the country’s most powerful people for reasons best known to himself. No, he isn’t asking people if their fridge is running, instead he’s been introducing himself as ‘The Devil’.
That prank would probably work better on Family First Senator Steve Fielding, but he’s no doubt too busy to answer the telephone right now. No, he’s not out in the club and sippin’ that bubb, he’s performing the senator’s equivalent of blowing a raspberry and saying “ya boo sucks” to the ALP. Senator Steve, who lost his seat this election, threatened to block legislation in the Senate if the ALP gained power.
It all makes Wyatt Roy look perfectly well-seasoned.
And what about the aspiring journalists? Do you realise how hard it is for us?
My fellow student and I were charged with writing the election coverage for our student magazine, Catalyst. It seemed like such a good idea when we signed up. How were we to know there would be no result for weeks? The deadline was yesterday but the magazine comes out in two weeks, when we will apparently have a government, even if it is being run out of Bob Katter’s wool shed. Anything we wrote for deadline will be out of date by the time of publication. The shame! The horror! The obsolescence!
And worst of all, Australia, is a scenario I’m sure you didn’t consider as you queued up at primary schools around the nation, freshly sizzled sausages in your hands. One of the three wise monkeys, Tony Windsor, is threatening to MAKE US DO IT ALL AGAIN! That’s right, friends. It will be more party hacks all up in your grill waving How to Vote cards, more election day traffic, more moronic ads, more wall-to-wall coverage on the telly, more election graphics, more Kerry, more Laurie, and probably, Australia, probably more Latham.
I bet you didn’t think about that last weekend, did you?
If there was a choice between Government House or Bob Katter’s wool shed I would choose the wool shed every time! It would draw in far more tourism dollars than Government House, offer far more appealing nightlife opportunities than Canberra and present a cavalcade of prized political merchandise that could be sold to pay off the government debt.
One wonders whether city folks would take Mr Katter more seriously if he wore a beret rather than a ten-gallon? For beneath the man’s madness lies sense. No-one should argue with his stance on rural suicide, especially with one farmer killing himself every four days. It is also hard to argue with how he is currently using the political deadlock to push his own agenda – as this is what the majority of politicians (and journalists, for that matter) do. I wonder whether Australia would be complaining so much if it was a city politician causing such a furore? Or am I wrong in seeing ruralism at work? Katter’s passion and conviction for the Bush is the most admirable thing I’ve seen amidst the uninspired dirge of Australian politics for some time.
With one in ten people admitting they would change their vote if given the chance, you’re right in asking Australia what it is was thinking. When I voted, I was thinking ‘who would do a better job of running the country?’
As for everyone else, given who we’ve ended up with, I’m putting my money on they were voting for the sausages.
I agree, Katter’s activism about farmer suicide is commendable.
But I’m pretty sure we’d still take the piss if he wore a beret