Lost the race but won the battle on primary votes

Ok, more than a week after the election I’m finally organised (or rather want to move on to writing about far more exciting things) to write about it. My observations, experience and once again longing to write a stream-of-consciousness election night piece like Bob Ellis. Here goes …

On Saturday afternoon I went to vote at my local polling booth, unfortunately this year situated in the hall of Siena Catholic College – insert glib remark about church and state here – and arrived to find quite a few Peter Slipper corflutes surrounding the place. And who wouldn’t want to kick them over, graffiti them or light them on fire? I was sensible and did nothing more violent than sticking my used chewing gum on them – twice. Much love, Pete! On the way to the queue for voting I was of course hassled by the faithful of a few different parties with their wasteful ‘How to Vote’ cards and pamphlets. Again, I was well behaved and instead of telling the Liberal volunteers to “piss off” I instead gave them the most curt and forceful “NOTHANKYOU” I could manage. I of course took the Labor sheet and a Palmer United Party (yes, PUP! – the most useless and ironic in it’s non use of irony anagram since the National bank became NAB) pamphlet and was again civilised to my canvas-shoed toes until the PUP player said after me, “Best place for it, put the yellow paper on top of the red!” So of course I automatically before you could say “fat millionaire” switched the papers round in my hands so Labor was again on top.

So, after quickly lining up I made my way to the polling booth and filled out the green ballot for the House of Reps.
And out of the 10 candidates my preference was:

1. GREENS (Y’know, preferences to Labor and all that)
2. LABOR – Bill Gissane was the candidate for Fisher and from first-sight a good bloke too
3. Oh like you really care – you’ll be pleased to know I put Mal Brough dead last in 10th place and Slipper 9th, the rest were a motley bunch of half-baked independents, Family First (read: Fundamentalist) and the usual blokey yobbos from PUP and Katter’s Australia Party.

On to the Senate ballot, and of course I voted below the line, like you’d expect anything less (or better) of me. And I spent my time carefully giving my preferences to all 82 candidates for Queensland. Again, Greens 1st, Labor 2nd, the Liberals dead last at number 82 and then to work backwards until I’d made sure that the Sex Party was ahead of the I Shoot, Root and Vote or whatever the fuck they’re called.

I snapped myself after voting in a little tribute of sorts to Catherine Deveny’s pic of her culture-jamming the 2004 election.

At least I was on the right side of history.

And so to the election coverage.

And WHAT A CROCK OF SHIT it was that once respectable “journalists” or people who dare to call themselves “journalists” (whom you would think would know that to be a journalist one must be factual and IMPARTIAL) were declaring that Tony Abbott and his band of fundamentalist and economic-rationalist nutbags had already won – at 5 pm! Another hour until the polls closed in the eastern states! I know, right?

And Channel 7’s coverage, called the “Panel of Power” or some such rubbish that clearly belongs to a talk show in the 90s was nice and equitable, starting off with 4 Libs and 2 Labor people on the panel. And only 1 woman too! So switching over to the more “balanced” if not “subdued” ABC before I put my foot through the television, it was the same thing! “Liberals win! Liberals win!” Never have I seen Antony Green throwing all sense of patience and factual actuality out the window.

Eventually I started to get drunk, not to drown my sorrows on a Labor loss (I remain a proud Gillardite and know one day my views on Rudd will be vindicated) but because I just didn’t care anymore. This had been the most uninspiring election campaign in (my) recent memory, forced to choose between a paedophile-defending, fundamentalist-Catholic, homophobic, misogynistic blue(blood) tongued-lizard and a megalomaniac sadist who can whip up support on Instagram but can’t pass any lasting policies. Is it any wonder I just didn’t care?

By now (and I’m still waiting for the final result, was waiting until all votes were counted before I wrote this but I can’t put it off any longer) I really only hoped that Sophie Mirabella, the Member for Indi would lose her seat. Don’t know Sophie? Lucky you! How to explain a sneering, bullying, hysterical in the non-belief of a round Earth (probably) and most of all, RUDE person like Mrs Mirabella? And no, I don’t hate her because she’s a woman (looking at you, Helen Razer) but because, well, the best way to explain this is: you know that a person can’t be good if your astrology-teaching and peace and love-espousing mum reads Mirabella’s bio and all she can say is, “What a dog!”

What, not THAT Cathy McGowan? Oops.

Anyway, the one good thing (I hope will still happen) of this campaign is the massive swing against Mirabella, led by independent Cathy McGowan. Good on her! I’m sure I’m one of many people who wish they were enrolled to vote in Indi just to give Mirabella the shits. And no, unlike a few people on the internet who believe that most people are against Mirabella due to her being a woman, and not just a vile and nasty person – Helen Razer, whom I’ve only just discovered and copped a fair bit of flak for taking the view that we all hate Mirabella because she’s a woman, take note.

And on the subject of Ms Razer, she made election night fun. Sadly she’s since deleted her twitter account and has pretty much gone “off the grid”, but with a few drinks in me and a lot more in her she was tweeting away about anything that was annoying her about the election, politics and people in general. From calling Kevin Rudd a “symbolism obsessed lollipop” to decrying the left for trying to change the world with “rainbow chalk crossings”, what’s not to love? Shame on you wowsers and Helen Lovejoys who all flew off the handle at her. If I was any more churlish, I’d be like that skinny idiot having a hissy fit on Youtube – “LEAVE HELEN ALONE!”

So I got drunker on first Malibu, then Tequila, then Bourbon before I passed out for a bit after watching the Ruddbot’s concession speech and thankfully slept through Abbott’s victory, before my brother came home and piled me with more booze, Vodka this time, and he finally conceded that I can punch properly, for some reason daring me to punch him repeatedly in the stomach. It was that kind of night. I’m sure a glib columnist for the Sunday supplement would make some analogy of “rolling with the punches” here.

And so, we who believe in marriage equality, faster broadband and better infrastructure have been left to go wallow in the misery of opposition for the next few years. And yes, Labor did win more primary votes than the Libs, but only because the LNP and the Nationals aren’t tallied together with the Liberal Party, which is a crock despite they love to have a love-in, sorry, COALITION.

Don’t penalise penalties, Mr Abbott

from http://www.australianunions.org.au/

This is, for now, as close as I’ll probably ever come to writing from my heart, or at least the spot where I have a lumpen-shaped chunk of stone where one’s “heart” usually is.

Tomorrow, we will all be voting in the 2013 federal election, or at least those who turn up will, even if they just cock and ball the ballot paper. Thinking of that makes me want to spill the beans on the only excuse I know of that works if you’re pulled up for not voting, but tomorrow’s election is so important that everyone needs to vote, so ask me later.

It is important to vote tomorrow not just because we live in a democracy and can vote for whomever we wish without fear of rigging – or much fear, it shames me to admit that my beloved Labor did once rig the result in a by-election for the Victorian state seat of Nunawading in the 80s but ho hum, it kept Jeff Kennett away from the top job for a few more years.

It is important to vote tomorrow not just because it’s something to get done and then the rest of your Saturday is free to use watching the football.

It is important to vote tomorrow and equally if not more so who you vote for.

I know that on this blog and on Twitter, and especially in my Facebook page if you know me from there, that I regularly, if not prolifically, go the thump on the Liberal Party and conservatives of all political parties in a way that really only makes me look like a 13 year-old in the body of a 23 year-old (I know, I’m like mental jailbait) but this time I’m imploring you to vote Labor and not Liberal for what is to many people I know arguably the most important topic of this election campaign, and you’re excused (this time) for not picking up on it, thanks to the mainstream media’s pathetic admiration and enabling exploitation of Tony Abbott”s daughters, who have been seen every day on the campaign trail being used by their father to get attention, patriarchal pimp that he is.

It is important to not vote Liberal or to preference them last on your ballot paper not just because of their policy of “rewarding” mothers who already earn over $100,000 a year up to $75,000 in paid-parental leave (just what we need, more North Shore brats with a sense of entitlement). Not just because of their policy to stop people-smuggling from Indonesia by buying, yes, spending our taxpaying dollars on buying the rickety and unsafe boats of the smugglers – and then what? Forget Great Western Auto City, Barloworld and Cool Banana Motorama, give Honest Tony’s Used Boats a try. Not just because of their policy on repealing anti-discrimination laws.

What we should all be worried about more than Mr Abbott’s repeated insensitive, discriminatory and offensive “gaffes” and “daggy dad moments” is what he and his party will do to workers, specifically people who rely on their penalty rates in order to live.

It could be argued that would delivered victory to Labor and allowed them to form a government after 11 years of Liberal rule was the Libs’ policy known as “Work Choices”, which was vehemently protested against by all due to it’s unfairness and bullying of workers that would be legalised and we’d have nothing to do about it. Work Choices was basically a way to undo collective and enterprise bargaining in the workplace and to get workers on individual contracts whereby the public was told that their employment contracts would be “tailor-made” to suit them – yes, if that suit was being worn on the proverbial clerk in the old saying, “Done up like a pox doctor’s clerk”.

In 2011, Mr Abbott was interviewed by Neil Mitchell on Melbourne’s 3AW (bring back Hinch!) and declared that if elected to government, Work Choices would be “dead and buried” and “cremated” under his leadership, nor would the policy be returning under any other name.

However, just last week, the Liberal candidate for the seat of Gilmore, Ann Sudmalis, was quoted as saying in a candidate’s forum that “Any workplace relations legislation is on the table after the election, not before.” Yes, AFTER and NOT BEFORE.

from http://www.australianunions.org.au/

If you think I’m exaggerating here, cast your mind back to the “Watefront dispute” in 1998 when Patrick Stevedores, assisted by then Minister for Industrial Relations, Peter Reith to lock all of it’s workers out of their jobs at ports nationwide via bullying, assault and intimidation – security guards who were nothing more than glorified thugs patrolling the wharves wearing balaclavas and with the hounds ready to be released at a moment’s notice. For more on that dark episode in our nation’s employment history, see the docu-drama Bastard Boys.

from http://www.australianunions.org.au/

And now Mr Abbott has refused to say outright whether or not he is supportive of some big businesses idea of ridding us of penalty rates. Instead, Mr Abbott shiftily refers to a Productivity Commission into Industrial Relations that he is promising will (doubtful I’m guessing) either cut penalty rates and thus jobs in the strange belief that the more penalty rates are gone, the more jobs can be created from this.

As ACTU President Ged Kearney has said:

“We need Tony Abbott to commit to making no changes to penalty rates if he is elected, rather than hiding behind his mysterious Productivity Commission inquiry into IR.”

“Penalty rates have been part of the Australian workplace for decades and provide much-needed income for low-paid workers who are required to work week-ends and public holidays.”

“Cutting penalty rates will hurt workers without creating jobs.”
“Money paid as penalty rates does not disappear it is returned to the economy when workers use it to buy goods and services from businesses. Reducing penalty rates will hurt these businesses.”

If you or anyone you know has a job whereby they are paid an award rate, or receive penalty pay or even providing frontline services in the community especially, then do not let them vote Liberal.

A vote for the Liberal party tomorrow will fuck this country up, and that’s putting it politely.

from http://www.australianunions.org.au/

I’m writing this because with all the possible outcomes of a possible Abbott government, and that’s including the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, people being paid by the government to push out sprogs they can already afford to keep themselves, bullying and bigotry instead of debate on policy, not to mention all the other disasters that will happen from those in his “cabinet” (for all their intelligence it’s more like a broom-cupboard), what he will do to workers is the worst.

As somebody who has worked in a job that requires penalty rates to make the wage worthwhile, and most people I know also requiring their penalties to survive, a vote for anyone but Labor will make us all worse off and, without exaggerating, have to go begging for alms.Please don’t vote for Tony Abbott. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.yo