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.

An attempt at culture jamming the 2013 Election

Recently Opposition Leader (and aspirant to the top job – knock him down, people!) Tony Abbott has had letters sent to voters all over the country, tailored and suited to their constituency, pleading for them to vote Liberal and by describing how we can “choose a stronger Australia and a better government” and his “Plan” to do so, which is in itself vague, non-descriptive and mistier than the vision of somebody with cataracts being stuck in a Gaussian blur.

Inspired by the few “responses” to these letters I’ve seen, mostly to be found on anti-Abbott Facebook pages (may Abbott’s own mad Mick God bless these people’s efforts instead of his), including this excellent and inspiring one from a constituent of the Division of Wills (thankfully held by Labor’s Kelvin Thomson – GO KEL!):

Whoever did this reply I will happily buy them a pint and bake them a cake.

I decided to knock out a reply to this one sent to Mumsie, (yes, my shame is that I’m enrolled to vote in the Division of Fisher, where I’m hoping that the result will not leader to Angus Deayton’s only quip of “No change there then”):

Unfortunately, the ink was dying on my pen and I was without a scanner for the full high-resolution of my facetious responses.

If you’re reading this in Australia and have received one of these untruthful, PR-driven and ultimately failed missives, do as I’ve done and send it back to whichever candidate Mr Abbott has sent it from on their behalf. Also, if you’re on the other side of the world, I’d love to see what you can do with your political pamphlets too.

VOTE LABOR!

 

Knaves, Liz Jones and dozing with the White Rabbit

Well, it’s been a month since I last posted anything here because I’ve been a) too busy moving back to the “big smoke” of Brisbane, which last time I left because it was like a large country town but now it’s like a proper city – the pubs are open late on weeknights now! b) trying to find gainful employment here (and I shall “reveal” that I’m actually an aged care nurse – bet you’d never guess that’s my day job) and c) there’s been so much to write that I can’t decide what to punch out first: I’ve been meaning to write for nearly two months now a letter of commiseration to Julia Gillard (and on the whole Rudd vs. Gillard frippery, I’m still proudly pro-Gillard – much like with British Labour having had Blairites and Brownites, I’m proud to call myself a Gillardite); the election campaign currently underway between Kevin Rudd, who’s campaign slogan is “A New Way” (again, does this not sound like Tony Blair’s “Third Way”? If Kev wins – which I hope beyond all power of wishful thinking that he will to spare us the arch-conservative rule of Tony Abbott, more anon – I really hope he doesn’t start calling his style of governance “New Labor”); the laughable fringe parties (Katter’s Australia Party and Palmer’s United Party – yes, PUP, the most unfortunate acronym for something since the National bank changed to NAB) who think they’re actually going to win seats; and the (newly discovered on my part) awesomeness of Elizabeth Taylor. Quite the mix, huh?

Anyway, let’s start with the election so far. We’ve less than a month until polling day and so far the whole thing’s been totally uninspiring – the only enjoyment I get from it is whenever Opposition Leader Tony Abbott (a hair-sniffing, paedophile-defending, woman-hating, Anglo-loving, North Shore-living, blue-blooded tongue lizard. And a fundamentalist Mick too, who only quit the seminary because he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants – imagine that! A priest who took a pro-active stance with his (ugh!) libido) or one his co-conspirators from the Liberal Party make a gaffe, faux-pas or grand-mal fuck-up.

The first fuck-up came courtesy of the Liberal candidate for the seat of Greenway (currently held by Labor and the most marginal in the country), Jaymes Diaz – and yes, that hurts to type and spell James that way; it’ll never have the same impact as Liza with a Z – who when quizzed on the Libs’ “Six Point Plan” for asylum seekers could not name a single point. True to form, like all Libs when they can’t answer a question, Mr Diaz blinked, stuttered, shrugged his shoulders and mentioned something about families before being led away by a minder (so clearly on day release, Mr Diaz).  Since then it’s gone global and most notably featured on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show in the US of A, complete with all the other aspiring politicians in this country who’ve ballsed up their one shot in the past week (see, Peter Dowling, a Lib who sexted his mistress a pic of his dick in a glass of red – I hope it stung; and Stephanie Bannister, standing for the right-wing and non-admitting xenophobic One Nation party, confusing Islam as a country and the word “haram” for Quran, as well as saying she has no problem with Jews because “they follow Jesus Christ”). Apparently, it’s since been alleged that Jaymes “Liza with a Z” Diaz has slagged off his neighbouring constituency of Chifley (held by the country’s first Muslim MP, Ed Husic, for Labor) as being “full of Muslims” and tweeting his detractors juvenile missives to “fuck off”.

Next came a meet-and-greet with Abbott and one of his many lacklustre candidates, complete with the obligatory non-consensual baby-kissing, and what appeared to be a photo of Mr Abbott sniffing the hair of the baby’s mother. Now, we could say this was just an unfortunate camera-angle that snapped an unfortunate moment. But no. If fellow Liberal Troy Buswell can be caught out seat-sniffing, then does it not surprise us that all Libs have sniffing tendencies?

Yesterday, Mr Abbott described his party’s candidate for Lindsay as having “sex appeal” and today writing it off as a “daggy dad moment” – look Tony, my own father has plenty of daggy moments (and sometimes I seriously believe he must be on the autism spectrum) complete with sexist and hateful views, but he at least knows not to say them in public!

And today, when again quizzed on whether the members of his party will be allowed a conscience vote on any motions to legalise same-sex marriage, Mr Abbott again dismissed this with an even more offensive quote than he has uttered on the subject before, describing marriage equality as, “the fashion of the moment”. And yet people are seriously considering voting for this hateful, backwards and arch-conservative bully. This is not my Australia. How could we go from the glory days and revolutionary and awe-inspiring governments of Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and even Julia Gillard until the media (read: Rupert Murdoch) and the sub-conscious bigotry and vileness of otherwise “normal” folk came to the fore and villified and hindered any hope of a fair-go of governance for Ms Gillard­­? And from within her own party, too – yes, you Kevin. I’m only 22 (23 next Thursday, join me for booze, spills and thrills if you like) and proudly identify as a “staunch” and “rusted-on” Labor voter, despite my dislike of Mr Rudd – yet if he’s our only chance to ensure that this country is not sent back to the 1950s in policy, society and our standard of living, then fight the good fight Kev – don’t give that Blue(blood)-Tongue Lizard the satisfaction.

And so, as luck would have it, this morning I found out that Mr Abbott was doing a presser down the street at the Hilton, so I raced round there and sat on the other side of the street to the front (and only) exit of the joint in the hope of seeing Phoney “Kony” Tony. And after an hour’s wait and watching his minders and staffers mill about in the obligatory white Holden Statesmans’ (oh ok, Statesmen) with Commonwealth plates, he emerged. And you know what, he’s actually pretty short! Macho man of politics my arse! Seriously, it’s no surprise he is the way he is, he’s got near dwarfy-Tom Cruise levels of Small Man Syndrome. Anyway, as he happened to turn his head in my direction, I took a chance and shouted the most polite word I could use to describe him.

“KNAVE!”

So there we go, I called Tony Abbott a knave, and whether he heard it or not I don’t know (I’m guessing he manages to block out anything that isn’t spoken by a blue-tie wearing fool), at least I did it, in my own special little small-a anarchist way. By the way, his security detail is pretty poor, just a bunch of old farts who look more like White-Shoe Brigaders up from the Gold Coast to follow their “leader” around. So if you should see Mr Abbott around, kneecap for me! I’ll lend you the crowbar.

—

I’ve just discovered the writings of journalist Liz Jones, former fashion-editor and now columnist for the Daily fail, hell, Mail, who writes of her life in a column called “Liz Jones’ Diary”. I believe the selling-point is that Ms Jones is unafraid and unashamed to write of her miserable upbringing, depression and successive failures to make friends and get blokes and keep them. So far, I’ve been reading the book based on her writings and providing the backstory to her forlorn failures and eating disorders, neuroses and media-placed malaise and am finding it interesting, hillarious, heartbreaking and (yes, I’m admitting this) just occasionally familiar to moi. No, I haven’t tried to steal somebody’s sperm or had plastic surgery, but there’s a few stray similarities between myself and Ms Jones that I keep picking up on in her writing (ok now I’ve gotta sing this, “Have you met Miss Jones?”) which makes me want to either keep on reading in the hope it gets better and all is well (although by the tone of this op-ed from the Independent I doubt it) and I want to give her a hug a la Milhouse, “So this is what it feels like … when doves cry.” And how could you not either laugh hysterically or cry soul-crushingly over titles such as: “In which I face a lonely birthday” (veteran of that), “In which the years aren’t kind to me” and “In which more friends desert me”. Best I’ve read so far is “In which I’m rejected yet again”:

To promote my autobiography, I came up with the brilliant idea of asking all the men who wouldn’t go out with me, all my ex-boyfriends (all – that’s a joke!) and ex-husband, and all the friends who have dropped me to write about why I am such a pariah.

What did I do that rendered me so unfanciable? Why am I not worth a reply to a text?

and after a list of absent, wayward and disappeared friends and lovers …

They were all contacted and asked, ‘Why did you reject Lizzie?’

Each and every one refused to answer …

Well, welcome to my world, Lizzie! Where on this earth have my muckers L, A, J, G, R, K and E buggered off to? Though this being the “modern world”, any semblance of normal etiquette doesn’t apply, as I’ve found out with Facebook. It’s seems to be perfectly acceptable to just “unfriend” and block someone on the site with nary a word why. And as for all the etiquette I bang on about, you’ll be happy to know that I’ve never read Debretts – instead I’ve picked it all up by watching Ladette to Lady and Bad Lad’s Army.

If I could make a quid from it, then I’d happily publish all the anxious and near self-fulfilling prophecy (oh shut up, Josh) thoughts that keep me awake at night, but they’re not even embarrassing. They don’t get sympathy, even from me. Really, the only word I can use to describe my tendencies to be an over-emotional fool is “pathetic”. Who gives a shit if I have a semi-recurring dream that when I wake up from it has knocked seven shades of shit out of me? Or that I can’t accept most compliments because I’m deserving and that it’s presumptuous of me to expect people to give a damn anyway. But the money from such a venture … Yes, Liz Jones and her writing is the proverbial car-crash that you can’t look away from, a truck laden with combustible chemicals about to destroy a school bus, a parish of nuns and the cure for cancer. Oh well, it’s better than Fifty Shades of Grey!

Finally, one evening recently I decided to have a few drinks and traipsed round on my lonesome, having a little solo pub-crawl to see what was new since I’d last lived in Brisbane. After discovering the Embassy (where all the booze is either crafted, artisan or made by hand without being the slightest bit annoying pretentious), and being introduced to White Rabbit Dark Ale (do try it, it’s like White Ox tobacco in liquid form, but smoother than blue-eyed soul, so unlike the tobacco favoured as prison currency, it doesn’t one-inch-punch you in the soul as you imbibe it) I had a few pints of the yeasty restorative. At the next and final bar I went to I tried the White Rabbit Pale Ale and it’s a lovely drop too, and, I’m still embarrassed by this so here goes, I FELL ASLEEP! I know, right? I was only a bit tired but didn’t even notice myself nodding off with a pint in my hand whilst perched precariously on a wobbly barstool, and was woken up by the nice Irish barman, leaving to quickly slam down the rest of it and scurry away with my metaphorical tale between my legs. See, hardly up to Ms Jones’ level of unfortunate events is it?

So there we go, a post of rambling, self-agrandizing waffle but hey, at least I’m back! So look forward to some more regular updates around here and hopefully you can give me some of that sweet feedback too, even if it is hate mail. In fact, I do prefer hate mail, because nothing thrills me more than replying carefully-worded missives to my detractors (just like when I got bete-noires from my onetime fundamentalist Christian neighbours – what else could I do but reply with serial-killer handwriting and signing it “THE DEVIL”?), although I guess encouragement is just as good.

I remain nobody’s servant,

Josh

LINKS TO BE ADDED GRADUALLY