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.

Cory Bernardi and his illiterate groupies

Cory Bernardi is still opposed to same-sex marriage, believing that his earlier predictions of the consequences of marriage equality would be bestiality and polygamy have come true; though how same-sex marriage between two humans could be seen as a green-light for matrimony with mammals and for swingers to be “normal” – isn’t the whole point of swinging that it is “frowned upon”, and thus a group of horny and boring people with nothing better to do than get their rocks off can throw their stones at others? Bernardi previously voiced his opposition to marriage eqaulity in September 2012, claiming that if same-sex marriage was legalised,

“The next step, quite frankly, is having three people or four people that love each other being able to enter into a permanent union endorsed by society – or any other type of relationship … there are even some creepy people out there … who say it is OK to have consensual sexual relations between humans and animals.”

before adding

“Will that be a future step? In the future will we say, ‘These two creatures love each other and maybe they should be able to be joined in a union’.

Today he’s gone one better, saying that a petition presented to Parliament by the Polyaction Amory Lobby has proved him “right”, and then deciding to hit out at the entire left (as only a Lib can) by claiming it was a Greens-endorsed group (again, as only a Lib can do), and that bestiality and polyamory are part of the Greens “radical agenda”.

Bernardi is well known for subscribing not to the loony left but  – even worse – the loony right, once again proving that the Liberal Party should be done for false advertising. “Ah yes, but they’re only called ‘Liberal’ because they believe in a ‘free’ market’,” I’m told. Yes, and look where that’s got the world – KFC, GFC and sweet F.A.

Bernardi is a founder of the Conservative Action Network, known as CANdo, a right-wing rival to the left-leaning Get Up! group of grassroots activists. “Conservative Activist” sounds like an oxymoron to me, which reminds me: for all the talk of “well meaning liberals”, why do we never hear of “well meaning conservatives”? CANdo? More like a brat saying “shan’t”.

After a poke around on the CANdo site, there’s a page for supporters to suggest things for CANdo to campaign on. The best I’ve found is by someone called Ken Barton, “Stop This High Spending Government From Crippling Us – And Worse! (sic)”:

This crazy crazy Government, ruled by Fabians and deranged International Monetarists, must stop spending even if it means:
Stop funding the Aged Pension
Healthcare will now be 100% user pays
End all Welfare – churches will have to pick up the slack
All Education is users pays including childcare, universities etc
Armed Forces disbanded
All Foreign Aid will cease as of midnight
Close all Foregin Embassies
Sell all public buildings in Canberra and Capital Cities in first 12 months of an Abbott government
All tax revenue will go to repay the foreign debt – will take approx. 28 years to do so under this funding scenario
Until this is put into place we will have no chance of returning this society to the glory of the Howard years.

Spelling and grammar aside, it’s laughable. Yes, let’s scrap the aged pension so that Granny has to spend her twilight years begging for alms. Though the suggestion that social welfare should be junked and churches responsible for it is food for thought. For two seconds. Yeah, let the Catholic church pay all the oldies, disabled and unemployed a stipend – shouldn’t take too long, just look at how efficient they’ve been with victims of the church’s abuse getting compensated, if not finally acknowledged. And as for closing all Foregin embassies, perhaps that can wait until the nation of Foregin is established. Back to the drawing board, Ken!

In December 2011 in The Monthly, Sally Neighbour wrote a profile of Bernardi, and what I remember most of it are the quotes by unfortunately unidentified members of his own party:

“Cory is deluded,” says a Liberal Party colleague. “He is one of the least effective or important members of the parliamentary team. Cory is a person without any intellect, without any base, and he should really never have risen above the position of branch president. His right-wing macho-man act is just his way of looking as though he stands for something.”

and

“He wants to be some sort of conservative warrior but he’s not up to it intellectually,” says a Liberal associate.

Much like retiring Liberal politician Judi Moylan was widely quoted on yesterday, it’s time for the moderates in the Liberal Party to speak up, if not the party properly, to denounce the nuts who are moving inwards from the fringe; because with three months until the next election, there’s nothing worse than the thought of Cory Bernardi as President of the Senate.

UPDATE – Senator Bernardi has now claimed that his words yesterday were “taken out of context”. This article in The Australian reports on Liberal leader Tony Abbott’s sister Christine Forster, a lesbian, responding to Bernardi in a tweet. Again, another Liberal non-apology for hatred and stupidity.

Why I hate the BDS movement

Since the age of sixteen, I’ve had a deep love, interest and respect for Jewish people, whether they be practicing or just of the blood pure. It all started from reading the columns of Julie Burchill, the British journalist who is known as one of the fiercest defenders of Israel in the British media. Where are the defenders of Israel in Australia?

Why do I have such a thing for Jews? I can’t explain but I hope the following list will. How many of the people listed are either clever, talented, intelligent, funny, switched-on, interesting or even downright sexy, and all because they’re Jewish, regardless of whether by birth, religious observance or descent:

• John Safran
• Deborah Conway
• Sir John Monash
• Malcolm Fraser
• Frank Lowy
• Abe “Mr Sin” Saffron
• Robert Manne
• Peter Singer
• Sir Peter Abeles
• Poppy King
• Sidney Myer
• Renee Geyer
• David Helfgott

And that’s just a selection from Australia alone. I could go on with a list of people from overseas but we’d never hear the end of it, such is my passion.

I consider myself a philosemite (a Judeophile if you will, but small-minded people hear the suffix of “phile” and their minds go instantly to child abuse – I can’t fathom it either) and am very slowly learning all about Judaism, Israel and Zionism. Thanks to Burchill’s and others’ writings and the dozens of books I’ve read, I’m gradually becoming more passionate and learned.

I overcame the slight dislike of my name once I learnt it was of Hebrew origin, (Yeshua, translated to God is Salvation) and that even the alias I tooled about with, Levi, was again by coincidence Hebrew, meaning “joined in harmony”.

But the real turning point for me was when I decided to join a political party. Being of a lefty persuasion (despite favouring Israel over Palestine, a slap in the face to any left-leaning cause) I decided to join the Socialist Alliance, cheap at only $15 a pop for yearly membership. I only attended meetings and such for a fortnight before realising what a crock it was, of people brainwashed by words like “solidarity” and “cause” and “consciousness” bandied about like stones, the same stones that Israelis are pelted with by Palestinians. Also I got out before the question over the Middle East arose and would surely have been kicked out anyway. I can just picture myself being chased out of Trades Hall for refusing to kow-tow to the demands of a group of people whose chosen fashion accessory is one of Mum’s tea towels, straight out of the third drawer down.

Months later and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign kicked into full swing in Australia, spearheaded by Senator Lee Rhiannon of the NSW branch of The Greens, and a few mimsy words from then party leader Bob Brown, who didn’t anywhere near calling it out on the anti-Semitic bullying it is (And doesn’t Lee Rhiannon always remind you of that weird teacher from primary school that nobody liked and always smelled like they’d pissed themselves and rolled round in chicken-salt before leaving home?).

I’m glad I cut all ties with the lefty loonies by then, because at that time they all decided to do the only thing a BDS campaign can do, to picket a chocolate shop because it was started by two guys who happened (by fortune) to have been born in Israel. I was livid and had a near panic-attack when I read in the papers that 19 protestors (some of whom were from the S.A., just one letter away from S.S.) were arrested for protesting outside a Max Brenner store in Melbourne’s CBD, on charges including riotous behaviour, trespass and besetting premises. In my upset state I seriously thought that the next thing the S.A. would do was goose-step down Glen Huntly Road to Caulfield, Elsternwick and Balaclava (the home of most of Melbourne’s Jewish population) and attack any newsagent that dared to sell the Australian Jewish News. Thankfully, this has not happened, but if anything so resembles that sickening thought I’ll be on the first plane down there to abuse them in turn whilst proudly wearing my Israeli flag-patterned bandana (sorry,  it was cheaper than buying an actual flag-sized flag, of which I hope to buy a few to put up in my front windows).

Picketing Max Brenner stores and other businesses with links, however tenuous, to Israel is not just confined to Melbourne, or even Australia, but has happened throughout the world too – from London to Los Angeles. It also happened at around the same time to another Max Brenner store in Brisbane, and delightfully the BDS mob were met by a counter-protest, with bigger numbers and louder voices. Happily there was as a pro-Israel protest and show of support for the beleaguered chocolate shop in Melbourne, although sadly (to me personally) was sponsored and organised by the Liberal Party (don’t let the name fool you, international readers – the Liberal Party of Australia are conservative and currently there’s a right-wing Catholic at the helm), but at last Josh Frydenberg, Liberal MP for Kooyong, finally endeared himself to me, by asking BDS protestors to their smug faces: “Where is your Boycott, Divestment, Sanction about the butchers in Syria, about Ahmadinejad in Iran and the perils of Hezbollah?” If I should ever move to Anglican, leafy, upper middle class Kooyong – he’s got my vote.

So why do we hear nothing from a pro-Israel point-of-view in the Australian media? Granted we hear precious little about the Middle East anyway, usually only a few seconds on the evening news of rockets being launched over borders. And even that’s only on World News Australia on SBS! Australia needs a shake-up to scrape off the anti-Semitic crust that somehow most people I’ve met have inherently got. Even last week a 17 year-old (now former) friend of mine heard me mention that I was reading about Israel. His response to this was “bomb the shit out of them.” Considering that the political history of the Middle East isn’t taught in high school history (for shame), how could he say this without knowing a thing? How come in February 2012 on a block of toilets in near-redneck Wantirna of all places, some yobs chose as graffiti “The best Jew is a dead Jew” and a picture of a stick-figure in a noose, in a place with no Jewish people at all?

As Peter Finch cried in Network, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna’ take it anymore!” Why is there no history of out-and-proud philosemitism in Australia, particularly in the most Jewish-populated cities of Sydney and Melbourne? Why do studies say that anti-Semitism in Australia is on the rise since 9/11? Correct me if I’m wrong but was Israel in anyway involved in an attack that was orchestrated by the suicidal shareholders of Al Qaeda PLC? I know Muslims, whether fundamental or not, have taken stick (if not a branch), since then but blaming Jews for a cowardly offence committed by people? Have you not heard of Nick Griffin? Isn’t this just fringe-dwelling conspiracy nuts blaming Jewish people for everything wrong in their lives becoming mainstream?

It’s not on.

NOTE: Next I’ll be writing about what it’s really like attending a Socialist Alliance meeting and joining them on a protest – in other words, “My Brush with the Loony Left”.