Before You Get Too Excited About The Election Result, Stop Everything And Listen To This

Listen to this Sydney PEN lecture by brilliant Melbourne writer, Christos Tsiolkas about tolerance which was aired on Radio National's Book Show last week.

You know him. He wrote Loaded, the book which was made into the infamous but way awesome Alex Dimitriades movie, Head On.

What a lecture.

Spicy.

Biting.

Aggressive.

And an exact explanation why I can't stand either of the political parties and why I'm so disappointed with the left.

Spot on.

Wow etc.

By the way, Tsiolkas' 2005 novel, Dead Europe is a ball tearer, one of the most confronting yet beautifully written things I've read in years.

The Story Of The Entire Campaign Told By The Giants Of Oz Rock/Pop!

Men and women of Australia, behold some of the lamest election analysis ever attempted.

I'm Dog Tired And On Deadline So This Is The Best I Can Do Right Now For Intelligent Political Comment

It's not only Rudd's popularity that's waxing and waning.

Game On Moles

Let the shithouse game begin.

Boy Bashed To Death And Then The Election Campaign Gets A Whole Lot Filthier

On a day when dunce Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews should be answering questions about 4 Corners’ Liz Jackson interview with Dr Haneef, he instead throws up a despicable wedge.

Citing the bashing murder of 18 year-old Sudanese boy, Liep Gony in Noble Park, Andrews back-announces a cutback in immigration from war torn African countries because…wait for it…

"Some groups don’t seem to be settling and adjusting into the Australian way of life."

"I have been concerned that some groups don't seem to be settling and adjusting into the Australian way of life as quickly as we would hope and therefore it makes sense to put the extra money in to provide extra resources, but also to slow down the rate of intake from countries such as Sudan."

But Andrews' stupidity and desperation gets worse.

The alleged attackers were not African.

Two Noble Park men, David Rintoull, 22, and Dylan Sabatino, 19 have been charged with Gony's murder. A girl, 17, is facing other charges.

For this it’s simple. Andrews must now resign from public life.

Not just him. His spokeswoman connected the attack and her department’s plans to cutback on taking in Sudanese just doesn’t get it. From the Herald Sun:

"It's more anecdotal (evidence)," she said, citing media reports of some serious crimes involving Sudanese. "A lot of people from African regions need extensive trauma and torture counselling."

No shit. That is your department’s responsibility, not reason to hit them some more. And it's a tough but ultimately worthwhile gig. Just listen to the incredible Late Night Live interview with ex-child Sierra Leone soldier, Ishmael Beah and you'll start to get a tiny idea of how hard it is on children who've grown up with war and how difficult their recuperation can be.

Phong Nguyen, chairman of Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria has it nailed, making the point to The Age that any refugee programs should be based on need and that,

"Selecting refugees on perceptions of their capacity to integrate borders on racism."

"It is simply inhumane for the Australian government to close the door on these people based on perceptions that some African refugees are not integrating into the Australian community," "As with all refugees, their initial settlement period will face challenges and the Australian African community is currently facing discrimination and racism."

Violence in Noble Park isn't new.

I know the place well.

My own German migrant grandparents, Oma and Opa lived there for many years. I hung out and grew up on the weekends in those streets in the 80's with Croat, Viet, Italian, Greek and German local kids and yep, some of them were thugs. There's always been bashings and stabbings there but we all mucked around together at the local pinnie joint, playing Frogger together no matter where we came from. Once we gossiped about a kid down the creek who got stabbed in the neck. Johnny and Tommy, the Crows next door knew him well, but weren't too concerned because a homemade bomb was found under their mum's car a week before.

What's the hard to make out camera photo? Something I saw a week before all this flared up. As I was already in an emotional Grand Final week state, this scene almost made me cry. A bunch of nine to eleven year-old Sudanese and Ethiopian kids on the Rathdowne Street housing commission estate playing Australian Rules football. Watched them for ten minutes and boy, they were REALLY GOOD. Drop punts, torps, baulks, marks and a cry of DIDAK!!! Watching, I felt dizzy and proud.

Bunch of despicable arse, the African kids aren't integrating.

Once Off Special Never To Be Missed!

As seen on the specials pile at Readings, Carlton.

Nuff said.

Melbourne: Relaxed And Comfortable

Meet Rathdowne Street, Carlton in Shadow Finance Minister, Lyndsay Tanner's safe Labor seat of Melbourne. Every election, pundits get carried away saying the seat could go to the Greens but it never happens and never will.

Even now with the always irritable Dean Mighell (pronounced Mile but gee, MIG-HELL is an awesome Commie name!), and his Electrical Trades Union funding a big bit of Greens' candidate Adam Bandt's campaign, they don't have a chance.

$20,000 is bugger all really, barely funding a mailout, a billboard or a free beer bbq. Labor will probably spend at least 10 times more on that seat alone.

Besides, the area is under constant demographic change: spinach and hollandaise has become in four years caramelized onion, blackberry and truffle oil jus the area's standard cafe breakfast side dish. Apart from the planned destruction of the lovely vistas pictured, house and apartment prices have soared since last election and it's almost impossible to rent a one bedroom hovel for under $350 a week.

Melbourne's voters are 'relaxed and comfortable' and as a pundit, it's my duty to generalize. Sticking issues will be interest rates, Work Choices, new Rudd, childcare, taxes, Work Choices and interest rates. Not forests, the war, Haneef, uranium and climate change as the Greens claim.

And Mighell's grudge donation won't stick. The Greens will never be a credible and listened to voice on workplace laws.

The Liberals won't bother with the seat and will send in a potato with eyes held on with toothpicks as their candidate.

My tip for the seat?

Collingwood by 38 points.

Remember Those "We're Acting" Ads On Late Night TV For Some Dodgy Film And Television School? The Government's New Work Choices Ads Are Way Crappier.

I was going to whine about the horrible new Work Choices television ads but the hot, nice smelling and pretty haired kids at Lucky Boris Yeltsin Is Dead used their fiendish powers of charm, wit and dogged enthusiasm to READ MY MIND.

And they did so in a list.

The Top 5 Reasons The Workplace Authority’s “Two Mates in a Pub” Commercials are Unconvincing, Uncompelling and Downright Stupid:

1. Two guys walk into a bar. We keep expecting this joke to get funny. It doesn’t.
2. A pub, two “mates”, a basket of chips and two glasses - sounds reasonable…even pleasant. But there is no beer in the glasses. None. Could it be that with their spanky new AWA’s they don’t have enough coin for the next shout? Or the Australian Government could see fit to spend our taxes on shamelessly political commercials masquerading as information campaigns, but was too tight to pop for two schooners of XXXX Gold. Who knew?
3. There are no sodden coasters. There are some car keys on the table. The mates’ pants appear to coordinate with their shirts and do not appear to be pulling uncomfortably across their bellies. Have these people ever been in a pub?
4. The pub is not playing Shannon Noll.
5. The mates are talking about WorkChoices, rather than tits.

I hate everything about these ads.

The dialogue stinks of malformed leaky arse, the acting is limper than Australian Idol's Rock Night and the blokes' glowing anecdotes are so staged and unbelievable even the minister, Joe Hockey wouldn't have kept himself from guffawing himself wet when he handed over the cash to the ad agency.

Oh, and for government 'information advertisements' they're a little bit um.... FARKEN TEN TIMES TEN TO THE POWER OF TEN PARTISAN!

One star, Margaret.

Liberals Give In To Hard Drugs In Gutter Wedge Shot

Howard gives up. Gets back up. Downer holds focus groups. Every cabinet member gets onto their favorite journo and has off-the-record panic attacks. Big meeting. Costello wimps out. Howard goes on. Howard says he might retire. Libs now a TEAM.

So what's the TEAM's first play back from the huddle?

Go low. Wedge hard. Beat up on the weak. Get populist. Shit on the weak. Go back to war. A no brainer war for the no brainers. Bank on outrage. Make it outrage Rudd will have to agree with. Keep the outrage simple for the stupids.

D R U G S

Story three, straight after a couple on the leadership pant-wetting on last night's PM, a committee headed by the eternally-foul Bronwyn Bishop recommends demands that the Federal Government move its ENTIRE DRUG STRATEGY away from harm-minimisation, to harm prevention.

According to the PM report Bishop wants ALL funding pulled from treatment services that don't have the express aim of getting users drug-free; which could include needle exchange and methadone programs.

Here she goes...

"It means that the aim of the program, or the body that is getting the funding, that they must have the ultimate aim of the individual becoming drug-free. Not that they can perpetually be on drugs, and that's OK."

Predictably the government's edict will be low on modern thinking but HIGH on ad-spend. MORE SHOCKING TV ADS! But now with more violence, fear and gore than ever before.

The committee also want to change language. The brief demands HARM must be replaced by tougher, more tabloid friendly, but obviously misleading words like DAMAGE, DESTRUCTION and DANGER. Reefer Madness anyone?

And if you're on drugs, BRONWYN WANTS YOUR BABIES! Yes she does. She's invented a world where there's drug addicts out there letting their babies crawl on ceilings just like in Trainspotting and all the state run child protection agencies DO NOTHING TO STOP IT.

"There is this entrenched attitude in the bureaucracy, anti-adoption, and it really has to be overturned. And when we say default option, we mean that the obligation is then on DOCS and in conjunction with the parent to make the case why adoption is not an option."

Christ, the shitbird media won't want to resist this but let's hope they don't buy their drug lines from Bronwyn. AM spoke to CEO of the Family Drug Support organisation, Tony Trimingham, whose son died ten years ago from a heroin overdose.

Bronwyn's committee's recommendations only appall him.

"I could have actually cried this morning when I read the recommendations and some of the report. And they've ignored the pleas of families who have said, we need to keep our children alive, we need to keep them supported until they can turn the corner that they eventually need to turn.

What happens if the recommendations become government policy?

Says Trimmingham:

"I think there'll be more deaths, more disease, more crime."

"I think families will be more sidelined. You know one of the things that we face, and we stressed this in our submission to the committee, is that we face isolation and shame and stigma."

Let's hope Rudd, The Drover's Dog doesn't 'me too' to this wedge for the sake of one or two marginals.

But he will.

It's election time.

You Thought My Analogies Were Tenuous

From Alexandra Kirk's story on this morning's AM about the speculation over the Libs' leadership:

Alexandra Kirk: "As one senior MP muses, what's the point of standing on the road, waiting for the car to run you over?"

But I'd rather be a fool in danger than a fool in love.

One time bouncer (Yes he was. Photo proves he can get snarly) Nationals senator, Barnaby Joyce relives past traumas at a Tamworth B&S...

"It's like going to a dance, there's only so many times you can go up to a girl and ask her for a dance. If she keeps on saying no and you keep on going back, you know, it's not too long after that that she starts getting annoyed or she calls the police."

Poor Barnaby.

Jason Koutsoukis got kinky in yesterday's otherwise brilliant column in yesterday's Sunday Age:

After 11 years of being run by a policy contortionist, it's difficult to see why the Liberals want to be in government.

And in probably the 173rd mention of the Drover's Dog in the couple of days since I started this blog, The Australian reckons a resounding 38 per cent(!) majority of voters in my marginal electorate of Bruce think an actual drover's dog has more chance of winning this election for.... wait for it.... THE LIBERALS!

Um.

What?

I've Been Contemplating Resignacide

Christian Kerr in today's Crikey dropped a huge story with reports that John Howard has been tucking into his son, Rowland's (pictured) Boys Next Door bootlegs and is....

at last.....

contemplating resignacide.

Crikey reckons he's only prepared to speak about his future with wifey, Janette and one of his advisors, and that he is so vain he is almost a mirror and the sound of his name sends shivers down most of his cabinet's spi-i-i-i-ineees....

The pressure in the Howard bunker has risen many hectopascals since the cancellation of the 10 x pom poms + 5 x floggers and a kilo of streamers thank you, order of party supplies at The Australian earlier this week.

Paul Kelly cancelled the party pies and little boy savs apparently with this yesterday:

"The Howard Government faces the prospect of political annihilation and the most serious defeat since the Liberal Party was created by Robert Menzies."

"The sense of frustration within sections of the Howard Government is undisguised."

Howard should stay. Resignacide doesn't really suit his style. Refusal to concede any defeat is exactly what's got him this far.

Besides, I only started this blog thing today. He resigns, they go to the election with Costello or Downer as leader, and this blog gets all pear shaped.

UPDATE!
Today (Friday) the paper's Janet Albrectsen who AM this morning described as one of Howard's "cheerleaders" took a swig of her passionfruit n' lime Baccardi Breezer and threw down her pom poms in defeat.

Under Howard it became cool to be a conservative. (!!! Obviously more on this statement later) He rebuilt a political philosophy of individual responsibility for a new generation. His legacy is profound. From workplace reform to welfare to indigenous politics, to our sense of national identity, Howard has changed the nation in a way very few leaders ever do. Each step rankled his opponents as they clung to old orthodoxies. Yet Howard, through sheer dint of character and intellectual fortitude, prevailed.

But now he must go.

It’s not easy saying that. The economic numbers certainly do not warrant it. All the numbers are in the right direction. Unemployment at historic lows.

Oh Janet what a pity, she don't understand.

What's Going On?

I've read so many times already that this year's Federal election is going to be the first ever truly online election.

Arse.

Sure, Rudd's got a Facebook page, Howard's all over YouTube and bloggers are supposedly being read this time around but really, the last election in 04 was supposed to be the first ever truly online election, or wasn't the one before in 02 that the first ever truly online election?

All hype.

Political blogs have been around forever. Just now, there's too many to read and fark, they're long winded and take it all too ridiculously seriously. You been to Online Opinion and Larvatus Prodeo lately? For fark's sake. Click the 'continue reading' buttons on their articles and you're stumped with a 2000 word article followed by 87 impassioned comments. Get through that and well, let's look at the word check for the top liner for today's Larvatus Prodeo and you got, I merde you non Monsieur, 5,040 words.

You won't get that here. I'm already bored of this posting and gee, we're only at 181 words. Besides, my regular readers at The Nightwatchman don't do commenting. They prefer to skim the article, giggle at the pics and then go back and stalk some more poor good lookin' bastards on Facebook.

Why call it Drover's Dog 07?
Because as of today, September 6th Howard's got no chance in hell of winning this one. Work Choices farked him up big time and he's so far behind nothing can save it. So the famous saying can be well and truly applied, even a drover's dog could lead Labor to victory.

All the drover's dog has to do now is play dead and he's got Howard boned.

Let's watch.