Aug 24
This man will decide who forms the next Australian government:
I mean, if you could imagine 20 or 30 crocodiles up there on the roof, and if all that roof was illumination, and saying that we wouldn’t see anything in this room because of a few croco-roaches up there … Are you telling me seriously that the world is going to warm because there’s 400 parts per million of CO2 up there?
Aug 21
AnSo, today is the day. It’s finally here, election day 2010.
Really?
Stranger things have happened
And a special message for Queenslanders,
Take it from a Victorian
Don’t fuck this up, Australia.
Aug 20
Democracy is a pretty special sort of thing. We take it very much for granted in Australia, but around the world people have lost their lives and endured unimaginable hardship in the fight to secure for themselves a democratic voice. On Wednesday, I did my democracy at the Australia embassy in Cairo, and while my life and wellbeing were not in any way at risk, it was no visit to a primary school to buy a sausage in bread, let me tell you.
It’s hot in Egypt at the moment. Real hot. Like, over 40-degrees hot. There’s a reason only idiots come to Egypt in August and that’s because it’s hot. Regardless, I set out from my hotel in the general direction of the Australian embassy feeling democracy swelling inside me. I knew it was going to be a bit of a walk, and it was going to be a hot walk, but after fifteen minutes in the direct midday sun, shirt sopping wet with sweat, and still a very decent distance away from the embassy, I started to wonder whether democracy matted that much. “Get a taxi!” screamed the comfort-seeking half of my brain. “And waste a perfectly good dollar when you can walk?” screamed the tightarse half of my brain.
Another half hour later I decided to ask a friendly looking man if I was close.
“The Australian embassy,” he said, leading me over to the street so he could point, “is just down here, next to the Italian embassy.”
“Um, are you sure?” I asked. “I’m fairly certain it is north from here but you say it is south.”
“Yes, yes. Very sure.”
“The Australian embassy?” I articulated clearly, in case he thought I meant the country next to Italy.
“Yes, Australia … kangaroo,” he added, helpfully.
So, I backtracked in the direction indicated by my friend, found the Italian embassy, and sure enough there was precisely nothing next to it where he said the Australian one would be. I took off north again.
Finally, an hour-and-a-half after I left the hotel I found the building which houses the Australian embassy on its 10th and 11th floors. I shoved my bag through the x-ray machine and waited for an elevator, developing a nasty chill due to the Arctic air-conditioning’s effect on my dripping wet t-shirt. Up at the embassy’s reception area I surrendered my camera, gave my water bottle and guidebook another dose of x-rays, marvelled at the terrible framed photographs of Quentin Bryce and Stephen Smith on the wall (wondering if there had been until recently a piccie of Kev, too), and got lead by a man through a labyrinthine series of doors and corridors secured by code-lock keypads and CCTV cameras.
Completely disorientated, we emerged into a simple room filled with bright sunlight from floor-to-ceiling windows, and decorated with a large stuffed koala and Australian flag. A young man in business attire, lounging casually behind a large desk, said, “Howyagoin?” which was only about the fifth time in six weeks I’d heard an Australian accent. I told him I was, “Prettygoodhey,” and filled out a postal vote envelope. He handed me a small green slip and a giant white tablecloth and pointed me towards a makeshift booth with “VOTE HERE” plastered on the side. I walked over to the booth, folded the unmarked pieces of paper, walked back over to the young man, sealed them in the postal vote envelope, and shoved it into the locked ballot box.*
Tempted to ask if I could hang around and chat or something – anything to spend a bit longer in the air-conditioning – I said, “Seeyalater,” retrieved my camera from Quentin Bryce’s protective gaze, and headed back out into Cairo’s ridiculous heat just to get totally lost once more and spend an hour walking around like an idiot instead of spending a dollar on a taxi fare.
(* Of course I didn’t vote informally – I’m not that stupid. I made sure I put a tick in every box.)
Aug 18
By now, odds are you have heard about Queensland Family First senate candidate, Wendy Francis. You know, the one who had the homophobic rant on Twitter? The one that said “Legitimising gay marriage is like legalising child abuse”.
Well, she has issued a warning to Queensland,
Senate candidate Wendy Francis has warned Queenslanders that Australia would be worse off without a Family First senator. She said if the Greens obtained the balance of power in their own right the floodgates of immorality would open and Australia would spiral out of control.
That sound’s pretty dire, Wendy. Please go on.
“Because the Greens have such strong support from people who are not parents they have little understanding of issues that parents and families face.”
Um… so that logic is more than a little flawed, but I’m sure you are getting to your point.
Francis said despite the outward appearance of a credible party, the Greens will try and force their anti-Christian, pro-drug, anti-life agenda onto unsuspecting Australians. “The Greens are not mainstream and will have more influence if Labor gets in. The result will be the destruction of marriage as we know it, the silencing of the mainstream Judeo-Christian message and the loss of Australian values.”
Oh noes!!1! Not marriage, you can’t destroy marriage. How do we stop this devastation?
Family First is the voice of mainstream Australia according to Francis. “I believe it is more important than ever for a moderate voice like Family First to be in the senate and maintain the nation’s integrity. If we are not represented I hold grave fears for our future,” she said.
If her view of immorality is equal rights for gays, equal rights for all religions, harm minimization for drug users and rights for women. I say open the floodgates, it’s time to go swimming.
Aug 18
About 14 years ago, my then employer replaced the dodgy old green screen terminals in the office with desktop pc’s running Windows, gave us all internet access and from there on in, the way I went about my work changed completely.
I am not a tech-head.
But it became immediately apparent to me back then that if I wished to remain relevant to the workforce for the remainder of my working life, what I would need to do was get across all this new-fangled technology and have a clue.
Which I did, and which I have.
But it does not appear to be apparent to the current leader of the federal opposition and many of his acolytes that if this country wishes to remain relevant to the ways of the world and how it will go about its business in the future, what it needs to do is stop thinking the future will be secured for an eternity if only we continue to invest all our high hopes in a small clutch of billionaire mining giants whose sole fucking talent is pulling rocks out of the fucking ground and selling them to fucking China who then make stuff and then fucking well sell it back to us.
We need to make some fucking stuff of our own.
For it appears to me that investing in technology for the future, things like research and development in the sciences and such, just might be a nifty way to go about proving that this country and its inhabitants are not an intellectually lazy but “lucky” bunch of instant shake ‘n’ bake fucktards whose greatest heroes are an old cunt who hit balls around a fucking paddock with a wooden paddle for a living and some dickhead who liked throwing himself on top of fucking reptiles and maybe, just maybe, we can aspire to be a little less average and ordinary than we really are.
It’s a big ask I know, as plans such as these involve things like … foresight, imagination, innovation, intelligence, the courage of …
…
…
Nah, fuck it.
I have two tin cans and some string.
And a bicycle.
She’ll be right.
As you were.
Aug 16
More problems for Tony Abbott:
White models of Apple’s new iPhone 4 have continued to be more challenging to manufacture than we originally expected, and as a result they will not be available until later this year. The availability of the more popular iPhone 4 black models is not affected.
Could this be the end of the Boatphone?
Aug 16
Problem
Solved
It really is so simple. I can’t believe that no one thought of it before.
Aug 16
'Robin, what's that ringing noise?'
'Holy smoke, Boatman, I think it's the boatphone!'
I want so desperately not to care. I wish I could look at politics and feel “this doesn’t affect me” like so many other normal people.
I care who wins the election. I care about health policy. I care about education policy. I care about environmental policy and transport policy. I care that millions of Australians – mostly Indigenous – live in poverty. I care that there are children who can’t read. I care that commited couples who want to get married can’t.
But what angers me the most is that each passing day of this election campaign I seem to care less and less.
With each day that goes by I feel more anger, that passes into dispair that passes into apathy. My disillusionment with politics is almost complete, my apathy almost final. Election campaign 2010 was the culprit; the final nail in the coffin of my passion for politics.
I guess it was naive of me, and I should have listened to the people who were much older than me when they tried to warn me. But I genuinely believed that government could be a force for the betterment of society. I believed that passionate people could show leadership and inspire a country to make itself better. Use the tools of government to make life for all people in Australia fairer and more equitable. My optimism shown to be completely foolish by the 2010 election campaign.
It was pretty tragic to see a sitting Prime Minister outed by his own party before the end of his first term. Rudd had lost his ability to sell, and there was no doubt that was causing problems. But I suspect Rudd was being frustrated from within: bad advice and wavering internal support for his policy positions would have made his job very difficult. The whole affair was made all the more tragic when he went public earlier this week to defend his achievements. Kevin Rudd made the most concise and convincing attack on Tony Abbott that has been made for the entire campaign. His appearance on Late Night Live filled me with something akin to joy. Finally someone from the ALP was articulating what needed to be said.
But it was short lived. The media turned his appearance into a soap opera. A will they/won’t they saga between Gillard and Rudd designed to play out in prime time news bulletins.
And all once again seemed hopelessly lost.
The media. To the pack of journalists (sic) who get paid to follow the candidates around, it’s not about you. It was never about you. The tax payers fund your junket. Politicians might occasionally not answer your questions. Sometimes they might run a little late, change their plans at the last minute and sometimes you might not get a policy document in advance. This may inconvenience you a little bit, you may have to work a little bit harder before filing. You may even get tired from standing up all day. Deal with it. Politicians aren’t there to make your job easy. They are trying to get reelected and sometimes journalistic scrutiny isn’t what they want.
So when you do get to ask them questions, you should scrutinize their policy. The tax-payer doesn’t fund your Australia wide travel so you can ask questions about why Tim isn’t campaigning with Julia, your there to ask questions of their policy, after all one of these people will be the leader of the country.
When Tony Abbott says. “Stop the taxes” you ask “What taxes? How will you recover the money?” when he says “Stop the waste,” you ask “To what waste are your referring, Tony? How much money is being ‘wasted’ and how do you propose we stop it?” and when he says “Stop the boats” you ask him “How do we stop the boats and why should we stop them?”
When they announce a policy you don’t ask them why their boyfriend isn’t there, you ask them about the policy.
Don’t complain about how this campaign has been dominated by distractions then report only on the distractions. You shouldn’t be making it harder for politicians to talk about issues. You should make it harder for them to be distracted from the issues.
Mark Latham is not an issue. Tim Mathieson is not an issue. Cabinet discussions are not an issue. The calluses on your feet are not an issue. Your boredom with the campaign is not an issue. Julia Gillard’s earlobes are not an issue and nor is what the Internet thinks of them.
Journalists of the press pack, editors, news directors and media moguls: political discourse in this country is broken and it’s all your fault.
So yes, Gillard is pretty uninspiring. Yes, Tony Abbott just scares me. The ALP and the Liberal Party look more and more alike. But that’s not it.
I think I lost faith in politics because of the media. Because ultimately, if anyone was in a position to raise political discoure in this country, it is the media. The media asks the questions. The media reports the news. All political discourse is mediated, the media can raise the level of this discourse.
I want to make this country better. I want those who are disadvantaged to be helped. I want those who do not have rights given rights. I want preserve the planet on which I live. But it’s all starting to feel a little hopeless. The whole system just isn’t working.
I’m not really angry, I’m not even surprised anymore. I’m just disappointed. I thought it could be different.
Photo: Alan Porritt/AAP
You know what to do.