Spare a Thought for Janette

Imagine the conversation at Kirribili house on the morning after the night before. In my mind it runs like a Your Rights at Work advertisement... it goes a little something like this:

John: They've taken away my job, my seat, my houses, my cars... they've taken everything!

Janette: Can they do that?

John: They have...and what worse, the Commonwealth says its okay. Apparently elections pass the fairness test.

I mean really, talk about a tough day at the office, a popularity test where retrenchment is the prize for the runner up.

But I ask who is the real loser in all of this? It has to be Janette. The long suffering wife who for years has stood by her man. She has no job, the kids are all grown up and now she has to move back to Woolstonecraft at Christmas! All the while watching that Queensland upstart and his working wife and Asian son in law prepare to move into the Lodge, while banning fundraising at Kirribilli House.... oh the humanity!

And, unlike the rest of us, she can't even mitigate her personal trauma by gloating about the change in government. Can you see her in a Kevin07 tshirt?

Perhaps that is why she is encouraging JW to get out of the house. The SMH dutifully informed us that our former intrepid leader was getting back to normal life by playing a few rounds of golf (and anyone who has ever seen footage of JW attempt to play anything involving a ball and basic handeye coordination is right to find the concept of him playing golf innately amusing). The article also mentioned that he was playing his round of golf alone bar two security personnel.

Hmmm am I right in thinking that 30 odd years in politics with at least 11.5 of them spent as an utter dickhead leaves you friendless and alone, playing 18 holes of golf with rentacops? Either that or being on the wrong side of a landslide makes you want to shorten the odds and play a game you know you can win.

How apt....How delicious!

Of course JW's golfing excursion further serves to reinforce how out of touch he is with the common person, or rich wanky golf lover for that matter (and aren't they after all the Lib's core constituents?).

This week the SMH also felt compelled to share with us the revolution in golf hitting a Sydney club near you. Nine hole, kinda the one day cricket of the fairway. Apparently we are all too time poor in Sydney to play the game properly and if the mountain won't come to Mohammed the golf clubs will halve the length of the game and come to you! I wonder if the golfing world has ever considered that maybe people just don't like golf.

So JW is starting his ordinary life playing a sport that most ordinary people can't play (this gives me faith in people's sanity broadly speaking) because they are working too hard to pay off the dreams JW cynically sold them for the last decade or so while he stripped away all their rights, devauled their infrastructure and disinvested in everything from welfare to education (except the armed forces of course), privatised telstra and generally made a big f***ing deal of spending any of our own money on us.

Despite this I say spare a thought for Janette.

After all she has him for life!

T'was the night before polling.....

The irony of seeing Anthony Albanese speak about the Fake Pamphlet scandal in the marginal seat of Lindsay on Lateline last night was palpable. Perhaps he is considered an authority on matrimonial influence since he is the the federal half of Labor's very own power couple, the King and Queen of Marrickville. Nevertheless, the question must be asked, can we really believe that neither Jackie Kelly, nor the current candidate (who's husband is also implicated), nor the Liberal campaign manager, really could not have known what was going on? Labor sure seemed to....

Now I will admit here that I didn't watch the interview. I am suffering from serious election fatigue and I don't find Albanese or Ruddock who was also on, particularly appealing, even after a schooner or two. So I am not going to comment on it. What I am interested in the the Liberals apparent ineptitude when it has come to campaigning in this election. I have only lived in Australia under a Coalition government. That puts me in a similar position to many people voting for the first time in this election. In every federal election to date it has seemed that Howard and the Coalition could literally not put a foot wrong. Partly this has had to do, I think with federal Labor's inability to offer strong opposition. They have been for eleven years or so Liberal Lite. I think they still are really. But for some reason this time it doesn't seem to matter.

Why?

Well perhaps because eleven years is just too long. People want a change. If the Liberal party had changed leadership earlier they may have been in a better position, and I am not talking Costello because who in their right mind would vote for him?!

The next problem is WorkChoices (it really makes my skin crawl to call it that because the only people it really offers genuine choice to is to business). This is one of the most broadly unpopular pieces of legislation the government has introduced and using their senate majority to ram it through backfired I think. It has solidified "battlers'" resistance to both the legislation and the government because it seemed to take no consideration for the opposition. But again, why did this not happen when Howard and co. introduced the GST after promising hand on heart that they would never do it?

I suspect it has something to do with the media. Not a new or insightful comment admittedly. What it seems is that for the first time in eleven years the mainstream media outlets have moved away from subtle (in a few cases) or quite overt support of the government. One could say that they seem to read the mood of the country better than the pollies. But I think we have the cart before the horse. I think the media contributes enormously to that sentiment. I am convinced that what happened in Lindsay is not a new tactic. I am convinced that the government's lies and arrogance are not new traits. This time, however, they are being reported and we are seeing the Liberals for what they are; liars and cheats at worst, frightened at best.

We still see headlines that warn us that business is bracing for the return of the Unions, as was on the front page of the Fin Review yesterday. We are still being told that the polls are narrowing, that the coalition could still win, but this reporting serves Labor as much, if not more than the Coalition. Simply because it makes people afraid. Afraid that the mood for change is not strong enough, afraid that we might have 3 more years of the coalition (if we think they are bad now imagine what the next term will be like when they have won the "unwinnable" election), afraid that we may end up with a PM we didn't even vote for.

We all know that winning this election is a big ask. As has happened before a party can win the most votes and not the most seats... and Labor needs to win 16 new seats (didn't Latham get a kicking?). That is a huge swing in real terms. But not imossible. A poll released last week showed Labor leading in 18 marginals, if they deliver that is a landslide in anyone's books.

Personally I want to see a change, I would love it coupled with a change in Bennelong, but I am not fooled. We will all need to push to keep the ALP honest. The scene has been set for mendacity and wilfulness, remember when Howard said with a straight face that involving us in Iraq was an example of his not being a poll driven politician since he simply ignored the massive displays of public sentiment (you know the great unwashed he is supposed to represent) that were so vehemently opposed to it.

This is a government that has shown itself to be more concerned with keeping their jobs than doing their jobs. Lets make them redundant, take away their penalties, because if there is one thing I know, elections certainly pass the fairness test.