First kill someone, anyone, and let there be blood ... or at least a decent mud fight ...

(Above: the pond accepts no liability for what happens to your breakfast, lunch or dinner while contemplating this image).


So here's the thing, and it's a commonplace observation already made by a number of people.

If the Federal Opposition is in possession of evidence that proposes Julia Gillard is guilty of a criminal offence, why haven't they presented it to the police, in order that an investigation might begin immediately, with charges to be made in due course?

She'd be out on her ear in a minute.

Failing that, why didn't the Opposition launch a no-confidence motion yesterday, offering up reasons why a criminal PM shouldn't be in charge of the country, instead of offering up the bizarre spectacle of Tony Abbott caught out of his depth, with his parliamentary pants down, forced to produce a more mellow,  ambiguous, disingenuous and reduced meandering rhetoric on the subject, with the charges against Gillard diminished or retracted?

It was a pitiful, lamentable, pathetic spectacle, in so far as listening on radio might be construed a spectacle.

There's no doubt some of the mud will stick to Gillard, but it comes at a cost, and that cost is the mud sticking to the Opposition, and most notably to Julie Bishop, who apparently will talk to any anonymous john in the cause of turning a trick, and to Abbott himself, who - flushed out from behind Bishop's splendid skirt - looked like a duck in the headlights.

The pond, of course, knows everything about throwing mud. Its gourmet mud pies, cooked hard in the noon-day Tamworth sun, were much admired and sampled by friends and relatives, and the left-overs could always be used in a mud fight.

Sad to say, it was also a reliable way to a scolding and a scraping of mud off clothes, but at least it inoculated the pond against germs and the viral hysteria being spread by Abbott.

Naturally the Murdoch press is all agog, having been the chief supplier and carter of mud for the current fight, and today you can read all kinds of accounts of how the mud will stick, even if unfairly applied.

Over at the Fairfax press, it was a different story, perhaps helped along by Julia Gillard's letter to Greg Heywood (available here), explaining just how Fairfax and Mark Baker had got it wrong in their quest to join their baying hound News Corp brethren.

Suddenly today there were a flurry of floozy stories examining some of the damage done to Abbott.

Is this cardigan-wearer remorse?

Of course you can't expect any remorse amongst the Murdochians. Only blood will sate their lust.

Speaking of blood, it was left to Tony Wright at Fairfax to shriek 'Bruiser' Abbott is waltzed out of the fight on a TKO, while embarking on an extended description of Gillard v. Abbott as a cage match, and mourning the absence of blood. Strangely, in his quest for evocative cliches, Wright failed to mention a rumble in the jungle.

Yes, Australian politics is now conducted on the level not of boxing, but of the UFC, and the absence of blood is an issue, when there should be blood, there will be blood, to keep the punters and the media gored and mired to the hilt, as the gladiators go about their business.

Strangely, Abbott's quest even over-shadowed his book launch, which is perhaps just as well given the title and jutting jaw pose on the book's cover. No doubt Freudians will some day have a field day about Abbott's unholy lust for power, and the extent to which he will go to secure it.

The title of the book evokes, if we may borrow a term, a "will to power" which is vaguely disturbing, and all in the name of a "strong" Australia. Why not a good world citizen Australia, a caring Australia, an engaged Australia, an aesthetic and an artistic Australia, a climate science aware Australia, or perhaps even a gentler polity Australia?

Ah you'd forgotten that climate science was crap, as explained by Cardinal Pell, Abbott's chief scientific advisor (and occasional spiritual mentor), and by Andrew 'the Bolter' Bolt, Murdoch scientist in residence, who pleasingly had his show voted into the top twenty worst television shows of the year.

As for an answer to questions about a strong Australia, as opposed to say an intelligent and aware and meaningful and useful and caring and sharing Australia, the answer is sadly bleeding obvious, with testosterone-laden sturm und drang the preferred option, a kind of weltanschaung for the herrenvolk which evokes memories of ein volk, ein Austreich and ein fuhrer. How soon before the volk demand additional lebensraum for their strong-willed, walled fortress ways?

Oh okay, it's been awhile since the pond threw in a few bucks to the Godwin's Law swear jar. Consider it done.

But if Abbott imagines he can shift from Mr. Contemptible Mud Flinger to Dr. Positive, then surely he must have played rugby union in the forwards where brute force and a strong Australian is preferable to one who can think. (Like why am I sniffing other men's bums? Is there something gay about this? Oh okay, there's some more bucks for the politically incorrect sporting metaphor jar. But only if Tony Wright pays double).

The pond has been following Australian politics for a long time - if you count the study of history right back to the invasion days and specious arguments like terra nullius - and you actually have to go way back then to get such a naked lust and grab for power.

And for what? Well 2013 is the year of promised policies, but all we know so far is that Australia will be strong.

On the evidence to date, as played out in the public arena, the values of the Federal Opposition are not the values of the pond, since one can take only so much relentless negativity before shorting out - except of course for the sheer joy of playing in mud, and smearing it everywhere on everyone, on shorts and dresses, and rolling in it like pig in trough.

Meanwhile, there has been one genuine casualty in the whole sordid affair, and it's Julie Bishop, who revealed a lax way with words and with memory, and instead of applying the blow torch to Gillard carelessly applied it to herself.

Let's not brood about Bishop's role in "litigate until asbestos kills the lot of them" corporate shenanigans - first kill all the lawyers, the pond says, in solidity with Shakespeare - but instead just contemplate her back-tracking on accusations Gillard played a role in siphoning funds, or organising stolen cars, and her telephone tag with an apparently anonymous stranger.

It moved Bernard Keane in Bishop and her fierce battle with the English language (behind the paywall) to a whole new level of metaphor, as he contemplated Bishop's singular inability to use the English language to say what she means, or perhaps even to mean what she says:

This follows Bishop yesterday describing her meeting last Friday with the Jolly Bagman as a “chance meeting”. A “chance meeting” would suggest she bumped into Blewitt while out for a morning stroll, or at a function, but in this instance “chance meeting” extends to Bishop agreeing to go and meet Blewitt at the request of Michael Smith, Dante to Blewitt’s Virgil in this dodgy amateur production of Inferno. Or perhaps another cultural touchstone, Princess Bride, is more appropriate here: I don’t think “chance meeting” means what Bishop thinks it means.

Yes, that's what Australia needs! Forget the use of the UFC, or boxing or rugger buggers as metaphors, it's a stronger use of literary and cultural metaphors that's needed ...

Hang on, hang on, Princess Bride is a cultural touchstone? If that's a touchstone, the pond is at one with Shakespeare ... first kill all the journalists.

Will we find out anything about strong cultural metaphors by reading Abbott's latest book, which truth to tell couldn't attract the pond even when it hits the two dollar remainder stand?

There's surely someone with a strong stomach out there who can advise the pond that once again we've been dreaming ...

Oh New York, lost treasure of civilisation. Why did you forsake the pond?

(Below: is this image unfair? Of course it is, but at last the pond understands there is no fairness in Australian politics, or a gentler polity. At least there's no blood, and if you want more, just google Julie Bishop death stare).