(Above: Antony Green being silly, as you can read here)
So here's a bright idea ... the pond, always doing community service, offers it free of charge.
Worried about appearing out of touch, dominated by crazed conservative Christians using a union position to exploit the union's power to get a dominant position on the ballot?
Well you could just make a speech about dynamic new Labor, embracing dynamic new values, distancing said new Labor from unions, and distancing new Labor from recalcitrant angry old dinosaurs, and to show you mean business, keep them away from the ballot box ...
But the solution's actually much simpler ... appoint a crazed conservative Catholic using a union position to get a dominant position on the ballot. Numero Uno. And then let him speak ...
Such simple, poetic advice, and so useful, and will the pond get any thanks for the ALP following the advice down the path to electoral oblivion? Probably not. The comrades are too involved in fluff gathering and navel gazing ...
Meanwhile, the pond had the extraordinary pleasure - along with ABC News 24 - of contemplating the eight votes cast and counted and displayed at the beginning of the broadcast of the WA senate election.
It was a moment of zen. Eight votes. What could they mean? What did they imply? What did they portentously portend?
Oh the computer spent many happy minutes frolicking and throwing up completely meaningless figures ...
Spoilsport Antony Green had the modesty to look embarrassed and concluded they meant nada, zip, nothing, fiddled with the computer, and the eight votes were consigned to history.
News 24?
Why the next morning, if you went in search of an update, you could stagger out to see Geraldine Doogue having a stand up discussion with he of the whimsical name, Bishop Spong, and then a local Anglican, whose name the pond missed.
Want to find it and head off to the ABC's website to check the missing name? Good luck with that. Talk about skeletal and bare bones, here. You can find out more by heading off to TVtonight, here, including the news that it first aired back in August 2013.
It was too much culture shock for the pond on the day they took daylight savings down, but what was even more interesting was the way the eastern papers wiped any discussion of Western Australia's mini-election from the map.
It seemed the worst fears of the reptiles might now come to pass - PUP and the Greens looked in the running for a seat - so you could hunt - at 7 am adjusted eastern time as the pond did - through the front digital pages of the Sunday Terror, and the HUN, and the Currish Snail, and find diddly squat about the WA election.
The sandgropers had done wrong and so they were exiled from Valhalla, hunted and driven from the flock.
WA? Let it be excised from the mainland and drift off into the Indian Ocean where it and missing planes belonged.
The reptiles at the lizard Oz did run a story at the top of the digital page:
But compare that to the coverage on offer, without subscription, at The Graudian, and at the top of the digital page:
Now some of this was an aggregation of old stories, but it least it looked like the Graudian was interested in this remote, distant, likely deviant, certainly mysterious land ...
And Lenore Taylor knocked off a brief column, Tony Abbott's negotiating skills will be put to the test under new Senate, which did the math:
Under one possible outcome in the WA Senate rerun (Labor winning the final seat) if Labor and the Greens oppose a bill, Abbott is going to need the Senate votes of the Palmer United party bloc and also three votes from a diverse group of four – Independent Nick Xenophon, the DLP’s John Madigan, Family First’s Bob Day and the Liberal Democratic party’s David Leyonhjelm. Labor and the Greens would need only two of the crossbench to join with them to win the 38 votes needed to block a bill. Under the other scenario (the Liberals winning the final seat) Abbott would need Palmer and two more votes, and Labor and the Greens would need to find three to block.
Of course Labor and the Greens will not always oppose the Coalition. The Greens, for example, are the Coalition’s best best bet to win passage for Tony Abbott’s generous paid parental leave bill, with some amendments. And it is not uncommon for the major parties to vote together.
It's easy to see why the reptiles got the sulks and decided to shun the sandgropers, hide them under a rock.
Get the backing of the Greens to pass a reprehensibly generous paid parental leave designed to benefit the well off, at a time when everybody in jolly Joe Hockey's camp is blathering about the age of entitlement and the precarious situation of the budget and the Bolter is shrieking that pensions must be cut?
Oopsie daisie ...
Get the backing of the PUPsters to abolish the carbon tax, give Clive and his companies an unseemly boost - will it be made retrospective to heal Palmer's wounds? - and then implement a risible, reprehensible, expensive and ineffective direct action plan, which is pissing money against the wall in this dangerous age of entitlement?
It's the stuff of comedy or of disaster - at least if your idea of comedy is seeing the Abbott government do endless pratfalls slipping on bananas and landing face first on conveniently placed custard pies ...
But is shunning the sandgropers the most professional response to the result?
Will that make the wounded pride of the reptiles heal a little easier?
It won't be so easy if the results make life hard for Abbott in the upper house. One of the ways Abbott effectively tarnished Gillard's minority government was by noting the company that it kept.
Abbott might now have to keep some sordid company of his own.
But was there another reason for the sulking and the shunning?
What did it mean? Could Scott Ludlum have retained his seat courtesy of a video of a speech that went viral?
Is social media having more impact than the reptiles, who did their very best to diss the greenies and the Cliveies?
Was all that abuse directed at the Cliveies in the Oz so much spit on a hot griddle?
Even the Fairfaxians got tired early, and ran a story courtesy of AAP, WA Senate count shows swing to Greens, PUP:
At 12.44pm local time, when 70.88 per cent of polling places had counted first preferences, there was a 5.91 per cent swing against the Liberals and a 5.33 per cent swing against Labor, while the Greens had put on 6.69 per cent.
At the same time, there was a 7.51 per cent swing towards the Palmer United Party (PUP).
Who knows how it will all turn out, but what once passed as mainstream media in Australia now looks markedly tired and any political junkie who wanted to find out the details of the voting would have been better off looking on the internet at the Western Australian papers or the Graudian than taking a look at the Murdochian fish and chip wrappings being readied in the east ...
Online the Terror still had Akker Dakker at number one on its digital whirlpool of death:
Thereby entirely missing the rich comedy of Joe Bullock and Louise Pratt:
Labor Senator Louise Pratt has caused a political storm by defying party recommendations and voting below the line in the Senate election.
In front of the media at Dianella Heights Primary School, Ms Pratt spent at least five minutes filling in every box below the line of her ballot paper – fuelling speculation she was protesting about being placed second on the ALP Senate ticket, behind former union leader Joe Bullock.
ALP pamphlets handed out at polling booths told voters: “Just place the number 1 in the box F above the line as shown.
“No need to fill in below the thick black line.” (more here)
Well would you vote Bullock number one if he'd taken a cheap shot at your sexuality and the gender of your partner?
All in all, this circus seemed to presage the grander circus that is to follow in Canberra very shortly, with an extended season that would have Ashton's circus salivating at the mouth ...
It's old news to lost souls clustered around Botany Bay. We've been in touch with circuses since at least 1798 ... (click on to enlarge)
Deary me, DP, truly one doesn't know what one has lost until it's gone: I'm missing your incisive commentary on Cardinal Pell Mell to Hell already.
ReplyDeleteEven if you do keep on the Jensenist case, at most it's just half an arse farting. As one gets older, bit by bit one's world just fades away.