Well, he's worse than Malcolm Turnbull but not nearly as bad as Tony Abbot would have been. (An opposition leader like him would have kept Rudd on the Centre-Right and stopped Gillard from bringing any balance back to Labor. I hope Abbot doesn't challenge just before the next election!)
What I don't understand is how Hewson was able to lure him to the dark side. He says it was interest rates but if he was so dead against the Libs why didn't he join the Dems or someone less evil?
So I'm sure everyone's heard by now about Jackie Kelly's hubbie, Gary Clark (who had been my sister's orthodontist, but won't be getting any more of my parents' money) was letterboxing fake pamphlets with the candidate's husband and right-faction powerbroker Jeff Egan.
The only interesting thing is that they got caught this time. Last Federal election Ed Husic was targeted with similar shit-sheets in the Bible-belt seat of Greenway. His Liberal opponent Louise Markus, a Hillsong member, went on to win that seat. Similarly, they dressed up as the Save the ADI Site party and handed out fake How-to-Votes. (This was widely known in my hometown of Penrith.)
But worse is Kackie's reaction.
Contrition is just not within her emotional range. Rumour has it that Tony Abbot told her to make the comparison to The Chaser. I'm still waiting for the punch-line!
One ABC journo asked her, "What's funny about that?" To which she replied that it was a reference to Robert McLelland's "gaffe". She's referring to the fact that McLelland said that Australia should encourage Asian countries to get rid of the death penalty, which is perfectly in line with Labor (and Liberal!) policy of opposing the death penalty. But apparently, for Rudd and Howard, that human right is only for Australian citizens.
It's also disturbing the way she keeps saying that it was a gang of "unionists" that caught her bubbie red-handed. I fail to see how that changes photographic evidence of their wrongdoing. Besides which, when did it become acceptable for people to go around hating? I remember that Latham caught a lot of flack for saying that he was raising his boys to hate the other side of politics. Why does Kackie think that "He hates the unions" somehow makes it right for Gary Clark to steal an election? To my mind it just makes him sound like a worse person, if this whole thing is fuelled by a hatred of these organisations that so often do good things for working people. Sure, some union leaders are corrupt. But so are some cops. Yet if I went out there saying that I hated all police and that I wanted them all run out of town, the interviewer would leap upon such a statement. I guess Howard has succeeded in maligning the unions to such an extent that they're now a perfectly legitimate target for hatred.
The worst is the realisation that, had they not been caught, it may well have worked, such is the xenophobia out in the Western Suburbs of Sydney.
Post-Election Update Well, Kackie had the audacity to face the media again on election night.
The best she could do was admit to being "clumsy". "Pathological liar with Machiavellian intent" is more like it.
Conversely, Karen Chijoff has shown some outward signs of contrition. She's told the media that she's not talking to her husband at the moment. Whether that's because he did what he did, or simply because he got caught (or even if it's true), I don't know. But it's certainly better than Jackie's attempt to laugh it off.
I received the ballot papers yesterday and today my sole Australian friend came around so we could witness each other. Both being Australian, we weren't quite as forthright with our political opinions as two Americans would be, but we did discuss it a little and I was pleased to hear that I was helping her vote against Howard.
(Three years ago I probably would have enquired as to whether she was voting 1 for Labor in the Senate. Because that election I went around begging Labor voters to vote below the line (or vote 1 Greens) so that the prefs wouldn't flow to Fred Nile. This time around I was happy with any vote against Howard.)
This type of explanatory campaigning is what we need more of, especially in a country like Australia where voting is compulsory. When I used to hand out, my response to any question about preference was always to emphasise the fact that, ultimately, the voter has the final say.
These videos do a good job of explaining how politics works. I hope a lot of young people watch them.
