Well-crafted rant by Warrigal Mirriyuula

This is getting ridiculous. We’ve got an election in a few months and as of this date it looks like most of us wouldn’t vote for either of the major parties, and many of the minor political groupings and independents look increasingly self interested, irrelevant, marginalised or simply loopy; except the Greens, which look like getting a significant fraction of the primary vote, 16 percent some are saying, even if only by default. The Greens of course can say what they like. That they’ll not have to form a government any time soon assures them of that right. Their role at this time is to be the net that will catch the disaffected voters from both sides.

So what happened to the notion of Rudd as saviour from the excesses of Tiny Johnny Small, The Turd Long Boy’s crypto-fascism? How did this man we saw as some kind of political demi urge cock it up so badly that most of us now think him a wonk at best, at worst an disingenuous shyster? On the other side; why have the Liberal party abandoned any semblance of liberalism and shown themselves openly to be the cats paw of big money interests, unable to see the utter social, cultural and philosophical poverty of the idea that “the market” will save us all if only we’d let it rip? It worked really well for the financial markets didn’t it?

As a nation we’re up to our hips in shit and, as Harry Jenkins had it the other day, our elected leaders are flinging schoolyard abuse at one another across the chamber over whether or not Clive Palmer really is the CEO and principal shareholder of the Liberal party.

I think the repulsive Sophie Mirabella had it best when she spat vituperatively at Rudd, “No one believes you any more, you fool.” Of course she conveniently didn’t mention that her side has offered no believable policy for quite some time and she has never done anything but spit and scratch like the fevered feral pussy she is.

And what are the media doing while this farce seems to get more farcical as the days before the election shorten? Well they’re doing for the most part what they’ve always done. They’re pandering and fluffing fit to bust. The notion that the tiny exclusive club of Australian media owners has anything on its mind other that sowing continual discord and misinformation in the pursuit of an ersatz political debate full of heat and fury but no substance just so they can prop up their failing old economy business models and keep the shareholders sweet is just laughable, except that it really is quite serious. Look at Channel Seven’s shameless handling of the Campbell case. So obsessed with the prurient aspects of the story they missed the simple fact that he, like the rest of NSW Labor, has been so incompetent in his portfolio that NSW has gone from Wran’s conceit of being the “Premier” state to being in a state of almost irreversible disarray, disrepair and decline. But would you vote for a party dominated by the evil David Clarke, because he is the weeping pustule behind Big Barry O’Farrell’s smiling but ultimately empty head.

So what are these problems we really must get our heads around if we’re not to fall into the pit toilet future our politicians seem so keen to dig for us.

No side has yet given any indication they are committed to both acknowledging the reality of climate change and the need to act nationally in our own interest and that of the globe more generally. The Murray Darling is still our biggest environmental challenge for while it’s just managing to feed most of us, it’s dying none the less. The recent floods have only postponed the inevitable. One of the greatest disappointments of the Rudd ascendency must be Penny Wong and her incompetent mishandling of the negotiations over the ETS with Turnbull that saw Minchin install his favourite glove puppet before buggering off to greener pastures leaving us with Big Ears, the Mad Monk. Make no mistake; we have Abbott because of Penny Wong’s short sighted arrogance and stupidity and, as always, the cupidity of big money Liberal backers.

After the now apparent lip service of the so called “Apology” and that great gab fest held in Canberra shortly after Rudd was elected why is it that Indigenous issues are as far from the heart of Canberra’s great concerns as ever they were and none of the grand intellectual gems of the gab fest have been realised. It really was, as so many said at the time, just a photo op for Rudd and Cate Blanchett. Aboriginal children are still appallingly afflicted with Chlamydia and a host of other preventable diseases, their culture and languages discounted, forgotten, their families and communities still beset with such difficulty as the white paradigm gets back to business as usual.

Neither side has dealt meaningfully with the GFC as a regulatory challenge; and this at a time when our pensions are more and more leveraged by fund managers with an eye on the main chance. How many Australians, forced into the share market by legislation, now find their hard earned superannuation halved or even quartered by the unconstrained greed of people they don’t even know. Further; Rudd’s genius idea of funding the future with an income stream from the mineral boom, potentially the greatest lay down misere for average Australians who, having lost every turn in that boom up until now, might just have won the hand; none the less looks like foundering on the rocks of a well funded disinformation campaign paid for by that same Clive Palmer and the likes of Andrew Forrest, both billionaires from digging up our dirt and not a bit grateful for it, bleating that such a tax is unAustralian. I suppose because so many Australians are mining billionaires. Beats the shit outa me!

And what about the great Australian polity, what about us the electors? Are we really so stupid as to think that this internecine tribal warfare will actually serve us well in a future that is increasingly complex and demanding of greater personal commitment than the simple slavish repetition of idiot mantras like” great big new tax” or “for working families”. And don’t get me started on communications policy; the rise of Conroy’s militant self righteousness, all in a sweat over titties and bums on the net but couching its creepy Christian campaign in terms of child protection, just another dog whistle in the moral panic we appear to be in over our kids, because we love to panic, we just don’t panic constructively enough to want to do anything about it. So what do we get but a filter that won’t work and another slanging match between the mental midget Conroy and Google because Conroy isn’t bright enough to see that what he wants to do is a refracted version of what he accuses Google of doing. The paedophiles are laughing all the way to their secret file swap sites. It beggars belief except that all this is true, the transcripts are available.

I’ll take a breath now while I consider something a friend said the other day. He said, “Spengler was right. Before collapse you get comedy!” and of course he’s right, not that Spengler actually ever said that, that’s the stand up version of what Spengler said. Spengler wasn’t into post modernism and probably wouldn’t have subscribed to semiotics even if someone had filled him in but that’s what Spengler meant. But then Spengler was a madman howling in the wilderness too.

“And your point is?” I hear you all asking.

I have no real point. This was just a vent really, a bit of a spit at the political class. After all, that’s what democracy is about, it’s all we’re allowed these days, a vent and a spit at the ballot box. Trying to maintain an opinion contrary to any of the prevailing paradigms is difficult. You’ll get slagged off and marginalised. Just ask Petro Georgiou or Judi Moylan. When Abbott went back to the future the other day on boat people they tried to speak up for compassion and humanity only to be put back in their box by Abbott’s stupid and mendacious line on The Liberal Party being “a broad church”; but as Petro and Judi know, you only get heard if you sing in the choir singing from the choirmasters song sheet. Soloists are discouraged no matter how sweet their song.

And me? I probably won’t do anything about any of the points I raised until I’m in that little cardboard cubicle with the pencil in my hand. Sadly even then I’ll only have a politician to invest my hopes in. Makes me wonder why I bother; except that there once was a bloke called Peter Andren and I live in hope that when the chips are down and the shit’s flying, someone like him might turn up ready to serve.

One can but hope.