There was a quote from George Orwell which I don’t have but as I’m doing the sort of stenographer stuff that passes for mainstream journalism these days, I don’t feel the need to find it or even quote it directly… suffice to say that he and I have been distracted from the ART thing in order to…
Anyway, you have to give the politics prize to Albo…
If anybody cares, I can write a whole thesis on that one but simply:
- He got to be Labor leader
- He got to be PM
- He got a massive win
- He’s losing support but Pauline Hanson is a bigger threat than the Liberals…
Now, just to be clear, when I say I’m giving the politics prize to Albo, that doesn’t mean that I agree with him and I think that he’s doing the right thing…
Every time that the Liberal/MuddyPress coalition call him weak, they’re giving him permission to prove them wrong and introduce some legislation that stops them in their tracks and bans hate speech and let’s him say that he doesn’t care what they say that this the right thing to do and Donald Trump will back him and arrest any journalist named by…
Like I said, I’m not saying that I support anything, I’m just saying how well he’s doing politically…
All of which brings me to Pauline Hanson and the wonderful opinion poll numbers…
Ok, she is outpolling the Liberals but that really seems like a participation award at this point…
Opinion polls… in case you haven’t heard my opinion on opinion polls are a bit like checking the score of an AFL game at quarter time or checking which horse is leading into the straight in the Melbourne Cup…
You’d rather be in front than miles behind… but you’d also be prepared to cash out any bet you had that was paying well rather than presuming that this is how things will finish… particularly if everyone agrees that it was really, really surprising that you were there…
I could write pages about how silly it is for the Coalition to be taking Pauline seriously, but I think it can be summed up like this:
- Green/left voters
- Labor voters
- Not sure voters
- Liberal voters/Teal voters
- National voters
- One Nation voters
There’s a sprinkling of Libertarian voters who will appear randomly but they don’t count because nobody tells them how to vote and their preferences will be either put beside someone who has nothing to do with them or disqualified because they wrote something about drugs and Donald Trump…
So, some Labor voters will undoubtedly leak to the top there… The Not sure will go some Labor, but the Teal Liberal voters will leak to the Not sure and the National will leak to One Nation and Pauline will feel like she needs to contest a lower house seat so she can be PM, leaving Barnaby a bit confused because he thought that he would… sorry, oh, you want my seat, sure, I’m a gentleman… can I have your Senate seat before the election? All of which leads to a bit of a mess with Labor winning lots of seats on preferences again and the Liberal/National/One Nation voters complaining about the voting system completely ignoring the fact that in the UK, when Labour won with the simple majority system, the losing Conservatives complained about the unfair voting system there.
Anyway, I think it’s time that we got Pauline’s position on Greenland…
And yes, it is quite likely to be:
“I don’t know… it’s just wrong that any country could be called that… I think we should take it off those Green people and give it to the people who can make it one nation with one flag like things should be…”
God, she should be President of the US.
Reaching for an Orwell quote is a bit like wading in a crystal spring and reaching for a handful of water to refresh one’s face… which handful to take?
Such a pity that the ubiquitous reminders of that prescient sage are only that… reminders, while the whole show turns to shite.
The ongoing confusion of Australian politics, first could be last, if fifth and six support second or third!!
I hear that well known ‘Retail Politician’, Barnaby Joyce has been discounted at the Reject Shop – who pays retail anymore?
Further on George Orwell, the 2003 documentary Orwell Rolls in His Grave is as urgent today as it was when released. More so, in fact.
Available for viewing on YouTube here.
@ Terry Mills: I am not surprised that Beetrooter has been discounted by the Reject Shop because he has lost his protector in the Tamworth NOtional$ Election Committee.
The good news is; I am advised that Beetrooter betraying the staunch NOtional$ voters who believe that poverty is preferable to economic development are disillusioned by this political tsunami of putting personal financial stability ahead of the mateship ”political principle”.
The NOtional$ in northern NSW prefer their pre-selected candidates to be not very bright practicing alcoholics with an eye for the ladies (but not my wife) that does not exclude adultery.
However, a group of Tamworth ladies appear to have gained control of the NOtional$ Tamworth Pre-selection Committee and want change now that most of the old fogey WWII ex-service male voters have passed.
It is no longer good enough to just occupy a political sinecure, there must be some attempt at using government for the benefit of the voters.
This novel idea is contrary to the long-standing policy of former male NOtional$ leaders, who believed that a woman’s place was bare-foot & pregnant in the kitchen while elections were won by promising the world and deliberately refusing to meet those promises.
Beetrooter may not win the necessary votes for re-election in New England, but that is not important because there are sufficient unthinking NOtional$ supporters across NSW to gift the target Senate seat to the Only Nutters candidate ….. so that economic development in regional centres can be inhibited for a further seven years.
George Orwell’s “1984” should be essential reading for all high school students before they are let loose on the World.