The Potential Labor Landslide – Take 2

In June last year, I wrote a piece called “The Potential Labor Landslide”...

Of course the downside to writing satire most of the time is that people tend not to notice that a lot of it ends being a case of life imitating art. I began with:

I once wrote that the Liberals would be releasing their policies closer to the election and, by closer, I mean a few weeks AFTER the election.

Of course I was being facetious and I never expected that a Liberal leader would think that it was a fantastic way to avoid scrutiny of his policy but then this is the party that’s been trying to prove lefties wrong every time they say, “Well, they can’t have a leader who’s worse than Tony Abbott/Wishywashy Turnbull/ScottyfromMarketing…”

You can click the link and see how accurate I was…

Yes, yes, I know it’s election eve and one shouldn’t count ones chickens because of all the bird flu around and who knows what Elon might do to rig the election and there’s still a lot of undecided voters and don’t forget 2019 and even if the polls are right there’s always the individual electorates that might swing like a Peter Dutton election promise which seems to be going in the opposite direction to the initial indication and…

Anyway, I just thought I’d better get the gloating in early while there’s still some chance that I could be right and if I’m not… well, I can be like all those commentators who assured us that the election would be in April and when it wasn’t, well that was because Albo changed his mind after the cyclone that wasn’t as bad as we all thought, so they weren’t really wrong. I predicted a Labor landslide and tonight I look like being right and if I’m wrong tomorrow, well, that won’t mean that I was wrong; it just means that a lot of people changed their minds…

I probably should mention that I accurately predicted:

• Malcolm Turnbull launching a spill and defeating Abbott about a year before it happened.
• That Scott Morrison would do a Bradbury and skate through after Dutton launched his challenge.
• That Peter Dutton would say something stupid during the election campaign and then blame the media for reporting it.

Ok, I’m sure that some of you are going to bring up a couple of things and try to say that I predicted some things that didn’t happen but clearly if they didn’t happen then I didn’t predict them because it in order for me to consider that I predicted a thing it has to have happened otherwise it’s just a thought…

Yeah, all right, that’s a bit of a semantic argument but I need to practice for my political career. I intend to start a party called The Trumpet Of One Nation and pick up all the confused voters who like the policies of a certain other two parties but are too apathetic to get in clear in their head exactly what party they want to vote for.

But back to the current election. It seems like a foregone conclusion when one of the leaders says that we shouldn’t worry about the election campaign; it should be a referendum on the past three years. There is a counter argument that when one votes one should be more concerned with the future than the past. That, of course, doesn’t mean that you ignore the past but it does help to consider the future as well. It is true that Pele was one of the greatest soccer players to ever live, but I wouldn’t be picking him in any team these days.

Yes, when Peter Dutton tells us to ignore the campaign it does sound like he isn’t giving himself an enthusiastic endorsement. Rather like a coach saying in the middle of the grand final that we shouldn’t judge things on his moves that day but reflect on the whole year and how his team were favourites on the morning of the match.

Whatever, we’ll have the results tomorrow and either I’ll be right or I’ll owe Peter Dutton a big apology for doubting him when he said that he still believes that he can win. Although if I do offer one, I can’t be sure that he won’t walk out…