Didn't cover much of it here due to extended break from blogging, but this piece from The Guardian, published in August, sums up the Australian Coup to the 2010 Federal Election period perfectly :

Here was a Labor government which had breasted the world financial crisis better than almost any other developed state. Here was an administration facing up to the realities of Australia's environmental situation, the constraints represented by the country's limited water supplies and agricultural land, and its vulnerability to fire, flood, drought and other hazards made worse by global warming. Here was a leadership with plans to impose more realistic taxes on the extractive industries that control the nation's most important assets. Here was a government, in other words, ready to discard the myth of "Big Australia", of a nation that could be pumped up to super-size by immigration and the breakneck exploitation of its mineral resources, and settle for a more modest vision of the future. And this reining-in carried with it the possibility of attending more effectively to the social inequality that had been increasing in Australia in recent years.

In all this it had the broad backing of most of the electorate. So how did this translate into a performance at the polls so dismal that the Australian Labor party is either headed for opposition, or, if it stays in power, will have only a tiny majority provided by a handful of independent MPs and one Green? The answer is a cautionary tale involving the power of Australia's mining and energy industries, the loss of nerve in the face of that power by two Labor leaders in succession, and the determination of the leader of the opposition Liberal National party.

The Rest Is Here

Now, kneel before Zod.



Photo by Gary Ramage, The Australian

Still one of the greatest scenes in cinema.

UPDATE : Zod, or BobCat as he's more commonly known on Twitter, has made the front page of the New York Times.




A rare treat for any Australian politician. It was definitely the hat that won over the photo editor.

I'm guessing most of you have already seen this newsimation of the lead-up to Federal Election 2010, but it's still the best vid I've seen online summarising the lead-up to this historic outcome. Here's hoping they do another showing Liberal and Labor party officials trying to negotiate with the independents who have already revived Australian democracy by forcing the major parties to realise the end of the two party system is officially nigh.



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Here is the Federal Election 2010 campaign as I saw it on Twitter over the past five weeks :

Outrageous. ABC1 cut short Superfreak by Rick James on Rage for some election announcement thingy.

How different would the asylum seeker debate be if boats filled with economic refugees from the UK & US turned up?

If you want Australians to support boat people, you have to turn it into a sport. Give the boats numbers and get them to race here

Pauline Hanson's mid-90s beliefs and policies on immigrants have now been raided by both Liberal & Labor prime ministers.

Australia has 7.5 million square kilometres & 22 million people. 3 people per square k. We're not overcrowded, we're fucking barren

Abbott costing plan to blast asylum seekers into space for "off world processing."

I sure hope in the future we never have to flee Australia in boats for any reason. How welcome would we be as refugees in Indonesia?

For non-Aust. readers, here's our new PM @JuliaGillard preparing to snog an elderly member of the electorate.http://tinyurl.com/25xtysy

@JuliaGillard Moving Forward Together? Together : Moving Forward? Or how about Forward We Move Together With Working Families?

Joe Hockey : " I don't know what Labor stands for." Same thing the Liberals stand for - keeping The Greens from shattering 2 party system.

"Moving Forward" from what? Moving Forward from the coup

I want to vote for a party moving diagonally.

Is @JuliaGillard really lifting political slogans from The Simpsons? http://tinyurl.com/2fzglrv

What election? 4 out of 6 Most Popular stories of the week on ABC News online are psychic octopus related http://tinyurl.com/23zhkcq

is anyone going to have one single fucking inspiring thing to say in this whole fucking election?

Bob Brown calls for end to Labor Vs Liberal vicious, bitter. election advertising, promoting "nasty negativism". Hear Hear.

Apparently, some evangelists think atheists, like @JuliaGillard, are satanists in disguise. Perfect cover.

@JuliaGillard announcing Australian austerity measures : "clean and green, but very very lean."

@JuliaGillard announces "this requires ongoing discipline." Mmm, discipline.

It doesn't seem to matter whether you vote Liberal or Labor, either way the mining industry's candidate becomes PM

A shame the Liberals couldn't use The Angels 'Stand Up' as their theme tune as well as their mantra http://tinyurl.com/25bydt5

From The Angels' Stand Up: "promises are easy, you swallow every word, be sure of who u serve."

Can't we just replace nearly all politicians by some mix of Google Wave & social networking? At least until the robots are ready to govern?

Two polls, one front page, utter cognitive dissonance http://tinyurl.com/353sbnp #ausvotes

Yes, it's true @JuliaGillard & @TonyAbbottMHR, we are more interested in Tambo's adventures than your campaigns http://tinyurl.com/3xz8cw9

If Citizens' Assemblies decided policy, we wouldn't have gone to war on Iraq, cannabis would be legal & everybody would have free iPads.

So now the minimum price for a 20 year old 2nd hand car is $2000? That'll keep P-platers off the roads. The poor ones anyway

On the plus side, the FedElection2010 campaign does seem to be slowing down time.

Anti-Gillard leaks from inside federal Labor should be referred to as REDs, (Ruddevised Explosive Devices)

Surreal. Reporters pepper @JuliaGillard with questions about what it's like to be peppered with questions about #Ruddileaks

Did @JuliaGillard make the decision to dump campaign plans and "Go For It" after hundreds of Twitter messages telling her to cut the shit?

@JuliaGillard promises to make sure "the real Julia is on display." Will this Real Julia also refer to herself in the third person?

Majority of Australians opposed to Afghanistan War. @SenatorBobBrown says we need a debate on it. No media reported this today.

A Philip K Dick election. What manufactured reality are we in now? Another fake? Is this the real Julia? Are u real? Am I?

Seriously, if Labor don't know how pissed off people still are about the coup, they don't deserve to win

Craig Emerson is dying on Q & A like a kitten juggler at a PETA Christmas party.

Christian lobby groups panicking that environment-minded Christians are drifting off to hang out with atheist Greens. Interesting.

A shocking international headline for this federal election. From the UK Independent : "Children found starving in rural Australia" http://ind.pn/cpVvkX

The Liberals think a few thousand asylum seekers is a more important issue than national broadband. Priority/reality check needed.

Co-conspirator of illegal war that killed more than 200,000 wanders freely thru Australian communities during campaign http://tinyurl.com/28mgvpz

So far in @JuliaGillard's launch speech, the Mr Rabbits have outnumbered the Mr Abbotts 2 to 1

Even Westies who moved away decades ago are secretly pleased so much of election appears to be hanging on Westie opinion

New Liberals slogan : 'Let's Wait And See What Happens Tomorrow, Okay?'

The fact that carers get so little for looking after the elderly & new mothers will get so much tells you a lot about our priorities

Welfare for the poor? Bad. Welfare for the rich? Good. Think Liberal.

"Mr Rabbit, we got another boat here, whaddauwannado?" "How many Muslims on board?" "About 40." "Turn em round."

@SenatorBobBrown's checklist of issues undebated, so far, revealed how thin & duplicate campaigns of Gillard & Abbott have been.

Gillard can live with 'Ranga', but can Tony Abbott handle 'The Rabbit'?

Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Governor General John Howard. US Ambassador Alexander Downer. The Horror.

Darryl Mason On Twitter

via @AndrewBolt :




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Murdoch Backs Gillard

By Darryl Mason

The Daily Telegraph ramps up the mockery of opposition leader Tony Abbott as the last week of the 2010 Federal Election campaign begins.





Ex-Australian Rupert Murdoch's Sunday tabloids, reaching more than one million Australians, carried front pages and lead editorials endorsing coup prime minister Julia Gillard to be officially elected PM this Saturday.

From The Australian's Media Diary :

Australia’s top-selling newspapers yesterday went for Julia Gillard, with Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph (circulation: 630,000) saying every government since 1931 has been given a second chance, so why shouldn’t the ALP get one, too? Melbourne’s Sunday Herald Sun (circulation: 597,000) said “the best interests of Australians are served by the re-election of Labor”.

Tony Abbott doesn't back a carbon tax, Julia Gillard, like Rupert Murdoch, does.

It's going to be an ugly week for Abbott in most of the Murdoch tabloids.

Unless, of course, Tony Abbott agrees, by Thursday, that a carbon tax "of some kind" may be necessary, after all.

UPDATE, August 18 : Both Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard have denied they plan to introduce a carbon tax in their first term. I'll wait and see on this one, but it's rare that big business doesn't get what it wants. The pressure on Gillard and Abbott to make a carbon tax part of their first term government agenda is not simply localised corporate pressure from those who stand to gain the most from a CT, it is also coming from international banking and investment institutions.

I'll be both pleased and, frankly, amazed if Australia doesn't have a carbon tax by 2013, regardless of who wins on Saturday.

"Mr Latham Helping Himself To A Cup Of Coffee"

Nine surreal minutes of 24 hour live TV news, as a reporter reports on a reporter reporting. Some minor action at 7:02 when Mark Latham confronts Tony Abbott about his role in the jailing of former One Nation leader Pauline Hanson :



And speaking of surreal, there is this frantically OTT election promo from Channel 9 :



I swear the people who put these together have trawled through old pisstakes of exactly this kind of promo on Frontline and CNNN and thought, 'Fuck irony, this stuff is Gold.'

It's the best ad of the Federal Election 2010 campaign, it's a shame the Greens can't use it :



The ad was, however, seen by more than 1.6 million viewers on Gruen Nation last night, will be seen by a hundred thousand more in repeats and will probably clock up another 20-50,000 views on YouTube between now and election day.

Considering The Greens didn't pay for the production of the ad, or come up with the slogan, or pay the equivalent of getting such an ad screened on commercial networks to more than a million and a half Australians in prime time, the ABC did The Greens one hell of a huge favour.

Compared to 'Stand Up For Real Action' and 'Moving Australia Forward', the gifted to The Greens slogan 'If You Think, Vote Greens' is election pitch poetry.

Price Of Bread To Rise By Two Carbons

Two of the most recent attack ads of the Federal Election 2010 :



Meh. Try Harder.

The Liberal Party decide to go The Big Fear on the carbon tax :



Tony Abbott can rage against the Carbon Tax all he wants, and he will, but he too will introduce a Carbon Tax in his first term as prime minister, just as John Howard found a way to undo his promise to Never Ever install a GST. By 2015, a carbon tax will be the global currency, and if you don't have one, you will be shut out of the global carbon economy.

The greenies might want a carbon tax because they faithfully believe it will save the world, but it is the world's richest banks, and banking families, who are already positioned to skim tens of billions from this new global currency.

That's why a Carbon Tax will become a reality, not because some protesters chain themselves to coal loaders,, but because some of the world's, and Australia's, wealthiest families want it to be so.

Tony Abbott knows that as surely as Julia Gillard does.

Still some of the most sensible talk we've heard in years on Australian TV on asylum seekers and immigration. PJ O'Rourke on Q & A :



If only our politicians were willing to speak such obvious truths, in the face of tabloid hate front pages screaming 'Invasion!'

As you may already be aware, The Chaser returns to the ABC tonight for the first of five new episodes covering the Federal Election 2010, a year on from the end of their War On Everything series.

Yes We Canberra! will likely be the most, or only, entertaining thing about the next four weeks of campaigning, leading to the day Tony Abbott is declared the new prime minister of Australia.

In preparation for a Liberal Party-led new government, Chas takes on the next Australian deputy prime minister, Julie Bishop, in a deathstare cagematch :



After the June coup, The Chaser had to dump a ton of sketches and gags they'd been working on, centred around prime minister Kevin Rudd on the campaign trail. Here's one of the Rudd gags that didn't get the chop :

FireBomb Democracy

Today on Andrew Bolt's blog of fevered hate and intolerance, an open, uncensored call to commit acts of terrorism in Australia from a regular commenter :

"...it's always the darkest before dawn, and the people will have the ultimate voice - molotov cocktails into the Parliament Houses. We WILL regain control of the nation."

Let me guess, it slipped by the moderators, eh?

The Herald Sun's and ABC Insider's Andrew Bolt suggested an act of terrorism could have helped then prime minister John Howard win the 2007 election :

"...something might yet turn up that will make us appreciate anew his vast experience and steadiness under fire...if there were to be another terrorist attack...(we could) admire his firmness in handling it."

Will he suggest the same for Tony Abbott now?

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Does Tony Abbott Still Believe Bible Classes Should Be Compulsory For All Students?

Opposition leader Tony Abbott, December 19, 2009 :

"I think everyone should have some familiarity with the great texts that are at the core of our civilisation. That includes, most importantly, the Bible.

"I think it would be impossible to have a good general education without at least some serious familiarity with the Bible...."

Most important core text of our civilisation, eh?

"If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity."

"Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib?"

"....they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel..."

"If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered....he must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives."

"There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses."

Unicorns, donkey dicks, raping virgins, stoning women to death and cutting off their hands - the Tony Abbott literature class of 2011.

It's funny, because it's true :



Effective political advertising :

The front page of The Australian online gets downright cognitively dissonant one day into Federal Election 2010 :



"Labor has started the campaign well ahead of the Coalition..."

"Voter support for Labor has slipped since the election was called...."

The Australian should considering changing it's advertising mantra from 'Think. Again.' to 'Wait. What?'

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Standing Up, Moving Forward, Falling Asleep

By Darryl Mason

So here we go. Federal Election 2010 is on. Even though we don't actually vote for the prime minister of Australia, politicians to the media are quite happy to play along and make it a battle of personalities, less so than policies, or even competence.

But it's not even really about coup prime minister Julia Gillard Vs the Mining Industry/Coalition's Tony Abbott. It's about Gillard & Abbott doing everything they can to stop The Greens from gaining the balance of power in the Australian senate, and completely undermining the two party system that has served Australia's richest people so faithfully for so many decades. It's fortunate then that the Labor Party and the Liberals/Nationals coalition can rely on the full support of the Australian Murdoch media doing everything they can to scare people away from voting for The Greens.

As coup prime minister Julia Gillard has made clear, by mentioning the phrase more than 20 times in a 10 minute speech, the Labor Party are for Moving Forward, or Moving Forward Together or Moving Australia Forward :



It's a corny phrase already making people grind their teeth, less than 24 hours after the election date of August 21 was announced.

The Liberal Party meanwhile have settled on 'Stand Up' :



'Stand Up' is, of course, the name of an excellent song by The Angels :



Note these key lyrics :

Promises are easy
You swallow every word
Just be sure of who you serve

And here's the first official Federal Election 2010 ads from the leaders of the Labor and Liberal parties.





Here's Greens' leader Bob Brown outlining his party's policies for the coming election.

I'll go easy on the Federal Election 2010 coverage here, because you're going to be inundated with it everywhere you turn, and I'll be a bit busy elsewhere finishing off my first movie 'Fuck The War', starring Dave Gleeson, for an October release.



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Kudos Kodos

I keep hearing coup prime minister Julia Gillard using variants of this phrase :

"We must move/go forwards, not backwards."

Such a familiar phrase. Someone else had used it, many years ago, in a gripping campaign speech, powerfully podium pitching their political wares.



It was Kodos :

"Tonight I say, we must move forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!"

I'm not being critical in pointing out that Julia Gillard appears to be sourcing The Simpsons for political rhetoric. I say More Of It.

In fact, let me help out. I submit following stirring political views of Homer Simpson for inclusion in future speeches by our coup prime minister :

Children are our future. Unless we stop them now.

If something goes wrong.....blame the guy who can't speak English.

Volunteering is for suckers. Did you know that volunteers don't even get paid for the stuff they do?

How is education going to make me smarter?

I wish God were alive to see this.

Stupidity got us into this mess, and stupidity will get us out.

Marriage is like a coffin and each kid is like another nail.

I never apologize, I'm sorry but that's the way I am.

It takes two to lie....One to lie and one to listen.

When are people going to learn? Democracy doesn't work.

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Election advertising in Australia gets mega-mashed up :

I hope the trickle of entertaining #FedElect2010 political ads, by professionals & amateurs (or professionals imitating amateurs), turns into a steady stream. Key word - entertaining :



Via VexNews

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A very, very effective first Federal Election 2010 campaign ad from opposition leader Tony Abbott :



But there's something about one part of that ad that reminds me of something else....