I hope you’re all feeling very proud of yourselves. It was a great party last Saturday. We all poured over to Kristina’s and trashed the joint, gave a few old no-hopers a kicking, drank all the beer and then pushed off. Whoever had the idea of putting the address up on Facebook should be given a bloody medal.
What a hoot, I nearly wet myself. Little Antony Green’s home computer shat itself halfway through the night, claiming it had never seen such big swings and something was obviously wrong. Ant had to go home early to have a lie down. Wimp.
Any of you go back next day to help Kristina and Ben put out the empties? I thought so. I couldn’t get there; I had to sort my sock drawer.
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| Joe and Kristina in happier times. PS: That's Verity looking like she wants to be somewhere else. |
And I suppose it wasn’t surprising, as I seem to remember that around 10.30 Kristina got up and said she was chucking it all in, leaving the party in the hands of that malevolent old bald bloke in the corner. Geez, wasn’t he a bore? Banging on about how he had been the bloke behind the ACTU’s Work Choices campaign. Funny, even through the haze I couldn’t recall him being other than a bit player. I thought Greggy Combet and Shaz Burrows made the running on that one. Memory, such a funny thing.
Speaking of Greggy … geez, for a bloke with glasses and a never-ending line of dag clothing off the Lowes bargain table, doesn’t he pull the chicks? I mean, his main topic of conversation is about Gouldian finches (be still, my beating heart) and still they hang on every word. Women are funny sometimes. But I digress.
Anyway, the old bald bloke went on about how he opposed electricity privatisation, then got himself into parliament and ratted on the deal and then seemed to support some sort of power privatisation. Then, just because he could, he shafted Morrie Iemma and we got Nate, that ranga who was always ready to give it a “red-hot go”. In the end, he just went.
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| Not the underpants dancer from the ALP South Coast but you get my drift. |
Then we got Miss America who said she was nobody’s girl. Geez, we laughed at that, cos she had already done the godfathers a few favours while planning minister.
As premier, she and Smooth Ecca Roozendaal managed to completely stuff up the sale of our electricity assets. Then they prorogued parliament so we couldn’t find out how badly they stuffed up. And so it went. Keneally is a good reason why old blokes shouldn’t be allowed to cover politics. It is plain a lot of them had the hots for her. They thought she was just a pretty face but she was a right-wing factional warrior with the ruthless streak they love down in Sussex Street. She showed that when she prorogued parliament. It was the sort of scorched-earth tactic they love down there. Politically, it was stupid but by then this mob were playing a different game. Tina’s job was to sell the electorate a shit sandwich. She didn’t, yet even after the biggest defeat in their history, these old journos are saying what a great job she did. WTF?
There was a story in the US press a while back about how a shipload of conservative relics went on an expensive cruise that visited Alaska and a young perky governor named Sarah Palin had them over for lunch. These old boys got off on a flash of leg and a whiff of perfume and a sassy gal in a red dress. They loved how she said grace over the soon-to-be consumed halibut. And so began the myth making that created this stupid woman and made her a chance of being within a heartbeat of ruling the free world.
These old goats shouldn’t be allowed out by themselves. Same goes for journos in Australia. One in particular, at a certain national daily, needs to take a cold shower.
So you all went out on Saturday night and gave the Labor mob a kicking. A bit indiscriminately, I thought. I mean, fun’s fun, but shooting innocent bystanders is not on.
My old mate Paul Pearce in Coogee didn’t deserve it. Luckily, sanity prevailed in Marrickville and Balmain (maybe), where two good eggs, Carmel and Verity, look like hanging on. Both are decent women and they are lucky they live in small electorates where they can get out and meet people. Hard to vote against them after you’ve met them.
As for the rest of the mob who were shown the door, it is hard to feel pity for them because most began their parliamentary lives as nobodies and it was all downhill from there. They had been part of the Sussex Street sheltered workshop which trained people to jump when Eddie Obeid and his mates said so, and to only ask, how high?
In The Sydney Morning Herald on Wednesday, Frank Sartor, former planning minister and Lord Mayor of Sydney, wrote an open letter to Obeid, telling him to hit the road. I’m sure Eddie will be off (not) but first he has to install the old bald guy, John Robertson, in the leadership just to piss us off a bit more. Morrie Iemma, another big fan of Robbo’s, said they may as well because his mediocrity will be revealed early and he will be shown the door.
Knowing Robbo, he will probably take the door with him on the way out.
Just to show how low the Sussex Street mob are, Morrie said if Robbo didn’t get the nod, he would just white ant anyone who did. Lovely; they sound like the Federal Liberal party.
But to get back to the Sartor column. Frankie is a bitter man because he didn’t get helped into the premiership by the Terrigals, led by Obeid and Joe Tripodi. And let’s not forget he was the most hated man in NSW as planning minister, and he was given unseemly treatment by a judge in the Land and Environment Court over a decision to allow Catherine Hill Bay to be totally rooted by developers. Check it out here. Spoiler alert: the words land bribes and Sartor appear in the same sentence
Even with those caveats, I am wondering why the reaction has been muted, to say the least. I know everyone is still basking in the glow of the Paul Keating spray about Robbo − and vintage PJK, it was. I loved the line about Robbo having 25 dead people hanging round his neck.
Pure Cicero.
But Sartor raised charges of influence-pedalling and control of these Sussex Street drones that some might think borders on criminality. Have a read and then ring ICAC.
Before we move off this, a bit of praise for a few journos. Andrew West’s column in the SMH on Tuesday did us all a service in reminding us what a waste of space Bob Carr was. After the election, Bobby wrote one of his ponderous columns on his blog in which he spent 500 words giving the Greens a kicking and 200 discussing Labor’s performance and his part in its downfall (none, apparently).
Carr is someone who never listens to himself. He’s up there with Mark Arbib and Karl Bitar.
The ALP is irrelevant in NSW for at least the next eight years, so let’s look at Barry O’Farrell, the man who is now premier and living proof of the old Woody Allen saying: “90 per cent of life is about just turning up.” Not since John Howard sleazed into office in 1996 on the back of the “it’s time” factor has a man arrived in public life so unscrutinised. We can thank the journos for this.
Instead of demanding detailed policies and costings from Bazza, they just let him slide through. Some were pursuing Keneally like secret admirers (stalkers). Others were just keen to ride the rape-and-pillage express that was the NSW election. It became a daily coverage of who would be put to the sword first and how many swords would be used against them. I think I am the only person who highlighted Gladys Berejiklian, who will be transport minister. This is the pivotal policy for O’Farrell. Trains, buses and more bloody freeways all heading out west.
Costings, anyone? I knew Gladys had come as a surprise to everyone when I noticed on Twitter on Saturday night that #gladys was trending and most people were asking, Gladys???? WTF? Anyone care to name any other notables on the NSW Lib front bench?
Of course, Mr Barry, a handy spinner, sent down his first ball on day one. It caught the hapless press gang totally by surprise. It was like one of David Boon’s famous nude balls: it had nothing on it but it clean-bowled the journos. So we had the stories of the big budget black hole. Of course, it is a pile of bullshit and should have been seen as such. Big budget black holes were invented by John Howard in 1996 and have been used ever since by incoming governments to justify throwing all their election promises overboard. It took a day for them to catch on and Matt Wade nailed the first big lie of the O’Farrell era
Good on Bazza for sending it down in his first over; he must have known that he had a bunch of tail-enders in the press gallery and they would cop anything. Critical thinking doesn’t seem to be part of the armament of journos any more. They are just stenographers.
Bazza then threw down another one by declaring war on the Gillard Government. Another stock ball from the state premiers’ handbook. Start a fight with the Feds over funding and you can cover up no end of incompetence. Next up will be a move to close the safe injecting room, a backflip on teaching ethics in place of scripture in state schools, and a raft of Fred Nile-inspired Christian fundamentalist legislation. Then a sop to the Shooters and Fishers Party and, by the end of four years, I wouldn’t be surprised if the shooters are potting off wildlife in Centennial Park.
O’Farrell will become like all state premiers − a tinkerer at the social end of the spectrum. It will be talkback-inspired repression supported by the far-right religious fundamentalists who infest the Libs. There will be rhetoric about more police on the beat, tough on crime and sentencing. Meanwhile, people will keep getting bashed outside and inside pubs because they are open too long and alcohol is a blight on our society. But doing anything about it? Get real.
The liquor industry kicks the can big time for the political parties. O’Farrell’s big promise to clean up the property developers and the approval process will die a quiet death, crushed under an avalanche of developer donations.
The big infrastructure issues will be too hard and not done because Julia has been being a big meany. Gladys will spend the next four years apologising for not having achieved anything.
The barbarians have taken over and if in six months you can spot any difference between them and the old mob, I’ll send you a cupcake.
Geez it’s depressing.
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