Hola friends, apologies for such a long hiatus, I've been boring myself with the normalities of the everyday and haven't had the motivation to spin everday tales of life into the comedy gold that I've presented to you in the past. But that's all changed now, so let me
The term of office for a Government over here is three years, and as Labor (no U for the party name over here, but the word meaning graft has it...) swept to a 1997 style victory just after I got here in 2007 (a good example of always being about ten years behind the UK…), there's another one due soon.
Just over a month ago Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard (she's a taffy by birth) knifed Kevin Rudd in the back and became Australia's first female PM overnight. I'm sure you probably heard.
There'd always been stories that Kev was a Gormless McBroon control freak nutter who worked twenty hour days and constantly lost his rag with his staff etc so he didn't have many friends within his own party, but that was alright as he was King Kev who'd got them into power and who had the love of the people to back him up. Then came the GFC and he spent big, saved the country from recession, but in the post-mortum got a lot of stick for wasting some of the cash. He then also failed to introduce a carbon tax bill (voted down by the Greens, who said it wasn't strong enough, teaming up with the Liberals, who said it was too strong), and then the big one was taking on the mining companies in trying to introduce a mining super tax.
The mining companies have been making billions and paying what was seen as a relatively small amount of tax for taking minerals that were seen to 'belong to all Australians and non renewable'. Basically the mining companies would pay an initial fee to secure a permit to mine somewhere then pay normal amounts of tax for digging up and selling huge parts of Australia. As they flew round in private jets and looking at ways to avoid paying tax, Kev saw that taxing them would be a popular move with the people and help pay off the huge deficit that had been run up staving off recession.
Except the mining companies have obviously got a lot of money and clout and before you knew it there were loads of prime time ads going out saying that the mining tax would destroy mining, cost jobs, cripple the economy, and Kev was out to ruin hard-working families and the country in general. They spent millions on the campaign and weren't looking like they were going to budge soon. The unions, who've got a lot of say in the Labor party started getting pressure and started getting worried, and as polls showed Kev's popularity was dipping a bit, started moving against him. With the other things Kev had got a bit of grief over (focussing on the bad stuff that was real, rather than the unprovable hypothetical bad stuff he saved the country from by making Australia one of the best performing countries through the GFC) Labor started getting worried that they might lose the upcoming election.
So they got his deputy PM to assassinate him, dump him overboard and call an early election before anything else went wrong and they dropped their lead in the polls altogether... except that plotting to, and then killing your leader in a vicious and cold-blooded way can, to some people, look quite moody, and might be the sort of thing that makes you look a bit evil and untrustworthy. Which is just what you're after going into an election. Also, using the argument that "Kev and all the bad things he did have gone now, so vote for us!" doesn't really work when the folk saying that are the ones who were in his cabinet and stood next to him and agreed with his decsions.
It was quite mental - they plotted against him and made sure that when they called a vote of no confidence and a leadership battle they had the numbers behind Gillard to beat him. He'd dropped a few points in the polls but was still well ahead of the opposition, but with so many of his own hating him, and them getting spooked by the direction of the polls, they happily stuck the knife in. With rumours flying about that there was a plot to do him in, Julia Gillard came out and said there was more chance of her playing Aussie Rules for the Bulldogs than there was of her challenging Kev for the leadership. On the night the story broke, Kev held a press conference and said he had the support of the people. The next morning Julia went to his office, told him his number was up, and he stepped down without challenging (as he knew he'd be hammered in a vote) and then gave another press conference stepping down as PM and party leader. He nearly burst into tears about three times, which is quite weird for a Prime Minister to do on live telly. You could see he was gutted but also totally fucking raging and having been whacked by his own. The resignation speech lasts about ten minutes and in the background his missus looks worried that he's going to lose it any minute, and his teenage son is standing on the other side looking like he'd rather be naked on stage at Brixton Academy, wanking into a cup with an orange stuck in his mouth. You can watch it on youtube here, it's not often you see Julius Caesar-style intrigue played out so publicly.
In the speech Kev the egomaniac rears his head as he can't resist banging on about how brilliant he's been, listing all his achievements, with his most proud moment being the official apology to the Indigenous people. Which is quite funny, because more than two years since he did it, the Aboriginals now properly hate him because making a big empty gesture and publicising it around the world in shameless PR is all he's done, and all the other promises of money and support and improved services for them haven't appeared, they're no better off than they ever were. I felt sorry for him until I saw the speech, then you could see that underneath he probably is a right arsehole.
...but maybe not as big as the two the country now has to choose between! Julia Gillard, the Maggie Thatcher-style psycho who murdered her boss, dumped him overboard then smiled sweetly to the camera and asked the nation to trust her, or opposition leader Tony Abbott, a mad catholic who regularly nearly drops himself in it by coming out with mental religious stuff about hating gays, that a woman's place is in the home, abortion is a sin, and Jesus is the greatest saviour. Then he gets into a pair of speedos and does a triathalon.
The first thing that Julia did once she became PM was backdown on Kev's mining tax crusade and appeased big business by agreeing to much weaker terms. By doing that and trying to distance herself from the mistakes she was intimately involved in under Kev's rule, and also being the key assassin (et tu Brutus etc), the Labor party have dropped even further in the polls and are now level with the mental bunch of right wing, big-business-loving religious nutters that are the opposition.
After seeing Kev get toppled by not being allowed to deliver on the promises he made in order to get the top job in 2007, there's now this weird spectacle of both major parties running an election campaign but too scared to announce any policies for fear of not being able to deliver on them and getting killed off as a result.
On top of which Labor want Kev to come out and stand next to Julia and smile and campaign and say everything is alright, to try and win back the voters who think they're a bunch of evil murderous arseholes (this is especially important in Queensland, as Kev pitched himself as a good Queensland lad and it's a big state with loads of farmers suspicious of us city types and our disloyal ways). Kev seems to be enjoying the power he's now got as so far he's refused to join her on the campaign trail and is being blamed for damaging leaks that have come out about Gillard recently. Sources say he's definitely the kind of chap who would wait patiently for revenge, and who would laugh like Patrick Bateman as he took it.
Anyway, I can't vote and they're all a load of twats who are making my life busier at work, so a pox on all their houses!
