Not Kim Beazley's Blog

Out of the Political Grave

2007-01-25T19:40:00.000+11:00

Well, ladies and gentlemen and others who need not be ignored, the good news is that the Dear Departed Leader has emerged from the entombing cobweb cocoon of hemi-demi-semi-retirement (i.e. the twilight of the political gods, not to untowardly and unduly blaspheme, you understand, I trust), Kim Beazley has emerged, I say, to vouchsafe upon our as-yet-unwitting world the inestimable pearls of his undubitable hard-won wisdom, to wit, his much-anticipated and much-analysed oracular and orotund pronouncements pertinant to, and reflective of, the upcoming Federal Election in our wide, brown, but nonetheless generally pleasant land, viz. Australia, an election, one must acknowledge upfront and cleanbreastedly but with heavy heart and heavy chest-heaving, the which Mr Kim Christian Beazley, Esquire, will regrettably but undeniably not be contesting in his erstwhile manifestation as the highly esteemed - and highly missed, needless to add, but add it I unswervingly will - loyal leader of her Majesty's steadfast Australian opposition, to wit, the Australian Labor Party. But to come to the nub, the kernel of the chestnut currently in question: the Great Man has enunciated an earth-shaking dictum that has percolated through the caffeine-addicted netherworld of what passes for journalistic praxis in this afflicted desmesne; namely, that the upcoming, aforementioned electoral and gladiatorial contest will be none other than the proverbial 'make-or-break' Armageddon of the Antipodean political landscape, and, to express it in blunt and concise fashion, will spell the veritable end for one or other of our major political actors, i.e., either the Australian Labor Party will cease to exist due to the decimation of its Trades Union base under the swingeing assault of the Orwellian misnamed, so-called 'WorkChoices' package, or - in stark contradistinction - the Liberal Party (with whom we of course taxonomically bundle their hapless, hopeless, hackneyed, hasbeen, hayseed lackeys, the ingloriously misnamed National Party, who comprise but a pimply rump of the once-significant Country Party of Black Jack McEwen et alia, of whom the much-vaunted and much-vented Barnaby Joyce constitutes but the final, flickering flare of a fast extinguishing ember), the Liberal Party - to return to my theme - whose continued existence is posed point blank - at the point of a veritable electoral revolver, no less - by its consistent and consecutive defeats at the hands of various assembled State-level Labor administrations, and whose inevitable and unregrettable demise would be obviously accomplished by its defeat in the aforementioned Federal poll. To sum up: the upcoming Commonwealth election will indubitably result in our nation becoming effectively a one-party state, with the ineluctable extinction of one or other of the major competing parties for the aforementioned diverse reasons. We, the general public, seated round our TV dinners, can only be transfixed by this burst of politically analytical brilliance and await - with breath bated or otherwise - the unavoidable transmogrification of our political life. One can only hope that Kim will continue to share such scintillating insights, with those of us that are willing to listen, in the extraordinary times that clearly lie ahead.

A Valediction

2006-12-05T17:50:00.000+11:00

At the outset let me say our hearts go out to the Beazley family with their recent bereavement.

As you are reading this, the political career of Kim Christian Beazley Jr is deceased. His commission has been terminated. His Napoleonic-cum-Churchillian baton is firmly and fastly stowed in his proverbial knapsack as he marches stalwartly and stoically into the time-hallowed sunset of the Labor icons. Sic gloria transit mundi. From cock of the Labor roosters to knick-knack-brushing feather-duster in a vertitable eye-blink of vertiginous Antipodean politics. As the Bard hath it, 'nothing in life became him like the leaving of it.'

He will always be remembered as a big man from a big country, indecently obsessed with building it even bigger, manically measuring out the hard yards and the cubic inches of heated air, concretely laying down the base of principle plus practicality and creatively erecting the gossamer superstructure of rhetorical effusion, enumerating the diverse dimensions of this nation's future prosperity, propensities, and proportions. Of course, the loss of such a Collossus to Australian public life will be catastrophic and incalculable, but nonetheless it would be a gargantuan case of Goliath with quadruple quintuplets if he was to continue to serve the great Australian Labor Party in any imaginable capacity from henceforth. As to regrets, he has accumulated a mythic myriad, namely 4332*, which doubtless he will enumerate in analytical triplicate when his much-anticipated diary is released in coming weeks (to be published by Dancing Bear Press).

Let me say in closing that Kevin Rudd will be a very good leader with very good qualifications, very good policies, and very good strategies which will indubitably enable him to have a very good result against the Moriarty of Australian Politics, our Prime Miniature John Winston Howard. You will never hear me say the merest whisper against Mr Rudd, nor a word that is not in full and unequivocal affirmation of the goal of a strong and united team - viz. the Australian Labor Party - being fielded in the 2007 Ashes Match.

Kevin Rudd - over to you!

[*Approximately. To be reassessed on further examination.]

It's On!

2006-12-01T18:20:00.000+11:00

It's on! In response to the aforementioned internal rumblings, Kim Beazley has courageously and correctly precipitated a spill, as part of a strategic manoeuvre to clear the air, which will amply demonstrate who can cut the mustard in the leadership stakes and who merely cuts the cheese. Presumably, the constant tedious talk about the absence of ticker - the needless nagging nattering - will be brusquely banished to the nether regions of the never-uttered-again as the concomitant consequence of the occurrence of this bold coup d'etat. Moreover, the outcome of the spill will hopefully be carthartic. The stark and unforgiving choice currently confronting the Caucus of the Australian Labor Party is between an experienced bloke who has gouged out the hard yards of solid exertion and who appeals at an undeniable gut level to the average Australian household dutifully seated around their time-hallowed kitchen table trying to make proverbial ends meet under the swingeing impact of the double whammy of the traitorous interest rate rises and the unAustralian WorkChoices legislation, a man of indubitable substance, a global statesman - no less - who bestrides the international stage like a veritable Canberran Colossus, a masterly tactician and rhetorician, and - on the other hand, in inapposite opposition, alone and palely loitering in the shadowy parliamentary wings - a pallid, pasty, pastel-wearing, Mandarin-speaking former Foreign Affairs mandarin who is uncannily evocative of a Da Vinci Code villain, namely, Kevin Rudd. The political tennis ball is now well and truly in the figurative court of the Caucus wisely and well to detemine the ultimate victor of this pivotal contest and thusly to annoint the party leader by whom they are desirous to be led in the inevitable approach in the direction of the electoral battle that is obviously looming large on the not-too-distant event horizon, i.e., the future. We can but trust they will vote with a sagacity that well befits the trust in which they have been placed by the rank and file of the Australian Labor Party and the great Australian public, in whom, through whom, and for whom the governmental sovereignty of this great nation soundly rests.

Internal Rumblings (Again!)

2006-11-30T20:05:00.000+11:00

The internal rumblings on the backbench have reached a not-so-carthartic Caucus crescendo, as the effluent hits the proverbial ventilator and scuttlebutt claims the airwaves. The rump that is trying to destablise Kim Beazley - I quote from none less than the Sydney Morning Herald here - has inflamed the situation without precipitating any productive movement, and - needless to say - Beazley will not evacuate from the throne.

Needless to say, this issue - or lack thereof - has provided an unwelcome diversion from the anti-WorkChoices campaign - if you forgive that ugly neologism - which has achieved apolectic apotheosis in the National Day of Action today. Of course, the routine identity parade of usual suspects - the same old carping critics and snide sneerers - has already unleashed its collective unpleasant load of vulgar disparagement on this worthy event, a mode of behaviour which, I have to say, is ironically tinged with disappointment at the very outcome in which it ostensibly revels and reviles.

Of course the assembled and dissembling media will play merry hell with this apparent non-eventuality - namely, the leadership challenge - until it grows sick of this its lacklustre plaything and moves on to something more shallowly enticing. Until this point, the Australian Labor Party seems regrettably stymied and doomed to exist in a species of Sisyphean limbo from which the only quietus is the sweet escape of temporary sleep or, perchance, timeless death. Ah, but this is but the errant voice of unabashed pessimism evoking its varied essences in a profitless echo of needless nihilism.

Let us rather rejoice in the ALP gaining a candidature of such a lustre as that emitted by former SAS (Special Air Services) commander, Peter Tinley, at the same time as we commemorate with regret, but also sorrow, the untimely demise of the young SAS soldier(s) in the Black Hawk tragedy in the vicinity of Fiji. If only their sacrifice had a commander-in-chief sufficient to its gravity. We can but hope that the upcoming electoral contest gives birth to an outcome that is satisfactory in this aforementioned regard. Indeed.

A Global Statesman

2006-11-26T09:50:00.000+11:00

As Howard thoughtlessly forges an inexorable course towards an awful nuclear future, it is clearly beholden on the Australian Labor Party to render this exorable, to wit, to wrest the metaphorical tiller from the unresponsive hands of the Great Pedestrian, and to steer the ship of state past the melting icebergs, into the halcyon seas of clean coal and renewable energy.

Meanwhile Howard and his men and women of straw await the winnowing of the Wheat Board Enquiry which will hopefully separate the grains of truth from the chaff of bureaucratic subterfuge and parliamentary evasion and provide the yeast from which a wholesome, fully-baked Labor Government can emerge at Federal level. This, of course, reminds one to extend one's heartfelt congratulations to Steve Bracks for his resounding victory at the polls in yesterday's Victorian State Election, though one's stomach cannot but help registering tentative misgivings along the lines that the continued dominance of the Australian Labor Party on the median tier of governance - welcome though it indubitably is - bodes ill for altering the other verity of our current political status quo, namely, the conservative stranglehold on the upper tier.

Unfortunately, this juncture - precipitated by Beazley's trivial slip of the tongue with regard to Rove McManus - has seen the re-emergence of the backbench rumblings which threaten to unseat our leader. The guileful Gillard has given an interview to the popular talkshow host, David Tench, for instance. Now while Tench is respected by all other real Australian men, the consensus is that he is a little lightweight, and one cannot but recall under this rubric Gillard's erstwhile and unlamented mentor, Mr Latham, whose televised antics at the Big Brother House would have had Eric Blair (better known as George Orwell) turning over in this grave. For his part, the ever-ready Rudd has been trotting the globe like a ubitiquous gnome, popping up on a ornate throne in the Great Hall of the People and obviously chagrined that he missed out on the opportunity to garb himself in one of the Vietnamese APEC gowns. What the Caucus and the carping critics of the media need to realise is that it is Beazley, and he alone, who is the global statesman; he alone of the Labor alternative Prime Minister contenders has the substance to don the ceremonial robes of such occasions; and if he is not comprehensively au fait with the latest trends in popular culture, that is surely no barrier to taking his rightful seat in the highest office of the land, rather it is reflective of the fact that his mind is pre-occupied with loftier matters, matters which may well constitute a blimp on the radar of the more mundane commentators, but are far more than hot air to one like Beazley who has his head in the clouds.

Rove Astray

2006-11-18T09:33:00.000+11:00

Well, as Kim Beazley has opined recently, a political leader has no friends of good or bad odour - but, it should be added, he has a veritable multitude of mates of various manifestations, both great and little, 'mate' being a valuable verbal device in the great Australian vernacular to cover for the regrettably inevitable lapses in memory - specifically with regard to personal nomenclature - to which we are all prey from time to time, especially those of us who perennially pirouette on the pinnacle of public life and for whom the passing parade of colourful personages becomes oft little more than a kaleidoscopic blur. The occasion that has summoned forth these philosophical-cum-psychological observations is, of course, KB's misplaced conveyance of Australian sympathy to Karl Rove - known in popular parlance as 'Bush's Brain' - over the loss of the Iraq War, rather than sympathy to Rove McManus, not to be confused with Susie Annus, or the annus horribilis that Labor seems to be painfully passing through at this moment...

Needless to say, all manner of carping critics have seized on this misspeaking to once again lambast our embattled leader, linking this present incident to the previous instance in which Beazley was confused as to the name of model Michelle Leslie who was then, like the unfortunate Chappelli, entangled in the clutches of the Indonesian justice system (though it should be acknowledged in his defence that 'Michelle Lee' was how this hapless individual was first introduced to the readership of the Sydney Morning Herald) and taking this opportunity to cast aspersions on his leadership credentials and mental capacity to the extent of asserting that he is suffering from Chateaubriand, Member for Brand, or whatever the alleged syndrome is called. Of course, nothing could be further from the facts of the matter: the truth is that Beazley's mind is a self-contained 'knowledge nation', a labyrinthine library of Umberto-Ecological proportions, a cavernous cathedralline cadastre of complex thought, which no mere mortal can comprehend, such that minor mishaps of synapse and syntax may occur within the majestic tapestry of his subtle cogitations - or, as Sydney's Daily Telegraph would put it, he is a 'noodle brain'.

Betrayal!

2006-11-09T21:29:00.000+11:00

Well, ladies and gentlemen, yet again we bear witness to a bare-faced backroom backstabbing betrayal by the stockmarket bear-garden bowler-hatted bureaucrats of the Reserve Bank of the hard-working households of this great nation, who honestly and innocently seated round their humble kitchen tables have been trickled down on from a lofty height by the merciless economists of financial correctness in this latest edict of monetary stringency, i.e. a one-quarter-percent rise in official interest rates. But, make no mistake, dear reader, this savage, swingeing blow against the very marrow of Middle Australia has been signed, sealed, and delivered by none other than his Mendacity, the Prime Miniature, John Winston Howard, whose lips may say 'economic management' but whose eyes say 'austerity' - nay, whose intimations of sunshine are but a haunting harbinger of nuclear winter!

This man's very being is suffused with Orwellian duplicity, whereby even a fall in unemployment is a dread messenger presaging further interest rate astringency. His cultural canker has insidiously corroded the very soul of Australianism, so that our sadly beset land is facing not only the daunting prospect of having to wrestle the sacred Ashes back from the clutches of our bastard fathers, the hated Poms, but also the receding vision of the Melbourne Cup being borne off on the steeds of the denizens of Nippon. Can our country endure the shame!

Making Water an Issue

2006-11-07T20:43:00.000+11:00

As our esteemed and estimable Feral Parliament wrestles heart and soul with the torturous and tortured Gordian knot which is the confounding conundrum of stem cell research and human therapeutic cloning, let us all and sundry rejoice and wish the happy parents every joy as our own Labor Senator Conroy produces a half-human, half-rooster embryo.

Meanwhile Mr Howard has seen fit to make water - which he has sat on for a decade - a front and centre issue for this sitting of parliament, which may be a welcome relief to farmers in this wide, brown - and slightly dessicated - land, but which ill behoves a prime minister of his longevity so dilatorily to approach - it being such burning issue - so late in the piece, so to speak. But never fear, Mr Beazley is equally well acquainted with his position as leader of Her Majesty's Opposition and will indubitably play his appointed role in this exercise with the exactitude and aptitude as is his unwavering wont. In due course, he will spout forth with apposite responses on this topic which will - needlessly to say - put Mr Howard's Johnny-come-lately posturing to the very shame. Watch this (expansive) space!

The Camels are Coming!

2006-10-29T16:12:00.000+11:00

Well, ladies and gentlemen, as I pen these brief but timely lines, the imminence of an interest rate rise hangs over the bowed heads of the sorely afflicted, sorrily tried, and sadly misled Australian public like a mythical Damocles' sword, and let us make no mistake: this fourth instance will be the last financial straw which breaks the proverbial camel's back, which makes it easier for that aforesaid figurative camel to pass through the eye of a veritable needle than for the average Aussie family seated round the suburban kitchen table to enter aspirationally into the heavenly kingdom of rich persons, being as they are mortgaged to the hilt and leveraged to the eyeballs. And the unexpected but not unwelcome decision handed down by the Orwellianly entitled Fair Pay Commission, when combined with the manifold bottlenecks that beset the mismanaged Australian economy - great as it indubitably is - can only concomitantly contribute to the excessively exacting incidence of inflation which afflicts this aforesaid economy. All the great Australian Labor Party needs to do is to communicate this simple message to the general Australian public and they are - to use the colloquial expression - well and truly home and hosed in respect of the upcoming but as yet unannounced federal election which is inevitably in the offing in the foreseeable future, namely the next year or so.

Smoke and Mirrors

2006-10-25T19:27:00.000+10:00

Ladies and gentlemen, beware, beware, the Great Evader is at it again, cloaking and covering up his Neronic inaction over the burning issue of climate change with smoke and mirrors, with a scintillating mirage of the construction of a solar plant, a confection, a conjuring trick. No, dear readers, make no mistake: while Mr Howard's lips may say 'solar', his eyes have a radioactive gleam!

Meanwhile, Mr Howard holds grimly to the steering wheel of a losing strategy in Iraq, churning his tractionless tyres deeper into the desolate desert sands. If only he had heeded the wise and eloquent counsel of Kim Beazley when it rang out clear as a bell, tolling a solemn warning of the folly of rushing headlong on the coat-tails of our American and British cousins without the due diligence of a strategic assessment such as only an experienced Defence Minister could have provided if his sadly misled nation had but taken up his modest offer. It is a veritable certitude that it will be Mr Howard's troops - I mean, the brave and true men and women in uniform who nobly went where Mr Howard so unwisely despatched them - it will be these unfortunate few who switch out the metaphorical lights after the departure of Bush and Blair's forces. Oh, to what a sorry pass our proud military has come!

Retreat Forthwith!

2006-10-10T18:05:00.000+10:00

I write these lines of condensed outrage in the midst of this international emergency which has been precipitated by the actions of the dastardly DPRK, which has, as you would doubtless be aware, in line with their previous announcement and the predictions of sundry distinguished commentators over the preceding decade, tested a nuclear device. I trust that you are, as I am, and as is the rest of the free world and other parts as well, reeling with shock at this unexpected turn of events. We can but hope that the United States, Britain, France, Russia, and China (last but not least) take an unqualified and principled stand against the possession of nuclear weapons, and in the interim we can but join with Kim Beazley, who has advised Alexander Downer - who is, disturbingly, growing to resemble the notorious Kim - to spearhead a diplomatic offensive against this provocative act, and standing stoutly with martial jaw ajut stare down the North Korean menace, telling the regime in calm but unmistakeably firm tones to retreat forthwith!

Blue Heelers and Yellow Bellies

2006-10-06T20:30:00.000+10:00

Well, ladies and gentlemen, electors of Australia, blokes and coves and coots, the ineluctable question on this wide brown land's collective lips is the following: will the myriad myrmidons of the National - erstwhile Country - Party slink off the proverbial political stage with their metaphorical tails between their figurative legs like some iconic blue heeler cowed by their toffee-nosed Tory masters, or - on the contrary - will they be fair dinkum and ridgy didge and in the time-hollowed Australian tradition make a stand against the various nefarious multifarious machinations of the misnamed Liberal Party machine vis-a-vis the dismemberment of media ownership laws and their replacement with the concept of open slather - and even, perhaps, demonstrate that their bite is every bit as effective as their much-echoed bark? May well you ask.

Meanwhile, we long for the day when a Federal Education Minister takes his - or, I hasten to mention, her - place on the honorable Treasury Benches to respond with a preternatural fascination to the role of education in addressing the debilitating skills shortages and infrastructure bottlenecks which plague this great nation's booming economy due to the lamentable ineptitude of this our lacklustre alleged governmental institution, viz the Howard administration. Alas, such a happy conjuncture will only emerge with the election of a Beazley Goverment. Hasten the day!

What a White-Knuckle Contest!

2006-10-01T08:50:00.000+10:00

Well, what a white-knuckle footy contest that was, what a nail-biting finish, and what a not entirely unfortunate outcome - viz. the Eagles having the proverbial wood over the Swans by a mere point - for those like myself with finely balanced loyalties in the game of rugby! Of course, I share this fence-straddling posture with the Grand Humpty of antipodean politics, our Dear Leader Kim, who is an autochthon of the occident (i.e. a WAster) but at the same time a resident of convenience in our nation's mighty metropolis, Sydney Town. KB with his customary eloquence has oracularly declared that his prime and principal loyalties lie with the Fremantle Dockers (not to be confused with the Fremantle Doctor, which like Kim himself is a refreshing wind from the west) but he would be duty bound as a Westralian to aver his football fealty - albeit with knitted brow, clenched fists, gritted teeth, and involuntarily tightened sphincters - to the victorious West Coast Eagles. As in politics, so in sport, positioning oneself on the winning side is never less than torturous.

Towards 2007!

2006-09-27T18:42:00.000+10:00

I must preface my remarks with an apology, for I have been remiss of late in contributing to this blog, a hiatus which has been due not to a lapse into lassitude on my part but rather due to the whirlwind of frenetic activity that I, along with every other member of the Australian Labor Party, has been singlemindedly engaged in over these last weeks, as you would no doubt be aware being - as you undisputably are since you are perusing this missive - a well-informed denizen of this nation's body politic, for - make no mistake - we will not cease in electoral fight nor will our field marshall's batons sleep in our hands till we have rekindled the light on the hill in this our wide brown land.

But to business: Australia is still gripped by drought, despite some recent relieving showers in the metropolitan localities - so what, pray tell, is the ruminated response of our nominal leader, the Prime Minister John Winston Howard, to this grievous national emergency. Why, it is none other than to spin out like a veritable dung beetle a malignant bureaucratic excrescence to cover up the issue, while producing nary a single solitary drop for the thirsty throat of the once mighty Murray! It is none other than to set up a cynical sinecure for Malcolm Turnbull, positioning him as a competitor to Peter Costello in the Liberal's continuing saga of sordid internecine feuding. As with the infrastructure stranglehold placed on the neck of industry, as with the skills shortages undermining the foundations of the economy, this reckless feckless government has once again demonstrated itself to be completely, utterly, and irredeemably incapable of stepping up to the plate and putting in the hard proverbial yards that this afflicted country is so palpably crying out for.

Needless to say, the Labor Party is riding high in the opinion polls but sadly we are not free from lead in our saddlebags, from the dead hand of the ghosts of leaders past, as Mark Latham unleashes another fetid diatribe of verbal diarrhoea on the unsuspecting world and Margaret Whitlam - of all people - chooses to swipe with her handbag the wife of our Prime Miniature. Such things are red herrings which seek to distract us, but rest assured we are on Howard's trail like the very hounds of Hades. To 2007 and victory!

Terrorism and Kevin Rudd

2006-09-11T20:50:00.000+10:00

It has been a sad week in this wide brown land as we have seen the passing of two rolled-gold Australian legends, to wit: Steve Croc Irwin and Peter Perfect Brock. In addition at this time our hearts and minds are with our American cousins as they contemplate the anniversary of that infamous act, September 11. While not seeking to derive squalid partisan advantage from such a universal tragedy, I cannot but point out that if Mr Howard genuinely and sincerely desired to terror-proof our terra firma he could so do merely by instructing new migrants in Australian values on entry, instead of pussyfooting round the issue and emitting the occasional dogwhistle as is his wont.

And in more mundane matters, the mythical Labor leadership issue has again raised its ugly head - rather like the Loch Ness Monster in many respects - this time prompted by the stirring of Tasmaniac Harry Quick. Harry always paddles his own canoe and we in the Australian Labor Party are glad that he is paddling it to the next election, but let me assure Harry that Kevin is a rudder not a helmsman - that latter post is reserved for Dear Leader Kim.

And so to bed.

Australian Values

2006-09-05T20:26:00.000+10:00

Another week brings with it another sad passing of a great Aussie bastard - I mean that epithet, of course, in the time-hallowed Australian way, that is to say, not at all - with the untimely demise of Steve Irwin, whose enthusiasm infected millions worldwide and whose loveable catchcry 'Crikey' was brazenly filched by those cynical assassins of cyberspace, the manic slanderer Stephen Mayne and his sardonic sidekick Christian Kerr. Sharper than a stingray's barb is Mayne's ingratitude, Shakespeare might have said. But enough of them - Steve was a true Australian hero in the fullest sense of the word and died doing what he loved. It is what he would have wanted, and for once I concur with our Prime Minister in saying that many of us Australians aspire to that.

From the epitome of Australian values I move to their antithesis: the deployment of foreign workers to undercut Australian working conditions and destabilise the kitchen table of the average family. Let me say this at the outset: it ill behoves Amanda Vanstone to cry foul to the effect that we in the Australian Labor Party are substituting the foghorn for the dogwhistle of racism - backhandedly admitting the penetrating charge many a time and oft laid at the door of her mealy-mouthed maladministration - for the sound that she hears is merely the chickens coming home to roost. I have a bone to pick with John Howard, and my beef is this: he wants it one way with the English language when he's casting aspersions against a particular segment of the populace whom I shan't detain you by nominating, when he's rattling his tin sabre in the bully pulpit in time with the drumbeat of war; but he sings an entirely different tune to the boardmembers in the backrooms of the big end of town when he plots and plans to dud the mums and dads of Middle Australia. The unprincipled duplicity on display in this instance is of a piece with the grotesque mendacity of this man and the gargantuan imposture he has foisted on this fair land.

Beazley, you should be Prime Minister at this hour! Australia has need of you! She is an endangered wetland of stagnant - and, I dare say, polluted - waters mismanaged by shortsighted pedestrians! And you, at least, genuinely appreciate the riches of the English language.

T3: The Fall of the Shares?

2006-08-29T19:45:00.000+10:00

As we say, 'Goodbye, Mr Chipp; our nation is poorer for your passing', our federal government is girding its collective and proverbial loins for a further fire sale of the family silver, namely, the residual portion of Telstra (or part thereof), on the palpably spurious grounds that the mums and dads are sick of being half pregnant and in the forlorn hope that T3 will be subtitled 'The Rise of the Machines'. This aforesaid sale presents a golden strategic opportunity for the Australian Labor Party, in that we are, at one and the same time, able to pose as the champions nonpareil of the small shareholder aspirationals of the Middle Australian mortgage-cum-Bible belt and also to stay brave and true to our trusty anti-privatisation trade union base, i.e., to put it in an unfortunate but not entirely inaccurate way, to walk on both sides of main street and have it both ways on either side of the ideological fence on which we as a movement are wont to sit. In this case it is one JWH, with his Judas spruiking of the lamentably underperforming Telstra shares, who is conspicuously impaled on the white picket fence of his financial iniquity, and it is he who will face the raucous chorus of calls for a policy back flip.

Meanwhile, this inadequate administration is struggling to provide feasible defence forces for our great nation with its latest, typically inept announcement of two pie-in-the-sky battalions for our sadly overstretched Army, revealing its singular and abysmal ignorance of the well-worn and not lightly disregarded adage about God being on the side of the actually existing battalions. Our men and women in khaki deserve better - one hundred times better, I say! - but only Corporal Beazley has a sufficient baton in his proverbial knapsack to deliver the goods in this regard. Would that his regretfully benighted nation was fully apprised of this state of affairs!

Their Days are Numbered

2006-08-14T20:05:00.000+10:00

Well, dear readers, I'm sure that you like me recoiled in horror at the news of yet another plot against the mother country by subhuman terrorists who have no respect for human life and dignity. The world is a dangerous and unstable place - as recent events in Lebanon have made amply manifest - but unfortunately the thin khaki line of Australia's fighting men and women has become desperately overstretched by this woefully witless government whose deployment of our troops from Terrorism Central in Afghanistan to the quaking quagmire of Iraq in pursuit of the will-o'-wisp of weapons of mass destruction (WMD for short) is now widely recognised as a strategic blunder of the first order. To make matters worse, this miserable administration - despite its election-snatching sabre-rattling and rabble-rousing flag-waving - has signally failed to secure adequately the nation's defences at this its hour of need. Far be it from me to join the chorus of carping critics of the Australian Federal Police: what's-his-name is a good bloke, but nevertheless the fact remains that the Australian people need an anti-terrorism inspector on the beat 24/7.

However, dear readers, rest assured that the days of these slothful incompetents are well and truly numbered. Fresh from seeing off his chicken-hearted deputy rooster, Howard has been forced into a humiliating backdown after a backbench backlash against his weak and worthless 'border protection' legislation which in reality is no more than a yellow-bellied exercise in kow-towing to Indonesian blackmail while at the same time despicably kicking the racist can. Meanwhile the general Australian populace is up in arms about the skyrocketing price of petrol which has well and truly hit the hip-pocket nerve where it hurts the most, but though Howard has responded with a smokescreen of half-measures, he has failed to uncouple the country from the tyranny of the distant oil suppliers, leaving us at the mercy of the international cartels and failing to mend the faultline which is everwidening in the kitchen tables of the average Australian family. I can almost hear the collective election pencils being sharpened in readiness to direct preferences away from these skulking scoundrels!

Beazley v.s Tuckey

2006-08-10T19:45:00.000+10:00

I hope you all witnessed how a boisterously bumptious Beazley shirt-fronted the weak, worthless worm, Wilson 'Milk Sop' Tuckey in front of the parliamentary portal, and in response to the latter's scurrilous schoolboy scorn - 'big, fat so-and-so', no less! - presented the broad shoulders of disdain. This has provided a palpable instance of the manner in which Beazley is more and more garnering the recognition he so richly deserves for having put in the hard yards and heavy lifting during his days in the wilderness, for trimming the unsightly flab from the Labor line-up, for tightening the party line, for getting his front-bench into shape, and generally for cutting a fine figure as number one contender for the heavyweight crown. What a stark contrast he makes to this miserable government - comprising a weasel in charge of a chicken coop - whose gross dereliction of duty has left the erstwhile Lucky Country trundling along an information goat-track to Cowpat Creek in a handcart!

The Banana Republic in Retrospect

2006-08-06T16:17:00.000+10:00

It is the wont of the Liberals and their supporters - overt or otherwise - to contrast the reign of Howard with that of his predecessor Keating and to do so in a less than flattering vein. However, it is salutary to recollect that under the much-maligned PJK we had the possibility of both bananas and a republic and under JWH we have most decidedly neither.

A Breach of Trust

2006-08-03T20:44:00.000+10:00

My fellow Australians: as you peruse this blog you are indubitably aware that the Reserve Bank has jacked up interest rates yet again by a colossal 0.25% and thusly dealt a swingeing blow to the much-vaunted economic credentials and oft-touted political credibility of one John Winston Howard, ostensible leader of this great but sadly afflicted nation. Make no mistake: this banking boardroom betrayal of the average Australian battling family seated round the suburban kitchen table was signed in triplicate, sealed with a Judas kiss, and delivered into the world with a breach of trust by none other by the Dishonourable, the Prime Miniature, short may he reign. Rest assured that we in the Australian Labor Party cannot but feel heartily and sincerely sorry for the erstwhile media-dubbed 'Howard Battlers' - not to be confused with shock jockey, Howard Sattler - who mistakenly took the misnamed Honest John at his word - as though it were his bond, whereas in point of fact the only bond to which this gentleman pays any regard is that traded on the international money markets - these battlers, I say, who took him at his word, cast their sundry ballots in his favour, hitched their family bandwagons to his petard, borrowed up to the eyeballs, mortgaged thirty pieces of the family silver for a mess of pottage, and were generally sold down the river without a financial paddle by this fly-by-night carpetbagger and his Mississippi riverboat trickster of a Treasurer. It is now eminently and abundantly apparent - as Kim Beazley has sagaciously opined - that it is ineluctably beholden on Mr Howard to undertake personally to write a grovelling letter of apology to each and every Australian householder for this flagrant breach of elementary decency and good old Australian honour.

A Fight Beazley Will Win

2006-07-31T19:57:00.000+10:00

Ladies and gentlemen, in breaking news, Mr Howard has finally responded to the gauntlet thrown down by Kim Beazley, has stopped his erstwhile practice of skulking in the shadows, has dropped his shallow pretence of prevarication and his hollow show of procrastination, and has unwittingly exposed the fact that he only thinks of himself, announcing - in brief - that he will, after all, lead his Party to the next election and leaving his Treasurer, Peter Costello, a political husk of a man, an eternally simpering electoral bridesmaid, a Harold Holt manque. This then is to be the epoch-making contest, the fight that Beazley wants and the fight that Beazley will win. Today - or at least some time next week - a council of war will be convened, strategic options will be canvassed, and plans will be drawn up, revised, and in the fullness of time put to Caucus. This is not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end, but it is perhaps the end of the beginning of the middle of the first phase of a long and arduous campaign, the hard yards of which will inexorably and inevitably culminate in the crushing victory of Beazley in 2007. Howard and his lacklustre, backbiting hacks are faced with unsurmountable obstacles if they are to meet Beazley's challenge. As Wayne Swan has pointed out, they must straighten out the bananas. And as Kevin Rudd has ably demonstrated, there is also the mystery wrapped in an enigma - or perhaps a banana skin, ho, ho - which is Downer's policy on despatching troops to the geopolitical quagmire that is Southern Lebanon. First, such a move was decried as suicidal; now there are intimations that the Government may be countenancing such an option. Unfortunately, since our troops are overstretched due to this Government's cavalier charge down the slippery slope of the Iraq debacle, such a commitment is decidedly unfeasible - not that we mean to cast aspersions on our men and women in uniform, whom - as is well known - we have always supported and always will. Suffice it to say: Beazley has girded his loins to battle the Government on any terrain, ready take his stand on bananas, on oil, or on some corner of foreign quicksand!

The Uranium Minefield

2006-07-25T18:05:00.000+10:00

In a stunning rebuff to his rebukers, Kim Beazley has remade the political landscape of the Australian Labor Party, grasped the nuclear nettle, and marched straight through the 'three mines' minefield, burning his proverbial bridges behind him and throwing down the gauntlet to the Government and to his sniping left-wing critics. Rather than sit on the fence or wander in the wilderness, Beazley has breached the policy pallisades and has claimed the strategic high ground of economic rectitude alongside the Government. Let the pusillanimous and the passive pooh-pooh this bold move if they will, but let those who have been hasty to harangue Beazley for his inaction draw breath and reflect. For this is a policy announcement whose time has come.

Exodus Postponed

2006-07-20T19:52:00.000+10:00

As Armageddon looms in the Levant, the nightmarish plight of Australian citizens presently visiting Lebanon is thrown into stark relief, and the government mechanisms which should be humming are rather stuttering and spluttering, and the dithering, simpering twit of an excuse for a Foreign Minister, that international embarrassment, Alexander Downer, fiddles in the rockets' red glare. Would that Beazley were at the helm - his country has need of him! Can you not imagine him, his former Defence Minister's baton clenched firmly in place, pushing forward the frigates with a croupier's rake on the verdant felt of the War Room? Can you not envisage his beetling brow and unflinching chin? But, of course, regrettably, inevitably, once again, this miserable administration - as evidenced previously in the debacle of Hurricane Katrina - seems unable to win a trick - nay, rather devotes its febrile energies entirely to profitless spin. With his stalwart arm and unquestioned ability to communicate astutely and pithily with our men and women in uniform - whom we in the Australian Labor Party have always supported to the knuckle of the hilt, and always will (despite the over-analysed lapses of the lamentable and unlamented Mark Latham) - Beazley, I say, would be the man of the hour, and at the very least arrange smarter charters! Would it were possible...!

Divulge, John Howard!

2006-07-18T16:38:00.000+10:00

Well, dear readers, another week has elapsed and Mr Howard has singularly failed to proffer a clearcut statement of his intentions vis-a-vis the Liberal Party leadership - to say nothing of the nation's - to the long-suffering Australian people; yes, he has neglected to take them into his confidence, and they remain decidedly out of the loop in this regard, and meanwhile Mr Costello circles like a cowardly hyena, and issues such as the water crisis and the as yet unsigned Kyoto Protocol go by the board. Well, it's just not good enough!

Only in It for Themselves

2006-07-13T09:09:00.000+10:00

With their apparently bottomless displays of hubris, duplicity, and spite, Messrs Howard and Costello, the alleged leaders of this disreputable government, have demonstrated yet again that they are only in it for themselves, focussing on their tawdry tussle for the top job and ignoring the petrol price peril, the skills shortage, the infrastructure deficit, and Big Brother - not to mention the cosmological scandal of AWB - in stark contrast to KB, who has dedicated himself to public life for decades without advancing his own career at all!

No Relation!

2006-07-08T14:54:00.000+10:00

This week our dear leader Kim's electorate office in Brand should surely bear a banner emblazoned 'No Relation!' as North Korea's tinpot tyrant test-fires a barrage of missiles and causes the planet to shudder on its very axis. Of course, Kim Beazley stands shoulder to stalwart shoulder with the rest of the free world in well and truly condemning this perverse and unconscionable militaristic display of unwanted and unwarranted aggression in otherwise peaceful times. The fact that these aforementioned missiles fell harmlessly in the Sea of Japan should by no means curtail our vigorous sabre-rattling in this regard. The only plausible strategem for restoring stability to the now disturbed North Asian region is to escalate the geopolitical tensions until Pyongyang either cracks or launches still more desperate provocations, licensing thereby a decisive military response on the part of our American allies. Rest assured that Kim, as an accomplished former Defence Minister, is fully apprised of the strategic imperatives of this scenario and is ready, able, and willing to lend his not inconsiderable expertise to the service of DFAT men and women who are at present strenuously engaged in applying might and main to the matter at hand.

Big Bother over Big Brother

2006-07-03T18:28:00.000+10:00

The much misunderstood social democrat, George Orwell (a nom de plume of one Eric Blair, by the way), must be turning in his grave, as Channel Ten's perversely dubbed Big Brother breaks new ground in gutter broadcasting. While this discredited government - the one which lost Australia the Ashes, no less - pussy-foots around this visual pollution, Kim Beazley has stood up and been counted on this stink-raising issue, delivering his blunt and businesslike advice to the adolescent smut-peddlers of that network of ill repute: to wit, that they should cease and desist forthwith with any plans for any subsequent series of this misbegotten and ill-conceived progeny, and, to put it in a nutshell, make this Big Brother their last. As the Sydney Morning Herald has so aptly noted, Kim is well-placed to hand out such astute advice, given that his wife, Susie Anus, has experience in children's television. Yes, Beazley can be counted on to get to the bottom of every sticky situation.

The World Cup

2006-07-02T10:05:00.000+10:00

As you may have noticed, I have thus far held back from making much commentary on the World Cup brou-ha-ha, but now that Italy has won, now that the dust has settled, the green and gold facepaint has faded, and the flares have gone out, it is apt that we reflect on what this sporting extravaganza has told us about ourselves as a nation: yes, dear reader, multicultural Australia has been well and truly front and centre, and we are now fused as one in our collective response to that final penalty kick in the dying seconds of the last game, a nation united - in disgust at soccer!

The Tightrope

2006-06-30T20:35:00.000+10:00

Let us be crystal clear: we do not ask for any especial treatment for David Hicks, currently imprisoned in the proverbial Castle D'If of our age (viz. Guantanamo Bay); we merely ask that he be dealt with normally (and so on, and so forth). Similarly, we do not ask for a special status for trades unions (despite the inopportune remarks in this regard by Mr Greg Combet) nor for Australian working people to be treated especially well, but merely that they be treated fair dinkumly in the great Australian way and not have their rights traduced by Un-Australian Workplace Agreements. Unfortunately, sentiments such as these - though indubitablely blameless and eminently reasonable - can be easily misrepresented as being more radical and militant than they are by our unscrupulous opponents, whose skulking skulduggery is unsurpassed. It is not often acknowledged what a fine line, what a veritable tightrope an Opposition Leader has painstakingly to tread. One must neither quietistically acquiesce nor bumptiously oppose. How well, but how thanklessly, Kim toes this line!

An Evil Act

2006-06-22T05:57:00.000+10:00

This disreputable government is evidently drunk on its power, inebriated in its self-satisfied and self-righteous arrogance, and intoxicated by an overweening hubris spawned by their last, much-trumpeted election triumph; and its present attempts to suborn and subordinate the Senate Committee process to the imperious imperial will of the over-reaching Executive (viz. Messrs Howard, Costello, and sundry minions) is indubitably an evil act, as Beazley has stated, notwithstanding the miserable endeavours from some quarters to paint this assessment as a high-flown hyperbolic excursion into the phantasmagorical realms of far-fetched rhetoric, attended by a liberal allowance of the excessive prolixity for which our Leader is lashed on a quotidian basis, and notwithstanding the snide jibe from the Rodent in Chief, to wit, that this complaint is rank hypocrisy in the mouth of one - who as Beazley was - was Deputy to 'Lord Keating' as our Prime Miniature sees fit retrospectively and disrespectfully to christen his prodigious predecessor.

Take Advantage of the Opportunity for a Strategic Redeployment

2006-06-20T20:38:00.000+10:00

As our Pacific partners, the Japanese, have seen fit to withdraw their forces from Iraq, it behoves the Australian Government - regrettably represented by Messrs Howard, Downer, Vaile et alia at the present juncture- similarly but separately to consider taking advantage of this opportunity to stage a parallel withdrawal of Australian troops, not that the support of our women and men in uniform is any whit diminished on the part of those of us in the Australian Labor Party, nor are we advocating the opportunistic taking of advantage of an adverse situation to 'cut and run', as the unfortunate phrase goes, to wit, quitting the quagmire when the allied effort is cut to the quick, rather we resolve to propose in favour of a strategic redeployment of military resources (i.e., in military parlance, boots on the ground) towards the universally acknowledged 'Terrorism Central' (viz. Afghanistan), and hence square the circle in redoubling our endeavours in the direction of prosecuting the War on Terror, while simultaneously responding sympathetically to the many and sundry calls for Mesopotamian disengagement.

Come Out from the Bully Pulpit!

2006-06-18T09:40:00.000+10:00

One is inevitably reminded of the tried but true old saw which runs, 'With friends like these, who needs enemies?' as the Sydney Sneerer - which has until now been ostensibly on-side vis-a-vis the Un-Australian Workplace Agreements - joins the aforementioned deploring chorus and proffers a rancid headline lancing Kim Beazley for pandering to union 'gangsters', an epithet singularly ill-befitting John Robertson and his ilk at Unions NSW, but, never fear, our valiant Leader has routed the divisions of detractors and gallantly thrown down the gauntlet to the Prime Miniature, the Rodent-in-Chief, the Dishonourable Dishonest John Howard, the alleged leader of this disgraceful government, calling on him to come out from the bully pulpit of Parliament, to forsake the defences of the proverbial Coward's Castle, to leave behind the safety of the chamber where things are weighted in his favour - aided, needless to say, by the unseemly offices of a Speaker who is a bought-and-paid-for myrmidon - and engage in a decent debate over his industrial relations policies; for if he is going to visit such unmerited and unmitigated misery on aspirational Middle Australia he should have the intestinal integrity to chance his arm in a contest conducted under the Queensberry Rules, or, to put in in a nutshell, have the guts to front Beazley.

Poison Arrows

2006-06-13T18:22:00.000+10:00

Another week commences, and the world has witnessed another strategic masterstroke by Field Marshall Beazley as he boldly moves to defang the poison arrows (represented by the Un-Australian Workplace Agreements) which have been rudely shot into the body politic of long-suffering Middle Australia by those debauched Cupids of industrial hate, Messrs Howard and Andrews, a visionary manoeuvre on Beazley's part, which takes Labor from a defensive fence-sitting posture and returns it with magisterial decisiveness to the position it held at the last election, but a manoeuvre nonetheless which has been derisively greeted by the cacophonous chorus of the constant carping critics who lazily label this latest coup by the Kimster a cave-in to the faceless union bosses - as if the faces of Combet and Shorten did not haunt our dreams...

Gripes

2006-06-08T18:48:00.000+10:00

If one had to nominate a singular word to escapsulate one's gut reaction to this Howard-triggered nuclear hullabaloo, hue and cry, how-de-do, and general all-round hoo-ha - veritable intellectual chain reaction might be an apposite epithet - this word would be 'gripes': gripes that this disreputable Government smugly washes its hands of the question of where the posited nuclear reactors might be positioned, allowing this messy issue to drift down the proverbial pipeline, while resting snugly in the sure and certain knowledge that no such 'dark satanic mills' - phrase courtesy of William Blake and Sting - will ever encroach on the electoral bailiwicks where their dishonourable members - such as Tony Abbott - habitually bivouac; gripes that an uncomfortable wedge has been rudely thrust between the two fundamental constituencies of the Labor Party - namely, the working class as represented by the uranium miners and the progressive environmentally sensitive community - two constituencies, I say, which should be working cheek by jowl but are thus torn asunder by the prominence of a point which does not allow us to sit on the fence; gripes that John Howard has raised this point of contention without committing himself to any hard position, thus giving himself the option of slipping away and leaving us painfully skewered, as is his wont; or to put it in a proverbial nutshell: gripes.

Disunity is Death

2006-05-31T19:52:00.000+10:00

Well, a week is a long time in politics, as the old saw has it, and this present one has been a veritable stroll through Hades for 'Lazarus with a Triple Bypass' (i.e. our Prime Miniature) haunted as he is by the spectre of Coalition dismemberment, as the proposed marriage of the Liberals and Nationals in Queensland conjures up ghosts of politics past, to wit, shades of the late, great Bjelke-Petersen's ill-fated 'Joh for Canberra' putsch emerging from the eldritch electoral cemetery - the putsch which you will remember previously cruelled Howard's earlier tilt at the Lodge - though, of course, the hillbilly messiah would be turning restlessly in his grave if he could see his ideological successors bartering away their birthright for a mess of pottage and sacrificing the grand old National Party of Queensland on the sacrilegious altar of gross political expediency, but the consequences of this kerfuffle are far more wide-reaching than the convulsions of a single week, for as Malcolm Fraser said, 'A house divided against itself cannot stand' - or was that Jesus? - anyway, the point being that the disunity thusly demonstrated will indubitably prove deadly for the Tories, and our man of destiny waiting in the metaphorical wings will be able to stride masterfully to centre stage and claim his rightful place in Australian political life.

A Bounceless Budget

2006-05-30T15:22:00.000+10:00

Betwixt the turmoil of the timorous Timorese, the wholehearted and hearty hullaballoo at the Tasmanian mining miracle and epic of mateship, and the flabbergasting shock at the gaspworthy cosmic scandal of Wheatgate, let us take a deep breath and with a smile on our lips, a spring in our step, and a song in our heart, rejoice with reverberating joy that this miserable, disreputable government has failed to gain the benefit of a bounce after their one-armed bandit budget, despite the snide sniping of the professional sneerers in the pseudo-sophisticated media who blithely opined - viz. Michael Brissendon on the 7:30 Retort - that Kim Beazley's mighty budget reply was lightweight and lacklustre and low on vision, whereas Middle Australia out in the suburbs evidently warmed to the great man's humanity, breadth of vision, and down-to-earth yet masterly manner, as is indubitably evinced in the latest polls.

'Interesting Times'

2006-05-26T19:37:00.000+10:00

I would just like to avail myself of this opportunity to place on record the Australian Labor Party's complete and unqualified support for our armed forces in whatever field of combat they find themselves. We have always supported our men and women in uniform, and always will. In this spirit we stand shoulder to shoulder with the government with regard to the deployment in East Timor. We need to send in the troops to show the East Timorese that violence is not the answer.

Clearly there is a complex situation developing on the ground, but essentially it appears to be a conflict between West East Timor and East East Timor. Now is not the time to assess to whom the blame attaches, but suffice it to say that, given the arc of instability emerging on our northern frontier, it seems monumental folly to commit forces to a quagmire such as Iraq where they will but become magnets for ne'er-do-wells from hither and yon.

Meanwhile, our absentee Prime Minister has seen fit to drop a nuclear bombshell while diverting himself in foreign parts. And a new front has developed in regards to Aboriginal affairs, which is clearly a dilemma for the Party which must stay true to its 'doctor's wives' constituency while not allowing itself to be outflanked by redneck dogwhistling.

I fear, dear reader, that we live in 'interesting times'...

Another Week, Another Debacle

2006-05-18T17:56:00.000+10:00

Well may I say with warranted confidence that Australians, one and all, are well and truly gobsmacked and flabbergasted at the latest cock-up in the Kovko imbroglio. The weight that this discredited Government really places on homeland security - as opposed to its non-stop gasbagging - is amplified loud and clear in this sorry saga. I mean: lost laptops and mislaid discs - words fail me! Merely consider the possible - plausible! - security breaches inherent in such a unsettling scenario! Meanwhile, the Dishonourable John Winston Howard is off overseas hobnobbing with our American Allies - nothing wrong with that, perish the thought - but planting suck-up saplings is no substitute for putting in the hard yards and the heavy lifting on strategic issues, and in that department - disserved as it is by Messrs Downer and Nelson - this Government is lamentably lacking.

One would have thought, at such a juncture as that which I have vouchsafed a thumbnail sketch above, that the Australian Labor Party would solidify behind its leader, the one and only Kim Christian Beazley, Member for Brand, Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, former Defence Minister etc, etc. But, no. As has unfortunately been the not uncommon pattern in recent days - nay, years - certain sects and sections, aided and abetted by their cohorts of confederates in our hypercritical and hypocritical media, needless to say, have exercised their minds in the uncalled-for direction of plots and plans to place their latest misbegotten messiah, false prophet, and alleged pretender on the throne of the party (to wit, Bill Shorten). I can only from the bottom of my heart beg them to cease and desist forthwith.

When You Put In, You Get Back

2006-05-12T21:08:00.000+10:00

Well, the nation has witnessed Beazley's budget reply speech, and what a beauty it was! It began with a painstakingly painted word-picture of the Middle Australian household at the end of the Middle Australian day, peeling potatoes at the Middle Australian kitchen table in preparation for the evening meal, juggling the mental arithmetic of the domestic minutiae, and deciphering the political rhetoric while keeping one eye on the Budget Reply speech, as the Middle Australian does (while flicking between Getaway, Smallville, and Las Vegas). What a perfect way to demonstrate the quasi-telepathic rapport that the Beazle - as he is affectionately known - has with Middle Australia. And what a perfect backdrop to the centrepiece of Kim's reply, to wit, his Pact with Middle Australia - Pax Australiana, one could call it. Yes, Middle Australia, you who have put in the hard slog, the heavy lifting, and the hungry mile; you who have long been dudded - and dudded comprehensively and consistently - by this disreputable Government and its smarmy Treasurer, Costello, who as Kim so aptly phrased it, smirks at the future and smugly capers like a coyote on the facade of a RSL poker machine, a one-armed bandit who delivers a jackpot barely sufficient to cover a burger, a shake, and fries with that; you who face daily the dreaded deadly double drop-off with your kiddies; you who face the awesome triple whammy of interest rates, petrol prices, and extreme (I mean EXTREME) industrial relations changes; y0u for whom an information super-fast freeway broadband connection the envy of Slovakia or Slovenia is but a idle fancy - you, Middle Australia - look at me, I'm talking to you - you, can only imagine a government with the commitment to nation-building that Kim now proffers. Let this shining new nation be built, one which is online, on budget, and on track, and let this and this only be its watchword, let this be inscribed on its masthead: 'When you put in, you get back!'

I christen her the HMAS Kitty, and may God bless all who sail in her!

PS May I also take this opportunity to put on record that I and all right-thinking members of the Australian Labor Party are fully behind the Government on their pushing a pair of frigates north into our difficult backdoor. Let's lend a hand and sort this out with as less mess as possible.

The Elephant in the Corner of the Budget

2006-05-11T19:15:00.000+10:00

Bathing in the glow of the rolled-gold miraculous epic of great Australian mateship (namely, the great escape of the Beaconsfield miners), this hucksterish government is attempting to dazzle the more gullible members of the populace with a spectacular display of financial finesse and legerdemain masquerading as largesse.

When Hawke ruled the roost, every galah in the petshop was talking about microeconomic reform, but now productivity and training is - as Swan so eloquently put it - the elephant in the corner of the budget.

Changing metaphorical tack for a third time, I call for all hands on deck to batten down the hatches and trim the mainsail in preparation for Cyclone* Kim who will talk up a storm in his response to the budget shortly.

[*Needless to add, I am not suggesting that Mr Beazley will produce a lot of wind and go round in circles.]

The Odds on Shorten

2006-05-09T18:33:00.000+10:00

I, like all Australians needlessly to say, was enormously heartened by the rescue of Todd 'Chips' Russell and Brant 'Gravy' Webb from the clutches of the bowels of Beaconsfield Goldmine. While I savour the moment, my enjoyment is obviously tinged with sadness with the tragic death of their workmate, Larry Knight, and by the dramatic demise of that consummate media entertainer, Richard Carlton, and also tinged with a certain wariness vis-a-vis the stance of Bill Shorten whose growing media stature recalls that of Bob Hawke - of whose coup d'etat we were recently reminded by the replaying of the late Carlton's famous 'blood on your hands' interrogation. Simply put, we in the Australian Labor Party cannot stomach any further internal eruptions, and while we welcome Mr Shorten's imminent arrival in Parliament with open and outstretched arms, we take a decidedly dim view of any attempt to elbow Kim from the leadership position. Mr Shorten's mothlike flight to the limelight on cardboard king, Dick Pratt's, private jet - the paper plane, one could say - leaves a bad taste in the mouths of many rusted-on Labor stalwarts. However, time will tell, and now is not the time for whispering. Suffice it to say, that this particular correspondent feels fully confident that Kim's foray into the minefield of industrial safety will be rewarded in spades.

Interest Rates and Industrial Relations

2006-05-03T20:08:00.000+10:00

Caught between the Charybdis and Scylla of the two IRs, the Australian people have well and truly arrived on the Cold Comfort Farm of Honest John Howard, which is increasingly resembling a gulag in Soviet Russia - as is recognised even by the hardliners of H R PuffNStuff Society. The new hard man, Kim Beazley, has already thrown down the gauntlet - as foreshadowed in the aforementioned revelation of his new strategy of aggressive opposition - taking his stand on the Beaconsfield Mine. And, truly, his hard and uncompromising stand is a very beacon for the scattered forces of the Labor Party. In addition, he has jettisoned the lamentable Latham's policy deadwood and constructed a platform which is directed straight at Middle Australia. Let Howard cut and run from that, indeed! Finally, Kim has stated categorically against all the naysayers and doubtcasters that he and he alone will lead Labor to victory in the next election and has explained that swinging voters make up their minds in the last few weeks prior to the poll. Hence there is no need to pay heed to the opinion polls, nor actually to do anything in particular till then. The proverbial pearls of wisdom that Kim slops out to the swine of the media are truly wondrous to behold. We can but shake our several heads in mute amazement.

Relaxed and Comfortable

2006-05-01T18:00:00.000+10:00

Fresh from unveiling his Clausewitzianly clever electoral strategy of unpopularity, Kim has given a wide-ranging interview to Peter Hartcher, foppish flaneur of Fairfaux, in which he has revealed himself to be 'relaxed and comfortable', to use Mr Howard's time-hallowed coinage, with his position as Federal Opposition Leader, in which he is refreshingly sweat-free. Kim may not recall - at the drop of a hat- the names of his backbenchers, but rest assured they are all mates. As the big man in Caucus, Kim has thrown out the cheerful challenge to his Labor colleagues: they can roll him if they feel the urge, but, as he has held every other important job in Canberra (not the least of which being the post of Defence Minister - and including, of course, that of Deputy Prime Minister), it seems only fair and reasonable that he be given another shot at the top spot (viz. the Prime Minister's chair). Kim is clearly easing into his role and is a force to be reckoned with in the House on the Hill, a force - may I say - which bears considerable gravitas.

Kovco Cock-Up

2006-04-28T19:33:00.000+10:00

Until now I have held back from raising the delicate matter of Private Kovko, pertinent though it is in this the week dedicated to the dear remembrance of Anzac Day; but the continuing series of unconscionable governmental mishandlings has so grossly transgressed the quotidian bounds of proprietry that any semblance of dignified reticence seems vastly misplaced. The questions at the heart of this unpleasant incident, expressed in the inimitable Australian vernacular, are: what the bloody hell happened, and where the bloody hell is he?

Brendan Nelson as the newly annointed Minister for Defence - a post on which Kim Beazley, needless to remind you, dear reader, once put his stamp, did bestride like a Collossus, to not put too fine a point on it - is well and truly the bloke with whom the proverbial buck stops on the matter at hand, and it ill-behoves the aforesaid gentleman to indulge in the veritable orgy of gratuitious fingerpointing with which he has presently been engaged. By disgracefully fingering private contractors - instead of himself- for the misplacement of the casket in question and by being less than straightforward in his public account of Private Kovko's demise, Mr Nelson has proved himself irredeemably lax and demonstrably unfit for his exalted position as a Minister of the Crown, so much the more as he has assumed utmost political responsibility for our men and women in uniform - whom we in the Australian Labor Party have always supported and always will, I hasten to add.

In conclusion, I can only surmise the extent of the extreme disgruntlement being currently experienced by blokes in our defence forces at the present moment in time. How soon before we in Australia are audience to a Catonian chorus of General dissent such as currently besieging the ears of Mr Howard's opposite number in the United States of America, viz. George Walker Bush? One can only wait in strategic expectation...

The Folly of the Solomons

2006-04-27T18:09:00.000+10:00

I would just like to take this opportunity to wish Michael L'Estrange des Foreign Affaires - if you'll excuse my French, chortle, chortle - to wish him, I say, the wisdom of Solomon as he undertakes a very difficult mission in those eponymous isles. And our thoughts, of course, go out to our men and women in uniform at this difficult time, particularly as we have just passed that hallowed date on our national calendar, namely, Anzac Day, which will forever live in the annals of history, commemorating as it does an unprovoked attack on Turkey and a subsequent abortive campaign. But the Solomons have provided some light relief in these troubled times. Who would not riot to remove a Prime Minister called Snyder Rini? And wasn't it touching to hear the Opposition MPs singing the old Sunday School favourite 'This is the day that the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it' when they had triumphed over their cartoonishly named adversary? Can you imagine a sing-a-long in our Parliament? I shouldn't suggest it as Costello may take it up. And for that matter we have seen enough performances from Alex Downer - though of course cabaret is more his forte.

We are Contestable, Mate

2006-04-25T10:43:00.000+10:00

Yes, dear readers, after such a long sojourn wandering in the political wilderness, we in the Australian Labor Party are contestable, and so is everything our leader, Kim Beazley, utters. Kim has revealed that his current diminished stature in the opinion polls - a 30% approval rating, not that one takes notice of such figures - is part and parcel of a well-rounded electoral strategy. Kim is a new man and is in his best shape for years - contrary to the aspersions cast by sundry predictable critics with their sotto voce assertions that he is suffering from the Member-for-Brand syndrome. He has cast off the friendly, hail-fellow-well-met, hale and hearty, bonhomous, Falstaffian persona familiar to the Australian people at large and has transformed himself into a G'day-mate-what-the-bloody-hell-do-you-think-you're-doing kind of bloke. Yes, he has fleshed out a revolutionary new approach based on an innovative Opposition objective to actually remove this Government from office. But this masterstroke of political acumen has not been actuated without incurring a cost in personal popularity with the general public. Such a change in perception is the inevitable concomitant of Kim putting in the hard yards in terms of disseminating the hard word, of conveying a hard message to the electorate, and engaging in a harsh argument internally within the party. Yes, rather than being the jolly, roly-poly, likeable, knockabout bloke, mending the bipartisan fences, the Santa Claus of electoral Christmas Past, Kim is now the rogue elephant charging into the polite China shop of Australian political discourse and sitting on those selfsame fences, hell-bent-for-leather on keeping this ne'er-do-well Government accountable for its manifold ministerial misdeeds. This elephant may forget your name, mate, but he certainly knows where you live!

A Royal Easter Show

2006-04-13T21:44:00.000+10:00

One hopes that Gregory Combet and blokes of like-minded ilk are happy with the way we in the Australian Labor Party have strategically linked in the public mind the continually unravelling scandal of the AWB imbroglio with the wholesale assault on working blokes' rights currently trading under the Orwellian epithet of 'WorkChoices'. Of course, we must acknowledge that that outhouse rodent, John Winston Howard, has cunningly contrived to slip through the holes in the Cole Commission's term of reference that he himself has previously devised, and together with his allegedly mystified myrmidons, Messrs Downer and Vaile, respectively the Beavis and Butthead of Antipodean foreign policy, conspired to perform an arrogantly ostentatious Pontius Pilate routine - just in time for the blessed feast of Easter, ironically enough - washing their several sullied hands of the whole sorry saga; but nevertheless the commentators such as Michelle Grattan of Fairfaux and Michael Pascoe of Croaky who opine, as is their wont, that this fine to-do will have no impact on the hearts and minds of middle Australia are well and truly mistaken. The fact is that the ordinary blokes at the bowser will note the spiralling prices of petrol and know that manifold mischievous machinations - or at least oversights in the oversight - on the part of this disreputable government have contributed in no small way to the ongoing instability in the Middle East and hence the escalation of the international oil price. If the notorious Saddam Hussein had not been thrown a lifeline of lucre by the incorrigible ne'er-do-wells of the now-infamous AWB perhaps he would have seen reason and complied with international demands, producing the well-known WMDs or what-have-you. Similarly, the glaring hypocritical travesty whereby blokes on John Howard's front bench evade the hallowed strictures of Westminster ministerial responsibility will not for an instant escape the razor-sharp attention of ordinary decent working-class blokes* forced to work through the holiday period without the time-honoured Australian benefit of penalty rates.

Make no mistake, dear reader: Howard may have lived to fight another round, but rest assured he will not so easily slip out of the confines of our carefully constructed net on too frequent further occasions. His days are well and truly numbered.

(*Or sheilas, I hasten to add.)

The Bloke with Whom the Buck Stops

2006-04-12T18:25:00.000+10:00

You may envisage him sitting in the witness stand like the proverbial rabbit in the probing headlights of the Cole Commission, but you must bear in mind that in reality this was a bloke evading his ministerial responsibilities, this was a bloke concealing the full extent of his official knowledge, and if he was too dumb to be proficient with the proper exercise of his lawful authority, or if he was throwing up a dissembling smokescreen of subterfuge over the real and actual state of his cognizance of salient particulars, the fact remains with nary the skerrick of a shadow of a doubt: Mark Vaile is a bloke with whom the buck stops.

And, with his giggling, simpering, smug indifference - nay, insouciance- with regards to the Westminster system of ministerial responsibility, that idiot son of the South Australian establishment - to quote the late great Mick Young - that fishnet-wearing fop, that hubris-heavy Hooray Henry, Alexander Downer, is likewise a bloke - if I can sully the manly term - with whom the buck stops.

And, Mr Howard, whose presence in the stand is eagerly awaited by all and sundry - cast not worried glances hither and thither from beneath your bristling brows, mutter not aspersions on the serried ranks of your miserable myrmidons, send - I say - not to know with whom the buck stops: it stops, Mr Howard, with thee.

Yea, verily, it is easier to sack a bloke* in Australia these days - except for John Howard's own ministers!

(*And sheila, needless to say.)

A Smoking Harvester

2006-04-10T20:20:00.000+10:00

Well, ladies and gentlemen, another week brings with it the almost inevitable fresh sheaf of damning memoranda, fallen off the back of the proverbial Jordanian truck and covered with the government's incriminating floury fingerprints, as the Cole Commission continues to sort the wheat from the chaff and gleans further proof there was nary a grain of truth in the wafer-thin facade of waffle confected by this discredited government, which allowed a vile dictator to gather in ill-gotten dough while the Iraqi poor (for whom the oil-for-food program ostensibly operated, let us not for one moment forget) had to be content with the crumbs that fell from the palatial tables, and now - providing the icing on the Marie Antoinette cake - the Prime Miniature, that constipated rodent in the granary, has been summoned to appear, Commissioner Cole having been less than satisfied with the half-baked and flaky excuses of those two slothful loafers, 'Major Downer' and 'Vaile of Secrecy' (who are both, to quote the glorious Australian vernacular, a few sandwiches short of a picnic) and the cooked-up rigmarole of sundry murine myrmidons. In conclusion: he's toast!

Fess up, incompetent sloths!

2006-04-09T18:44:00.000+10:00

This title speaks for itself.

(Now, that's brevity for you!)

In Full Flight

2006-04-06T18:27:00.000+10:00

Well, ladies and gentlemen, this disreputable government is well and truly in fully-fledged and feverishly frantic flight, as they desert the industrial battlefield of the Cowra slaughterhouse with nary a shot being fired (proving to the doubting Thomases the wisdom of Kim Beazley's decision not to fire a shot), as the continually grinding millstone of the Wheatgate enquiry hangs like an albatross about their scrawny necks, and as further revelations of the misdoings of the camel-headed myrmidons of our airports lend further weight to the widely held misgivings that 'our' government has been less than diligent in helping our nation's favourite damsel in distress, to wit, Schapelle Corby.

The Uranium Conundrum

2006-04-04T12:56:00.000+10:00

Well, dear reader, at this present moment in time, my beloved Australian Labor Party is confronted with a confounding conundrum - a hard atom to split, one could punningly dub it - namely the divisive issue of the export of uranium to China. The usual predictably picky critics, such as that guru of gall, Peter Hartcher, writing in the Sydney Sneerer, have lambasted Kim Beazley with the well-worn and weary charge of weak leadership. But, as Beazley himself has eloquently elucidated, the issue of the Australian Labor Party's so-called 'three mines policy' is by no means urgent and can be decisively put to one side: it is, on the contrary, the burning issue of nuclear non-proliferation which should command our complete and undivided attention at this point in our nation's history, as proliferating nuclear fissionable material (such as uranium) undubitably heightens the risk of the spread of weapons of mass destruction of which we have heard so much in these past years. So in what lies the dilemma? I'm glad you asked. The nub of the conundrum is centred on the means of achieving a delicate balance between tightening our already substantial diplomatic and economic ties with the People's Republic of China (a relationship that was initiated by none other than Labor's very own elder statesman, Gough Whitlam, I'm happy to add), cementing Labor's standing as the party of economic growth (and jobs), and simultaneously not letting go of our very handy support from the environmentally conscious citizenry - without in the process tying ourselves in Gordian knots of ideological gymnastics nor inextricably entangling ourselves in mutually contradictory rhetoric. But, rest assured, this thorny task can be confidently left in the capable hands of Kim Beazley who will leave no stone unturned in his quest for an appropriate strategic position on this divisive fence of contention.

Game Well and Truly Over, Gentlemen

2006-03-30T20:19:00.000+11:00

Ladies and gentlemen, it is game, set, match, and well and truly over, for Messrs Howard and Downer and their myriad minions, mindless myrmidons, and media marmosets, as all their sundry assorted stratagems of convoluted obfuscation fall in one sorry, disorderly heap, and their incredulous Australian public, gathered round their kitchen tables, their mouths pendulously agape, witness before them the unseemly spectacle - as 'twere a sewer bursting forth - of all the many memoranda, minutes, and mandarin spiel coming spilling into the open. One refers - though indubitably such clarification is redundant - to the scandal of a millennium aforementioned in this the blog of yours truly, a denizen of cyberspace trading under the shingle of "Rt Hon Anon" for reasons that may or may not be apparent to any passing reader who is paying a skerrick of attention. But, to return to my chosen theme, it is - not to put to fine a point on it, nor gild the proverbial lily with uncalled-for excursions in unnecessary prolixity with the attendant excesses of mind-numbing and counterproductive rhetorical verbiage - it is, I say, game well and truly over to put it succinctly, or in terms of Queensberry's Rules - if you prefer - well and truly down for the count. No smoking gun? It's a fuming fusillade!

PS They are also well and bloody truly - if you can excuse my 'francais', though of course every patriotic Australian is liberally salting their diction with the proverbial Australian adjective at this junction, aren't they? - taking water over the much-vaunted IR changes, and as Greg Combet of the ACTU said, this issue must be well and truly front and centre in terms of the Australian Labor Party's well-targeted and long term assault on the Treasury Benches.

PPS I also note Tony Abbott's proposal for a 'smart card'. More of that anon, but suffice it to say at this juncture that while some see this as a Clayton's ID card, the inescapable fact is that such a card wouldn't have stopped the SUBHUMAN FILTH who bombed London, would it? Moreover, to put it in simple terms, I would doubt whether it is worth the billion-dollar candle.

The Sydney Sneerer

2006-03-28T17:53:00.000+11:00

Well, ladies and gentlemen, it's yet another case of 'another day, another snide headline', this one - as per usual - delivered like a sly poignard between one's unsuspecting ribs by the Sydney Sneerer, which is pleased to feature a front-page photograph of Messrs Howard, Blair, and Beazley with their respective and particular approval ratings, merely in order for these alleged journalists to snigger snootily over the unfortunate fact that Beazley's aforementioned figure currently resides at 27% or thereabouts (I for one am not overly exercised as to the exact number), demonstrating yet again this organ's vapid and venal approach to Australia's national politics and their absolute ignorance of the age-old axiom that there's only one poll that counts, i.e. the federal election which is still several years hence and its outcome still very much in the lap of the gods as the adage has it.

Filled to the Gills with Gillard

2006-03-26T11:32:00.000+11:00

As if the great but sorely afflicted Australian Labor Party hadn't undergone enough internal rumblings, ructions, and ruptures, and as if one hadn't had a veritable surfeit of Gillardry (to coin a nonce-word), one is once again greeted by the quizzical quisling's features at every turn of one's daily meanderings, and the lamentable conclusion can only be reached that Julia is clearly the undisputed queen of the Wetlands - under which rubric I embrace 'doctors' wives', 'small "l" liberals', would-be intellectuals, and other sundry supposed supporters of Labor who with their continual whinging bore (in both senses) from within and destroy our very marrow - and furthermore this metaphorical coronation is evinced by this weekend's Sydney Morning Herald which features the aforesaid's portrait staring out from the back-page of that exercise in journalistic padding which bears the misleading epithet, Spectrum - though a more narrow 'spectrum' of perspectives and concerns could hardly be imagined! - in what is ostensibly an advertisement for the exhibition of entrants in the Archibald Portrait Prize, while - as if that wasn't enough - the cyber ciphers of the errant e-zine, Crikey, ask, with their normal nagging negativity, in Friday's edition whether Beazley is 'soft' on Gillard.

The Scandal of the Millennium

2006-03-23T08:44:00.000+11:00

Now, the scandal of the millennium has acquired cosmological proportions with the ongoing revelations of stupendous malfeasance by this disreputable excuse for a government and its sundry cohorts of myrmidons. I refer, dear reader - needless to say - to the mind-boggling, flabbergasting, and gobstopping imbroglio, dubbed 'Wheatgate' by some of our unimaginative scribes, i.e. the outrageously unbecoming conduct of the firearm-toting ne'er-do-wells of the AWB (formerly, the Australian Wheat Board, just in case you were wondering) in ill-conceived concert with the erstwhile and unlamented government of Iraq, to wit, the ancien regime of Saddam Hussein, who well-merited the epithet 'the Butcher of Baghdad' if the concomitant juridical proceedings occurring in the aforesaid country are any guide (I mean, of course, the aforementioned gentleman's trial) - conduct, I would like to point out, that involved the vile violation of the much-vaunted United Nations sanctions while this resoundingly pathetic government turned a legally blind eye!

Now, it is now plain for the world to see - for men and women and children of Australia, gathered round their various kitchen tables and sundry television sets to witness - the witting and wilful winking of this disgusting government - and in particular, the egregious Mr Alexander Downer, our supposed Foreign Minister - at this said conduct. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we have his signature affixed to a memorandum, and in the political equivalent of the Marquess of Queensberry's pugilistic rules, that counts - I venture - as a palpable hit. Now, there are some - such as one Michael Pascoe in that less than reliable electronic epistle, Crikey - who nitpickingly insinuate that this is not a 'smoking gun' - such is their cliche-ridden terminology. Well, to put it bluntly, I beg to differ. What precisely to these commentators expect? A painstakingly detailed confession signed in triplicate? There are none so blind as those who will not see, as the well-known proverb runs.

But, never fear, sympathetic reader, the Australian people can see through this misty marsh of obfuscation, this thicket of rhetoric and speculation, and are as one with the sturdy, straightforward Federal Opposition on this issue, calling this government to account. Not a smoking gun? This is a veritable smokescreen!

Two Cheers for the Labor Party (And Maybe a Third!)

2006-03-20T18:08:00.000+11:00

Well, may I venture to say I am heartened by the thumping victories gained by the Labor governments in Tasmania and South Australia. Yea, verily, it warms the cockles of my heart and causes me to wax lyrical! And to all the knock-kneed nervous nellies, the peevish pain-in-the-neck thorn-in-the-flesh critics, and others of similar kidney who screeched at the top of their meagre lungs that Labor was unelectable, who had the gall to insinuate that we were a spent political force etc, etc ad nauseum - well may they hang their heads in shame, well may they turn up their collars and skulk away, their tails between their legs! Unelectable, my foot! It is palpably apparent that Kim Beazley and his team have the intestinal fortitude to forge ahead with the inertia gained from these body-blows against the rotten Liberal political corpse and wage an implacable struggle to wrest power federally. I - and any other rightminded Labor stalwarts - will no longer stomach the continual nit-picking and breast-beating that passes for political commentary in this sorry country. We will stand up with chests puffed out and heads held high and say Kim Beazley is the man of the moment and he will lead us to a resounding triumph over the disgraceful and disreputable Liberal government of John Winston Howard.

Now, there is much talk about the reasons for these electoral victories, and of course they were decided on state issues, and Kim is too honest and humble to take credit for other's worthy achievements; but, having said that, he has correctly pointed out that the Labor Party's highly visible campaign against the IR changes - ably assisted in part by our brethren in the the trade union movement - has made inroads into public consciousness and, though the misnamed WorkChoices packages was not a major element in either election, it has obviously had a role in turning hearts and minds against the Liberal Party - not that the Liberal Party was in government in either case, of course. Needless to say, the usual suspects will deride the wisdom of this observation, only serving to underline their own arrant inability to see the world as it is.

Liar! Liar! Unmentionables combusting!

2006-03-17T22:23:00.000+11:00

Well, what a to-do, ladies and gentlemen! The Honourable, the Shadowy Foreign Minister, viz, Kevin Rudd, has - wait for it! - called John Winston Howard a 'liar'!

A figurative Rubicon has been crossed. An irrevocable step has been taken - you mark my words! Well, you may say that this is not the end of this disreputable government; it is not even the beginning of the end; but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning of the beginning of the end of the first part of the penultimate continuation. Yea, verily, we live in interesting times as the afore-believed-to-be-Cathay-derived proverb said. What has happened - and let us not muffle its drums, steal its thunder, or otherwise render lukewarm its immediate heat - is that Kevin Rudd, our Shadow Foreign Minister - or foreign affairs spokesman, if you prefer the rather less grand nomenclature that currently appears de rigeur among the assorted personages of the assembled press corps - Kevin Rudd, I say, has nominated the Honorable, the Prime Minister, as a liar, as a teller of purposeful untruths no less, as an unashamed fabulist, as a purveyer of blatant obfuscation, etc, etc.

Of course, the very cosmos shakes with the ill tidings emanating on a diurnal basis from the notorious Cole Commission into the nefarious dealings of AWB in the oil-for-food program in Iraz. And now the Australian Labor Party - despite its continual whinging, carping, and otherwise carrying-on critics; despite, say I, the back-seat brigadiers - has exposed, nay expos-ed - the Machivellian machinations, manoevrings, and meanderings of this our disgraceful government down to the most unimaginably insignificant minutae! Yes, we have put all and sundry under the magnifying glass and microscope, and lo! and behold!, here we have it, ladies and also gentlemen, clear as crystal in its evidential inevitability: Howard is a liar.

Now, 'how will he deal with this startling development, this dramatic reversal of fortune, this... what y0u will?' I hear you ask with bated breath. Well, dear reader, believe it or not, this wily fox, this cunning ablution-block rodent, has many and varied tricks and strategems stowed up his proverbial sleeve. Strange and peculiar and unusual as it may very well seem, Howard has simply denied lying! Can you believe it! This saga has more twists than your average telephone cord! A man accused - rightly, dear reader, rightly, as I no doubt have no need to tell you - of lying should actually lie! Will wonders ever cease in this veritable annus mirabilis of crapulent administrative practice? The sheer audacity and sagacity of our opponent beggars belief - literally (or is that figuratively? - no matter!).

So, I hear you chorus, how will the Australian Labor Party deal with this incredible and unexpected ruse? In the words of the great John Kerin: watch this space!

Democracy vs Dictatorship - and other Distractions

2006-03-10T14:46:00.000+11:00

Well, I haven't blogged for a while, have I? The reason is that when the Party is under the control of the stalwart hand and steady eye of Dear Leader Kim - a little joke, tehe - all is quiet on the left bench and I find little reason to put pen to paper, or rather fingers to keyboard.

But now, the manic myrmidons of the mammoth media are asserting that the Beazle has been creamed by Crean, slimed by Simon, that Guillard has put in her poignard and hoist the aforesaid on his petard of inaction. Of course, dear reader, nothing could be more remote than the actual factuality. Yes, Kim has been sitting on his hands - and in his case that is no light matter - and folding his arms and generally holding himself back from the fray. But that - my princes and princesses of the press - is democracy! It is advocacy of dictatorship to suggest that a leader should attempt to direct the organisation which he is leading. Perish the thought! Pooh-pooh the suggestion. I repudiate it categorically, as does Kim.

Before critics such as Crean and goaders like Guillard try to take the moral high ground on their high horses, it would behove them to recall to the mind that the dreaded factional system got Labor where it is today. So there.

So let us return our observance to the Cole Commission which is daily churning out ammunition which in the hands of a capable Opposition could one day bring down the discreditable Government. This is the greatest scandal of world history, and we are in the heart of it!

The Scandal of a Lifetime

2006-01-31T19:32:00.000+11:00

Yes, ladies and gents, it's the scandal of a lifetime: verily, in days to come, one will take one's grandkids on one's indulgent knee and wax lyrical as they attend with starry eyes, scarce believing that one drew breath when the putrid portals of 'Wheatgate' were opened to the gasps of a gape-mouthed populace, a nation ashamed to call itself Australian, and a tsunami from the sewers flowed forth. Now Howard has been drawn into the gathering maelstrom of alphabet soup, as the SMH leaks a letter from the PM in support of DFAT's assistance to the AWB in dealings with the UN's anti-WMD sanctions. Aha! We have the malodorous rodent in our grasp at last!

Now, a painfully pedantic pundit might punctiliously opine - in seeking to puncture our pride on this point - that we are hoist on a petard (which, by the byway, is francais for a thing that farts!) , impaled on the horns of a horrid dilemma, and forced to nail our pusillanimous colours to the proverbial mast on the Iraq Question, or to get to the nub of the matter: caught 'twixt two stools (in the clinical sense, perhaps!) in that we needs must (allegedly, mark you) either plonk down decidedly in favour of the Iraq expedition or else forswear any attempt to prosecute the case against Messrs Howard, Downer, Vaile et alia for their circumvention of the UN sanctions, being as these sanctions were a prelude to war and furthermore predicated on the existing of the proverbial non-existent 'weapons of mass destruction'. Now this 'hoisting' which this aforementioned punditry seeks to foist on us is on careful examination a mere man of straw which should not detain us further. The very mountains wrinkle their noses at the overpowering stench of corruption which pours from the pores of this tissue of lies. The public is revolting! The government has no response. The Man of Destiny is waiting in the wings to make his triumphal entrance. Silence in the stalls!

Throwing Stones on Greenhouse

2006-01-14T09:56:00.000+11:00

There has been a big stink of late with much finger-pointing to a supposed split in Labor's flanks regarding greenhouse gas emissions with the airing of the thoughts of Martin Ferguson which many consider pungent, namely support for the Government's Asia Pacific Partnership. Now the broad view on the Government's approach has been that it is hot air. Ferguson's intervention, however, may give the impression that the grand Labor airship is flying by the seat of its pants or drifting with the prevailing wind. My view at present is that Ferguson's comments have been blown out of proportion. The Australian Labor Party is a broad church - though there is controversy whether this is just a matter of bums on pews or whether we should be singing from the same hymn-sheet. Some might say Ferguson should have vented behind the closed doors of the Shadow Cabinet. Others might say we need a breath of fresh air. I will probably be able to get to the bottom of this, and present a less nebulous response, after consultation with others in the party.

A Magnet for Ne'er-Do-Wells

2006-01-10T10:47:00.000+11:00

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, there has been an advance in the Australian Labor Party's policy on the conflict (not to say 'war') in Iraq. Our leader, Kim Beazley (whose this 'blog is not, needless to say) has made a pronouncement to the effect that as long as our men and women in uniform (whom we in the Labor Party have always supported and always will, in the great tradition laid down by Australia's great wartime Prime Minister, John Curtin) remain in the aforesaid domain, they will act like a figurative magnet for all the ne'er-do-wells, rapscallions, and blackguards who gad about in those parts, drawing them into the Iraqi insurgency (note the careful avoidance of the inflammatory term 'civil war'). Now, the Sydney Morning Herald has cast this foreign policy foray in a jaundiced way as is its wont, portraying it in a front-page headline as 'Time to cut and run from Iraq: Beazley' (resurrecting the prime-ministerial rodent successfully encapitulation and annihilation of Beazley's regrettable predecessor's foreign policy faux pas - namely that the troops would be home by Christmas) and has gone on to bracket Beazley with the Lamentable Latham on this issue. However, Beazley - with all his strategic acumen learnt in his glory-days as Defence Minister for his country - has stated his position with greater finesse and analytical rigour. The troops, of course, could not possibly withdraw from Iraq as speedily as Latham projected in his bull-headed haste - a matter of months. But for instance, April 1 next year would be an achievable parameter for the aforesaid exit strategy, all other things being equal, which regrettably they infrequently are.

The Herald has also plunged its puncturing poignard into our leader over his alleged prolixity and imperspecuity (sic - their choice of words nota bene) and has revisited what it rejoices in calling 'Beazleyisms' (a rather ugly item of nomenclature, if one was asked), namely 'myrmidon', 'boondoggle', and 'spiflicate'. Now why a Shakespearian command of vocabulary should disqualify a personage from the national political stage beggars belief, I must say. But of course Fairfax is a veritable empire of snide snakes-in-the-grass who worm their serpentine way into the bosom of the Australian Labor Party only to sting those whom they claim to support.

Well, for those whose interest in the national interest (and not just that very worthwhile programme on Radio National which Terry Lane is leaving at the present juncture) extends beyond the undergraduate sneers of self-important journalists and shallow analysts who view the world from the pontifical cathedra of their comfortable suburban armchairs, for those of us with hearts that tick and brains that cogitate I say, our leader's words - uttered at an international hour of need - are a guiding light in the fog of war, a stream of cool water in a drought of commentary, and a breath of fresh air in a stuffy living room. Hear! Hear! say I.

Vale Kerry Bullmore

2005-12-31T14:03:00.000+11:00

It is with heavy heart and kidneys that we bid farewell to that literal giant of Australian media - and much else - Kerry Bullmore Packer. While his greatest contribution was to the game of cricket, he veritably had a finger in every pie like a benevolent octopus. Sadly, his life was tinged with slur and innuendo, though he himself never descended to such gutter tactics. There is now a vast vacuum at the apex of Australian public life.

Multiculturalism Lives!

2005-12-13T12:36:00.000+11:00

Well, dear readers, the rumours of the death of multiculturalism are greatly exaggerated, to borrow a bon mot from the great Mark Twain. Just look at the faces in the crowds cheering Australia's victory in the World Cup, or whatever it was - I don't think it was outright victory, but I don't follow soccer. The point is the community is at one. Nevertheless, one cannot but be concerned by the appalling criminality displayed recently in the Sutherland Shire. My message to that mob that rallied at Cronulla Beach on Sunday is: you are killing our reputation in South East Asia! And this when a beautiful relationship was just beginning to blossom. I would just like to throw my wholehearted support behind Premier Iemma and his Police Commissioner Moroney in their use of whatever force is necessary to crush this violence. We must live together in peace!

The Gerard Affair

2005-12-07T14:39:00.000+11:00

Now, dear reader, did you know that Kim Beazley was once Defence Minister? It's not as widely known as it should be, despite it being an inestimably high office and he an able filler of the same. Why do I ask? Because Mr Beazley has rightly pointed out that as Defence Minister all relevant news items were on his desk pronto, yet Mr Costello expects us to believe that he was not aware of Rob Gerard's tax affairs when he appointed him to the board of the Reserve Bank. Hah! In fact this scandal was widely known, and had even been reported in the online gazette, Crikey. What a pity, then that we in the Labor Party didn't seize on this issue at the time, I hear you say. Ah, dear reader: strategy.

The Termites

2005-12-03T13:07:00.000+11:00

As I speak Howard's fourth term termites have begun to gnaw at the foundation of the great Australian way of life: your penalty rates, your holiday pay, your overtime, the family barbecue, and Christmas itself - all are under threat. No, it won't happen overnight, but slowly and surely it will happen. Mark my words, dear reader, mark my words.

And Barnaby Joyce has shown himself to be the Christmas turkey by passing the industrial relations package - perhaps we should call it Joyce's Choices. So much for those armchair pundits who opine that he was the real Opposition. If only he was a member of the Labor Party we could expel him!

Meantime we lament the passing of Van Nguyen and trust that some good will come of his tragic death - at the very least we have some notion of how to pronounce that surname. What a spate of drug arrests there have been in Asia recently! How corrupt of our northern neighbours to start enforcing the law at this point in time! Anyway, that's not diplomatic language is it? But what more can I say?

Days of Thunder

2005-11-27T17:20:00.000+11:00

There has been somewhat of an hiatus in this blog, but not due to idleness in this time of tempestuous political turmoil, one hastens to inform you, gentle reader, but rather the reverse. Kim Beazley has been busy of late, thundering apt epithets from the pulpit podium of public discourse against 'Lord Alexander of Adelaide' (I hope Mike Carlton doesn't mind him paraphrasing his 'Lord Downer of Baghdad gag!) and the other posturing poseurs of the sorry excuse of a government, which has lately been fiddling while Rome burns, or rather Singapore hangs an Australian citizen - a 'Chinese rogue port city' the great Gough called it, though I fear the racist tinge in this was a bit unfortunate, though we in the Australian Labor Party are not likely to be outflanked on that issue, are we? Apropos of that, didn't the carping critics of the minimising media make a big hullabaloo and hue and cry about Beazley's unfortunate but understandable confusion about Michelle Leslie a.k.a. Lee - well, she looks like a Lee, doesn't she? Beazley being the alternative prime minister has more things on his mind than such tabloid fodder about convicted drug felons. If Downer and co spent more time on the things that really matter maybe Van Nguyen would be free rather than under the Damocles sword of Lee Kwan Yew - if you get my drift.

And yet again leadership tensions have arisen in the Liberal Party - unconfirmed, of course. I just wish they'd shut up and get on with the business of government.

At the same time NoChoices has become somewhat of a vote-loser for the government, and that's exactly what we need. As Kim Beazley has said, if Barnaby Joyce goes to water over this one, there's no point in talking to him again. He might as well be in the Labor Party - no I mean, the Liberal Party. I think that's what I mean. Anyway, it's perfectly clear. Beazley just has to sit back and wait for government to fall like a succulent ripe fruit into his ample lap. Not that he's going to rest on his laurels - he doesn't actually have any - but more to the point... Sorry, I've forgotten what I was saying.

Anyhow, must rush,

A Confusing & Controversial Time

2005-11-03T20:33:00.000+11:00

It is a confusing and controversial time in Federal Politics, and one is not sure whether to be bellowing with bombastic outrage at the NoChoices IR reforms or standing in statesmenlike stalwartness in support of the very necessary anti-terror laws. Yes, we of the Australian Labor Party have helped Howard guillotine an amendment to existing law through parliament just before the subhuman terrorist filth attack. Not a moment too soon. The craftily drafted legislation had to be altered by the indefinition of an article (replacing 'the' with 'a'). The trusty members of the Labor Caucus stand by at any time night or day to add or subtract a semi-colon, never you fear. The dastardly terrorist plotters will not catch us napping. We can get legislation passed through parliament faster than they can rig a bomb. (Needless to say, it is necessary to keep this terrorist attack under wraps for fear that public safety considerations compromise secret police operations.)

Of course we will be unfailingly assailed by the bewailing waders of the Wetlands with their limp civil liberties cavills. But we cannot do otherwise, as this is the nations' darkest hour. The function of the Opposition may be to oppose, but in our case as we stand shoulder to shoulder with the Labor Premiers and Chief Ministers and with the Howard Government, they will in the future say: this was their darkest hour.

At one and the same time I am exploding with anger, incandescent with rage, and boiling over with righteous indignation, at this disgraceful government's attempt to ram its IR legislation through - disrespecting parliamentary institutions and casting aside long-cherished civil liberties like so much chaff. This cannot, this must not, stand, and it is heartening to see that the State Governments are mounting a Constitutional challenge while the ever unflappable Greg Combet of the ACTU is talking of going to jail. It does need to be opposed - and at least someone has got that message.

Anti-Terror Flap

2005-10-31T18:39:00.000+11:00

My alter ego - if I may venture to be so bold as to affix that epithet to the one whose blog this is not - is being assailed from all quarters with regard to the Anti-Terrorism Bill which Messrs Howard and Ruddock are ramming through Parliament at the most unAustralian of times - to wit, Melbourne Cup Day. Yes, dear reader, while all and sundry are captivated by the dazzle and razzmatazz of the Spring Festival, of which tomorrow's race forms the pinnacle, this disgraceful government - as though hell-bent on some devilish scheme under the cover of darkness - is attempting to rush their legislation through with nary the skerrick of parliamentary scrutiny. What is this democracy coming to? Cannot legislators take time off like their fellow Australians? An so Mr Beazley has stoutly stood forth, a stalwart bulwark against the subhuman filth of the terrorist threat, yea, in our hour of need he has strode on the podium and has proposed that racial and religious vilification be included in this bill. But, dear reader, scarcely were the words out of his eloquent lips than the hissing began from stage left, the waders of the Wetlands worked themselves up into a flap of feverish pitch, and the poison pens of the press insinuated that the Labor camp was divided unto itself. And why would this be, I hear you ask? Why, because our leftwing friends believe that the cause of freedom is served by defending civil liberties - as if this weren't a dirty word - and because they believe that Mr Beazley should be opposing Howard's 'draconian' laws, not attempting to make them more severe. But listen to this and take heed, for you shall learn: Mr Beazley is a more subtle strategist than he is given credit for being among the nattering nabobs of negativity and the perverse purveyors of soul-butter, flim-flam, and wishy-washy hogwash, who wish to turn the great Australian Labor Party into a unelectable sump of stagnant fortunes, a swamp of self-satisfaction and self-deceit. But I - and I echo Mr Beazley in this - I say, No. It must not, I cannot be so. Cometh the hour, cometh the man, and this man is Beazley, a great warrior for his party and his nation. Never fear though terror may strike: Beazley is a veritable Biggles.

Magnificent Spinners

2005-10-21T15:39:00.000+10:00

The Howard Government is a team of magnificent spinners, with googlies, wrong-'uns, and mystery balls to outdo Shane Warne at his own game, but can they play a straight bat and defend Australia's wicket from the influx of avian influenza? While they indecently abuse tax payers' money in advertising their pernicious industrial relations agenda, can we trust them with the fine print? Well, dear reader, the record of this disreputable government has shown, we cannot, nay should not, nay must not, nay cannot trust them - not with the loose change to go to the corner shop to buy the milk. Nay verily. They are magnificent spinners, but they bat like Glenn McGrath. Oooh aah! One hopes he doesn't read this.

Barry Jones and Dana Vale

2005-10-18T12:38:00.000+10:00

The next thing I know is that erstwhile whiz-kid, Barry Jones, has echoed Unmentionable Mark's critique of the Australian Labor Party as being dominated by factional warlords and so on and so forth. This kind of critique is simply not helpful to the Labor cause, as the Left's Anthony Albanese rightly pointed out on Radio National's The World Today today. Can't we sort these kind of things out behind closed doors or over noodles in Chinese restaurants? Come on, Barry, get with the team!

As for his allegation of 'policy anorexia', this doesn't relate to the Opposition Leader I know! IR Minister, Kevin Andrew, has chimed in saying that the Beazle is a 'policy passenger'. These mixed metaphors are making Barry's Noodle Nation look like a square meal - if you get my drift. The Beazle is a policy loco and he's going to pull the Labor train into the election victory station, thank you very much!

Light relief was, however, presented by Death's Dana Vale and her proposal to recreate the sacred site of Gallipoli on Mornington Peninsula. This is coming from the disgraceful government which presided over the desecration of this hallowed ground, this corner of a foreign field that will be forever Antipodean. Words fail me!

Deluge of Government Ads

2005-10-17T12:33:00.000+10:00

Currently the airwaves are overloaded with a deluge of government ads for the WorkChoices package, all of them promising that current rights and entitlements will be 'protected by law'. If that were true, one is left scratching one's head as to the reason why this package was proposed in the first place and why it was hailed by all and sundry as 'revolutionary'.

If I were Leader of the Opposition in this country, I would be sanguine at the prospects of walloping Howard's googlies around the paddock on this one, but as of course I'm not I'll keep my counsel.

Rt Hon Anon

Change of Blog Title

2005-10-13T13:15:00.000+10:00

I have recently received a missive from the administrators of 'Blogger' who have kindly allowed me to use this byte of cyberspace, requesting I cease and desist impersonating one Kim Beazley, said to be the Federal Leader of the Opposition in Australia. I am somewhat distressed that the complainants who initiated this course of action did not see fit to contact yours truly before embarking on such a bureaucratic avenue of redress, for it is crystal clear that I am not leading or opposing anything - and apart from that have nothing in common with Mr Beazley.

Now of course I did entitle the blog 'Kim Beazley's Blog', but the content is surely not alleged to be anything that could be reasonably presumed to be authored by the 'real' Kim Beazley. I have generally signed off as 'Rt Hon Anon'. I believe that asserting anonymity is not impersonation and see no reason that this would tie me to Mr Beazley and hence no reason to change it.

Yours sincerely

Neither Kim Beazley nor Kim Philby

Rollback (Again)

2005-10-11T15:03:00.000+10:00

Well, I've been accused of flip-flopping and walking both sides of the street, but my commitment to rolling back the IR reforms has shown that I can stand up and put my best foot forward when required. Yes, on this rollback I expect to get traction. Indeed Church leaders have already stuck their necks out in support of my stance. It is to be hoped that I won't have the carping critics both within and without the Party breathing down my neck with insinuations that I am some kind of windbag when this bandwagon gathers pace and gets wind in its sails...

Amanda Vanstone Still Standing

2005-10-07T11:08:00.000+10:00

In response to the Comrie Report labelling the deportation of Vivian Alvarez as 'catastrophic', Amanda Vanstone laughingly quoted Elton John's song 'I'm Still Standing'. I was reminded of her retort 'Get the masking tape - my sides are splitting!' in response to John Faulkner's critique of her Department in May. As a similarly generously proportioned p0litician, it ill-behoves yours truly to point out the obvious unintentional self-referential infelicity of these remarks: the substantial point I would like to press home is that she clearly takes these weighty issues in a misplaced spirit of lightheartedness.

I heard her this morning talking to Fran Kelly on Radio National, and the phone line was breaking up, but Amanda virtually accused Fran of lying about it and using it as an excuse to interrupt her. She obviously still taking umbrage over her notorious run-in with Tony Eastley. Well, as they say in the media, when you start attacking the messenger (i.e. them), you're really under pressure. Which of course has been demonstrated in spades by the mud-slinging of Unmentionable Mark.

This terrain - immigration - is tricky for us in the Australian Labor Party because we are vulnerable to the allegation we are 'soft' - though of course I have done much to establish our hard-boiled credentials by egging on the borderline disorder response. Mmmm, where was I? Oh yes, tricky terrain, strategic challenges, which even a skilled political operator like Laurie Ferguson found difficult to negotiate. But I think the Rau row turned the tables for us because of her white-bread looks, not that we would pander to racist tendencies - perish the very thought!

Meanwhile, a report into the Rara Rorts has bucketed the hayseed pork-barrelling. Yes, this government is on the nose, and if we can't get Vanstone's scalp, at least we can knee-cap her with a bit of fancy footwork.

Rt Hon Anon

Attack on Democracy!

2005-10-05T15:16:00.000+10:00

While the country is in national crisis and the central task of government is to suspend civil liberties, my conservative opponents have diverted their energies into trying to subvert democracy. They spend their time trying to discourage or stop people from voting in some way or other. What is it about these conservatives? Do they hate democracy? Hang on - but isn't Howard winning with the existing system? What giveth, as they say in the classics? I can only think Howard is trying to seize the Olympic gold medal for biting the hand that feeds you from Lamentable Latham's grasp. Or is it that Howard is trying to solder himself and his successor - who probably won't be Petulent Peter - into office for perpetuity. Yes, that makes more sense. Well, the Grand Weasel has already backed away from voluntary voting, pretending - as is his wont - that he never proposed it. This man is slipperier than an oiled eel, cunninger than a rodent in an outdoor lavatory, and more devious than a very devious person. But fear not my fellow Australians, I am girding my loins and trussing up my fardles and I will take up the veritable jawbone against this tainted government! Watch this space!

KB

Various Nefarious Areas

2005-10-04T13:48:00.000+10:00

Ladies and gentlemen, I have seized the initiative yet again by out-sabre-rattling Little John over the latest appalling opportunity presented in Bali. I propose that JI be banned! Now, some might say why wasn't this done at the time of the original Bali Bombing. Some might ask how we propose banning a secret organisation. Some might say that identifying the terrorist group as the 'Islamic Community' is not the smartest political tactic for the government of the largest Muslim nation. Some might say I'm a shameless opportunist. But these people would have said the same about Nixon. JI is involved in various nefarious activities in multfarious areas. They have talent scouts in the schools; they have school textbooks teaching the kids to count using bullets and guns. I'm sure I heard that on Alan Jones or John Laws. Let us crush this subhuman filth and take a central strategic role in our Asia-Pacific region.

KB

Another Terrorist Attack

2005-10-02T13:04:00.000+10:00

There's just been another terrorist attack in Bali - at least Alexander Downer says that's what he thinks it is, he can't think of any other reason for bombs going off, he says! The man is truly a pompous twit. If only he had held on to the Liberal leadership, the Australian Labor Party would still be in power!

Cut and Come Again

2005-09-30T12:42:00.000+10:00

Well, I've really got into the cut and thrust of political debate now, and my large target strategy is paying off. While I might be assailed by the Wetlands waders who think that 'counter-terrorism' is what happens when they get 'attitude' while ordering a caffe latte, the broad Australian community understands that I'm the man with the plan. Yes, we are the party of natinal security. I'm in this for the long haul, the national interest etc, and I'm not about playing politics. So I lift my bat and let the short ball of Latham Diatribes go past off stump. I'm the cut-and-come-again Opposition Leader, and I will assume the prime-ministership at some future point - or to be precise, after next election when I hit Howard's googlies for six!

KB

Guerillas in our Midst and Other Monkey Business

2005-09-26T13:04:00.000+10:00

As, from his Guantanamo Bay cage, David Hicks shows his true treacherous colours by abandoning his fatherland and claiming British nationality when all fair dinkum Australian patriots have donned the figurative sackcloth at this, the hour of the loss of the Ashes, I am accused by terror-friendly Terry O'Gorman of the Civil Liberties Council of gorilla-style 'chest-thumping' in my pursuit of the urban guerillas in our midst and by anonymous chatterers in my own party of aping the government. Well, I'm the alpha male, and they're just junior nit-pickers as far as I'm concerned.

Apropos of nothing, did you see the masses of abandoned oranges that Electronic Dick Smith spotted on one of his Biggles-like adventures? What a stomach-churning waste! Apparently the Chinese bellies don't want our navels! If Mandarin-speaking Kevin Rudd was in government I'm sure he could cut a deal, but not Howard and his bunch of coconuts - they're leading us down the slippery slope to a banana monarchy. Yes, this much-vaunted Howard bandwagon is an absolute lemon, and sooner or later the great Australian public and going to get the pip with this pipsqueak. When that happens I am ready to put my fruity eloquence at the service of the great Australian nation.

We are the party of national security! Of course, the Cadaver - Ruddock - accuses me of playing catch-up on security issues. When I heard it, I thought he said 'ketchup'. Dietary discipline can really mess with your melon - let me tell you. Sometimes you start talking about 'a democracy of steak-eaters' and things like that. It drives me nuts!

At least now Hurricane Mark seems to have petered out like a Costello leadership challenge. Why would you listen to someone whose integrity is condemned by John Howard and whose lack of public decorum is condemned by Bob Ellis? I mean, I ask you? Words fail me - as per usual.

Rt Hon Anon

Lock it Down, Johnny!

2005-09-25T19:49:00.000+10:00

The above title is a lighthearted play on a millionaire from the popular TV show, Catchphrase - no, I mean a catchphrase from Millionaire - to wit, 'lock it in, Eddie!' - but my purpose here is quite serious. Let me take the occasion, dear reader - a mere moment of your time - to trumpet my proposal to lock down cars, houses, blocks, suburbs, and like areas, so the police - or other security forces - can search and destroy, not necessarily in that order! Now I trumpet this clarion call - can Howard trump it? I know that it can get up people's noses if you blow your own trumpet, play the backseat-of-pants driver, and show a bit of cheek; but on this issue I'm amply briefed, I've got internal convulsions I've got to ventilate, and I need to raise a stink on this in the national interest. Let's open the windows and let some fresh air in. Yes, I've given Howard a brown eye - I mean black eye - on this one. Yes, my proposal cuts the cheese - I mean mustard.

Now, John Howard's government, it's like being ruled by a pack of magpies who peck and pick a pickled pepper. It's a mare's nest of red herrings and dog's breakfasts. Justice Minister Chris Ellison said that relationships with the States was like herding cats. Well, if I was Prime Minister, it would be a team of Labor governments pulling as one. I could crack the whip: it would be a cat-o'-nine-tails, if you share my allusion. But this so-called Deputy Sheriff, he just rides his lame nag into the sunset clause. This fiscally irresponsible Santa Claus just showers his key constituencies - the turkeys - with early Christmas presents and closes the stable door after the reindeers have bolted. But I'm not stating anything other than the obvious.

With my proposal, the police would have power to, say, lock down Newtown in Sydney and take it apart house by house, room by room - do a kind of cadastre of security issues. (Cadastre - I love that word!) I'm sure they'd find bearded desperadoes of the Scott Parkin-type that we could incarcerate for duration of the thousand-year War on Terror! Now who's the party of national security? Are you there, John? John? Not happy, John!!!

Yours in the Terror

KB

The Swans Soar Over the Eagles

2005-09-25T08:40:00.000+10:00

Well, part of being the Opposition Leader is that you have to deal with daily dilemmas, that you're frequently torn limb from limb by divergent centrifugal priorities. For Unmentionable Mark, the internal conflict was between unleashing the torrent of crudity accumulating within, or keeping up what he called the 'facade' - or what the more mature of us call 'politics'. Over the occupation - or war - in Iraq (perhaps it would be easier to call it a situation), I have the dilemma of whether to put up a stout, staunch, and stalwart opposition to the Howard Government's policy and risk endangering the American Alliance - a cornerstone of the Australian Labor Party's foreign policy since John Curtin - and allowing Howard and co to besmirch our loyalty to our men and women in uniform, or whether to adopt the much-reviled 'small target' strategy. Similarly, in the case of economic management, I am confronted by the dilemma of stoutly defending the legacy of Hawke and Keating as setting down the macroeconomic foundations for our current national prosperity, thus neutralising Howard's basking in these glory days but also risking us being tainted with all the old angst about high interest rates and the 'recession we had to have', or alternatively to abandon this heritage and therefore appear to stand for nothing and become a mere carping backseat driver on the Howard-Costello economic bandwagon. And then on industrial relations - or workplace relations, if you prefer - I am torn between standing stalwartly with our brothers and sisters in the union movement and the working class which gave birth to our party and nurtures it still (though not perhaps as much as we would wish), with the risk of alienating those members of the public who are repulsed by union militancy and with the risk of isolating us as ideological dinosaurs in the twenty-first century, or alternatively throwing in the towel in the defining battle of our time. Yes, dear reader, I am a veritable modern Hamlet.

After that brief introduction, let me turn to my theme: the AFL premiership. The dilemma here is that the victors, the Swans - despite their namesake being the emblem of Western Australia - are a New South Welsh team, albeit imported from South Melbourne, while the vanquished West Coast Eagles hail from my home state. So as a WAster, I want to throw my not inconsiderable support behind the Eagles, but on the other hand, I have made a temporary home in Sydney - so as to be able to appear on the all-important talkback radio - so I am almost duty-bound to line up with Premier Iemma - who is hammered by no such dilemma - and give my backing to the triumphant Sydney Swans. As a political strategist, my path is clear: I must congratulate the victorious - as there is no point associating myself with failures - while talking out of the west side of my mouth in support of the Eagles. I am sure someone like Unmentionable Mark would call me two-faced, but he has no place in politics. At least I haven't gone as far as Cardinal Pell who gave Vatican endorsement to Barry Hall's notorious punch! Methinks the said cleric is spending too much time in the counsel of that exponent of muscular Christianity, Tony 'Mad Monk' Abbott.

So congratulations to the Sydney Swans. Now I must turn my attention to winning my own grand final!

Rt Hon Anon

Howard Revealed as Anti-American

2005-09-23T11:41:00.000+10:00

Yes, dear reader, the mask has slipped and the Rodent is revealed in all his duplicity and hypocrisy: Prime Miniature Howard is revealed - out of his own mouth - as anti-American. If only this flabbergasting revelation had emerged before the election and we would have been home and hosed - that is, of course, assuming I had the leadership. Oh, yes, my flab was well and truly gasted when John W Howard let slip a criticism of America's hurricane relief effort. Hell-bent on lambasting my substantial proposal of founding a Department of Homeland Security, he unwittingly exposed himself as a treacherous anti-American weasel. Now, will people sit up and realise the Australian Labor Party is the party of national security?

KB

Four Years Too Late!

2005-09-22T12:11:00.000+10:00

Howard's interest in airport security is four years too late, coming as it does a full four years after September 11. The government's disregard and neglect of this important issue well-deserves the epithet of disgraceful. In contrast, we in the Australian Labor Party have not been lured into the quagmire of Iraq, nor will we be drawn down into the mud with Latham, nor have we become seduced by the will-o'-wisps which hold the whimsy of the wailing waders of the Wetlands like Margo Kingston, nor have we become bogged down in the boondoggles of the boondocks. No, any persistent peruser of this blog will know that national security has been front and centre for me and for the Australian Labor Party - apart from the lamentable lapse during the leadership of the Anti-American aberration, Latham. Yes, I have been a staunch and stalwart advocate for us to set up a Department of Homeland Security, a Coast Guard, air marshalls, and perhaps even something like the Texas Rangers. Why? Because it is essential for the defence of this nation of ours? Yes, I suppose that it is, but more importantly that is what our cousins in America have. And obviously we want to be as close to our cousins as possible - Hurricane Katrina has underlined that. But in contrast to my longstanding commitment to Australia's security, the Howard Government has sat on its hands and fiddled while the proverbial candle burned. At present, it is easier for a man in a camel suit to enter the Commonwealth of Australia than it is for a fat man to get through the eye of a needle. Believe me, I know whereof I speak. But to come to the point: what we need - in brief - is a cadastre of Australia's security, preferably chaired by Barry Jones, involving all the relevant stakeholders, including our American and British relatives, which will once and for all lay bare for all and sundry the state of play, the status quo, and the state of the union and lay the basis for ongoing improvement and strategic repositioning etc etc, put an end once and for all to the buck-passing, hair-splitting, backside-covering, red-herring-dragging etc - in short, to the veritable Ministry of Circumlocution which Howard, Ruddock et al. have foisted on the Australia people as their sorry excuse for a governmental response to the national security challenges of the post-September 11 global environment.

And just as the Howard Government has had to come kicking and screaming - metaphorically, needless to say - to confront the issue of airport security, so they have reluctantly come to the table of the summit regarding petrol prices. Some may describe this as a parish pump issue or a diversion away from the train wreck of the Latham Diatribes, but such cynics will never be satisfied. I am communicating with the Australian people - as demonstrated amply by this blog. I am no waste of space - an unkind epithet the Lamentable Latham cast my way - but rather a fundamental fixture, part of the furniture of the average Australian living room. I speak their language and am in tune with their most quintessential concerns. I have conquered my tendency to be prolix and obfuscatory. I am, in short, the very model of a modern alternative Prime Minister and wait patiently on the Opposition benches for my chance to take out my field marshal's baton and assume my well-earned place as Australia's paramount statesman.

Rt Hon Anon

Better Things to Talk About

2005-09-20T12:42:00.000+10:00

There are indubitably better things to talk about than the ranting, raving, rabid rambling of our former leader, Mark Latham, whose frothing, florid frolic into fantasy literature will doubtless rapidly fade like the vapid vapours they are into the all-embracing ether of our political atmosphere. Yes, the manipulative, maniacal, Machiavellian machinations of Mischievous Mark, are nothing compared with the devious dealings of another far more important rogue, North Korea's Leader, Kim Jong Il, which exercise the not inconsiderable mind of the sadly maligned, Kevin Rudd, my capable, Cantonese-speaking, Shadow Foreign Minister. Yes, the astronomical rise in petrol prices claims more attention of the average Australian - with whom, may I add, I have a preternatural rapport and a superior communicative nexus, second to none - than the viturperative, venomous vitriol purveyed by this sad, sorry, sore loser of a erstwhile political leader (namely, Mark Latham). So let this tedious turgid tome, this bloated book of bile, this folio of falsehood, gather dust on the groaning shelves of suburban bookshops around this wide brown land and be remaindered by the long-suffering shopkeepers, to be picked over by the curious and quizzical in the disorderly bins of discount book barns. I certainly won't be rushing to read this rancid, self-righteous rubbish, this carelessly cobbled-together collation of calumny, this libellous literary litter! Anyway, already I've undubitably heard the most unkindest cuts (yes, that may not be grammatically correct, but it is the words of Shakespeare, dear pedant!). In short, I'm not going to stoop to discuss this scurrilous screed, this self-indulgent self-absolving self-destructive self-obsessed selfish stuff, this treacherous trenchant tranche of trashy tripe, this spiteful spitoon of specious spleen, this traitorous tract of tawdry untruth, this fat file of fetid fibs, this snakes and ladders game which you would never give to your children. And that's my final word.

I have bigger fish to fry. Talking of which, let's do lunch!

Rt Hon Anon

So the Effluent Hits the Ventilation Device

2005-09-19T13:30:00.000+10:00

So the effluent hits the ventilation device, as they say in our armed forces - not that I'm endorsing Lathamite crudity, needless to say. I refer, as you would have guessed, to the publication to today of the much-trumpeted Latham Diatribes which I have covered a length in my previous post, so much so that it is somewhat unnecessary to revisit the unfortunate issue here as the proverbial dog revisits its vomit, if you pardon the expression. The Australian Labor Party's task - as I see it, and I am the leader, may I remind you - is to move forward, to gain some traction - perhaps on the petrol issue, say - and get back on track, rather than wallow in the mire, to drown in a puddle of self-reflection, or mud-wrestle with slippery characters like Latham. Like a lead-clad blimp, I rise above the muck of the trenches, and billowing with wind I sail towards the enemy lines. Follow my lead, and we will conquer! Descend to the level of dogfights, and division will prove to be death, as Malcolm Fraser wisely opined. This is the choice that my colleagues and I face, so my strategy is hold my nose and my course. Latham may label us two-faced lying sewer-rats, or some such vitriolic vituperative vulgarity, and we in turn describe his account as fiction without deigning to respond to his detailed allegations with specific and categorical denials. I mean, who has more credibility? Someone known for speaking his mind without fear or favour - or myself, the cautious strategist? You do the math, as our American allies are wont to say.

I am a statesman in the tradition of Churchill. I would never call an opponent a weasel - except of course when it was referring to cricket. I would never white-ant my own party - except of course when it was strategically necessarily, as when we needed to get rid of Simon Crean. To quote another great statesman, my hands are clean, my heart is pure, I gargle daily with manure - no, sorry, that last line was from an unfortunate jingle I picked up somewhere. Talking of picking up, did you read Paul Sheehan repeating Latham's dig at Righteous Ross Cameron? How amusing! Not that I'm endorsing such water cooler scuttlebutt - a furphy I'm sure...

Yours with monumental sincerity

Rt Hon Anon

The Latham Diatribes

2005-09-17T06:07:00.000+10:00

Mark Latham's diarrhoea of diatribes, his blast of belching bile, his spewing forth of spleen, all this and more has been vented, nay vomitted, nay evacuated, into the public arena to be picked over by the guttersnipes of the press, the junkyard dogs like Peter Costello, the entrail examining poohbahs of punditocracy. Words fail me! If there was an Olympic gold medal for biting the hand that feeds you, this 'sick puppy' (his word for us, can you believe!) would be 'best in show', would be on top of the dais as surely as any hirsute East German swimmer. I refer - needless to say - to Latham's performance - if that is the word, he did describe it as jumping through hoops - on Lateline and on Andrew Denton's aptly named Enough Rope in the lead-up to the publishing of the much-heralded Latham Diaries.

Yes, dear reader, if the 2004 election was his Gallipoli (though of course I am far more Churchillian than he), this is Latham's bridge too far. And yes, his campaigns are markedly unsuccessful - in stark constrast to my own Battle of the Bulge. But I could bandy military metaphors forever in an rhetorical Hundred Years' War. The point is that Latham has ratted on his party and shown gross disloyalty. This is unheard of in the history of the great Australian Labor Party. Of course, you could point to the instance of William Morris Hughes as the archetypal Labor rat, and admittedly he did serve as the Prime Minister for our opponents. You could also accuse the members of the Democratic Labor Party of being rats, if you were so inclined, and many are. Furthermore, I know Bill Hayden wasn't pleased with his last minute unseating by Bob Hawke before the so-called 'drover's dog' election - though Hayden wasn't particularly loyal subsequent to his parliamentary career - and then, of course, you could argue that Hawke ratted on the Kirribilli Agreement, and coming up to the present you could point to the Federal Opposition's regrettably difficult leadership manoevres. But that aside, loyalty has been a hallowed hallmark of the Australian Labor Party. And it is this great tradition that Labor - I mean Latham - has sullied with his campaign of slur, smear, and smut. Of course, he accuses me of the same. This is typical of the grubby gutter tactics he employs. Even John Howard supports my case - and you couldn't get a more reliable source.

As a statesman of substance, I am not the street-fighter that Latham is. I am not neglectful as Latham alleges nor deserving of the epithet 'Cowardly Kim' which Costello affixes to me: it is merely have a strategic posture. Operation Kangaroo, I call it. I make no apologies for leading from the rear. I regularly deposit my nuggets of wisdom in the ever-flowing discourse of public opinion while keeping my hands clean. If there are dirt files floating around in the system, does that mean they can be laid at my backdoor? Latham has obviously devoted obsessive energy to tracing back the soiled paper trail but has never got to the bottom of it. How dare he point the finger!

By making ludicrous allegations that politics is full of back-stabbing, two-faced weasels, he only discredits himself. I rise above this muck and solemnly press the flush-button.

Rt Hon Anon

Of Barnyards and Dunghills

2005-09-15T08:38:00.000+10:00

So Barnyard Barnaby and the rest of the bunyip aristocracy have passed the much anxiously anticipated Telstra bill, as the Bush has been led like lambs to the slaughter on the exalted altar of flea market hogwash to appease the Big End of Town by a ragtag bunch of city farmers and hayseed hasbeens who have their proverbial trouts deep in the proverbial snuff - sorry, snouts in the trough, I mean - and all the nation's household goods, the family silver, the whole kit and caboodle, everything except the kitchen sink, has been flogged off by a carpet-bagging government hellbent for leather on a firesale of assets. Words fail me!

Meanwhile, we have trimmed the sail, battened down the main-hatches, and lashed ourselves to the mast, in anticipation of the furious hurricane of torrential abuse, the deluge of verbal sewage, the veritable tropical storm of long-curdled bile, the gallows black humour welling from the bilious gall bladder, cradled in bitterness and now unloosed with tempestous impetuosity by our former failed leader, Mark Latham. I am saddened by Mark's continuing failure to come to terms with my ascendancy and his miserable trajectory. Like a great statesman I bestride the world, I receive ASIO briefings, I speak at the dispatch box at length, I deliver portentous remarks to the nightly news which unfortunately are edited down. I do not - despite Mark's attempt to taint my reputation with allegations of mud-slinging, dirt files, and undermining campaigns - I do not, I say, stoop into the gutter or descend to street-fighting. After all, a man of my substance finds it difficult to regain my straight, upstanding stature if hypothetically I did in fact stoop. And, anyway, I have roosters who can peck through the dunghill on my behalf. Mark has always had this unfortunate 'attack dog' mentality, this tendency to go for the jugular, to seize the issue by the scruff of its neck and shake it with savage abandon. I have never had this problem. My approach has always been measured, strategically long-term, and well-considered. I never make a hasty statement or jump to conclusions. In fact, on some occasions, I never come to any conclusion at all. Such are the nature of my gifts.

Rt Hon Anon
National Leader in Waiting

Briefed!

2005-09-14T14:05:00.000+10:00

Doubtless, I will be showered by brickbats by the usual carping critics of the Wetlands because of my support to the government deportation of Scott Parkin, purported American peace activist. Some will say the only time he had ever been arrested was when wearing a tiger suit in a protest. Not a threat to national security, they assert! Do they forget the role that a camel suit played in exposing the weaknesses in our airport security?

However, let me make the issue crystal clear to all and sundry: I have been given an ASIO briefing on the issue, and I always have stood shoulder to shoulder with our security forces and always will. Yes, I received an ASIO briefing - as is my right as Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition - and that speaks for itself. Let it speak! Let it be heard! I have been briefed! I am inside the Army Tent. I have been invited up onto the bridge. I have been asked into the cockpit. I have been shown some intelligence. We in the Australian Labor Party have always been the party of security - don't let the conservatives deceive you on this point, perish the thought - and I stand in the great - nay, grandiloquent - tradition of the great Australian Labor wartime leaders, John Curtin and William Morris Hughes. I may be in the political wilderness at present, enduring the slings and arrows of outrageous criticism, but my nation at her hour of need will turn to me and I shall hearken unto her voice, yea verily.

In closing, can I reiterate that I have been briefed. I have been amply briefed. They got to the bottom of it with me, those boys from hindquarters - I mean headquarters. They encompassed the fundamental area, coming at it from all sides, no nook nor cranny was left uncovered. I have been briefed, and I am comfortable with the briefing and breathe easily in the knowledge that our undercover agents are on the job in the backroom 24 hours a day. And I, gentle reader, am receiving a feed of the mushrooming information.

From the frontbench, this is...

Rt Hon Anon

Howard Loses the Ashes

2005-09-13T14:59:00.000+10:00

I will doubtless be assailed by any number of sourfaced, sobersided commentators for my massive tongue-in-cheek gag about being gobsmacked at the loss of the Ashes by the egg-sucking weasel, our Prime Miniature. I regret nothing. Here I stand: I can do no other. Someone had to say it, and I was the man of the hour.

To quote the great Amanda Vanstone, someone get the masking tape, my sides are splitting!

KB

The Epithet of Disgrace

2005-09-07T14:06:00.000+10:00

So John Winston Howard has labelled Sol Trujillo and his so-called 'Three Amigos' who run Telstra as 'disgraceful'! That epithet, however, could be more readily attributed to him. As directors they have a responsibility to divulge the true state of affairs with regards to their company's financial position and other related matters. If the Prime Minister had but one iota of responsibility he would not undermine Corporations Law in this slapdash fashion.

Yours pithily,

KB

Here's the Story of the Hurricane

2005-09-06T12:46:00.000+10:00

Well, far be it from a statesman like myself to try to make political capital while the great city of New Orleans drowns - a contemporaneous equivalent of the Emperor Nero fiddling while Rome burns, one might have said, though incidentally I believe that incident is apochryphal (I'll have to ask Bobby Carr) - far be it from me, I say, to channel the wrath of those Australians with relatives stranded in the mythic Mississippi Delta, channel the deluge of tears and wails that has swamped the beleaguered Foreign Affairs Department, towards the bulwark of the Howard Government and the pompous, dismissive Alexander Downer. No, I would never do something like that. But the function of the Opposition is to oppose, and I and my pallid shadow, Kevin Rudd, will do our best to hold this Government to account. As Defence Minister - did you know reader, that I was Defence Minister? I was a great Defence Minister, and have an abiding interest in security issues as a result, and I have always supported our men and women in uniform and always will - as Defence Minister, I say, I always had my buddies, my 'contacts', my back-channels etc and if I had been Prime Minister I would have been working the phones, pulling the strings, calling in favours etc - and getting our men - and women - into New Orleans to save our citizens. My people wouldn't have let some American bureaucrats - I understand they have some government over there, but it's not evident at the moment - get in the way! We could have sent in the SAS, ASIO, ASIS, Special Branch, or the Horse Marines. We would have invaded America if necessary! Cheap populism? Look who's talking! And after being beaten round the head by various carping critics for my small target strategy, my waiting game, my watching brief, my alleged meandering verbosity...Where was I? Anyway, regardless of that, needless to say, I would've done it better. But can I hasten to add that I have always supported the American Alliance and always will? Thank you.

By the way, I've just heard Barry O'Farrell complaining about the trains in NSW and saying passengers shouldn't have to slim down to use the rail system. I hear you, brother!

And that gracefully segues into my second topic, the hurricane that continues to devastate the NSW Liberal Party after the downward spiral of John Brodgen. I would never kick anyone when they're down, nor glory in anyone's misfortune. Unlike that blockhead Tony Abbott! The boots-and-all bovver boy has done a steel-tipped tap-dance on the political grave of the fallen leader. The man's in charge of mental health for crying out loud! Is he mad? I call on him to resign or Howard should sack him or I'll sic my hard-voiced harpy, Julia Gillard, onto him. We in politics have to wake up and smell the coffee and take a deep breath and a cold shower and look in the mirror. We are too quick to tear each other down - particularly those vipers in the Liberal snake pit! Can you believe them? Well, Premma Iemma doesn't have to fix the trains now, does he? Of course he will - I'm just saying... And the media has been appalling, absolutely appalling. Why don't they just report politics? And that Tony Abbott - what a blockheaded bovver boy with his boot in his own frothing mouth! I hope he comes a cropper over this! Yes, the stature of the Mad Monk is rapidly diminishing, isn't it? He's not the specimen of 'muscular Christianity' we took him for anyway. First he didn't really father a child out of wedlock, and secondly this amateur boxer chickened out of speaking at a debate because of student protests! Student protests in this day and age - it beggars belief! Belief, that's what it beggars! By the by, those of my generation will remember the massive 60s protests. We'll also remember Pete and Dud's definition of being born out of wedlock. Heh, heh, those were innocent times...

A Week is a Long Time

2005-09-02T14:35:00.000+10:00

There is an old adage universally acknowledged that a week is a long time in politics. And what a week! Though I am a WAster, always have been and always will be, I am currently making my domicile in old Sydney town due to political necessity, as part of my campaign to take the fight up to the government and specifically appear on Sydney talkback. But to get the heart of the matter, the fall from grace of John Brogden is the political story of the day and no mistake. While I support the freedom of the press, the Fourth Estate as the fond folklore has it, and always will, I do think that the Daily Terror overstepped the mark here. I well remember the way the media scrutiny exacerbated the windfall - I mean, downfall, of my predecessor, Mark, and I think we all need to examine our own consciences on this issue. I have avoided personal attacks on my opponents. Let other people do that. I do not, however, believe we need the unctious hypocrisy of Jeffrey Kennett - of all people, heaven forfend! - at this juncture. 'Beyondblue' his organisation is called - more like 'Beyond the Limelight'! He should look at his own party, at the 'jihadists' - that's the term they're given! - who white-anted Brogden over the past month since he made those unfortunate comments about elegant Helena Carr (and groped a couple of female journalists). White-anting jihadist - there's a tag to conjure with! With friends like those! That's the problem with the Liberal Party - just recall the Merry-go-round of Knives which the Great Pedestrian and his arch-enemy the Vain Peacock were involved in during the 1980s! I'm sure Mark doesn't feel this at the moment, but in the great Australian labour movement we look after our own (in the best tradition of the Painters and Dockers). We certainly would have any truck with the shadow-boxing that Stiletto is consuming his time with at present. Of course, there was the difficulty with Hawke and Keating, but I'll pass over that.

So where was I? Oh, yes, the NSW Liberal Party. So now they've elected Prince Deadwood - how he comes to be labelled as 'debonair' by some journalists I do not know! Not that I'm ridiculing the size of his ears or his stick figure. I've never descended into that gutter, and never will. I may be a major target because of my ample girth, but the same could be said about Veranda Sandstone and Fatty O'Barrel. Or the televisually fizzled Elle McFeast who lampooned me with a ditty, 'Big Kim', if I'm not mistaken. But I have broad enough shoulders to take that on board. I take it on the chins. I'm not upset about my bulk. I am slimming down, but that's in the national interest, like Castro giving up cigars for the good of the Cubans - not that I'm endorsing Communist tyranny, never have and never will! But anyway, the state election should be a shoo-in for Premma Iemma now. He won't need to fix the trains or anything! Of course, I know what you're saying: it would be advantageous for the federal party to set themselves off against a slash-and-burn Liberal government in one of the states. But I would never put political expediency against the good of my party. Like the great Winston Churchill I am steadfastly stalwart in this regard.

The other big news is the 'tax debate' the serious media is trying to facilitate in federal politics. Costello is putting the stiletto into that 'filthy rich merchant banker' Malcolm Turnbull (thank you, Tony Abbott, you politician of envy!). So I can sit back and watch them destroy each other. Costello claims to be fighting for the average taxpayer, and Turnbull champions the cause of economic reform. Of course, this is a tricky area for me, as I support both - and always will-so it's convenient that I don't have to have a voice in this debate. And I lose my voice quite easily, so I've got to save it up. I'm here for the long haul. Howard, your days are numbered!

Rt Hon Anon

Barnstorming Barnaby - Not!

2005-08-27T16:46:00.000+10:00

So the latest Wetlands darling, Barnaby Joyce, has burnt out like all the other will-o'-wisps! But I remain in reassuring solidity; here I stand, I can do no other, a rock in a hard place. So they expected Mr Joyce to save Telstra. Only I can do that. So they expected Mr Joyce to stop the IR reforms. Only I can do that. So they expected Mr Joyce to save student services. Oh, you people, hearken to me and hear my voice, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, may the dry bones of your deaf ears take in this precious seed of truth: Only I - Kim Beazley - can lead this nation to the promised land, the light on the hill, the sunny uplands, the New Jerusalem etc. Yes, I have had a low profile - compared with the village idiot, Barnstorming Barnaby Trudge, at least (though let me say, needless to add, parenthetically, that I found his coinage Senator Hefferlump very ticklish to my funny bone!) - but rest assured, people, that this is not a return to the small target strategy. No, perish the thought, perish on the vine, you thought! This is a rope a dope strategy, to borrow a line from another great heavyweight, Mohammed Ali. I am the Velvet Steamroller! I am Humpty Dumpty and the Queen's Men can't stop me now. Let's roll!

Vale, Lange

2005-08-16T10:22:00.000+10:00

It is a sad occasion I must mark here, the passing of the late, great - uncontestably great - David Lange. He did verily bestride the Tasman like a Collossus and I can but dream of filling his mighty shoes. (This should not however be taken as an endorsement of his withdrawal from ANZUS. If nothing else, this created an acronym dillemma - no, that's not the new NSW Premier - should the treaty be renamed AUS or USA, both of which are one-sided in appearance? Our New Zealand friends have always been valuable in feeling the breach in our acronyms: imagine if the ANZACs were the AACs - that's reminiscent of the crudity [pace Mark Latham] of the late Graham Kennedy, isn't it? But back to the point. Though Lange was a great leader for our side of politics, his stance on the American Alliance was one which I firmly disagree with. I have always supported the Alliance and I always will, just as I always give my support to our defence forces whose feats of arms in defending the free world from the depredations of unchecked militarism have just been celebrated in this the sixtieth anniversary of the cessation of hostilities in the Second World War. Lest we forget. Lest we forget the lessons of the horror that is war. The best way to prevent war is to start a new one. But - roundly, roundly, as a Shakespearian character would say - to return to Lange, his wit and verve will be greatly missed. Of course, I'm not about to endorse his slurs against Bob Hawke for being vain and vulgar. Bob was a great Australian Labor Prime Minister and I think we all appreciate what he did in economic reform - reform that is sadly keeping us out of office - a record of reform that parallels what the great Lange set in train in his prime ministership, making New Zealand the world-beating economic powerhouse that it is today. So Vale, David. You are an inspiration to me as a social democratic leader and also as a generously proportioned man about town who turned his health around as I am endeavouring to. Unfortunately you didn't live to get the full benefits of your improved health.

Vale, Lange, vale.

Lest we forget.

Rt Hon Anon

SUBHUMAN FILTH!!!

2005-07-12T11:44:00.000+10:00

The terrorist bombings in London are the work of SUBHUMAN FILTH who need to be hunted down and ELIMINATED! We in the Australian Labor Party stand shoulder to shoulder with Howard in our absolute abhorrence of these dastardly and heinous acts by SUBHUMAN FILTH, and by judicious use of my dominant corporeal presence and stout fundament I may be able to elbow the Prime Minister out of the limelight on this one. (Of course, this is not the time for political point-scoring, I hasten to add.) I have always supported our Australian troops and always will, and I have been a staunch and stalwart advocate of the American Alliance and will continue to take up the proverbial cudgels on its behalf. In this juncture, we in Australia assert with pride and independence of spirit our allegiance to the free world and our love for the mother country. The precious blood of the free Britons, the Little Englanders, flows in our manly veins, and with stout hearts of oak and noble common-nonsense minds we stand up and be counted when the Motherland is attacked by evil foreign foes. This kind of SUBHUMAN FILTH must and will be ELIMINATED! We in Australia - along with our family in Britain and our cousins in America - stand for peace and decency, unlike the SUBHUMAN FILTH who kill innocent people, who bomb civilian areas, and preach a message of HATE! We stand in the tradition of John Curtin, the great Prime Minister of the Australian Labor Party, who forged the great American Alliance in the furnace of Hiroshima. We stand in the heroic tradition of Australian heroism going back to Breaker Morant and Ned Kelly. We are a martial nation, we take no prisoners, and we can, must, and will crush the vipers, the SUBHUMAN FILTH, crush them in their slimy yellow eggs, dash out the brains of their young, EXTERMINATE, EXTERMINATE, EXTERMINATE!

Yours

The Bomber

Howard Humbled

2005-07-07T13:16:00.000+10:00

So now the gaggle of media commentators are agog at the public backlash against Howard's IR reforms. The Great Pedestrian has stumbled and taken humbling tumble in the latest opinion polls. He has had to rush back from holidays to try to shore up his haemorrhaging credibility in the onset of the withering fire of a union campaign which, as Costello has said, has got quick out of the blocks. The vitriol and hyperbole of Mark are now fast disappearing from the public memory. Once again my strategy of sitting back and waiting has borne fruit. As the unions picket the railway stations and rally in the streets, business mates turn on the hapless Howard and tell him to respond, to defend his much-vaunted reform against this justified outrage! It's wonderful! At this rate we will win the next election by a landslide.

Latham Unlooses

2005-06-30T23:11:00.000+10:00

Not content to let his vitriol and hyperbole boil and bubble in the anonymity of cyberspace, my predecessor, Mark Latham, has unleashed a veritable broadside which would do Horatio Nelson's Victory credit at the Battle of Trafalgar - which, by the by, is currently being commemorated on the other side of the globe. In the aptly entitled biography, Loner, Mark has pilloried and pooh-poohed us, his former comrades-in-arms. The head of Unions NSW - formerly the Labour Council - John Robertson has wittily commented that Mark has joined the 'conga line of Labor rats' which started with the execrable William Morris Hughes. I won't stoop to dignify Mark's regrettable outburst with a response. Suffice it to say, Mark calls me a 'stand-for-nothing conservative leader'. Well, you could have said the same about Winston Spencer Churchill! How on earth does that disqualify yours truly from office? As I said, I'm not going to respond, here or anywhere else to Mark's unfortunate utterances. Leave history to the historians, I say. You won't catch me talking about history. Instead of this internal focus, this navel gazing, the Australian Labor Party needs to focus on military strategy. This disgraceful government can and will be brought down. The constantly carping critics, those whom Spiro Agnew aptly named the nagging nabobs of negativity, those armchair activists from the Wetlands - they of course have leapt on Mark's uncalled-for attack and used it to lambast the Australian Labor Party which they supposedly support. Well, this criticism isn't critical. We must focus on our obligations, as the historic party of the great Australian fair go, to look after the interests of the great Australian people. On industrial relations, the battle is joined. Henry Higgins is stirring in his grave, andjust you wait, John Winston Howard, just you wait!

Rt Hon Anon

P.S. This blog should not be taken to disparage the teaching of history - a topic that is very close to my heart, as it is to that of my highly successful Labor colleague, Premier Bob Carr. Nor should it be taken to endorse the politics of Spiro Agnew. Just to be clear.
P.P.S. I won't be reading the book or Mark's diary which apparently is set to follow. It's not a priority. If I did read it, I wouldn't pay attention to it, and if I did pay attention, it would only be constructively. And as I said I'm not going to respond in this and any other forum to Mark's unfortunate and regrettable outburst. Got that?
P.P.P.S. Did you hear he called Carr, Beattie, and Gallup 'A-grade arseholes'? Chortled!

Reshuffle!

2005-06-24T13:54:00.000+10:00

I have a talented front-bench - and now they're even more talented because I've shuffled them round. Only we in the Australian Labor Party can hold this arrogant government to account as it arrogantly arrogates more power to itself with its much-foreshadowed and imminent assumption of control of both houses of parliament. And to this end I have assembled a team of heavy hitters, proven policy performers, and capable crusaders in my shadow ministry. I have moved the highly talented Laurie Ferguson to Consumer Affairs where he will be of inestimable importance. I have done a number of strategic realignments which you can no doubt read about the newspapers along with the predictable commentary that I haven't gone far enough. The carping critics, the nagging nabobs - they will never be content until the factional system is dismantled, union influence is thrown off, and the Labor Party changes its name to the ... Liberal Party. But hang on, what's that you say? There already is a Liberal Party??? Well, heavens above, you mean to say that the esteemed commentariat, the much-vaunted punditocracy were talking piffle? How extraordinary and novel!

Forgive me, I have over-reacted perhaps, but this constant carping cannot but get to one, get under one's skin, especially when it is delivered in such portentous tones by such pusillanimous and pompous pundits. We in the Australian Labor Party are well seized of the need to take on this arrogant government and we will do so, make no mistake! There is no other party which can oppose. Look at the long list of failed messiahs, of false prophets, constantly put forward by the carping pundits, the dopey denizens of the wishy-washy Wetlands! Will they never give up?!

Words - as often in this job - fail me!

KB