MISBEHAVING IN KAWANA

“Anybody been misbehaving?” Kevin Rudd gleefully asked a gaggle of noisy Queensland schoolchildren the other day. Standing next to him, looking awkward and sheepish, Peter Slipper wisely decided not to raise his hand.

Which is a shame, because when you’ve notched up travel and other expenses that add up to nearly $2 million in the last four years alone, including $280 cab rides, you’ve got plenty you could brag about to impress the other bad boys sniggering away at the back of the class.

The occasion was the recent visit by local member Slipper and “local boy made good” Rudd to inspire the graduating Year 12 students of Kawana Waters State College about their rosy prospects for the future. An excited throng of teenagers, parents and teachers assembled to hear the former and would-be-again Prime Minister in their $3.2 million BER-funded school hall on November 18. Precisely six days later, Slipper would prove he really knew how to misbehave and turn federal politics on its head by betraying his party and these same people – the Sunshine Coast electorate of Fisher - in order to rosy up his own prospects and grab himself a bigger slice of the parliamentary pie.

“Follow your dreams! Follow your dreams!” Rudd proclaimed, attempting Obama-esque repetition in order to outline his stirring vision of individual opportunity and self-belief. Reeling off a list of highly improbable jobs that these high-school kids could aspire to, including running the worlds most successful IT company (a la Steve Jobs) or heading up Formula 1 (a la Bernie Ecclestone), the pragmatic and insightful advice on offer to these young people entering the workforce at the very moment the world teeters on the brink of global recession was that “whatever you want to be, whatever you would like to do, don’t think it is too big or too difficult to follow your dreams.” Reminding us of his own relentless ambitions, the current Foreign Minister also managed to slip being “the Secretary General of the United Nations” into his roll-call of potential career opportunities for Kawana or, er, Eumundi kiddies.

Apart from a nod to his sister who’s a nurse, there was no mention by Rudd of “bringing better conditions to the people.” No mention of life not just being about “putting an extra sixpence into somebody’s pocket.” No mention of “if a depression comes there will be work.” 

The light on the hill, it turns out, is nowadays nothing more than the naked flame of personal ambition. Tailored expressly for the limited attention span of the me-generation, “Follow your dreams!” is Rudd’s and Labor's glowing new mantra.

Sitting, sweaty-palmed in the audience, Peter Slipper hung on his parliamentary colleague’s every word. The theme of individual success is one that has been much on his mind of recent. In September, at another school visit, he informed the kids of Conondale that: “We had someone who went to school here on the Sunshine Coast who became Prime Minister – what a wonderful country this is!” To the giggles and stifled yawns of a restless group of ten year olds he went on to promise them, in words that bear an eerie resemblance to Rudd’s own, that: “You can achieve whatever you want to achieve and what you achieve depends on one person – you.”

Himself a chronic underachiever in all but his expense accounts – in the last six months Slipper has slipped through an average of $1073 a day – Pete has now decided that he, too, deserves the chance to “follow his dream.” Putting nothing but blatant self-interest in front of the interests of his constituents and his party, he has grabbed the job he has long coveted yet has done nothing of obvious merit to deserve. With his promotion to Speaker comes a salary of $245,000 and a guaranteed two more years of gorging himself on the smorgasbord of publicly-funded perks and travel that he has so clearly developed a taste for.

“I support less taxes and less government, along with the principle that there should be reward for initiative, enterprise and hard work,” said the young Peter Slipper MP in his maiden speech in 1985. Worthwhile sentiments, but ones that he has failed to live up to in spectacular fashion.

The list of Slipper’s failings, alleged rorts, fiddles, and inappropriate and boorish behaviour reads like a Jeffrey Archer novel. Apart from the staggering dollar figures ascribed to airfares, taxis and commonwealth cars, office supplies, voguish magazines and so on, which have led to successive police investigations and much disquiet within Queensland LNP circles, there are the “colourful” episodes that he himself was quick to refer to in his speech accepting the Speaker’s job. Thumped in bars, kicked off planes, crashed out at all the wrong times and in all the wrong places, with comical interludes including an unfortunate episode in a disabled toilet, it is unnecessary to dredge up any specific “smears” to make the point. Slipper’s entire career is one long smear.

His most memorable recent speech (and that is being kind) was a re-hash of climate change scepticism clichés spun together with no fresh insights and little passion. Happy to oppose the carbon tax in word, his actions are nothing short of hypocritical. In one grotesquely selfish move, Peter Slipper has guaranteed the implementation of the carbon tax upon his hapless constituents against their express wishes at the ballot box. The very same tax he stood up and opposed in their name.

“The Labor Party will come to rue this day,” said Christopher Pyne. “They will come to rue the precedent that they have created.”

That the Labor Party of Rudd, Gillard and Swan ruthlessly rewards hypocrisy, disloyalty and greed in order to further its own ambitions of power will be the real lesson that the kids of Kawana take with them as they head out into the world.

LAUGHING UNDERWATER (Spectator leader Nov 18)

Perhaps they should include the video for Sexy and I Know it, by LMFAO, in GetUp’s 2050 “carbon tax” time capsule. This current chart-topping hit features a bunch of young men in their undies wiggling their tackle around, and will tell future generations all they need to know about the value of the contemporary popular music scene.

Also waggling their tackle around, metaphorically speaking, are Wayne Swan, John Hewson, Bob Brown and, er, Penny Wong, who have all agreed to “be a part of history” by contributing their very own “letter to future generations” to be sealed in GetUp’s time capsule to prove they “cared enough to speak up in an era when fear and cowardice almost won the day.” You don’t have to hang around to 2050 to imagine the earnest and unctuous words they, and others, will have penned. The air of self-righteous smugness will no doubt be as fresh as a daisy when the capsule is finally popped opened in the Museum of Australian Democracy thirty nine years hence.

Time capsules cut both ways. Although there is a faint possibility the Museum will be under water by then, there is a far greater likelihood that the prophesiers of doom will by 2050 have been shown to have exaggerated the scientific hypothesis of human-induced climate change in order to justify a reckless tax, and that without drastic and economically-suicidal actions by China, the US, India and others, the Gillard government’s carbon tax will be acknowledged as having been deceptive, unnecessarily expensive and utterly futile.

“Well at least we did something,” or “we thought we were doing the right thing” will be the awkward justifications when, and if, anybody ever bothers to open GetUp’s latest gimmick. Hopefully they include the aforementioned hit single. It might, in the end, be less embarrassing than everything else in the capsule.

FULL OF SOUND AND FURY, SIGNIFYING NOTHING

"I have nothing to say, and I am saying it,” said Julia Gillard this week, as she invited her Labor colleagues to make next month’s conference a “noisy” one. Actually, it was John Cage, the American avant-garde composer who used those precise words, but in may as well have been our Prime Minister.

John Cage’s most noteworthy contribution to contemporary culture was a piece entitled 4’33”. Composed in three parts, it always features numerous diverse instruments, but it is famous because not a note is actually played during the performance. Instead, the audience get to listen to whatever noises (rustling of papers, someone coughing, a mobile phone going off etc) that haphazardly occur over that period of time. One would struggle to think of a more apt metaphor for the “robust debates… full of energy and ideas” that Julia imagines the Labor conference will usher forth.

To put it bluntly, this government and this Prime Minister are not only devoid of original ideas to put to the country, but are only dimly aware of what the real issues confronting us are. When a political party’s one big achievement is to introduce a policy that they had no mandate for, and which by their own admission can be nothing more than a hopelessly tokenistic gesture aimed at getting other nation’s to “join in” combatting a “belief”, then the avant-garde claim that we live in a world of surrealist absurdism starts to come uncomfortably close to being proven true.

Confusing “loving an argument” and “making a noise” with what she doesn’t mention – coming up with fresh and unconventional ideas – the PM poses a series of questions that come with their own in-built set-piece answers. “As Australia becomes one of the richest countries in the world, how can we ensure a fair share for all?” she asks. And “how can we ensure no one is left behind by accident of birth or circumstance? How can we combine prosperity with stewardship of the environment?”

Clearly missing from these carefully scripted, meticulously “spun” questions are the far more fundamental ones. Such as “how do we actually generate the wealth to pay for all the things we want?” And “how do we avoid the debt crises faced by the rest of the West when we keep going further and further into debt ourselves?”

Already, the Gillard/Swan/Rudd team have destroyed the surplus that protected us first time around, have bloated the bureaucracy, have imposed crippling restraints upon productivity, and have committed the country to massively expensive and wasteful projects such as the NBN. Will any brave soul in the conference actually put up their hand and say “how do we increase the size of our nation’s purse?” No, of course not. It is a given in Labor circles that wealth generates itself. It’s the magic Chinese pudding - Norman Lindsey’s Dim Sum - and everybody can gorge themselves on as much of it as they want.

Actually, I’m being extremely unfair. Julia does have an economic plan. It’s called flogging uranium to the Indians. “One of our nearest neighbours is India, long a close partner. The world's biggest democracy. Growing at 8 per cent a year. Yet despite the links of language, heritage and democratic values, in one important regard we treat India differently,” she informed the true believers, neatly popping India into the “good guys” basket, with a bit of “white man’s guilt” thrown in, in order to justify this obviously pragmatic decision. Forget sound economic arguments, such as “we need the dosh.” The reason for selling uranium to the Indians is now, apparently, to prove we’re not racist bastards. Oh, OK. That’s fine, then.

And the other big issue designed to generate heated and passionate debate? Why, (yawn) gay marriage of course! “My position flows from my strong conviction that the institution of marriage has come to have a particular meaning and standing in our culture and nation,” says the unmarried, living “in sin” Julia Gillard. Really? Or might it just be a contrived stance that allows her to look tough on an issue the polls are very clear on as others “make some noise” on the conference floor?

“Labor’s National Conference is our highest decision-making forum and Australia’s largest political gathering. National Conference has always played an important role in defining the future direction of our Party and our nation,” boasts the conference website. 

“A party able to hold robust debates is a party that's full of energy and ideas,” claims Gillard, but the evidence is not there to support such a worthy claim. There will be no debate on the success or failure of Fair Work Australia, the mob who haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory over the Craig Thomson shenanigans and have yet to prove themselves in the Qantas showdown. There will be no debate on the affordability of the ever-expanding health services, or education. Small business won’t get a guernsey. The size of government and the need to reduce it won’t get a look in, either. And then there’s the taboo areas of immigration, reforming aboriginal welfare, building new dams, deterring asylum seekers, energy resourcing and pricing and so on.

None of these issues – all of which require serious, considered debate and analysis - are on Julia’s mind at the moment. But there is one issue that keeps her awake at night. Presumably, this will be the subject of the longed-for noisy, robust and passionate debate.

“The second issue is party reform. I want a Labor Party that is growing - with an extra 8000 members as a first step,” Julia tells us.

Or, as John Cage saw it: “The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all.”

NEWDEMOCRACY

Attempting to jot down Mark Colvin’s interview with Luca Belgiorno-Nettis and Geoff Gallop last week as they launched their newDemocracy Foundation, an ABC transcriber described one of their ideas to improve democracy as “inaudible.”

Just as well. Not only is “demarchy” an ugly sounding word, it’s an ugly sounding principle, best muttered under your breath.

Transfield Joint Managing Director Luca Belgiorno-Nettis and former West Australian Premier Geoff Gallop are two of the newDemocracy Foundation’s guiding lights. Despite a lengthy interview, it requires a trip to their website to wade through the waffle and get a genuine understanding of what they have to offer.

Luca’s mumbled “demarchy” is an untried system of government where a “pool of individuals” chosen randomly from “those who nominate they are interested in a topic” get to run our lives.

This laughable proposal is one of numerous bright ideas put forward as an alternative to the “adversarial” democracy that appears to have got up the collective noses of newDemocracy’s lollybag of ex-politicians, for whom, clearly, the failure of the current political system can best be illustrated by the fact none of them are still in it.

Supporters of newDemocracy (no, it’s not a typo) include Cheryl Kernot, who has flirted with more political positions than she has… no, I won’t go there. Suffice to say the former Leader of the Australian Democrats managed to treat both her constituents and her party with a fairly cavalier attitude, which probably explains why they and she no longer wield any power. Fred Chaney, John Della Bosca, Nick Greiner and the late John Button all lend their names to the foundation, along with a collection of election-wary academics, philosophers and businessmen.

Excitedly, they offer us all sorts of “new” democratic models to choose from, such as Confucian Democracy, where “positions of leadership (are) distributed to the most virtuous and qualified members of the community.” That’s me out, then! Candidates sit an exam where “knowledge of the world, literature, language, arts, ethics and culture” determine who gets the top political jobs. Handy if you happen to be a travel agent or a curator - not so good if you’re a bogan dyslexic.

Then there’s “The Popular Branch” and the “Electronic Town Hall.” Or you might opt for “Deliberative Democracy”, which according to newDemocracy director Lyn Carson is where “150 people… randomly selected” are guided by “a range of experts to ensure that all perspectives on an issue are available” before telling the government what to do.

What all these ideas have in common, apart from their disdain for the adversarial Westminster system, is the desire to see committees – normally chosen by some kind of lottery – reach a “considered, collective judgment.” A consensus that relies on the knowledge and opinion of academics and “interested parties.” 

“Election contests should not be the only way in which representatives, or… issues are determined,” Luca tells us. Whether he got a taste for politics sitting on his famous father’s knee is something Colvin should have, but didn’t, pursue. Franco Belgiorno-Nettis, a blacksmith’s son, born in a poor Italian village, served in Mussolini’s army before being captured by the British, migrating to Oz, and making his fortune as an Industrialist and his name as a passionate patron of the arts. The Biennale, and the corporate giant Transfield, builders of the Sydney Harbor Tunnel, are his laudable legacy. After a bitter family feud, his sons now carry on his good work. Perhaps not surprisingly, many of the newDemocracy musings, including Luca’s own, have a slight “corporatist” whiff about them. Before you leap out of your chair in high dudgeon, I don’t mean fascist. Corporatism is basically consensus government between powerful elites; unions, big business, culture and politics. Elections and robust debate don’t really figure.

Gallop seems to approve. Hesitantly, he informed Colvin that he favours “political parties that take up the cause of a different style of democracy which doesn't just rely upon elections.”

Geoff fantasises about a mythical era of bipartisanship, where “both sides of politics were basically onside… there was a cooperative arrangement.” He sees echoes of this glorious consensus style in today’s Independents, praising them for ‘sitting down with the Labor Government and saying 'Look, let's try and work these things through as a group, not just take the one party point of view'.” With Newspoll putting both Windsor and Oakeshott on the nose within their own electorates, this little insight of Geoff’s tells us more than he probably intended.

In essence, newDemocracy seems to be all about the big issues of the day being resolved by vested interests in cahoots with academic consensus, over-riding voter concerns and doing away with political argy bargy. If this sounds familiar, it’s because it basically describes today’s EU; a gigantic, undemocratic conglomerate ruled by elitist consensus, with scant regard for the views of the electorate. (And hasn’t it worked out well?)

Meanwhile, Gallop believes Australian politicians “have become frightened of big decisions, particularly those that relate to the future. I see the whole new democracy, deliberation, engagement movement as a means to better, stronger and more long-term policy making.” What on earth’s he talking about, I wonder?

Aha! Suddenly the smelly elephant sitting quietly in the corner of the room rears up on his hind legs. “For a brief moment in time with Turnbull leading the Liberals it looked as though there might be Labor/Liberal agreement on a long-term strategy to tackle climate change. However… adversarialism has again prevailed,” Gallop complained bitterly last July, proudly donning the Ruddbullist mantle. Sentiments he repeats to Mark Colvin as his goal for newDemocracy: “We got very close to bipartisanship on climate change of course, very close.”

So that’s Geoff’s drum. Fair enough. This is an oldDemocracy, and he’s entitled to bang it. Luca, too. Out of interest, I check up what Transfield, who made a few quid out of the BER, boast as top of the list of their current investments. Turns out it’s solar energy.

New Democracy. Who needs elections?

ADVERTISING ISLAM

http://tiny.cc/kp4g5

“Bringing Islam to the masses” is the goal of the new TV campaign from MyPeace, the organization that recently gave us the “Jesus: a prophet of Islam” poster. Clearly deciding they’d generated enough controversy for one year, MyPeace have now taken a softer approach; slo-mo visuals, mood music and a warm Aussie voice inviting us to “explore the real values of Islam.”

“Saving one life is as if you have saved all of humanity” we learn, as a bronzed Aussie lifeguard rescues a boy from the surf. You can’t quibble with that, particularly if you're a parent.

From an advertising point of view, the approach is similar to the current “Jesus-All About Life” campaign, also featuring visuals of sunburnt Aussies; along with a crème brulee, a dead pet goldfish, and questions about the meaning of life. Jesus himself even gets a chocolate-bar style logo.

Both ads - Muslim and Christian - offer a panacea to the “crisis of the soul” that supposedly afflicts modern Australia. Who could disagree with an ad that asks you to look after your parents in old age, reminding you that they looked after you as a child? Or who could not be moved by sentiments such as “How come the more you have, the more you want?” or the facebook-ish conundrum that ”we’ve got more friends, but less friendship"?

The role of advertising is to convert consumers to a brand’s point of view by finding its most salient aspect, linking it to a compelling insight, and allowing the brand to put its best foot forward. Both ads do just that. Were I currently in the market for a religious organization to join, I’d be saying “sign me up for either one of those, thanks. They sound great. In fact, I think I’ll take them both.” After all, you can’t have too much of a good thing. With all ads, however, it’s worth reading the fine print first. Just in case.

The Jesus ad is sponsored by a whole host of Christian organizations, so if I sign up I'll have to make the sort of mind-numbing decisions normally required for choosing a broadband plan. Should I go Baptist or United? Join the Salvos or Hillsong? Too hard - I give up.

The MyPeace campaign for Islam is much simpler, giving me chapter and verse of the Qu’ran to help me make up my mind. It invites me to look more closely at the Qu’ran, so I do. It only takes a few seconds online to check the veracity of the advert's claims. Yep. Chapter 5 verse 32 points out the benefit of saving every single life, although oddly it refers to saving the Children of Israel rather than the Nippers of Bondi. But the point is the same. Intrigued, I read on.

And that is, of course, the problem with selective quoting. Readers should judge for themselves the appeal of the Koranic verses either side of the one quoted, but as an ad man I would struggle to make either 5:31 or 5:33 as convincing a “sell” as the lifesaver scenario. One has to admire the chutzpah (if that’s the right word) of choosing as your major sales pitch a quote adjacent to one advocating “that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off.” Still, the Bible has more than its fair share of blood and gore. Selective quoting (and interpretation) is something all religions and advertisers are guilty of, so it would be wrong to single out this ad exclusively.

However, reading the rest of the passage felt a bit like a chocaholic being sold an amazing new flavour of Magnum ice-cream, eagerly biting into it, and discovering it's anchovy.

Will the ad “bring Islam to the masses”? No, but it will make many non-Muslims re-consider their attitudes towards the religion. Will it attract converts? Undoubtedly. Was it worth doing? Definitely. Taken at face value, it is a positive expression of worthy sentiments espoused by Muslims. Full credit to MyPeace and its founder Diaa Mohamed, who clearly recognizes the need for Islam to be seen putting its best foot forward and engaging in mainstream public debate about how its values are relevant to contemporary society. “We hope this campaign provides Australians with fact and insight around Islam,” Mohamad maintains. No problems there. Some consumers, however, may find themselves unconvinced when it comes to reading the fine print.

SWAN"S GOOSE COOKED BY COMICAL ALI (Spectator leader Oct 22)

A week may be a long time in politics, but so is thirteen minutes when you’re up against Ali Moore, the ABC’s sharpest interviewer. With an amused twinkle in her eye, Ali slowly grilled Wayne Swan to reveal that underneath his shiny new cloak of “The World’s Greatest Finance Minister” lies… not very much at all.

“I believe there is a serious situation in the global economy,” Wayne informed startled viewers, before enlightening us that he personally sees his main role as “getting on with making sure that we strengthen the global economy.” Whew!

“Can you give us some detail?” Ms. Moore repeatedly begged, struggling in the face of a tsunami of bureaucratic jargon along the lines of “All of these things are part of the architecture of a comprehensive response” and “a sizeable facility to assist a European financial stability facility.” Until Wayne finally confessed: “it's entirely a matter for the European ministers to talk about what they intend to do.” And, er… that’s it.

As for genuine insights into the global debt crisis, Australia’s IMF role, cabinet leaks, the effects of onshore processing on the surplus and the legalities of the carbon tax – all raised by the determined Ms. Moore - Swan failed to deliver anything other than pre-rehearsed spin and obfuscation.

To the point where the interview tipped into satire: “I couldn't give you an update on that, but there will be an update on that in the normal processes through the mid-year review at the end of the year. That's the appropriate time to provide the update.”

By the end, our world-famous Treasurer was left floundering that: “I don’t know if those reports were accurate or not,” “I'm not ruling anything in or out,” and “I'm not going to speculate about what may or may not happen.”

Even the amiable Ali struggled to keep smiling.

RUDDBULLISM - TONIC OR TOXIC?

http://www.spectator.co.uk/australia/7329953/ah-those-were-the-days.thtml

‘Ruddbullism’ sounds like one of those infectious diseases such as botulism or toxoplasmosis that hints at much unpleasantness to come. First diagnosed by John Stone in these pages over eighteen months ago, the term describes an unhealthy merging of policy strains on climate change, work choices, boat people, the republic and other issues where supposed opponents Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull found common ground. ‘Ruddbullism’ has now re-surfaced in The Australian courtesy of Brit-journo Nick Bryant; not as a sickness but as a suggested panacea for the perceived problems that plague our politics.

Coined by Stone, the term is a piss-take of ‘Butskellism’, used to describe the philosophical meeting of minds between Conservative and Labor ‘foes’ Rab Butler and Hugh Gaitskell that paralyzed British politics for decades until being dismantled by Margaret Thatcher.

According to Bryant, who after several years as the BBC correspondent to Oz knows a thing or two about the place: "The message from successive polls is that Australians would… favour a return to ‘Ruddbullism.’ Indeed, they repeatedly show that Rudd is much more popular than (Julia Gillard) and that Turnbull has broader appeal than Tony Abbott."

This contrasts with how former Secretary to the Treasury and Queensland National Party senator originally saw it: “Our own political scene was firmly in the grip of ‘Ruddbullism’, (yet) it was already clear that the Coalition parties had little hope of regaining office in 2010 under Turnbull.”

Much like botulism, a bacterium that enters the body through wounds, ‘Ruddbullism’ can also be viewed as a virulent strain that gains access through self-inflicted wounds upon the body politic. Perversely, it was the desire by Rudd and Turnbull to work together and stitch up an emissions trading scheme that eventually saw the two of them both lose their leadership positions. Similarly, Rudd’s embrace of feel-good policies such as the apology to the “stolen” generation – which Turnbull was also strongly in favour of, going so far as to publicly criticise former leader John Howard over, maintaining that his former boss’s position on the apology "was an error clearly" – weren’t enough to save either of them from being turfed out by their own party-rooms. Both leaders lost their jobs not in spite of, but indirectly because of their support for ‘Ruddbullist’ principles. According to John Stone: "Malcolm Turnbull welcomed, literally within hours of its appearance, the Rudd government’s Fair Work Australia Bill, conceding to Labor ‘a mandate’ not merely to repeal John Howard’s Work Choices legislation, but also to turn back the workplace relations clock by 25 years. He… embraced with equal fervour Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme proposal, threatening to sacrifice Australia’s economy on the altar of global warming religion."

Where Stone saw a toxic threat, Bryant sees a healthy tonic.

"Rudd and Turnbull seemed to be leaders primed for a national moment pregnant with so much regional and international possibility," Bryant declares. Clearly he is a fan of both. Which is not all that surprising. Call it the British disease, if you will; that voguish longing for a touchy-feely centrist position that gave the world the original ‘Butskellism’, the brief flowering of Tony Blair’s ‘Third Way’ and the current ‘Camcleggism’ which seeks to marry severe budget cuts with trendy soft left causes such as gay marriage, renewable energy and bucketloads of overseas aid.

Lost in the enthusiasm for such a ‘compromise’ scenario is the awkward fact that in Australia the punters won't vote for it. The closer both Rudd and Turnbull came to agreeing with each other, the faster they both plummeted in the opinion polls. It was only under Tony Abbott, who by fighting Labor on border protection and carbon taxes and drawing a clear distinction between the two parties where Turnbull had failed to, that the Liberals finally managed to tap into the thoughts and attitudes of Middle Australia and regain their current dominant position in the polls.

All the evidence indicates that the blue-collar "battler" constituency in the suburbs strongly support tough border protection and fret about higher costs of living, most notably energy prices. These voters have no time for Turnbull and will never support the green tinges of the ‘Ruddbullist’ agenda. Kevin Rudd’s initial success and triumph were largely due to his pretense that he was “John Howard-lite.” The more he distanced himself from that position, the faster he fell out of favour with “struggle street.” Turnbull, too, foolishly mimicked Rudd’s distancing of himself from the policies of Australia’s second-longest serving Prime Minister, much to his own detriment.

Turnbull’s tragedy, of course, is that he’s either in the wrong electorate or the wrong party. Take your pick. His constituents are the one group in Australia who yearn for ‘Ruddbullism.’ A Labor party ticket with both Rudd and Turnbull together would be an answer to the sweetest dreams of the Wentworth crowd.

It’s easy to see how the ‘Ruddbullist’ philosophy came about. In 2008-9, Kevin, confidently shedding his Howard-lite clothes, and Malcolm, eagerly donning the cloak of Liberal leadership under the mistaken belief that his own constituents expressed the desires of the larger electorate, found themselves dressed like a pair of slightly embarrassed identical twins. The majority of Australians suddenly woke up to the fact that the two leaders were prancing about in a manner utterly alien to them.

Although Rudd has now bounced back in the opinion polls, his popularity is probably as much due to the unfair manner in which he was dumped as to the policies he espoused. Call it the Short Poppy Syndrome. As is well known, we Aussies love an underdog. Where Red Dog endlessly roamed the outback looking for his deceased master, Rudd Dog now ceaselessly roams the globe, refusing to believe that his leadership is dead. And the audiences can’t help but love him.

According to the online Medical Encyclopedia, botulism can lead to hyper-sensitivity, double vision, nervous exhaustion, nausea and finally paralysis of the entire system. It can be fatal.

Much like ‘Ruddbullism’ really.