By Kevin Hillier
Just when we thought it was a quiet start to the year, along comes a federal election to invade our senses for the next few months.
Clive Palmer is leading the way with an advertising campaign that is all about saturating the airwaves with his head and his message – We’re not gonna cop it. Oh, if only we didn’t have to. If you got votes based on the number of ads bought, he would be in for a landslide victory. If annoying was an election platform, he would be winning that at the moment too.
The big winner here is the media outlets raking in big dollars and Twisted Sister. The forgotten ’80s rock band’s lead singer Dee Snider has been milking a plagiarism dispute and boosting ticket sales for the band’s tour. I am sure conspiracy theorists are having a ball with this scenario. Could Clive and Dee be playing all of us on this one?
The current PM (ScoMo) and the PM in waiting (Shorto) are on the Tommy Lee Jones Fugitive tour of the country – ‘every residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse’.
They are wearing hard hats, crash helmets, caps, high viz, ties, no ties, suits and jeans in their role as headline-grabbing chameleons.
The pair is answering every inane question in the book and nothing is sacred, including what happens during a Prime Ministerial trip to the urinal. I would rather hear another Clive Palmer tuneless advertisement than get a detailed account of what goes on there.
The issues tend to get lost and buried under layers of party rhetoric and personal jibes. I find it hard to concentrate on the point of anyone’s argument when there are half a dozen nodding sycophants in the background looking like they are in some sort of trance or gazing adoringly at the ear lobes of the speaker. Only Mr Spock, Shrek or Chopper Read have ears that deserve that kind of attention.
Scaremongering from all sides seems to be the most effective means of campaigning, which is an insult to voters and a sad reflection on the desperation to gain power at any cost. All this and it is only mid February and no date yet announced.
