Op-Ed: Australian election 2010- Political puberty, with verbal acne?

Verbal acne seems to be the theme of the current Federal election. Zits of wisdom from all corners have been “entertaining” the Australian public. Both sides seem to have people who iron their feet to make sure they’re flat enough.

It’s so bad that even Bob Brown, leader of the Australian Greens, objected on camera to “nasty” information being spread about the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. He found it extremely offensive. Ms. Gillard is a sort of breakthrough in Australian politics in several ways. She’s unmarried, an atheist, has no kids, and lives with her partner. A few decades ago, even the idea of having women members of Parliament, if not revolutionary, was certainly unusual. Then, even women reading the news were subjected to hate mail telling them to get back in the kitchen. The country may have come a long way, but apparently Australian politics hasn’t. The anti-Gillard whispering campaign has all the dignity of a primary school exchange of naughty words. Opposition leader Tony Abbott isn’t too pleased about it either, understandably enough, because naturally it’s being attributed to his side of politics. It’s extremely unlikely that he’d actively encourage any form of imbecility which is almost guaranteed to irritate the electorate like that. The fact remains that at this point in history someone in Australian politics thinks any of it’s relevant. There’s a famous Australian phrase for this unsightly example of infantilism: “Grow up!” Australian elections involve a pretty much middle of the road society which isn’t terribly keen on public national embarrassments on an hourly basis by its politicians. The requirement is for people who know what they’re doing, not spoilt brats who can’t open their mouths without creating a stench of pure idiocy. Meanwhile, the Australian media has been endearingly full of itself, and fanning any available flames. The same media which hounded former PM Kevin Rudd through the mining tax, insulation disaster and the carbon tax reversals is now talking about Gillard’s “disloyalty” to Rudd when she replaced him as leader. The party was in a tailspin, Rudd was in an impossible position, and therefore it’s all Gillard’s fault. Great logic throughout. Drivel, and not even good drivel. The most crazed media people should realize that the public’s memory is significantly longer than their own 5 seconds. The constant beat-ups of old innuendo aren’t what this election is about. At the moment, whether Gillard was previously for or against paid parental leave is on the agenda. Not whether she’s currently for or against, but the ancient history from a few months back, in a totally different environment. You guessed, it’s all about someone saying she was against it, and somebody else implying she’s anti-parents, and Rudds’ disgruntled supporters leaking, and therefore the Opposition is saying the government’s in chaos, while tripping over its own various feet. Grade school incarnate, just less adorable, somehow. Listen, idiots: Never mind what didn’t happen. The issue now is what happens next. If you really want to prove some sort of rationale for your existences, hit some actual issues. Just for the record, nobody particularly gives a damn what the media think. The blow by blow, poll by poll approach frankly, blows. It’s more like a game of Spot The Issue. If there’s a fact in there anywhere, it’ll get lost in “who said what about who” almost instantly. It’s like an unfocused Twitter. The Sydney Morning Herald is providing a relatively sane form of coverage, insofar as anything to do with Canberra can be called sane. As you can see from the link, everything from Gillard’s hair to the Vanishing Member For Bennelong, who defeated former PM John Howard and hasn’t been seen or heard by her constituents ever since, is on the menu. As Australia blunders happily along to becoming an adolescent nation, zits are perhaps excusable. A sort of juvenilia is pretty normal. All this instantly forgettable ephemera raises exactly one question: When do we start charging for this?