I watched the election results ooze in with our seven month old passed out on my lap.
The overdue demise of Toney, the chief architect of the last decade’s worth of general rot, was hardly an effective salve, given the circumstances.
Wine barely hit the sides - it evaporated, inert, en route to the gnawing clench in my gut.
By 8pm it was becoming increasingly clear that, thanks to a mealy mouthed, vision-bereft campaign, the ALP had squibbed it spectacularly.
Hawkie had sniffed the breeze and decided he couldn’t stomach three more years of jabbering Coalition malfeasance.
Fair play to him.
Shorten did the right thing and pulled the plug on six years of Grey Man slog just before midnight.
Scott Morrison – who famously shat his pants at Engadine Maccas in 1997, ho ho, oh and also believes in the actual Devil and Rapture, no doubt happy fapping in the Kirribilli khazi at the prospect of the climate Weber being cranked up – had clinched it.
He was quick to call it a capital ‘m’ Miracle of course, on-brand like the frothing mad failed ad man he is.
I’d prefer to think that, ultimately, the slender win as a gift from the ALP, whose timid centrist bollocks failed to capitalise on the urgent opportunities afforded them by the global moment.
Fucking hell, what with maniacs and psychos the LNP have squatted out all over the national stage, this was supposed to be a formality.
But no, the Member for Adani, the shovel-headed Canavan, the absent mad rooter Christensen and the pickled mad rooter Joyce (not to mention Spud, and who wants to imagine him on the job?) were all returned in a canter, more fool us.
We’ve now had our very own Trump moment, so let’s learn from “The Resistance’s” mistakes and not re-litigate the “dumb rednecks” narrative with pointy manicured index fingers jabbed in North Queensland’s direction.
There are plenty of greedy, craven arseholes in the southern inner cities, too.
You’re probably one of them.
After all, wouldn’t campaigning on a Green New Deal style influx of work for all those punters held in thrall by the promise of Adani not have paid dividends? Address all that disadvantage and anxiety in uncertain times with a sustainable future footing? The global economy’s turning its back on coal, after all.
Of course, sketchiness was ALP-under-Bill’s trademark. They never really looked convincing on the detail, especially when touting the wonders of fracking in NT out of the other sides of their gobs.
At any rate, they’ll be getting down to the business of following the US Democrats’ path into navel gazing paralysis with plenty of leadershit grist for the time being. It’s hard to see any Bernies or Corbyns lurking in their ranks now or, indeed, well into the future.
I always wonder what the real whores like Barney and his bromo Matt tell their kids when it comes to cashing in so brazenly on the future wellbeing of the planet. No doubt there’s a boggle eyed evangelism at work, just like the big boy in charge, the vacuum at their moral core enough to crush all that coal in the Galilee Basin into a continental diamond.
Meanwhile, the fuckers on the nominal “Left” are never going to be our salvation, so it’s time for us to change gears from the relaxed and comfortable apathy of the last twenty plus years, get our shit collectively together and show our kids we give a fuck about their existence.
Who knows, maybe a Labor win would have led to another three years of dangerous torpor?
I’m hearing a lot of people saying they’re tuning out of paying attention to politics after the events of the weekend. That’s a luxury I don’t think we deserve at this point.
I’m headed to a meet up with a climate change activist group later this week, then off to another protest on Friday, with bub in tow.
I want to be able to tell our kid that I did something constructive to move the needle in a positive direction. She’s been cheerfully playing nearby while I’ve snatched a moment here and there to piece this together while policing her new adventures in standing upright.
Now’s not the time to take for granted our privileged position - it’s time offer up our time, our skills and, if it comes down to it, put our bodies on the line to help effect the very real change we need to desperately accelerate on this all but cooked planet.