Politics: And So It Begins...

It’s on. Yes, from passionately ill-informed uni students to totally uninterested old bastards, Australia is now officially in the grip of election madness. Cafes and pubs are alive with the chatter of a nation trying to come to terms with where we are and where we want to go. Beers will be drunk, cigarettes will be smoked, fingers will be pointed and friendships will be tested. Even those apathetic fucks who love nothing more than sitting on the fence will feel something up their arse. And that something is politics.

Will John Howard lead his band of zombies, deviants and perverts into another four years of power? Will Mark Latham claim Canberra without outlining any concrete policies? And, perhaps most importantly, does it really make any difference who gets high from the amyl nitrate that is national power and political glory?

The mood on the streets – at least, amongst the left-leaning youngsters – is undoubtedly and unsurprisingly that Latham represents ‘the lesser of two evils.’ Unequivocal support for the man hasn’t come from any quarter of the youth, apart from the coke-snorting sycophants who call themselves Young Labor. If Latham secures the youth vote this election – and he will – it will be signifiy nothing but a desperate attempt by kids everywhere to get John Winston Howard thrown out of Canberra at any cost. As far as most Labor-leaning punters are concerned, Latham is the number one choice not because of who he is, but for who he isn’t.

So what will we do about the fact we're only being given two choices, and both of them are fairly dubious? We could weep in the streets, demanding an end to the Westminster system and the introduction of a direct democracy. We could rise up and spill the blood of the bourgeois, creating a nation state based solely on equality. We could outright ignore Labor and the Libs, focusing all our attention on Bob Brown and his Tasmanian trees. Or we could do what we always do: suck it up like true blue Aussies and try to pick the candidate who will embarass us the least. We can look for that Gallipoli spirit inside us all and run towards the Turkish gunmen of unrepresentative pseudo-democracy, regardless of the fact we're going to get shot either way.

Whatever. All I know is that on October 9th, either Mark Latham or John Howard will be popping the champagne. Latham's thuggish disdain for (and hence obligatory opposition towards) Howard's policies may see him crowned victorious. Howard's predictable brand of scare tactics and selective number-crunching could see him add another four years to his already impressive tally.

At this point, there’s no sure way to tell who will take out the title. Not even the polls can help us: many show that Howard is seen as a sickening embarrassment to everything good and right, and yet those same Howard-haters will still list the Libs as their number one choice. People are lost and confused, mired in insidious lies and tempting half-truths. No one knows what they want – and they only have until October 9th to work it out.

(Originally published in The Brag in the Fear & Loathing column).