“What Slobs thinks of Australian elections: The mildly coherent but thankfully short ramble”

I like elections, they're greatly entertaining if done properly but they often leave us wanting when it comes to results.
The main flaw of elections is that in a democracy everybody expects to have a say, a noble thought but flawed since a lot of people would have trouble picking the difference between Kevin Rudd and Tony Jones should they ever watch Lateline, which they don’t, exacerbating the problem further.

The Australian electoral process is worse than the usual as it's startlingly sterile and boring, a drawn-out press conference of frustrated po-faced protestant-class underarm shit slinging ending with a trip to the local church or primary school to throw my opinion into a box and then watch the results unfold at a spectacular piss-up where the nice people leave early and someone is quite likely to kick a TV.

All this means that for our candidates to be electable by the wears-a-hat-indoors crowd they need to be as boring as possible. Any controversy and it's all over. Rudd weathered a fair bit of flak over his Scores visit which in some other countries would hardly have rated page 3 even if the initial story had been true.
Elsewhere they have a lot more fun about it and get to elect far more entertaining leaders, even if they are cheerful fuckups - case in pictures, we get this, other countries got (for better or worse) this, this and this. Come on, Rudd's not even doing anything interesting with his hands.

The parties too campaign on pretty well known and worn lines, I'd like to the parties properly divided on issues, choosing parties shouldn't be a matter of comparing tax breaks and interest rates as if we're comparing specs on a whitegoods purchase, it should be a matter of conviction in a system of rule and management where only a monumental fuckup would ever change one's mind.

I want a conservative party that's properly conservative, I want a left wing that's actually left wing and a centrist party that swings wildly between which side it's pretending not be beholden to.
While we're at it throw in an ultra-right party, some anarchists, libertarians, Raelians, the FARC marching band, and just for laughs, the Australian Democrats.

It doesn't really matter though, none of this matters - any party that can bring the price of a pint at the pub down by a dollar will be left holding a landslide so large they can sling that mud right back in our faces and we’ll cheer like automatic cheering machines.

Woooooooooo!