Vote the Bastards Out

Rated MA: Strong Language, Adult Concepts

Alright. Most of the Australians reading know this by now. Little Johnny called the Australian Federal Election for October the 9th. In case you missed it, he called it on the last day possible to kill off the two week parliament session that was about to start. Why then? Because even more incontrovertible evidence has come to light that he knowingly lied about the "Children Overboard" affair, and he couldn't afford to face parliament under those circumstances, as he would have been forced to reveal in Parliament that he did in fact lie and mislead the Australian public about an issue in order to manipulate them.

Apparently, the pundits are saying that it doesn't matter if he lies his arse off, The Peepul will vote Lib anyway. Little Johnny is so confident of this that he's campaigning on a stance of "Who do you trust?" Are the mugs under the impression that it's just Little Johnny who's a lying fuckwit? Because it's not just him. He's just the front man. Front man for whom? Well, front man for the Lyons Forum, that group of right wing fundamentalist christian nutbags that runs the Liberal Party.

The entire party is riddled with and controlled by bigots who would like nothing better than to throw scumbags like myself (Chink, bisexual, kinky, non-conservative, non-Christian, how many more hate boxes would you like me to have?) off the refugee boat I obviously illegally snuck into the country on (skilled migrant parents, fuck you very much Mr Little Fuckwit Johnny who pays his son to spam for him and honestly believes it's a good thing to spam), preferably with lead floaties, if possible.

You may think that Labor is "just as bad"... Well, no, they're not. The Labor moderates actually have some say in party politics, and whilst the Labor Catholic faction is pretty strong, the Labor progressives have significant force too. Sufficient to force compromises within Labor that mean that actual equitable outcomes are a little more likely. Witness the Labor Response on Gay Marriage that they put out. Yes, on the surface, they "caved in", but if you read beyond the biased newspaper headlines, they fully intend to establish a level of equity for gay couples that has never before existed by reviewing the whole issue, and the "new law" changes the actual current situation not one iota. So, no, the two parties are not the same.

Labor has always had fairly solid internal factions, and whilst those factions do have their own separate agendas (sometimes aired too often in public for the party's good), that multiplicity of factions is important. It means that Labor is far more representative of the actual blood of this nation, the multicultural multiplex nation that is Australia. The Liberal Party? Its structure is pretty much run by the Lyons Forum and attendants, and there are no real factions within it. The Liberal Moderates come the closest to a faction that the Liberal Party will ever have... and they will never have any kind of say in actual Party policy. And don't forget the Liberal attachment... the National Party. Some of whom are genuinely nice Australian country folk... but even more of whom are fundamentalist bigots.

Now, the issue of bigotry is hardly the only issue. The "Free Trade Agreement" will cause immediate and utter devastation to Australian Intellectual Property Law, resulting in an even worse brain drain that we have already. We have had a serious and intentional undermining of the office of the Governor General (Little Johnny knowingly put someone in the office who was going to get shot down in flames). We have had many serious breaches of the line between judiciary and parliament, with the Attorney General refusing to uphold decisions along actual legal lines, instead preferring to kowtow and suck on Little Johnny's line. We have tortured genuine refugees, including children. We now intend to imprison them indefinitely if we can't send them home to be tortured there instead. We have gone to war on false pretexts (Why were we told we were invading Iraq? WoMD, right? Now they tell us it was all to get rid of an evil dictator all along). We have had no genuine improvement in our national security as a result, instead, we are more of a target than ever. That's just the tip of the issues that I can recall off hand.

So. The Pundits say that the fact that Little Johnny Lies Like A Mongrel Dog is totally irrelevant. Well, I'm telling you it's not just him. It's his whole fucking party and everything they stand for. Vote for anyone you like, just make sure you put the Liberals and Nationals last. If you're going to vote the Senate ticket above the line, then put Greens, Democrats, or Labor. Nobody else. I highly recommend voting the Senate ticket below the line, despite the effort that this is. And if you're not enrolled to vote yet, then bloody well get to it. If you were enrolled but have moved, then update your enrolment, because the bastards may have dropped you from the roll (there was a concerted campaign a couple of months ago to check voter registrations). If you are enrolled to vote, confirm your enrolment just in case they've fucked up. Or, if you're going to be overseas, then, by all the gods, Absentee Vote!

Vote the Bastards Out. It's Time. And Any Other Damn Cliche You Like. Just get out there and vote against the Liberal Party.

( Lyrics of Ich Bin Ein Auslander )

Edit: See Also

This has been crossposted to:

• aussielj as [Danger, politics ahead] Vote the Bastards Out
• aus_politics as Vote the Bastards Out
• aust_politics as Vote the Bastards Out