I don’t know if it’s online anywhere, nor would I necessarily point you toward it if it were, but Conroy just appeared on Lunchtime Agenda with David Speers, and proved a point. Look. Here’s a simple tip for the Prime Minister and Labor- don’t put Stephen Conroy near a fucking camera. Ever. Again. Speers nailed him to the cross, doused him with fuel and danced about with a lit match. And yet that was nothing compared to the damage Conroy did to himself. He wailed. He yelled over the host. He pushed lines so beyond belief that it made one choke on one’s cupcake ('the people out there aren’t asking me questions about Kevin Rudd or Mark Latham or leaks- they’re asking me when they can get broadband in their homes'). It was brutal. Conroy needs to be put somewhere. Perhaps in a box with Latham and Rudd. A small box, very far away.
I've no problem, as I suspect any thinking typing googling tweeting person would, with better broadband, or this NBN as we must abbreviatedly refer to it. The problem, I feel, is the moralising that comes with it. It is a policy for faster access to the internets, not a grand challenge in the style and scope of the Snowy Mountains Hydro scheme. Lives should not, one hopes, be risked in the cable installation (I shall not mention pink batts). A new way of life will not be established afterwards. We who have travelled to Europe or Japan or Vietnam for chrissakes will be familiar with zippy internets. It's good. Let's have some. But let's not suggest that this is something the nation should stand and salute to.
Something lost from the Latham debacle of 2004 comes to mind thanks to the brawling nutbags latest media appearances. I like Latham a little. Reading his diaries gives a good impression of someone able to be absolutely lucid one moment, barking nuts the next. He might be right on Rudd, or he might be so overwhelmed by envy at Rudd's success in place of his own that even Rudd's downfall won't bring succour. Either way, like Keating's disembowelment in 1996 which meant that Labor was taught, like a beaten dog, to eschew big picture stuff, Latham's touch-up in 04 meant that lines on so-called class politics were not to be crossed. It was a great failure of his and of Labor's more generally that an argument against private schools having freshly furnished polo fields installed in place of state schools having, say, adequate heating, never took hold. How this idea that unfairness, that most unAustralian trait, was to be ignored in place of aspirationalism, was partly their fault. It should be a piece of piss. So as much as his circuit-breaking skill is admired, Latham would be more useful turning his acid on himself and the failures of his moment that mire the party now- too afraid to go big. Gillard is a product of this small-target approach, and Cheryl Kernot's idea to run for the Senate on a 'change politics' platform, whilst almost certainly doomed, will pick up steam if it continues. Not enough to elect Cheryl one suspects (hasn't she had enough rejection?), but it will come if our politics stays small.
AND LATER
Just when you thought he couldn't distract Gillard any more- off he shoots to have his gall bladder removed. Get well soon Kevin. They need you. Maybe. Maybe once you go national the nation will be reminded of why they began to hate you and all the warmth that your final, still incedible speech garnered will dissipate. Maybe. David Speers, fast becoming a proper star of the campaign, tweeted the best line- "Rudd should also get the stitches taken out of his back while he's there."
LATER STILL
Nielson poll published late has Labor 48, LNP 52, 2 party. Jesus.
To conclude, here's Julie Bishop lecturing a garden gnome from Yes We Canberra.
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