Yep, it’s official. The man of steel has been flogged by a girl from the ABC. The ex-prime minister’s personal defeat so teems with symbolism that it belongs in a novel, or no doubt several instant history books, and one day a movie. Fancy Bennelong being created in 1949, the year of the great conservative victory by Bob Menzies! The seat hasn’t been out of Liberal hands since, until now. The forgotten people have finally forgotten, or something, which feels like squaring for Ben Chifley and Jack Curtin, and the end of the Liberal Party of Australia. Maxine McKew has plunged the stake through the dark heart, as Paul Keating would say. And dig this fact, according to Max, “the primary vote at the 2004 election was around 28 per cent, our primary vote this time was around 44 to 45 per cent.” That’s a primary swing of 60 per cent, an almighty rush to help this courageous woman remove John Howard’s head from the lists. This week, she will join the first Labor ministry to accept commissions since Keating’s government in 1993. Maxine, you’re a bloody legend. Ask. It’s yours.

Hard to choose, really. Perhaps:

1. Kevin Rudd, like John Howard, wears glasses and describes himself as a fiscal conservative, so this is really a victory for John Howard, and the luvvies have lost again, if only they’d realise that we are all creepy conservatives now, really.

2. Stanley Melbourne Bruce’s first name started with “S” and he wore spats whereas John Winston Howard’s starts with “J” and he wears tracksuits, so 2007 is completely different to 1929, as proved by the scientific fact that these are two completely different years, really.

3. Someone, probably John Pilger or Julia Gillard, called the former Howard government “fascist” recently, forgetting that fascism occurred in Italy a long time ago and this is Australia today, so s/he is clearly wrong, really.

Go Gerry, make my day, really.

Update: Gerry goes for the crocodile tears (consolation prize for 2. above, although we failed to mention that Stanley lived on the outskirts of Melbourne, not in Bennelong, and the more recent of the two old PMs faced a celebrity candidate, so that’s why it’s completely different, this week, really).

Three high-profile frontbenchers from NSW Mr Turnbull, Brendan Nelson and Tony Abbott are already set to fight for the poisoned chalice of leader of the Opposition.

How good is this?

‘No reason to get excited’, the thief, he kindly spoke,
‘There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let’s not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.’

Bob Ellis is one of Australia’s great writers. No, I don’t mean he always has his facts right. In fact, I wish he would get more of his facts right, just to annoy Tim Blair. Regardless, Bob Ellis can dig deep. At his best, Bob Ellis can capture a whole sensibility better than any other contemporary writer in the political vernacular. I miss Bob Ellis at the moment, but that’s not the point.

Bob, crazy lovely brilliant bastard that he is, always says the Liberals would blow up their own head office to win office. On the third last day of the 2007 campaign, the Navy plucked 10 children and six adults from their leaking wooden boat in the Timor Sea. Ten children. The Ellis theory, in reverse! Not to be outdone this time, perhaps, the ALP has forced the Liberals to expel two members busted impersonating Osama bin Laden on behalf of the opposition. It’s wild, in the last hours.

Kevin Rudd has revealed his first five priorities as prime minister if Labor wins government at Saturday’s election. They are:

1. Ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
2. Negotiate with states to reform the hospital system.
3. Begin roll-out of high-speed broadband network and connections to schools.
4. Upgrade trade training centres in secondary schools.
5. Begin negotiations with US and Iraq for staged withdrawal of Australian combat troops by mid-next year.

Mr Rudd said that Christmas Day and Boxing Day would be the only holidays for a Labor cabinet this year as they began putting policies into action, and that he would use the Lodge in Canberra as the prime ministerial home. He said he wanted to be known as “an education prime minister”, someone who fundamentally transformed education. Mr Rudd, the hot favourite to be elected prime minister on Saturday, told the Sunday Age that the last week of the campaign would be “very tight and tough”, but said he had plenty of petrol left in the tank. “Fighting and raring to go, mate,” Mr Rudd said. “I’m moving from fourth to fifth gear, and certainly in my own personal engine there is capacity to move into sixth gear as well.”

Sounds good to me, except I guess repealing WorkChoices has to wait to the next parliament? Can’t something be done immediately? How about some real experts going through the pile up? What about an independent inquiry? What about an open-ended standing royal commission into the Howard’s government’s 12 years of crimes against humanity? Can’t we at least have Kevin Andrews in the stocks for tomato practice at Martin Place for just one day? How about Tone Abbott in an all-comers boxing tent? Joe Hockey on a stick? OK, the first five will do. *Sigh.*

Update: Classic Bill Leak.