Club Troppo

Kens touching memorial to David Beeton made me think of the new Bob Dylan album, serendipitously titled, Together Through Life.

Those who know the album well will also know that it makes its way to its climax with the great artist at near full, awesome stretch in I Feel a Change Comin On, before he winds up the whole outing with the great belly laugh Its All Good.

I Feel a Change Comin On, which is a further sequel to the transcendent The Times They Are A-Changing, follows an earthy ditty called Shake Shake Mama, which is little more than a pallet cleanser after Dylans wondrous spiritual tilt This Dream of You. This Dream is the only song on the album written by Dylan alone, and is surely his most moving hymn since his hat tip to William Blake in Every Grain of Sand. It is superior, in my view, to Blowin in The Wind (as perfect a piece of work as that song most assuredly was and is).

To return to the point, This Dream sets the stage, after a quick shake up mama, for the climax that is I Feel a Change Comin On. This extraordinary song is itself resolved in two lines that I, like many others, originally heard as:

Some people they tell me

Ive got the blood of the lamb in my voice.

The line could not be delivered more perfectly, more powerfully, and yet, as Christians will know better than me, does Bob really say that the lord Jesus speaks through him? Whoa Bob! Steady on old chap. That is a line humans dare not cross in their own name. I instinctively shrank at the same time as I thrilled to the sound of the delivery.

(Continued)

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.

Ever so gently, Kevin Rudd is looming into full view. The ALP launch was high politics. Not only did we see Bob Hawke and Paul Keating holding hands, in one swoop, the alternative leader deeply wedged the government forces with a bold fiscal policy and shored up his own side with anti-WorkChoices pledges. Anything can still happen, especially when we’re talking John Howard. As we head into the home straight, however, it’s looking like the Ruddster plus everyone from the Reserve Bank through to the ACTU and beyond versus the profligate retiree who, as far as anyone can really tell at this stage, has only sown up the orangutan vote. Fingers crossed.

Far be it for me to jinx the race, but it’s hard not to think that that’s that. The government had one shot: drive economic management to the front of the nation’s mind via the rate rise, and then break opinion on the only ground still tilted its way.

You just have to read Missing Link to appreciate that the Prime Minister comprehensively stuffed up, with his sorry but no I don’t mean I apologise for I will only take credit so I’m not to blame routine. The trajectory was always a high-wire act, carrying sufficient risk to leverage the difference. As it happened, the PM crashed into himself coming the other way in mid-air and fell into the net. The game’s up. The stride’s been broken. The water has been muddied. The government’s difficult message has become garbled. The LNP’s re-election strategy is a smoking ruin.

We’ll have to wait to see how sentiment swings, of course. There’s no telling the mythical Australian punter’s mind. But it’s now hard to see any way for the PM to turn. Hope the cricket gets interesting. To think, it all looked so clever on PowerPoint.

The PM appears to be sitting nicely a couple of weeks out. Newspoll has him coming home at a comfortable clip. Gotta love the Melbourne Cup. The sick, mad and giddy apart, gambling makes the punters think about taking risks. Follow up with a rate rise. Between the laws of probability and the definition of commerce, most punters will have lost money. As they lose confidence in taking risks, blap them with a rate rise. Hang the last election. Force the risk-averse suckers to bet on the next race.

Mr Howard defines ground zero. Will you back me in the next rate race? You don’t like WorkChoices, but it’s an anti-inflation, anti-rate plan to save your house, plus an unemployment rate of 3 per cent. The ALP has inflation-fueling unions which will let the rate monster out of the cupboard. Back me to save your house against your job and income under WorkChoices, with the lowest unemployment since the early 1970s. What is it? Make up your mind. Risk a perilous rate rise or a cosy rat race?

I suspect this will be the crucial test of Kevin Rudd, at least this time. No doubt there’s a political theory on how he should manage the moment for everyone able to have a political theory, and I’d hate to make the calls. I could more comfortably run a political campaign for an enemy. There’s a crazy freedom in being a mercenary, when it’s just a job, a paycheck, key performance indicators and a pile of bullshit.

Alas, my disapproval of the Prime Minister is in perfectly inverse proportion to my approval of the alternative. Such high stakes are excruciating. I can barely watch, let alone wish to be responsible. For two bob, I say Mr Rudd must meet this moment head on. No resting on opinion polls, slick advertising, small targets or whatever. The response must be full frontal: an all-guns blazing, scorched earth, take no prisoners, empty the purse, spectrum-dominating rebuttal, in a gentle Ruddster kinda way.