The recent Lachlan Connor action has reminded me about something I meant to blog at the time but completely forgot about. In the middle of November I received an email from a journalism intern at Crikey addressed to Lachlan Connor.

From: Alesha Maree Capone (XXXXXX@student.rmit.edu.au)
To: lachlanconnor@gmail.com
Date: Nov 13, 2007 5:06 PM
Subject: Re: Hillsong stuff

Hi, I’m an intern at the journalism site crikey.com and I’m wondering where you found this quote “lesbianism as a sin that their residential program assists girls to ‘walk in freedom from.’” that is was posted on your blog on 22 October?
Thanks- this would be a big help with a story I’m working on

Easy enough mistake to make, I suppose, given that his name is on the front of the website. So I answered her question and politely informed her that Lachlan didn’t exist.

From: The Editor (XXXXXX@gmail.com)
To: Alesha Maree Capone (XXXXXX@student.rmit.edu.au)
Date: Nov 13, 2007 5:51 PM
Subject: Re: Hillsong stuff

Hi Alesha,

The quote comes from here (http://www.talkaboutparenting.com/
group/alt.adoption/messages/437079.html) and is spoken by Sarah Scantlen, Assistant Programs Manager at Mercy Ministries:

Approximately 40 girls live at Mercy for up to a year, coping with everything from drug abuse, suicidal thoughts, eating disorders, unplanned pregnancies and lesbianism. “We do have girls who have a history of lesbianism, and that’s definitely an issue that we deal with,” says Scantlen. “We are cautious to make sure that we’re not putting them in an area where there’s going be more struggle or temptation because this is a girls’ home. In dealing with it in counseling, they have been able to walk in freedom from that.”

Do you reckon you could email me a copy of the finished article?

Cheers,
The Editor

ps/- Lachlan Connor is a fictional YouTube politician created by my site (http://www.grods.com/lachlan-connor-independent/). Sorry about the confusion.

I reckon I spelled it out pretty clearly so imagine my surprise when I received this email the next day addressed, once again, to Lachlan Connor.

From: Alesha Maree Capone (XXXXXX@student.rmit.edu.au)
To: lachlanconnor@gmail.com
Date: Nov 14, 2007 3:54 PM
Subject: Crikey article
mailed-by student.rmit.edu.au

Hi Lachlan,
You can find the article at the link below. Thanks very much for your help- Alesha Capone.

http://www.crikey.com.au/
Politics/20071114-Borders-between-charity-and-Hillsong-church-thin-.html

That’s some fine attention to detail right there.

Since revealing Lachlan Connor’s accidental audition success on GrodsCorp last week the story has been picked up by Big Brother fan site Behind Big Brother…

Bloggers at GrodsCorp managed to get a fictional persona right through to the group interview stage of Big Brother auditions this year.

“Lachlan Conner” is a dorky traffic surveyor and failed senate candidate featured in an internet video mockumentary made by the site. When GrodsCorp wrapped up the series they decided Lachlan might as well have a shot at reality TV stardom.

Big Brother producers must have found Lachlan more interesting than the real applicants on the site because he was soon sent the audition questionnaire… even though his video only received 2 votes.

GrodsCorp filled out the questionnaire with semi-bogus answers but when Lachlan was invited to a group interview his audition journey sadly had to come to an end… the character doesn’t have a drivers license with his name on it.

In an indication of how average the other real contestants must be Lachlan was chased by Big Brother producers with at least a dozen follow up calls and a few emails. You can read more about Lachlan’s story including his questionnaire answers at GrodsCorp.

..and, in turn, the gossip columns of News Ltd. rags around the country (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth).

IT WOULDN’T be the first time a Big Brother housemate has been accused of being fake, but a make-believe character making it right through to group auditions?

Lachlan Connor – a fictional character who stars in an internet video mockumentary – was apparently more appealing to producers than many real-life applicants.

Connor “wrote” in his questionnaire that his favourite movie is The Truman Show, and talks of his life-changing Contiki tour across Europe.

But because he only exists on the GrodsCorp website, the dorky traffic surveyor failed to advance to the next level.

So given the interest in Lachlan’s Big Brother tilt I decided to see if the producers were still willing to let him attend the audition.

From: Lachlan Connor (lachlanconnor @gmail.com)
To: Big Brother 2008 (bigbrother @bigbrother.com.au)
Date: Jan 30, 2008 9:18 PM
Subject: Re: BB08: Audition Invitation

Hi,

If it’s not too late to RSVP I’d love to come to the audition.

Regards,
Lachlan

I’ll let you know if I get a response.

It all started back in September 2006 when GrodsCorp created a half-baked character called Lachlan Connor who starred in a half-baked internet mockumentary called Lachlan Connor, Independent. And it was all supposed to end in January 2008 when we pumped out the final episode of the series, wrapping up Lachlan’s story by having him audition for the 2008 series of Big Brother.

But it didn’t end there.

Lachlan’s audition video was uploaded to the Big Brother website a few days before entries closed and was viewed barely 100 times with one or two votes before the cut off date; yet Lachlan somehow progressed through to the second round of auditions despite there being hundreds of audition videos that were far more popular and the fact that a really casual Google of Lachlan’s name reveals him to be imaginary.

From: Big Brother 2008 (bigbrother @bigbrother.com.au)
To: Lachlan Connor (lachlanconnor @gmail.com)
Date: Jan 11, 2008 1:12 PM
Subject: BB08: Congratulations, you’ve made it to the next stage!

Congratulations. You have been selected to progress to the next stage of Big Brother auditions… and your BB08 experience has begun!

You now need to fill out a questionnaire. This will help us learn more about you.

When you click on the link below, you’ll be taken to the questionnaire. You must complete this by Wed Jan 16 2008 , 5pm AEST in order to be considered for the next round.

You will need to enter your username and password that you created when you joined the Big Brother site. If you have forgotten this, please visit www.ten.com.au and go to the sign in/register section.

The URL is:

* link *

It’s important we remind you that you must click to indicate you agree to our Terms and Conditions and Confidentiality agreement. These are the same conditions that you agreed to when you submitted your initial application and they continue to apply to you throughout the selection process.

Good luck! We’ll be in touch if you are successful in moving through to the next round.

The Big Brother Team

So how could I resist logging into the Big Brother system and filling out their silly questionnaire? Little did I know that I would squander three hours of my life making up answers to 123 questions like these:

Read the rest of this entry »

Pauline Hanson — who gets rooly, rooly upset when you accuse her of running for Parliament just for the cash — has received $213,000 in funding from the AEC in the wake of the 2007 federal election. This is a 12% improvement on her $189,000 haul at the 2004 election.

Nice work if you can get it. Run for Parliament every three years with a campaign budget of virtually zero and rake in a few hundred grand of taxpayer coin. Why a campaign budget of nothing? Well, Pauline doesn’t need to spend the money that other independents do on getting their name and face into the heads of voters; there’s a hardcore group of rusted-on Pauline voters out there who will continue to tick her name forever. And the media gives her a free run every time — the sort of advertising that other independents simply can’t buy.

In related news, independent candidate for the Senate in Victoria, Lachlan Connor, has missed out on AEC funding to offset the costs of his campaign. “Theoretically I was owed about six dollars for my two votes,” Mr Connor said. “But I fell a little short of the funding threshold so once again independents suffered and our democracy was weakened in Australia.”

Episode 40: In which Lachlan reflects on the election result and cuts a deal with the documentary’s producers.
Follow the whole series here.

Rate this episode at YouTube.
Watch Lachlan’s Big Brother audition.

The Editor’s note: As this is the final episode of Lachlan Connor, Independent I’d like to say a hearty thankyou to those who took part in its production (you know who you are) and everyone who took the time to watch an episode or two. Even though Lachlan was a chore a lot of the time — what with us trying to do proper jobs, our complete lack of acting talent, and (in the end) a complete lack of scripts — I do know that we had a bunch of fun.

With its razor sharp satire, the web series Lachlan Connor, Independent changed Australia forever earlier this year, (”Heil L. Ron Hubbard, HEIL!!“) slashing down everything in it’s path. Mostly the elderly. But the massive amount of times the series was viewed on YouTube has finally been reflected in Queensland:

It’s Christmas hols so blogging is reduced to reproducing amusing snippets of Gmail chat conversation. This one’s with the Anonymous Blogger Who Played Billy In Lachlan Connor, Independent (ABWPBILCI).

ABWPBILCI: i was thinking the other day
why didn’t we vodcast lachlan?

The Editor: I don’t even know what that means.

ABWPBILCI: pffft

The Editor: You mean through iTunes or something?

ABWPBILCI: yeah

The Editor: Maybe boost the hits from 35 to 40…

ABWPBILCI: to a million!

The Editor: FUCK!!!!

ABWPBILCI: we could’ve put in ads
made, maybe, as much as $15

The Editor: Sell-out.

ABWPBILCI: i’m all about the selling out
my name is really Maggi

The Editor: Hah!

ABWPBILCI: Maggi Whiskers Jonnie Walker

The Editor: I love Whiskers.

ABWPBILCI: sorry, Whiskas I think it is

The Editor: That too.

ABWPBILCI: on a teachers salary it provides ample nutrients

The Editor: And it comes in a variety of flavours.

ABWPBILCI: and essential snouts

The Editor: Gotta run.
Gonna blog this conversation (it’s xmas — lazy blogging is allowed) and then go to the shops.

ABWPBILCI: who gives a shit what we say?

The Editor: Who gives a shit about anything we write?

ABWPBILCI: :( that’s it, bloggings over

Election 2007 kicked off for me at 5am on Saturday morning with a day of election filmmaking duties ahead, and finished up nearly 24 hours later when I collapsed into bed in a reasonable state of inebriation and exhaustion. I would’ve had roughly the same itinerary if there was a Liberal victory although the Great Ruddslide ‘07 made the day one of immense joy and jubilation. Bridgit Gread has already written a brilliant wrap of the RWDB reaction to Australia Decides ‘07 so here’s the rest as seen through GrodsCorp’s eyes.

Summary
Everyone knows what happened thanks to tonnes of proper election analysis in the MSM and the blogosphere so I might just mention a single point that especially makes me smile: Family First have gone from strength-to-strength with their national primary vote climbing -0.04% to the massive total of 1.97%, while their nemesis, the “extreme” Greens, grew their vote by 0.4% to 7.59%.

Suck shit, Steve Fielding. There’s now absolutely no doubt that once that stain on democracy is removed from the Senate in 2010 we’ll never have Family First make either chamber look untidy again.

How the candidates went
Let’s check out those aspiring politicians to whom GrodsCorp paid attention during the campaign (all figures are from AEC website at 5:50pm, 26 November 2007.)

Stuart Ulrich, independent for Charlton, scored 2.29% of the primary vote which he can partly attribute to scoring first place on the ballet (sic) paper. (Read this if you want to understand the “ballet” joke.) Still a not-totally-shite result despite the donkey vote.

Jemma Tribe, Family First for Cunningham, polled half a percentage point less than her party’s national average with 1.48% of the primary vote. If she was Steve Fielding, and with numbers like that, she’d be sitting in Parliament right now.

Stewart Glass, independent for the Senate in South Australia, has built a solid base for another tilt in 2010 with 65 votes, or 0.01% of the primary vote. Maybe his campaign was a hammer and the election was a wood screw? (As John Surname said when he saw Stewart’s YouTube video: “Buy a screwdriver.”)

Zane Alcorn (AKA MC Doc Fruit), Socialist Alliance for Wills, scored 0.73% of the primary; Margarita Windisch, Socialist Alliance for the Senate in Victoria, managed 0.08%.

Philip Nitschke, independent for Menzies, gathered a respectable 3.91% of the primary vote in a blue-ribbon Liberal seat against the (ex) minister for immigration, Kevin Andrews. Here’s hoping he can boost that percentage up to 4% with absentees and postals to get his deposit back.

Lachlan Connor
Look, I’ll be honest with you. We were all ready to shoot two episodes of Lachlan Connor, Independent during the GrodsElectionParty but when things started to go oh-so-right we started to get oh-so-drunk. There was no chance that we were going to tear ourselves away from the telly long enough to turn the camera on, and even if we did get the camera turned on we probably would’ve pointed it the wrong way and forgot to put a tape in. So Lachlan will appear in an epilogue episode this week and that’ll have to do.

Disgraceful behaviour
Some of you may be aware of the allegation that Kevin Andrews tore down the posters of an opposing candidate on election day. Andrew denies that he committed this offence with a spokesperson from his office saying, “It’s not true, it’s absolute rubbish.” Well, I can say that I was rather closely involved with the whole incident on Saturday and I have no choice but to declare that Kevin Andrews is a lying liar who lies.

The Liberal Party
Decimated. Pure and simple. I hope with every fibre of my being that Tony Abbott is elected leader so that it implodes just a little bit more.

In conclusion
John Howard, you are a national embarrassment. May you never have another chance to fuck this country up in any capacity ever again. Good riddance.

Episode 39: In which Lachlan, on the eve of the poll, reflects on the final weeks of his campaign for election to the Senate.
Follow the whole series here or subscribe to the RSS feed.

Rate this episode at YouTube.
Visit Lachlan’s blog.

Episode 38: In which Billy mourns the loss of Jacob.
Follow the whole series here or subscribe to the RSS feed.

Rate this episode at YouTube.
Visit Lachlan’s blog.

Episode 37: In which Lachlan learns of Jacob’s whereabouts and has a latte with Heather.
Follow the whole series here or subscribe to the RSS feed.

Rate this episode at YouTube.
Visit Lachlan’s blog.

Episode 36: In which Jacob runs into trouble with the law and disappears.
Follow the whole series here or subscribe to the RSS feed.

Rate this episode at YouTube.
Visit Lachlan’s blog.

Episode 35: In which Lachlan reflects on the challenges of grassroots campaigning.
Follow the whole series here or subscribe to the RSS feed.

Rate this episode at YouTube.
Visit Lachlan’s blog.

Kevin Rudd doesn’t support gay marriage but sorta supports gay rights. John Howard simply thinks that them gays is the work of the devil. Lachlan Connor has now weighed into the debate with an official gay and lesbian rights policy.

Gay and lesbian people to receive the same rights as normal people.

At least it’s, um, clear and unequivocal, I suppose.

The Editor spent the first years of his life in Dapto, south of Wollongong, and it is from here that James Purser is campaigning for a NSW Senate seat. James’ YouTube videos are up there with Lachlan Connor’s personal broadcasts for production quality and that special personal touch. Here’s his first:

If you’re still not convinced about the Purser-Connor synergy just check out this quote from James Purser…

Do you want a representative that has a vision beyond “follow the leader”? Do you want someone who can deal with both sides of politics to ensure that this country regains it’s place as one of the leaders? Do you want someone who views the coming challenges as an opportunity to grow rather than a political tool?

I can be that representative. I can be that someone.

…and compare it to this quote from Lachlan Connor.

If I’m elected to serve as a Senator for the Victorian people I will follow what can truly be called a centrist path. None of this dog-whistle politics, or politics of fear and insularity. None of this me-too popularism. I’m sick of politicians who are anti-intellectual, who are afraid to think outside the square. I think politicians should be people we can look up to; people we can trust.

I can be that people.

Spooky.