In GrodsThink 10 we took a look at day one of Brendan Nelson’s Magical Listening Tour diary. Go have a listen, ya bastards. Day two of the diary is now online and just like day one it’s a bloody corker.

2 April 2008

Diary from the road:

The people at the pointy end of the economic debate in Australia talk about the Westpac-Melbourne Institute Survey of Consumer Sentiment being the lowest in 15 years or the Sensis survey having the largest fall on record for the March quarter, but you’ve just got to spend a bit of time at the Lowood service station to see Australians coming in with their cars – 10, 12, 15 years old – putting $5, $7 or $30 worth of petrol in the tank.

10 year olds putting petrol in their cars? But seriously, is Brendan seriously suggesting that since November 24 last year Australians have suddenly acquired decades-old cars and suddenly started putting small amounts of petrol in their tanks that align with the disposable cash they have access to? Out of touch, man.

And one lady I gave a hand to get some petrol into her car…

I bet she rooly, trooly appreciated being assaulted by a slimy politician at a servo in search of a photo opportunity.

…who put $30 in, was saying “gee, I really hope petrol comes down soon. I’ve got to buy groceries; we’ve got other commitments with the house and interest rates and so on”.

Don’t hold your breath, ma’am. Petrol’s not ever going in the down direction again.

But then going to the Woolies in Nundah, just going through talking to the shoppers and helping to bag the groceries…

Checkout operators in supermarkets generally have no trouble bagging groceries for themselves; and they do it without having to continually smile for a battalion of cameras.

I’m Brendan Nelson and I’m here to help

…you see a string of people, from sole parents with two or three kids, elderly people on fixed incomes, retirees, mothers that have got three kids to feed and a husband at work, and they’re really battling with their grocery prices.

Hasn’t Nelson just spent a couple of months bagging Rudd for talking about grocery prices? And anyway, like petrol it’s just an expense you’ve gotta deal with. Is this seriously the biggest policy challenge for our national government?

And, by the way, they’re not too happy about the idea of some sort of tax on plastic bags. Mr Garrett needs to go back and have a look at that one. Big time.

Whoa, Garrett — you’ve been pwned big time by Dr Nelson. Gauntlet thrown.

The other thing that’s really emerging as a big issue is the funding of aged care. I’ve had a number of people, not only in aged care facilities but also the facilities themselves and the operators who are very concerned about what the Government’s going to do with aged care funding in the Budget.

And what exactly did your government do for aged care funding in eleven long years, Brendan, besides from cash bribes immediately prior to elections?

And again, like the carers and disabilities issue for which I was thanked by people who are desperately in need on that lump sum carers payment, the providers are very concerned about what the Government’s going to do in the Budget for the funding of the care of our nursing home residents.

“For which I was thanked”? You’ve saved us again, Dr Nelson.

– Brendan Nelson

Stay tuned for day three of The Secret Diary of Brendan Nelson.

On The 7.30 Report last night John Howard announced an investigation into the relationship between disgraced Senator Santo Santoro’s relationship with Queensland Liberal Party branch chairman Russell Egan Jr., after Egan was controversially awarded aged care bed licenses by the government. Some may remember the story from late last year, with Egan writing on his Blogger blog that the licenses were a “massive asset to receive from taxpayers. I hit the jackpot with my block of land… Keep in mind that these places can be on sold on the free market for up to $40,000 each.” This morning Santo was still happy to prominently display a picture of himself and Russell Egan Junior opening an aged care facility on his website:

GrodsCorp’s sources have known Russell Egan for some time and his political ambitions have never been a secret. He lists his interests on his flickr profile thus: bacardi, house music, company of heroes, liberal party. The general consensus around the traps was that it was only a matter of time before Russ Egan was preselected to contest a federal seat in Queensland, but one must conclude that Egan will never get a crack at parliament after the Santoro scandal.

Egan has learned the hard way that anything one writes on the internet will inevitably come back to haunt them if they try to enter politics or another sphere of public life. Since the scandal erupted Egan has restricted access to his blog, but not before The Courier Mail and GrodsCorp got to read long, vitriolic posts about why Asians should not be allowed to drive and “how to make money in aged care”.

Teenage political aspirant James Paterson, of The Neo-Con fame, has started working his way through the ranks of the Victorian Young Liberals and has wisely removed his blog from the internet tubes. Who wants to be preselected for the seat of Higgins (after Costello retires frustrated) and have political opponents stumble across this on their blog archive?

Just in case you hadn’t guessed from the title - I’m right wing.

In Australia this makes me a Liberal - but don’t worry American readers, not your pansy left-wing liberals, in Australia the Liberal party is the mainstream conservative political party. Sure, there is ‘One Nation’ but they are a little nutty and located on the fringe, and Family First is just not my cup of tea. In other words, if I was in America, I’d be a member of the Republican Party.

Our equivalent of the Democrats is called the Labor party. Yes it’s true; they cannot spell, as they are the party of the trade union - or labour - movement. We do have a Democrat party, but they have like four federal Senators and aren’t even recognised constitutionally as a ‘party’ because of their low representation. They are stuck somewhere around and in between Labor and the dreaded Greens, but its hard to pin them down on a scale more accuratley than that, because no one really knows what they stand for.

It can be safely assumed that The Editor will never run for parliament.

UPDATE (21 March): Russell Egan tells me that he’s had no interest in running for parliament for some time.