(This post is part of GrodsCorp’s continuing series on the 2009 Queensland state election. The opening argument from our LNP commentator is here.)

I played cricket against Peter Beattie once. It was at an ALP fundraiser in an unprepossessing park in Brisbane’s southern suburbs. In the post-barbecue hit-out, I was doing well with the bat when Beattie, then Opposition Leader, arrived for a back-slapping cameo. Walking onto the field, grinning, he grabbed a ball with jests from an ancient branchie. Off a very short run, still grinning, he served up an utterly pedestrian, short, slow delivery at me. But I failed to move my feet, swung and missed, and lost my off stump. I was out, knocked off my game by his idiotic, mesmerising grin. Anna Bligh was there too, I think, but I don’t remember much about what she was doing.

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(During the Queensland state election campaign GrodsCorp will provide running commentary from two north-of-the-border natives who represent both ends of the political spectrum. GrodsCorp’s own Jason will attempt to convince you all that Anna Bligh’s ALP is the best team to run the state, while guest contributor Russell Egan will argue on behalf of Lawrence Springborg’s Liberal National Party.

Our series kicks off tonight with Russell’s opening argument and will hopefully continue tomorrow if Jason can stop Twittering long enough to write his.)

LNP4QLD (cf Anna4Qld)
By Russell Egan

They have been at it for 10 long hard years now, the ALP. Peter Beattie was good at managing the media and and mataining an appearance of being very busy while achieving absolutely nothing (can anyone say “Smart State number plates?”). Sure there was the odd embarrassment like Dr Jayant Patel, Merri Rose, Gordon Nuttall, Chris Hurley, Pat Purcell or Ronan Lee not to mention crises in every major service delivery area: water, power, health, education and law and order. Peter Beattie had a lot to answer for… or apparently not. Despite the procession of monumental stuff ups under his Premiership, Peter Beattie was re-elected Premier in 2001, 2004 and 2007. Year in year out I would vote Liberal never hoping for too much, but more relishing in the fact that I hadn’t voted for Peter Beattie.

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During last year’s federal election campaign I worked on a documentary that followed voluntary euthanasia campaigner Dr Philip Nitschke’s efforts to unseat Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews in his eastern Melbourne seat of Menzies. The animosity between these two men is immense due to Andrews’ role in repealing the Northern Territory’s 1997 voluntary euthanasia law that Nitschke helped four patients to use.

The documentary’s director, Joan Robinson, and I have cut a teaser of the film which we’d very much like you to watch and tell all your mates about. Chatter and buzz about the teaser will equal faster completion of the film, so help us out. The documentary’s website is www.OpposingKevinAndrews.com and the YouTube video is here. Enjoy!

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

Last week we told you about Pastor Danny Nalliah’s faulty hotline to God and AV has been doing a great job following up on that story since. Today AV summarises some of the more hilarious responses to a Nalliah blog post on his horribly wrong prophecy about the coalition winning the election. In the spirit of GrodsCorp’s long record of sensible and mature debate here’s a prank comment I may or may not have left on the blog.

That’s www.g[r]od[s].com

UPDATE (6/12): Prophecy correct! Comment now deleted.

Danny Nalliah, proud recipient of the highly sought “Annual International Capitalism Award for Melbourne”, has exposed God as a big, fat liar.

Well, I believe with all my heart believe… that the Prime Minister [John Howard] will be re-elected to government. And also that the Federal Treasurer [Peter Costello] would be handed over the leadership.

[...]

Now this was something I knew because God spoke to me and told me very clearly a few days prior to the meeting with John Howard and Peter Costello — as to what was going to be the future of this country in the next election.

Don’t shoot the messenger.

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.

As Bridgit noted earlier it’s been very quiet around GrodsCorp today, in contrast with the immensely blogworthy events of the past 24 hours. “I can only assume that everyone is drunk or hungover,” assumes Bridgit. Well, she assumes correctly.

There was a gathering of like-minded people at GrodsHQ last night to watch the election results roll in and many drinks were drunk. At one point John Surname had a beer, a glass of Scotch, and a glass of champagne all at once. Both John and I had been up since 5am working on (separate) election-related projects, but all of us trucked on to the wee hours (including a trip to the local pub at 1am) regardless. Despite the vast amount of stuff I’ve wanted to blog today I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I will post a GrodsCorp election wrap-up tomorrow but in the meantime here’s the glass of champagne I drank while John Howard was delivering his concession speech.

The country just felt… well… different today. Like a weight had been lifted.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT!

THIS IS FUCKING AWESOME!!!!

I JUST DID MULTIPLE EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!!!1!!!!!!ONE

Stewart Glass, independent for the Senate in South Australia, uses visual metaphors to hammer home his points about government and liberty.

Just after the election is called, bam – my net goes down. After weeks of wasted opportunities I finally fix the connection (just call me Nerdlinger Surname) the night before the election.  To think of all the Tony Abbott jokes I could have made.

Oh, woe is me.

Episode 39: In which Lachlan, on the eve of the poll, reflects on the final weeks of his campaign for election to the Senate.
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A few months ago GrodsCorp introduced you to Stuart Ulrich, independent for Charlton, who came to our attention after he wrote a cryptic email to Lachlan Connor.

Hi Lachlan

Stuart Ulrich from the seat of Charlton, I myself will also be running as an independent.

Just something remember the constitution.

At the Parliament House website one can search for the why behind this, using constitutional debates for the search.

As I have found our government and those in Canberra, that’s is all of them are constitutionally inept.

The constitution holds certain powers for federal and those of the states that they had when the constitution was signed is 1900.

Good Luck

Stuart

At the time I asked for readers to assist us in the translation of the above message but Stuart left a comment that, in its attempt to clear up the confusion, only baffled us more.

Hi Lachlan.

To decode this is easy.

The political party i have been working on is about the people.

Federal Government is there to represent the people and states not political parties.

The parties can put forward candidates but once in government are supposed to be independent.
Remember it is the electorate that you should be concerned with.

Some say, well a constitution is old and out of date, but until such times that we have a referendum to change this then the rules are there.
We all know that behind the rules are the reasoning that has created these documents, and this goes for all.

The party TAPP was created to bring together those who wish to stand for the people and still be free to act accordinally.

Now Lachlan if you wish to contact me I am happy but if you cannot ask a question about our constitution then we certainly are in trouble.

With debates outlines how things are supposed to work.

Stuart Ulrich
Independent Candidate for Charlton

So imagine my delight when I found a Lachlan Connor-esque video of Stuart Ulrich on the YouTubes that makes even less sense than Stuart’s writing. Enjoy!

GrodsCorp speaks to Margarita Windisch, lead Senate candidate for the Socialist Alliance in Victoria.

Episode 38: In which Billy mourns the loss of Jacob.
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