Liberal leader Brendan Nelson announced today he has dumped the sparkling Kevin Andrews from the shadow frontbench.

Understandably, this news has saddened me.

Feel free to dance on his grave.

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.

They’re replaying edited highlights (or lowlights, as the case may be) of the Liberal campaign launch on ABC. Here are my thoughts…

* JHo: “My fellow Australians.” Spew.
* JHo: “This election is about the future… despite how great the past is.” It always comes back to the past doesn’t it, John?
* Costello: “Economic storm clouds on the horizon that will increase inflation, interest rates and unemployment. But we will decrease inflation, interest rates and unemployment.”
* JHo: “Family is the cornerstone of society.” And that’s why you’re force-feeding middle class welfare pork down families’ throats, despite Australia “no longer being a welfare state.”
* Vaile: Sorry, missed that. Went to sleep.
* Abbot: Is doing his interview in the rain holding an umbrella that has stars and moons all over it. Bwah hah hah!
* JHo: “We will give you nine billion bucks to bribe you to vote for us. Um, actually, what I mean is education, child care, Great Australian Dream and other stuff like that. Family, family, family.”
* Howard, never one to attract the term “charismatic”, is actually looking (if it’s possible) less charismatic than normal. He looks about as inspiring as the flotation ball inside my toilet cistern.
* JHo: “New homeowners shouldn’t pay for infrastructure that benefits them and the wider community.” So you’ll make those homeowners pay through their tax payments instead, John? This is appalling policy.
* Julie Bishop is on the telly telling me that parents have the right to choose the quality of their kids’ schools. And what sort of choice do parents have when state schools are desperately underfunded, Julie?
* JHo to the rescue — he’s going to make independent school fees tax deductible. Problem fixed then.
* JHo: “Fees and levies that have crept into the public school system.” Why do you think public schools have to charge those fees and levies, you great, fucking cockhead of a man?
* JHo: “Indigenous intervention has brought to an end 20-30 years of problems.” I think it’s been going on longer than that, John. Also, you had ten-and-a-half years to fix it before that — why didn’t you?
* JHo: “To continue to decide who comes to this nation.” Anyone but those dirty, fightin’ Sudanese if Kevin Andrews has anything to do with
* Downer: “If the terrorists win there will terrible consequences.” Dickhead.
* JHo: “Tough on drugs.” Ruddock just appeared on screen to back up Howard’s words. He looks as ghoulish as ever.
* Kevin Andrews: “We must protect our way of life.” Your way of life is nothing like mine, Kev, so stop trying to impose yours upon me via Parliament. Get your rosaries off my ov… um, testicolies.
* JHo: “UNIONS! UNIONS! UNIONS! COAST-TO-COAST LABOR! BOO!”
* The closing music sounds like the elevator muzak you hear over the top of 1980s telemovies on Channel Seven at midday.

Watching that made me feel genuinely sick. The sun will shine on Australia if the coalition is no longer in charge on 25 November.

A friend of mine was driving around Lower Templestowe the other day and saw this sign that was worthy of the cameraphone treatment.

Kevin Andrews on why gang-forming types shouldn’t be allowed into Australia:

Under pressure to explain his latest reasons for closing the door to new African refugee applicants until next year, Mr Andrews yesterday blamed gang-based violence…

(source)

Some recent gang violence:

[P]olice in the western suburbs [of Melbourne] yesterday appealed for witnesses to the bashing in Melton on Tuesday of 17-year-old Ajang Gor.

The Sudanese-born high school student was riding his bike home from his job at a fast-food restaurant with his brother at 4pm when he was set on by four men, who shouted racial slurs, then punched and kicked him and hit him with a bottle.

The attackers stole his wallet and phone, then sent racist text messages and made abusive phone calls to Ajang’s brother, cousins and friends.

(source)

Kevin Andrews talking about the importance of English proficiency for life in Australia:

“[T]he bottom line is if you wish to achieve your aspirations in Australia then it is quite crucial that you can speak English… the language of this country is English and we encourage people to actually be able to competently speak English.”

(source)

The English spoken by the (presumably white) Australian gang members who attacked Sudanese migrant Ajang Gor:

Wats up u black dogs ya mate jst got knocked da fuk out we jst jackd him welcome 2 australia u jigaboo fuks melton blood gang we from melton u pieces of shit

If this wasn’t so embarrassing and serious it would be hilarious.

Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews has inflamed tensions with the African community by releasing a dossier claiming African refugees were involved in gangs, nightclub fights and drinking alcohol in parks at night.

Let’s see:
Gangs– Melbourne’s gangland war involving almost exclusively the Italian-Australian community
Nightclub fights– Almost every single AFL and NRL footballer
Drinking alcohol in parks at night– Almost every single 15 year old white kid in Australia’s suburban history

Prime Minister John Howard yesterday said it was “contemptible” to suggest the Government was playing the race card.

I find Kevin Andrews and John Howard contemptible. End of story.

I was heading out to Kevin Andrews’ electorate in Eastern Melbourne this morning so I took my video camera hoping to get a few vox pops in response to his recent African immigration remarks. Most people on the streets of Templestowe were unaware of Andrews’ controversial comments, and those who did know about them were reluctant to talk about the subject of immigration, especially on camera. I did manage to get two people to share their thoughts on camera in addition to the independent candidate for the seat of Menzies, Dr Philip Nitschke. Click here to view the video if it doesn’t appear below.

If somebody put a gun to my head and forced me to choose one Liberal politician with which to have a boozy session at the pub I would choose Amanda Vanstone.

Let me explain.

Like many Liberal politicians I strongly dislike much of her personal politics and the policies she supports, but there’s something about her personality that I respect.

Let’s look at it this way: even if Philip Ruddock, Kevin Andrews, Tony Abbott, John Howard and Peter Costello had identical political opinions to my own I wouldn’t go out of my way to have a beer with them because I think they’re soulless, slimy bastards. I’ve never fallen asleep in a pub before (well, maybe just once but it was 4.30am — long story) but I reckon John Howard would have me snoring before I finished my first pot of draught.

However, the glimpses of Amanda’s non-political persona over the years have revealed that she’s got a wicked sense of humour, doesn’t mind a good session over a few bottles of wine (eg. one extraordinarily boozy lunch/ dinner with a Bulletin journalist, if memory serves me correctly), and she’s not afraid to speak her mind, often coming out with some absolutely brilliant one-liners. Who can forget the “sandwich and a milkshake” jibe at her own government’s tax cuts, or the “let me put my dancing shoes on” remarks after Christopher Skase’s death.

I get upset at how callous and heartless she is when defending current Australian immigration policy, and think she showed a frightening lack of remorse over cases such as Cornelia Rau, but on the flip side she continues to support an Australian republic and this week has been arguing that Australia should legalise voluntary euthanasia. You gotta respect that.

Which Liberal politician would you have a piss-up with and why?