The Americans have had Watergate, the Iran-Contra affair, Clinton-Lewinksy, Mark Foley, Larry Craig and Eliot Spitzer. In Britain there’s been the Profumo business, Torys-in-stockings, Edwina Currie, cash-for-peerages and the recent expenses furore. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi generates all manner of scandals, from bribery to tax evasion, from media manipulation to mistresses. And what do we get in Australia? 

“Utegate”

A summary of this earth-shattering scandal: an ill-conceived prop-up scheme for car financiers, a shonky Ipswich trader, a nerdy Treasury official, an e-mail that may or may not have existed… and a ute. How quintessentially Australian. And how utterly bloody boring. It sounds like the type of scandal you’d expect to envelop the Bourke Shire Council, not the Parliament of Australia.

The people of Australia demand better quality political scandals. Not Iguanagate, travel rorts, Keating’s pig farm or Howard’s big brother Stan. I don’t want to hear any more about ”Utegate” unless someone discovers that it involves Kevin Rudd rogering Kate Ellis in the back of a Holden Sandman after a pint of JD and six lines of coke. Now go away and try harder.

You have to chuckle at the ludicrous three-way ping-pong being played between Channel Nine, News Limited and Gordon Ramsay. No greater triumvarite of self-promoters ever crossed swords, yet since the weekend they seemed to have captured the attention of the gullible masses. We’ve had parental complaints about Ramsay’s bad language in front of their children at his live Melbourne show (a bit like going to Perisher and complaining about the snow). We’ve heard to-and-fro-ing between Ramsay and Tracy Grimshaw, the mournful talking-head who is the ‘victim’ of Ramsay’s ‘attacks’. We’ve seen the ubiquitous Youtube footage and tut-tutting from just about every rent-a-quote in Melbourne.

It’s my contention that this whole thing is an American wrestling-style beat-up, dreamed up on-the-wire by Ramsay’s agents, PR suits and Channel Nine. It is all geared at whipping up publicity for Ramsay and his programmes, once hot property for Nine but since flagging in the ratings. Others with a working knowledge of the media concur. Ramsay’s public persona is that of a crass, boorish and foul-mouth yobbo, but he is nobody’s fool. Grimshaw, once a real journalist, is now little more than a network puppet. If she was truly aggrieved by Ramsay’s ‘attack’ then she should raise the question of why her employer ran two hours of his TV shows last night – after, of course, yet another ACA re-hash of Tracy vs. Gordon – when Nine might instead support her by suspending them Chaser-style.

Today the Herald Sun went even further with a gutter-delving implication that Ramsay might well be gay. The ‘evidence’ of this, says the Spun, is a 15-year-old caution stemming from drunken nakedness and tomfoolery in a Tube station toilet – because as we all know, every canned-up young bloke who gets his kit off or flops out his shrivelled manhood must “bat for the other team”.  For additional confirmation of Ramsay’s dubious sexuality they went to his embittered, press-savvy former lover – who is, wait for it, female. Further comment was also sought from two of Ramsay’s arch-rivals, who had nothing of note to add other than that noting that Ramsay “looks like a cross between Patrick Swayze and a ventriloquist’s dummy”. A very shaky house-of-cards indeed and one that would, on any other day, never get past Murdoch’s in-house lawyers.

None of this concerns me too much: commercial TV and its stars will always play contrived games of cross-promotion and draw in the celebrity-obsessed masses when they do. What bothers me is the completely inappropriate involvement of our political leaders. Kevin Rudd, now so populist that he comments on just about every non-political matter raised at pressers, referred to Ramsay as “low life”. Julia Gillard more pithily advised him to ”stay in the kitchen” and make “nice things for people to eat” - good advice that Jules and Kev might want to follow themselves by confining themselves to matters of government. Their attempt to extract votes by tapping into a public ‘issue’ that is, at best, wildly exaggerated and, at worst, fabricated cheapens politics and insults those whose concerns run deeper than a foul-mouthed chef and a nondescript TV host.

“Fair shake of the sauce bottle, mate.”

Leigh Sales: If… you vote against the alcopops tax, you could be giving the Government the ammunition it needs to call a double dissolution election. Given that you would be possibly finding it difficult to hold onto your Senate place in that scenario, given that you relied on Labor preferences last time around, are you prepared to potentially send the whole nation to an election and lose your own job over this issue?

Steve Fielding: If that poncy little turd pulls a double dissolution I’ll wring his fucking neck.

Kerry O’Brien: Family First’s Steve Fielding has accused you of introducing to the Senate your alcopops Bill a second time to create a double dissolution trigger.

Kevin Rudd: I’ve got that God-bothering dipshit by the balls.

74 reasons to smile.

An expat Australian’s perspective on Kevin Rudd’s meeting with Barack Obama.

The [cultural] cringe expresses itself in many ways – parochialism, bravado, humor – but at the root of it is an often unspoken embarrassment about our place in the world order. We act indifferent to other nations’ views of us and claim that we’re “the best country on earth” (yep, it’s not just Americans who say that). Yet deep down, we’re desperate for the affirmation of powerful friends.

Go read the whole thing.

“So, B-man, I says to them, ‘don’t throw the fair go out the back door,’ and the suckers bought it.”

How are the PM and Opposition leader spending their respective Wednesdays?

Kevin Rudd:

Malcolm Turnbull:

Oh, Kevin!

An apostrophe shitstorm

Maybe Rudd should give his employee’s a punctuation lesson.

Hot on the heels of the Liberal Party’s previous three efforts comes its latest lame attempt at the internets.

Rudd Labor Debt (complete with awesome triple ‘d’ in the domain name) is a single-page site that tries to smear Kevin Rudd by comparing him to — shock! — Gough Whitlam and — horror! — Paul Keating. To do this the Liberal web design team (read: work experience kid) uses a Michael Jackson’s Black Or White-esque face morphing strategy, except by using Windows Movie Maker instead of powerful CGI software. The video is backed by a terrible ’80s synth horror movie soundtrack that wouldn’t seem out of place on an amateur Channel 31 short film broadcast at 2am.

You really must go and take a look.

However, my favourite part of the website is this line:

Donate here and help fight Labor’s $9,500 debt plan.

That’s right: give your money to an unelectable opposition to cancel out the $900 cash you’re about to receive from a phenomenally popular government. Brilliant.

Seems like our PM is a gross pervert:

Kinglake resident Gayle Rider didn’t want to shake Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s hand yesterday. “I’m so dirty,” she said apologetically. Bushfire towns do kick up a lot of dust. “I don’t give a bugger,” Mr Rudd said, and kissed her on the cheek.

At the CFA station, he autographed a newspaper for firefighter Steve Bell. The man bent double so Mr Rudd could use him as a flat surface… The Prime Minister grinned and used the paper to thwack him on the bum. Did he want this done or not? The crew exploded with laughter. One yelled: “Please, sir, can I have some more?”

Discussing buggery with dirty women, bending over our brave firefighters and paddling their posterior. Disgusting.

Andrew Bolt gets all teary when naughty people criticise Malcy and not Kevvie. Bolta doesn’t like it when evil journalists form opinions, based on experience, analysis and other journalistic shit, that make Malcy and the Liberals look silly.

The Canberra press pack had a quick count of heads and declared the public hated Malcolm Turnbull’s plan to block Kevin Rudd’s $42 billion spending spree.

See, it’s the journalists who are wrong here and not Malcy. These journalists wouldn’t know public sentiment if it spat in their faces. Andy, on the other hand, has his finger on the pulse of middle Australia from the comfort of his air conditioned tenth floor office at Southbank. (Sometimes Bolt even goes for coffee in the food hall and he sees heaps of plebs ordinary people while he hurries through with a hanky over his nose.) Bolta provides six examples of journalistic anti-Malcy sentiment, five of which come from the “hard left” Fairfax and ABC, with the remaining example from News Limited’s Courier Mail.

Michelle Grattan, The Age:
(The Opposition) expects its stand to be immediately unpopular — getting between the public and buckets of money could hardly be anything else… Turnbull did not make a very convincing argument …

Mark Colvin, AM:
You (the Liberals) are standing between a large section of the Australian middle class and a bucket of money. As you say, it’s not going to be popular.

Dennis Atkins, Courier Mail:
The Coalition’s hardline stand was cheered by the parties’ MPs, who saw it as getting the debate back to their “strong suit of economic management”. This may happen eventually but in the short-term they’ve dealt themselves out of the argument.

Tony Wright, The Age:
It brought to mind the image of the band playing uplifting tunes on the deck of the Titanic… (O)verwhelming approval and applause would likely be scarce in the streets for anyone attempting to deny the promised largesse.

Peter Hartcher, Sydney Morning Herald:
MALCOLM TURNBULL has decided to arrange himself casually on the railway tracks in front of the onrushing Rudd money train… It’s a bid for relevance on a point of irrelevance… At worst, it is an act of suicidal braggadocio.

Annabel Crabb described the scenes in Parliament when her colleagues heard the news:
Commentators gasped. Ladies fainted. The weak of heart covered their eyes… Indeed, debate raged around Parliament House yesterday about the political implications of Tarzan’s actions. Was he committing political suicide? Was this an incredibly beady-eyed act of political cynicism…?

After comprehensively proving perncious lefty groupthink with these examples, Bolta moves on to a much more authoritative gauge of public sentiment than journalists: online polls run by newspapers.

But much of the public seems, so far, to have failed to read the script written for it by the Canberra media.

The Herald Sun’s on-line poll has 53 per cent of more than 11,000 votes agreeing with Turnbull. The Australian poll has an already healthy 47 per cent of people saying he’s right to want to wait.

These are the same polls that ask hard-hitting questions (such as today’s Hun pearler: “Has red carpet fashion gone too far?”) and collate reliable statistics from a representative cross-section of the community.

But hang on, isn’t there an Age poll on the same question that should be included in Bolt’s analysis for fairness?

True, The Age poll is wildly against Turnbull, but if you believed all The Age wrote you’d think Rudd a saint and all who doubted him deserved hell.

And this man has the balls to call himself a journalist.

Kevin Rudd on moving Australia Day from January 26th, part one:

“We are a free country and it is natural and right from time to time, that there will be conversations about such important symbols for our nation,” he said.

Kevin Rudd on moving Australia Day from January 26th, part two:

“To our indigenous leaders, and those who call for a change to our national day, let me say a simple, respectful, but straightforward no.”

Well that was a pretty short fricken conversation.

From the pages of our favourite tabloid:

KEVIN Rudd’s campaign taking democracy to the people cost nearly $2 million – or $400 for every person attending Community Cabinet meetings. An investigation by News Limited has revealed taxpayers have forked out hundreds of thousands of dollars to fly Ministers, advisers and public servants across Australia.

Wow, who’d have thought that it actually cost money to fly politicians around the country they are supposed to be governing! Those stinking, rotten, corrupt bastards! I wonder who footed the bill when Rupert flew out here recently to tell us what we were all doing wrong?

The bill for one meeting alone – in Perth – reached nearly $300,000, as the Prime Minister takes his “live and raw experiment” into marginal seats. A raft of Ministers and Commonwealth support staff have made the trek to nine Community Cabinet meetings since January. They have cost at least $1.7 million.

The meeting was in Canning Vale and the division of Canning. It’s been held by the Liberals since 2001 and even amidst the rout of November 2007, the incumbent Liberal MP recorded 12 per cent more of the primary vote than the ALP candidate.

Taxpayers also forked out $7,819 for advertising, $2,115 for catering, $825 for musicians and $250 for an Aboriginal “welcome to country” ceremony.

Out comes the dog whistle. Those bloody Abos!!1!

With Queensland pivotal to the outcome of the 2010 poll, the Government has already invested in two meetings: at Narangba on Brisbane’s northern fringe, and at Mackay on the State’s central coast.

If you hold consultative cabinet meetings all around the country – and you foolishly hold a couple in Queensland, one of the six states of the commonwealth – then you’re obviously doing it for electoral gain. Never mind all the Queensland blogers (sic) who need to be consultated.

The Narangba meeting cost taxpayers just over $200,000 with those attending chomping through $10,170 of catering. Pics of the happy Ministers cost another $5,067 while $522 was paid to interpreters.

The attendees were chomping, the ministers were gay happy – and some of the buggers couldn’t even speak the Queen’s English!

It’s clear that we need to adopt fascist totalitarianism – it’d be a hell of a lot cheaper.