GrodsCorp can today exclusively reveal that the Liberal Party has been acquired by Australian company Southern Star Endemol, producers of Australian Idol and Big Brother. Southern Star Endemol have been tasked with breathing life into a tired old format and have hit the ground running with two bold initiatives.

1) Party leader selected by popular vote
Under a proposal supported by you’ve-got-to-be-kidding leadership aspirant, Christopher Pyne, every Liberal Party member will get to vote for the leader of the Party. Members will need to SMS the first name of their preferred candidate (e.g. WILSON) to a 1900 phone number for 55 cents. It is believed that many strongly anti-Liberal voters are considering taking out a Liberal Party membership just so they can play their small part in electing to the leadership somebody completely unelectable (e.g. BRENDAN).

2) Audience participation during Question Time
Fresh from cheapening Parliament by using the Kardboard Kevin incident to accuse the ALP of cheapening Parliament by sitting on Fridays, the Liberal Party is further cheapening Parliament by opening it up to anyone who wants a crack. The Liberal Party website has a page where punters can submit questions that they’d like Brendan Nelson or another clown to ask of the government. Some commentators have noted that MPs are elected to think of these questions themselves and if they can’t even manage that then they deserve their sub-polar Newspoll ratings.

This “waste of taxpayer money” theme that the Libs are running relentlessly at the moment is getting ridiculous. Brendan Nelson has highlighted the amount of taxpayer money spent on having Parliament sit for a day to accuse Kevin Rudd of wasting it by not attending (even though he’s under no real obligation to, as opposed to Alexander’s obligation to attend Question Time.)

Australians are going to spend a million dollars today having the Parliament here… A million dollars is going to spent by hard-working Australian taxpayers, yet we get no Question Time and I think there’s a few questions to be answered.

And here’s how Nelson’s MPs spend a million dollars of taxpayer money.

The first Friday sitting of federal Parliament has led to such chaos that the Speaker suspended the proceedings for a 15-minute cooling off period.

The row erupted when Liberal MP Steve Ciobo moved that there should be a Question Time every Friday, despite the Government’s rules that there will be no Question Times and no divisions taken on Fridays.

It led to the Coalition moving a motion of dissent against House of Representatives speaker Harry Jenkins.

Eventually, Mr Jenkins took the rare step of having him escorted out.

“Because of the gross disorderly conduct of the Member, I ask the sergeant to remove the Member,” Mr Jenkins said.

Mr Jenkins ordered Mr Ciobo out of the chamber for an hour, and later suspended Parliament for 15 minutes.

What a pack of jokers this Liberal mob are.

UPDATE (1.45pm): Can they get any more childish? Of course they can.

There have been chaotic scenes in the House of Representatives, with Opposition MPs brandishing a cardboard cut-out of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and demanding that the real Mr Rudd show his face.

[…]

Deputy speaker Anna Burke ordered the cardboard figure be removed amid shouts of “we want the Prime Minister here”.

The Liberals are currently engaging in the kind of sanctimonious finger pointing that oppositions of all persuasions engage in when they’re pissed about being in opposition, but the Liberals just take it all to ridiculous new levels. You know, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has the balls to employ staff to take care of The Lodge and his 14 year old son when John Howard would never have dreamed of such a thing. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has the balls to use Kirribilli House to throw a New Year’s Eve Party that he and his wife paid for — the same house that John Howard lived in for eleven years at taxpayer expense while forcing the simultaneous upkeep of the Prime Minister’s official residence in Canberra.

There are two points I’d like to raise in response.

1) Julia Gillard has been hilariously drawing attention to the phenomenal quantity of WorkChoices promotional material that is sitting in warehouses and is now completely useless. 100,000 pens here, 100,000 fridge magnets there, 100,000 mouse pads everywhere. Now, we’re all aware that John Howard desperately threw over $50 million of taxpayer coin at an propaganda advertising campaign for WorkChoices before it was even law, but at least that is somehow, in some way, marginally and tenuously, sort of, maybe justifiable. But millions of dollars worth of corporate promotional paraphernalia that serves no purpose other than attempting to build a brand? Disgraceful.

2) Alexander Downer was caught skipping question time yesterday to have lunch in a restaurant with a journalist. Now, we all know that Downer, Peter Costello and a few other previously senior government ministers are doing nothing more right now than warming a backbench seat long enough to let their bruised egos heal and long enough to minimise the damage to their Party when a by-election is held. But they are still being paid a salary with additional benefits and allowances to do a job and part of that job, one would think, is to attend Parliament unless they have other duties that clash. Are lunch with a journalist and an arrogant personality good enough reasons to skip question time? Disgraceful.

Again, I’m not wishing to suggest that the ALP has never wasted taxpayer cash but if the Libs want to look around for current examples they should check their own backyard first.

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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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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Episode 36: In which Jacob runs into trouble with the law and disappears.
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Episode 35: In which Lachlan reflects on the challenges of grassroots campaigning.
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Episode 34: In which Lachlan holds a meeting to revise his policies and update his website.
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Episode 33: In which Lachlan responds to John Howard’s announcement of the election date as Billy arrives home from Canberra.
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Episode 32: (Canberra — part three) In which Lachlan meets some Canberrans and Jacob searches for Billy’s “fireworks”.
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Episode 30: (Canberra - part one) In which Lachlan and Jacob drive from Melbourne to Canberra, losing Billy along the way.
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Not quite a policy today, but a promise instead. Lachlan has made a pledge to the voters of Victoria and the people of Australia.

A year ago yesterday the first episode of Lachlan Connor, Indpendent was broadcast on GrodsCorp. In the thirty episodes since, Lachlan has launched his campaign, lost a housemate, lost and gained a pet, been forced to put up with two idiot assistants of his campaign manager, learned how to use the video camera on his laptop, and released eleven policies. Today Lachlan is heading to Canberra for a weekend of “soaking up the democracy” and the GrodsCorp documentary crew will be there to capture it all.

So to celebrate a year of Lachlan Connor, Independent, and for the benefit of those who may have come to the series late, here is episode one…

… and here is the short film edit of episodes one to fifteen to quickly catch up on the storyline.

Lachlan Connor has announced his climate change policy.