So, there was an election on the weekend. I had to get a haircut, and we had to go to the most important wedding since ours, so I’m afraid we didn’t really notice. And when we did notice we, like most of the rest of the state, sorta kinda went, you know, “meh”.

State governments in Australia are not much more than bloated city councils, and the Big Things don’t really count. Big Things like the environment are in Canberra’s sandpit, and the states’ involvement is reduced to over-paying consultants for 800-page instruction manuals on how to turn the lights off every Friday night. We want hospitals, schools, public transport, and if you read the Herald Sun we apparently want tougher sentences and increased police powers, at least when they’re used against people who don’t read the Herald Sun.

What we don’t want is advertising campaigns about A Transport Plan in lieu of a transport plan. What we don’t want is the Police Force being used as a political secret service, witnessed by the Memoranda Of Understanding signed with such trustworthy bodies as the AFL and the North-South pipeline contractors. These are but two of the reasons the ALP lost on Saturday.

Another is that they fell victim to such fear of The Greens that they concentrated their efforts on eliminating the threat in inner-urban electorates, where there’s plenty of public transport, and voters realise that the Greens are a nice ideological choice but couldn’t run a health system in a pink fit. It’s always the outer suburbs that matter when it comes to state elections, and it seems that the same monkeys who ran the federal campaign somehow got in the ear of their state counterparts.

(There is a parallel there: federal Labor were so obsessed with the voters in one electorate in Western Sydney that they forgot about the rest of us. Their loss on outer-suburban redneck issues turned out to be a double-edged sword, as the coalition were so confident that “stop the boats” would win Lindsay for them that they neglected the basics, such as pre-selecting and properly funding and supporting non-fuckwits in very winnable non-redneck seats in Victoria, Queensland and NSW.)

There are many more reasons for Brumby’s failure than these, though. Think about Justin Madden as Planning Minister, think about Lyn Kosky as minister for anything, think about Myki, think about the fact that in the past twenty years we’ve spent about ten times as much on roads as we have on rail. Every time you stop at a level crossing or pay a speeding fine for being four km/h over the limit, or you wait for eight hours in Emergency, or you see a mentally ill person sitting on the footpath with a cup in front of him, remember that Brumby had eleven years to do something about it, and remind Ted that he won’t have that long.

Here at the Tribune we are conflicted about public transport. I use it all the time and hate it, Jane never does and doesn’t care. Until today, when the blight of the tram (yes, the same one that rides the bastard tracks that sent me over the handlebars back in March) came to visit her.

Performing a perfectly normal and reasonable squeeze-past-the-fucker manoeuvre in peak-hour traffic this morning, lovely Jane was surprised to discover that a person who drives trams for a living and should therefore know how wide they are and if a car is a little bit over the yellow line there will be impact, apparently didn’t know these things or more likely didn’t care.

So the front bumper is currently in the boot, awaiting its reattachment by men in paint-spattered overalls, and our lovely shiney newish car looks like it’s had its face ripped off. Which it has. Which means we are without a car for the weekend, which means if we want to go anywhere like, gee I dunno, the market, to procure the week’s sustenance, we’ll need to strap the kids to our backs and get on our bikes, then leave the kids to walk home carrying the food while we go for a trundle round the lake.

Which, given their attitudes lately, may be a good learning experience, particularly if we set them tasks on the way, like catching a swan at the lake and teaching it to vacuum.

Love to those who love us, armpits and arseholes to those who don’t.

J&J

Editors

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