Right, well, the Melbourne Cup’s just been won, and yours truly is quite happily sitting on a TAB ticket that says $5 each-way on Americain. That time machine’s really paying off, lemme tell ya. I know this sort of thing should more properly be in the Sport column, but it’s full, and, well, the Melbourne Cup’s just been won. By me.

It was nice to watch the coverage of the day’s racing and have the focus on horse-type stuff that wasn’t just Sonia Kruger’s head, so hats off and a quick chunder to Channel 7 for that.

The Virtual Cup they ran, with CGIs of great Cup winners past and present, was however only out-stupided by the footage of three women cheering the CGI on the big screen. To their great surprise Phar Lap won. That, in turn, was only out-stupided by the endless bloody cross-promotion we’ve come to expect that from TV networks. No big event is worth telecasting on its own merits, it must be a springboard for the next few months’ shit programming as well. For more bitching about the media, turn to Sport, and I promise that sport commentary will stop, here…. Now.

We could have called this issue The Victorian Election Issue, but we just didn’t care enough about it, and have to admit that we remembered it was on until just recently, when the ALP decided to make utter steaming turds of themselves. It started about a week ago, when news emerged that Brumby had been making overtures to the coalition about preferences, and urging coalition voters to preference the ALP. What, you say? I’m glad you asked.

Well, after the disaster that the federal election turned out to be for the major parties, what with voters deserting them both (but more so the ALP) in droves, turning to Independents and Greens, the true nature of our democracy exhibited itself in the behaviour of our state politicians. Realising that the electorate is getting more and more fed up with the cynicism and venality and treating us like morons of the professional political class that no longer knows the difference between politics and policy, the machine finally starts to see that we’re wanting another choice.

Canberra has shown all our state governments and oppositions that a hung parliament, with independents or Greens holding the balance of power, is absolutely not Business As Usual. They cannot do all their usual shit, they actually have to consult, and debate things, and we get to find things out about what’s going on, and policies are discussed on TV in more than eight-second soundbites. Law is made through actual voting on the actual floor of actual Parliament, and has to be negotiated through both houses, not just rubber-stamped after corridor deals and pork-barrelling.

So a way has to be found to entice back all the voters too disgusted to vote ALP or Lib/Nat anymore. Of course, having long ago lost the ability to appeal to anything other than fear and outrage, the Victorian ALP had no idea how to attract back all the disenfranchised socially-progressive voters using, gee I dunno, some campaigning on issues that matter to social progressives. No, they went the smear, and what a disgusting smear it was.

Brian Walters SC (Senior Counsel – Formerly Known as Queen’s Counsel), member of Liberty Victoria and a prominent human rights barrister, is running as The Greens candidate in the seat of Melbourne. He had a very good chance of knocking off the incumbent, Education Minister Bronwyn Pike, and then her party gifted him a shoe-in, along with Green candidates everywhere. He’s a barrister; part of the requirement of his job is that he take every brief that comes his way, unless a) he’s already booked for that day, or b) exceptional circumstances or a conflict of interest exist.

The ALP, which includes plenty of lawyers, thinks that the entire legal industry are too quiescent to point this out and that the rest of us are too dumb to understand it. So they started attacking Walters as a hypocrite because he’s currently appearing for a brown coal power company in a civil suit. It’s like attacking him because he has a hot shower every morning using electricity generated by a brown coal-powered station. Pathetic.

It would be laughable if it weren’t so contemptible – the fake outrage and high dudgeon masks being worn by Pike et al have more people than ever looking favourably at The Greens. What’s neither laughable nor pathetic, but is just downright disgusting, is what followed.

Eight years ago, Walters acted for an accused Nazi War Criminal in an extradition case, so the ALP dirt unit bring this up, effectively accusing him of being a Nazi sympathiser, which is a sick enough thing to say about a man with Walters’ Liberty Victoria credentials, but is that enough for them? No, having dipped more than a toe in the fetid, bubbling pond of shit they’d created, they thought what the hell, and dived in headfirst.

They approached the Jewish community and pointed out to them what a nasty Nazi-loving nasty person Walters is. The term “Anti-Semitic” was actually used, deadpan. Seriously. Funnily enough, this has all blown up in their disgusting hypocritical faces. There are, it may surprise you to know, plenty of Jewish lawyers, all of whom are saying “What The Fuck are you talking about? He’s a fucking barrister, you fark-heads, he had to take the brief! And by the way, how fucking dare you try to appropriate anti-Semitism as a tool in your disgusting little tricks.” Or, words to that effect.

In a nutshell, the ALP has managed to give a whole big heapum publicity to the Greens for free, and also, in inner-city electorates where a fair few lawyers and lefties and various other inner-city barbarians and haters of freedom (thanks Bolt) live, they’ve done themselves out of office.

Good.

Love to all who love us and a career as the ALP’s back, crack and sack waxer for all those who don’t

J&J Shaw

Editors

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