The Hon. Kristina Kerscher KENEALLY, MP

Who is this young upstart set to be our next premier? Touting a mightily strange accent, she seems to have emerged from the woodwork 15 months ago and is now clinging to the wheel of NSW’s very own Titanic.

Here are some facts so that we can all pretend we have known her for years:

1. She’s 40.
2. She’s from Las Vegas.
3. Her uncle-in-law is prominent Manly fan and author Thomas Keneally.
4. She is the Member for Heffron, an electorate in South Sydney.
5. She joined parliament in 2003.
6. Before the spill, her last quote regarding the Labor leadership was “I have always supported the Premier: Bob Carr; Morris Iemma and now Nathan Rees. Now is the time to put this ridiculous leadership speculation behind us.”
7. She rolled our old garbage-collecting friend 47 votes to 21.
8. She succeeded Frank Sartor as Minister for Planning and Minister for Redfern Waterloo, took over his job as Minister for Infrastructure when he was dumped by Rees, and bested him in the Right Centre Unity ballot to choose the next premier. He’s probably not too happy.

I’ll give her a 65% chance of lasting until the next election, although I’m still hopefully that Frankie can make a comeback. Not that I like the guy, but I’ve got $5 on him leading the Labor party to the 2011 election.

May you live in interesting times.

Boat people: evil?

Of late my hyperbole meter has been going through the roof, as often happens when Australian politicians start talking about “illegal immigration”. An interesting article by Michael Epis pretty much sums up the hypocrisy being spouted by the RuddBot, so we can skip over that topic and go straight to a solution.

But first, let’s reflect on NSW’s transport woes.

Actually, let’s not; we all know that Rees and co. couldn’t transport their way out of a central coast nightclub. Straight to the solution.

Why are we wasting taxpayer dollars bribing Indonesia to cop all the illegal immigrants, when we could be ferrying them in to Australia and putting them to work? In the 1940s,with all the post-war immigrants flooding into Australia, someone with half a brain did just that, and we created one of the greatest renewable energy projects in the world – the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme. Today, with climate change threatening to engulf small pacific nations, thereby increasing the number of people looking to jump into leaky boats, we are arguing about how best to offload our responsibility under the relevant UN Convention while at the same time offloading our responsibility to reduce emissions.

Why don’t we just kill two birds with one stone?

Ship in the refugees and put them to work building wind farms, tidal power plants, whatever. Hell, build a giant treadmill attached to a turbine and make them run on it in 4 hour shifts. Work them on a project for 5 years, then give them citizenship.

Let’s build some public transport while we’re at it! A new metro with more than 6 stops. A bullet train from Sydney to Melbourne. Some bloody cycle lanes that aren’t just a line painted on the road.

When we’ve finished with all this stuff, we can move on to further projects, such as demolishing the Cahill Expressway, building a giant wall between Australia and Queensland, filling in all the potholes on our roads, and locating Barnaby Joyce’s brain.

Politwitter

The Twitter bandwagon is well and truly in full swing, with hip characters such as Big Kev, Malcolm Turnbull, Joe Hockey, Kate Ellis, Nigel Scullion and Tony Burke all getting in on the action. However, I believe that this time they have bitten off more than they can chew, and will soon be breaking one of the number one rules of politics.

Politicians are elected by the people, for the people. While in practise they are generally serving the interests of their party, they also have historically kept in touch with the electorate and been generally approachable. To raise an issue with a politician, all you need to do is write them a letter.

Letters written to a politician will be answered; in fact it is unthinkable that no response would be received to a letter written to the office of, say, Malcolm Turnbull. Sure, it much be a response from a lackey, but you still feel loved. With email, the same applies (with the obvious exception of the Rev. Fred).

Now with Twitter however, these pollies are eliciting thousands of messages from Middle Australia every day. Many of these tweets have pressing questions crammed into their 140 characters, and yet the vast majority will go unanswered.

This is a dangerous game to play, people. If my question isn’t worth 140 characters, then your policy surely isn’t worth my vote.

Fitzgibbon: gone!

549 days into the Rudd government, we have the first ministerial casualty: Joel Fitzgibbon. After selling national secrets to China and NIB, he has been forced to step down in order to avoid having to listen to Julie Bishop’s incessant whine in his ear.

Of course, the Rudd government had already overtaken the Howard government’s 487 days in power without ministerial dismissal, and to beat the new record you would have to go back to the Whitlam government which took 939 days to sack Jim Cairns.

Now that the Rudd government has gotten past this important milestone, let’s hope we can start the ball rolling. It’s scandal season!

Barack Obama: the first 587 hours

Everyone seems to get quite excited about what politicians have achieved in 100 days, as if this is some magical milestone on which to judge their entire existence. Hogwash! It’s not even a prime number.

My model is the first 587 hours. So here we go.

Hour 1: Obama takes office. There was some kind of stuffup.
Hour 24: Obama re-takes office. No stuffups this time.
Hour 216: Obamicon.Me records its 500,000th Obama icon. Most of these are attributed to Duncan.
Hour 587: Prominent and world famous blogger Stu chronicles the first 587 hours of Obama’s presidency.

So far, nothing too interesting has happened. I’ll see you after 8191 hours of office!

Stilts and Houseboats

Let me preface this by stating that I am not surprised.

Kevin “Copperfield” Rudd has pulled yet another trick out of his bag, juggling some very dubious numbers to make a 5% reduction commitment look like a 41% reduction! At least that’s what Penny Wong was yammering on about on AM this morning. Who put this rabid lunatic in charge of climate change anyway?

Anyway, the Australian Government’s latest Apology Paper details first of all that it’s just too hard to set a target of greater than 5%, before justifying the 5% target against the background of increasing population, and then goes on to canonise the Hawke and Keating Governments for some unexplained reason.

The Wongster’s message this morning was that everyone will have to do their part in contributing towards a low-carbon economy, however Middle Australia will have 120% of their costs given to them in pork-barrel payouts, at convenient moments leading up to the next election.

Furthermore, the big polluters will be given 90% of their costs in pork-barrel payouts, which effectively means that they’ll be paying a maximum of $4/tonne for carbon emissions – less than the current (woeful) price of an NGAC certificate! And the more you pollute, the more you save!

And what’s with limiting the maximum price? What ever happened to the free market? How are renewables going to compete when carbon pollution has a capped price?

Oh yeah, my favourite section: new polluters will get compensated at the same rate as existing polluters! I can build a brown coal-fired plant in 5 years and claim my 90% handout. Genius.

I will rate the white paper under my new two-tiered rating scheme. First of all, the potential to save the world rating:

Secondly, the spin rating:

In conclusion, K-Rudd has provided a great platform for me to launch my new business: Stilts and Houseboats. Bring on the flood!

Joining the bandwagon

Alright, after months of ignoring the upcoming US elections, I have decided to add my drivel to the collective political blogging pool, so I guess it’s time to pick a side.

For the past few months I have been concerned that the departure of George W. will hurt my website’s popularity, as the party faithful decide to ditch my beloved quote generator. However, John Sidney III has resolved this issue by selecting a VP candidate who is arguably worse at public speaking than the master himself.

If McCain/Palin get in, I can say hello to four more years of massive traffic! Of course, this generator is still in the early stages, so feel free to send me an email with anything that comes out of her mouth that you would like included. Add the generator to your website with this code:

<script type=”text/javascript” language=”javascript” src=”http://marsupialmusic.net/stu/scripts/palin-script.php”></script>

Or, add it to your Google home page:

Thanks to Daniel Kurtzman for the initial stock of quotes, and thanks as ever to Pascal Hakim for fortune. My Sarah Palin fortune module is freely available here if you are interested.

Finally, I would like to plug the greatest piece of political satire in living memory.

US election Centrebet analysis

Avid followers of this self-indulgent isochronal may recall that my Centrebet analysis accurately predicted the result of last year’s federal election – give or take a seat in NSW and Victoria, and 2 in Queensland (bloody banana benders) and WA.

Let us therefore apply the same analysis to the upcoming US presidential elections.

So there we have it; the Dems to take 30 states (including Washington D.C.), and the GOP to take the remaining 21. If we translate that into actual electoral college votes (apportioning Maine and Nebraska 2-2 and 2-3 respectively), then Obama storms home with a whopping 375 votes to 163!

The closest race will be in Indiana, with the Democrats at $1.70. Centrebet has Obama at $1.07 to be the next president, however by my calculations he needs to win all the states that are at $1.11 or better to get the required 270 votes.

Of course, Centrebet is an Australian company, and so the options don’t stop at who is going to win the election. Here is my personal favourite option, which I will be putting five bucks on.

George W. Bush; a tribute

Just 85 days remain in the second and final term of the 43rd president of the US of A. Love him or hate him, you have to admit it has been an interesting ride. Let us review.

When it comes to polls, Mr Bush has broken all the records. First of all, he knocked his pa off the highest approval rating, with a whopping 92% shortly after the world trade centre fireworks. He then went off to knock Truman off the lowest approval rating ladder, with a measley 19% during the Iraqi insurgency.

Bush also went on to break the record for higest disapproval rating, clocking in at 76% when the economy collapsed around him and Americans finally realised that they all would have been much better off if he had stuck to the golf course for the past 8 years.

As you know, I am a big fan of graphs, so let’s see one.

The 9/11 attacks delivered Bush the biggest poll boost in the history of the universe, and in two short years, he had squandered it all. Was it his total lack of charisma, his mind-numbing lack of public speaking ability, his crass nationalism or his haircut that made the rest of the world hate him? None of the above.

Attention to detail is the problem here. If you’re going to be the most powerful man in the world, you should know the difference between Australia and Austria; between APEC and OPEC. Can you imagine this guy in bed with his wife?

That was fantastic, Lauren. Lisa. Laura. Whatever.

(Yes, I do take pleasure in give people mental images of a post-coital Bush).

To conclude, let us all have a long hard think about what “democratic capitalism” has done to America. Is this really the socio-political system that we want to press forward with? Maybe once all of our parliaments are underwater, we will find the will to change.

Opposition frontbench

That’s right readers, it’s time for yet another half-finished post on politics. This week’s topic is “what do I think of the new opposition frontbench”.

The Hon Malcolm Turnbull MP

The member for Wentworth delivered a boost to the Coalition’s poll performance this morning, and a boost to the general entertainment value of Australian politics with his attacks on Rudd’s penchant for jetsetting. I like it.

The Hon Julie Bishop MP

Ms Bishop becomes the first women in Australia to have her fingers on the purse strings. She was also the first female deputy leader of the Libs, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she becomes the first female PM one day. In government, she championed performance-based pay for teachers (a reasonable idea, in my opinion) and was widely critical of the communist syllabuses espoused by the states. A worthy match for Swan.

Senator the Hon Helen Coonan

Hubcap Helen. She deadset looks like a corpse in that mugshot. She played a major role in destroying media diversity in the Howard Government, and now she’s pulling on the fishnets and stepping into the foreign affairs portfolio. God help us all.

The Hon Christopher Pyne MP

The member for Sturt has been around for 15 years, and managed to creep onto the front bench during the death throes of the Howard Government. Elected at the tender age of 26, surely he’s had enough of politics by now! He’s got the tricky job of pointing out that Rudd’s “education revolution” has been swept under the carpet since the election. Oh wait, maybe that policy is in a committee somewhere. Get digging, Mr Pyne!

The Hon Tony Abbott MP

Tony has retained families, community services, and Indigenous affairs. Once an insufferable c***, always an insufferable c***.

The Hon Andrew Robb AO, MP

Andrew Robb has captured an interesting portfolio that encompasses infrastructure, COAG and carbon trading. This should be one to watch, as by the time the ALP’s trading scheme gets off the ground, we’ll probably have booted them out of office, so anything Robb develops has a strong chance of being implemented. Let’s hope he has the balls to push for something greater than a 5% reduction in emissions.

The Hon Greg Hunt MP

The man from Frankston continues to face off against Peter Garrett, but he’s been given some more responsibility in the form of water, plus he’s got a new secretary in the form of Nationals Whip Fiona Nash. I don’t think I’ve heard a peek out of this guy since the last election, but I could say the same for Garrett, so I guess they’re a good match up.

Right, I’m done for now. I’m not going to promise more to come this time. If you want to know more, just set your dial to ABC Newsradio, and enjoy the circus.