(Who, by the way, would appear to be recording and touring again.)
First, we have the longest-ever Australian federal election campaign, which comes to an end next Saturday. It has been about as enlightening and inspiring as I expected (i.e. not even). The prime minister has demonstrated that whatever he might bring to the office he presently holds (which either is not a lot, or has been kept from view until now, for reasons best known to himself), he is not much chop as an oppositionist. (Which perhaps makes him the reverse of the person he replaced, except that we all know what he was like as prime minister.) Given that this country has not been effectively governed since 2007 (with the exception of Julia Gillard's prime ministership, which, against all odds, managed to push some important and/or worthwhile things through a minority parliament, some of which have even survived), and given the turbulent international waters that we find ourselves in, it is dispiriting (to say the least) how uninspiring our leaders and aspirants have continued to be. We are not those others over there / we are better than those others over there would appear to be an end in itself. (At least the Labor Party has made some attempt at policy development, but from where I sit (on my side of the bed, the cat curled up in the sun at my feet) it isn't getting much traction, and anyway the slogan "100 Positive Policies" is about as likely to engage the electorate as John Hewson's "Incentivation" (remember that?).)
Secondly, Brexit, in which it would appear, from this distance, that what may have happened is that enough people registered a perhaps well-meaning protest vote (although against what they were all protesting against may have been neither clear nor uniform) to bring about a result that either nobody wanted or, at least, nobody had really thought through the consequences of. Am I the only person who is beginning to think that there might be such a thing as too much democracy?
Thirdly, the bizarre (and increasingly alarming) prospect of a President Trump. See previous sentence.
Bad politics, baby.
