The day my interest and passion in politics was reinvested

And that’s saying a lot, considering the near-8 years of insidiously dreary, cobwebbed conservative Federal rule trampling my will to get out of bed in the morning. I realise I’m probably biased because the guy is my local member who grew up around Sydney’s lower/middle-class western suburbs like me (he also went to my high school), but I don’t care. A passionate, charismatic young liberal firebrand infamous for his recent criticisms of the Australian government’s embarassing sycophancy to American foreign policy (amongst other great lines, referring to PM John Howard as an “arse-licker” and his entourage to Washington as “a conga line of suckholes” (admittedly tame by my standards, but infinitely stronger than the threadbare PC doubletalk employed by all experienced politicians, and the sanctimonious moral mock-outrage which rippled through the media was hilarious to witness)) and his ability to systematically alienate the stuffed-shirt wowsers who prefer their politicians three shades blander than a wet noodle with his no-bullshit, shoot-from-the-hip approach, he’s a breath of fresh air into a deflated Labor Party being seen as steadily less relevant in our subtly (yet tangibly) xenophobic, moderate, defense/security-obsessed and easily alarmed and manipulated post-September 11 society. Crean (the ousted leader) is an intelligent, dedicated MP who thoroughly deserves to retain a portfolio in the cabinet, but he just wasn’t leadership material. The tame lack of conviction and concrete ideological differentiation in his speeches and interviews was an increasing source of frustration for me as his approval ratings continued to dip and, with the next Federal election assured within the next 12 months, a change was vital for the sake of a strong Opposition. But it’s Beazley (ex-leader and unsuccessful re-election candidate for the second time in 6 months) I feel the most sorry for. A brilliant, articulate man (and Rhodes Scholar) who forever won my respect with the tears he shed as he addressed Parliament a few years ago, apologising on behalf of the ALP over the crimes of the Aboriginal “stolen generation” (a topic Howard and his private-school cronies still refuse to touch with a 20-metre pole), he was simply the wrong guy at the wrong time, robbed of a well-deserved election win in 2001 when his health and education policy-driven campaigns were successfully hijacked by the Coalition governent’s obfuscatory fear-mongering surrounding a single boat of asylum-seekers from Indonesia (later demonstrated to be a complete and utter lie, yet the government escaped responsibility through acrobatic back-flipping and buck-passing). I don’t normally get personally emotional about differing political ideologies, but you have no idea how over the moon I’ll be when the most arrogant, deceitful, manipulative and short-sighted government since Federation gets booted out the back door of Parliament House by an Australian voting public who should, SHOULD, know better than to be led by the nose down the same cynical, self-serving democratic path well-trod by the trans-Pacific “aluminium” tetra-syllabicators over the past three years.

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