GIMME THE KEYS!

Well, only a few more sleeps before ‘Hi. I’m Kevin. I’m from Queensland’ apparently gets the keys to The Lodge. If the relentless polls are to be believed.

And John Winston Howard apparently will be punished for behaving like an ageing punch drunk pugilist who just doesn’t know when to call it quits. Sure, the Fat Lady hasn’t sung yet but she must be practising her scales.

Even Mr. Rudd, who is desperately trying to make it look like he doesn’t have it in the bag and keeps talking about marathons, is finding it hard to suppress one of his quaint old-fashioned expressions like ‘wacko, the diddle-oh’. On Neil Mitchell’s programme last week he made a rare slip when he talked about “when” we take office and not ‘if’. Although he did lamely try to deny it.

Failed and despised former leader Mark Latham tried to drag his muddy boots across Rudd’s pristine carpet to the Holy Grail but virtually saying ‘ a pox on both your houses’.

But he was generally regarded as a demented relative who should really stay in the backroom. I mean you have to  walk a long way to find anybody on Labor’s side who will admit they actually CHOSE Latham to lead them out of the wilderness.

Inn the remaining days you’ll hear a lot about ‘a vote for Howard is a vote for Costello’ but at  least the Libs are being honest about it. Hawke and Keating went to the polls with a secret agreement for a baton change which only feel apart when the Silver Bodgie reneged.

It must be terrible though being inside Costello’s head. The self-accusing questions. Why didn’t I have the guts to challenge him?  Why didn’t I fire a shot in the weeks before the election was called? I had the numbers in Cabinet?  Now I may never be Prime Minister. All those years as a bleeping bridesmaid. If we lose there’s no guarantee I’ll get up. Bloody Turnbull. Hope he loses his seat.

Meanwhile the John and Janette show trundles. She’s talking more publicly in recent days than she has in a decade. Hyacinth Bucket explained to the Sunday Herald Sun that the reasons the Costellos had never been invited over for dinner was because ‘ We don’t have fours for dinner’.  If she’d said ‘we don’t do threesomes’ it might have generated bigger headlines.

And speaking of partners and headlines. There were front page screamers about Julia Gillard in the Sunday papers. Is that the big scandal that had been whispered?

Apparently her one-time boyfriend was a union official who turned out to be a conman and a fraudster, Bruce Wilson who allegedly shook down property developers and stole maybe a million dollars in the name of the Transport Workers Union.

Gillard says she was young and naive and obviously hurt by her relationship with Wilson. And not the first person to be betrayed by somebody close who wasn’t what they seemed. If anything I think it will generate sympathy for her.

But there’s been another con going on by both sides of politics. They both launch their official campaigns this week when the campaigns are almost over. Why the delay ? Because until the official launch minister and shadow ministers can claim thousands of dollars in travel and transport and hotel allowances. John Howard for example has been entitled to $510 a night for hotel accommodation on the road. It is a rort. Both sides do it.

Monday, November 12, 2007

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2007