Monthly Archives: July 2010

Clunkheads

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Yesterday Julia Gillard unveiled a ‘cash for clunkers’ scheme where people would receive a $2000 rebate for upgrading their car from a pre-1995 model to a more fuel efficient new car. While that’s a start …

If I were elected to office…

… I’d go further and institute a ‘cash from clunkheads’ scheme, where any clunkhead who thinks that it is a good idea to own and drive gas-guzzling 4WD’s around suburban and city streets would have to pay a $2000 cash fine each year.

Reducing 4WD’s on our streets. What a good idea! Vote 1. Me.

[This content was originally posted to Google Buzz, #43]

Gambling advertising

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If I were elected to office …

I’d do something about the infestation of gambling advertising in sport. When I was a kid it was cigarette advertising in sport that was prolific. Governments wisely banned that. Then cigarette advertising was promptly replaced with alcohol advertising. While that hasn’t been banned, it seems that gambling advertising is the new scourge of sport, infesting club sponsorships, team uniforms, stadium advertising, TV and radio broadcasts.

If banning cigarette advertising in sport was a good idea because of the addictive nature of cigarettes and the social and physical harm it does, it makes equal sense to ban gambling advertising. Vote 1. Me.

[This content was originally posted to Google Buzz, #42]

Climate change policy

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Labour has rejigged their climate change policy. It used to be “talking about doing something, but actually doing nothing” But now their much more refined and thought-out policy is “talking about setting up a process that facilitates talking about doing something, but actually doing nothing”

In contrast, the coalition’s climate change policy is much simpler – “do nothing”

Gillard heckled at climate policy launch – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

[This content was originally posted to Google Buzz, #41]

TV torture

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If I were elected to office …

I’d honour Australia’s commitment to the UN treaties prohibiting torture, and do something about that notorious torturer of the Australian people, MasterChef.

To this end I would take all the participants of MasterChef (presenters, judges, contestants, producers) and lock them in a room and play an endless loop* of MasterChef to them with all its hyper-mega-ultra over-dramatic superlativisation of the most mundane circumstances, with all its vapid flashbacks, flash forwards and replays, with all its tedious drawn out manufactured ‘suspense’, with all its ridiculous claptrap appraisals of food, with all its crass musical overlay – I’d play it all back to them endlessly until their stomachs churn with retch-inducing convulsions and they promise to never ever ever be involved in the production of such lazy, tired and unimaginative TV ever again.

Vote 1 for me, while I go and chill down.

*Technically, there has been so many hours of this bilious tripe produced that I wouldn’t need to loop it at all.

[This content was originally posted to Google Buzz, #40]

Carbon tax

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If I were elected to office …

I’d immediately put a tax on CO2 emissions and use every last cent from the tax to fund renewable energy sources and sustainable transport. In a few short years there would be no coal fired power stations, and in a few more years most people would be travelling on energy efficient public transport or driving solar sourced electric vehicles.

Doing something about climate change instead of talking about doing something. You know it makes sense. Vote 1. Me

[This content was originally posted to Google Buzz, #38]

Change, none at all

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How little things change … After watching the excellent adaptation of Dickens “Little Dorrit” recently on ABC TV, I’ve been reading the book, and in chapter 10 Dickens muses on the pronouncements of politicians pre and post election.

“It is true that every new premier and every new government, coming in because they had upheld a certain thing as necessary to be done, were no sooner come in than they applied their utmost faculties to discovering How not to do it. It is true that from the moment when a general election was over, every returned man who had been raving on hustings because it hadn’t been done, and who had been asking the friends of the honourable gentleman in the opposite interest on pain of impeachment to tell him why it hadn’t been done, and who had been asserting that it must be done, and who had been pledging himself that it should be done, began to devise, How it was not to be done.”

Despite the protestations of our secular age that humanity is on the improve, it’s clear that human nature doesn’t change … we just have different toys to play with in each era.

[This content was originally posted to Google Buzz, #37]

Swap

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If I were elected to office …

I’d swap the staff of “A Current Affair” with “Australia’s Funniest Home Videos”. In one swift simple move, ACA would get more credible and competent journalism, and “Australia’s Funniest Home Videos” would be become more humorous. Brilliant. Vote 1. Me.

Media Watch: Not-So-Easy Money (19/07/2010)

[This content was originally posted to Google Buzz, #36]