What did we learn Malcolm? We learned that the policies from Abbott’s 2014 budget have been comprehensively rejected by Australia. You chose to tinker round the edges by putting lipstick on the pig, but you didn’t actually change anything. Continuity of Abbott’s policies with a change of leader. Australians aren’t stupid. Voters saw through your say-nothing, waffle-spin, no-plan, tax-cut-for-rich-mates, vision-devoid flaff. Voters felt disappointed in your spineless-lack-of-leadership, letting the extreme-far-right-dinosaurs run your government rather than standing up for positions you used to hold. We learned that your ambition to be Prime Minister drove you to the top job, but once there, you shrunk into slogans, fear campaigns and Abbott-like-pettiness-and-dysfunction; that you’re just not as smart as you think you are. From the looks of things, you and your colleagues are desperate not to learn these lessons, and will blame everyone and everything rather than yourselves for the position you are in now. We’ve learned you are incapable of self-reflection. We’ve learned you don’t have the capacity for leadership which Australia craves. You might be a good merchant banker so maybe it’s time to go back to that. We learned to Australians are tired of hopeless and voted for hope instead.
What did we learn Bill? We learned Labor in opposition can unite. We saw how this unity lifted you and grew your confidence and mobilised your supporters. We saw how hard you and your colleagues worked every minute of the eight week election campaign. We learned that Labor can reform from opposition; you put sustainable investment in health and education front and centre of the national agenda and shattered the Liberal’s trickle-down-tax-cuts-create-jobs narrative in a campaign Clinton’s team will no doubt have paid close attention to. You were told over and over and over again that Labor will never win enough seats to get close to the Turnbull government and this seemed to spur you on. The bottomless-pit-of-Liberal-campaign-funding was no match for a united Labor with a positive story to tell. You’ve taken this election right up to the Turnbull government, you’ve blown their majority out of the water and are still in with a chance of victory. We’ve learned you will be a great Labor Prime Minister. Against all the odds, this is a Labor result for the true believers.
What did we learn Rupert? We learned that the media, all of you, chattering on about what might happen in the election for eight weeks and ignoring the policies which actually mean something to voters is the quickest way to make yourselves completely irrelevant. We learned that when you said Brexit would play into the hands of Turnbull and give him an easy victory, you were completely wrong and clearly unqualified to offer comment. We learned how out-of-touch you are with reality when you forgot to even notice the death of the neoliberal ideological argument about six months ago, or if you did notice it you were incapable of reporting it as fact. We learned your so-called-journalists would prefer to interview other so-called-journalists and ex-political-staffers than speak to policy experts or, heavens forbid, voters out on the streets to find out what is really going on outside of your ivory-tower-bubble-of-irrelevancy. We learned that your fun-and-games-search-for-gotcha-moments and dedication to debt-and-deficit scare campaigns means nothing to your audience and has got so boring people are clearly turned off. We learned your hatred and fear of independent and social media has pushed you further and quicker into irrelevancy, when you get a handful of shares from a shrinking pool of readers, and innovators like this guy get a million views in a handful of hours. We’ve learned that your influence and power is running down the sinkhole and you don’t have a plug.
We have learned a lot in the last couple of months. There is no result yet, but we’ve already learned Malcolm and Rupert are losers and Bill a clear winner. And as it turns out, we’re also learned Malcolm was right about just one thing. There really has never been a more exciting time to be an Australian.
