Election 2012: The Rear View

For those not familiar with the ins and outs of Queensland politics, but instead familiar with annoyingly naff bumper sticker trends, I think this is the best way to sum up the result of our March 24 state election:

Dan Beeston used his own stash of My Family stickers to mock this up.

Campbell Newman and the LNP romped it in, scoring more seats than James Bond at Ikea.

Everyone was expecting an emphatic LNP victory, except the nice hairdresser I went to on Friday evening after finally getting off the campaign bus.

"But surely anything could still happen?" she said.

"Universally, yes," I replied. "But the polling techniques they have these days are just too accurate. And just a little more off the bottom, please."

But nobody thought it would be so devastating for Labor, that you couldn't even use the word "decimation" in a grammatically correct way (while I'm not good with the maths, I'm pretty sure they lost more than one in ten MPs). Annihilation is more likely. Holocaust is probably going too far (it generally always is).

This morning I spoke with Dr Paul Williams, a political and media analyst from Griffith University. We chatted about the strange parliament Queensland will now have, including the challenges Mr Newman will have making sure all of his 77 or so MPs have plenty of work and stay out of trouble, and the risk a tiny opposition will not be able to adequately scrutinise legislation.

His killer line came at the very end of the interview, when we were discussing how long Labor will be in the electoral wilderness, cowering from wolves and subsisting on frozen Siberian tiger droppings:

"When people say that the next Labor premier isn't even in parliament yet... I might be cynical when I say this, but perhaps the next Labor premier hasn't even finished school."

DAMN.

In Queensland, once you're gone, you're gone for a LONG time. There were ten James Bond movies produced during the time Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen was Premier, before Queenslanders got a chance to enjoy 1989's Licence to Kill unencumbered by a sternly Lutheran but ethically flexible moral code.
It's likely we'll now see at least another four Bond movies (and at least one more Bond actor) before Labor can attempt to regain power.

It boggles the mind. I mean, can you even imagine someone not Daniel Craig as Bond?

Labor came close to losing the 2009 election; and frankly now probably wishes it had. It wouldn't have won this time around, but the destruction wouldn't have been so complete.

In the end, Anna Bligh's leadership during the floods and cyclones last year - while respected - came to nought. People had already drawn their plans against her. Asset sales seems to have been the biggest issue, followed closely by ongoing problems in Queensland Health. Campaign-wise, the ALP's been universally condemned for going in so hard on Mr Newman, his family and business interests. The mud stuck, but to the wrong side.

Labor has seemingly lost its base. At her concession speech in the ALP HQ in South Brisbane on Saturday night, there seemed to be no "True Believers" amongst the crowd. They were all twenty-somethings. Has the "working man/woman" had enough? Or was time in government a hump they just couldn't get over?

I'm interested in your take on the state election, and why you think the result unfolded the way it did. What do you think Labor needs to do now, given they've only got seven or eight MPs, a decreasing membership base, and a whole lotta wolves out there?

Dave, the Bligh Bus Driver

This is Dave, the Bligh bus driver. He's been hauling Anna Bligh, her media advisers and a pack of journalists around since early Wednesday. Thursday's trip actually turned into Friday's trip, with 18 hours of campaign in 19 seats finishing at 2am.

As the action wound down this afternoon, I thought I'd grab a quick chat with Dave about his perspective on the madness.

Speaking of madness, Bridie Jabour over at brisbanetimes.com.au has written a great piece about life on the campaign buses. I make an anonymous appearance - possibly relating to geography and travel distances. I wish I'd been able to keep up with the pace and write more detailed posts about the election trail. It turned out to be as busy as I expected, and then some. But after the final big push tomorrow, and before I collapse into a coma, I'll see what I can do...

On the Bus with Bligh

Day 33. I finally managed to launch a sneak attack on Anna Bligh after an intake of extra passengers on the Bligh Bus saw her plonk down in the seat beside me.

Sadly the interview got cut off by the appearance of a certain former Labor Prime Minister (what a bum), but it might be of interest to some of you.

As I post this, we've passed the 30-seat mark on the 50-Seats-In-Five-Days Last-Ditch Bligh Blitz Challenge. Today's trip is supposed to go through until 2am Friday. I'm still trying to weigh up whether I have the stamina, or at least enough Pepsi Max, to go all the way...

Puppet V Platypus

Apologies for the angle that I'm looking at during this film; there was another camera positioned higher than my iPhone, and I kept glancing up at it instead.

Regardless, this is certainly the most unusual interview I've done this election campaign, even more so than that time we did an impromptu media conference with Premier Anna Bligh on her campaign bus.

But I'll let you draw your own conclusions...

I must say, the monotreme at least deserves credit for staying in character. He didn't take off the suit, or even the head, the whole time I was there. It was a muggy afternoon, too, and we had to turn the air-conditioning off because it was too loud.

Born This Way

I've not spoken much about How To Be A Man since it finished. While everyone who saw seemed to love it, it didn't match the success of its predecessors He Died With a Felafel in His Hand and The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco, and I blamed myself for that. I didn't promote enough, I didn't direct well enough, etcetera, etcetera. I also worried about its reception amongst some key people whose opinion really mattered to me, and I felt like I let some of those people down.

Being a director can be a very lonely business.

Regardless, I'm possibly prouder of HTBAM than the other two shows, because it really was a foray into the unknown and bizarre, and more ambitious in virtually every staging element. I had the most amazing cast, and now that they're all off doing other shows (including The Boys Next Door at the Brisbane Arts Theatre and The Laramie Project at Nash Theatre), I really miss them, and hope that they think of me with something at least approaching fondness.

I'm also proud of HTBAM because I like to think it incorporated some nice messages about acceptance and tolerance and just living to let live.

Take, for example, this fabulous drag 'n' dance number, featuring Gay Jesus and his Naughty Nuns:

Sometimes you just have visions in your head, and when I read the part in Simon Bedak's script about Gay Jesus doing a dance routine, Lady Gaga immediately sprang to mind. I just wanted a beautiful Gay Jesus, wearing a Jesus Christ Superstar shirt, singing about how God makes no mistakes - and I'm so pleased to have put that on the stage.

Last night I became aware via Twitter that Katter's Australian Party has released a rather startling attack advertisement towards Campbell Newman. Frankly this sort of stuff makes me want to thump my head against a wall. I know it's an election, I know Katter's Australian Party is trying to secure votes from disgruntled former National Party voters - but it's sad to see overt homophobia being used like this in 2012. Gay people aren't the end of the world, KAP.

However, it's given me a great reason to bring out another corker of a scene from HTBAM - a cameo from Bob Katter himself. His speech is actually ripped from a media release issued by Katter in August 2011. I tweeted about it when I received it; playwright Simon Bedak immediately demanded I email it to him, and several weeks later it turned up in the HTBAM script.

One of my young actors demanded the role. He's always had a good nose for politics, and a great ability at stage caricature. I think you'll agree it's an uncanny impression, and rightly became one of the most popular bits of the play.

I've always thought humour the best answer to ignorance, so it was a delight to stage some fun satire alongside the giant genital costumes and time-travellers. I'll forever remain indebted to HTBAM for allowing me that opportunity.

Yumi, Kony & Misplaced Rage

My friend Dan falls into spells of inexplicable rage at the moment.

"For no real reason," he confessed to me on Wednesday afternoon. "I was doing something in the kitchen the other day, and I just got furious about the idea of a merciful God. If a real person behaved like that guy, they'd be locked up as a psychopath."

Now Dan co-hosts a science and skeptics podcast, so I guess it's a hazard of his job to become occasionally infuriated by immaculate misconceptions.

But as I emerged briefly from my state election bubble on Wednesday evening, I became aware of two current (.... events? Issues? Memes?... let's just go with) things... that seemed to reflect Dan's experience of misplaced rage on a national, and an international scale.

The first was the online destruct-a-thon of Channel Ten presenter Yumi Stynes, over comments she made about Australian Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith.

I knew something controversial had happened on morning chat show The Circle, but wasn't really aware until now of the vitriol hurled at Stynes. The wonderful Heathen Scripture has a great piece on it, and the acerbic John Birmingham is spot on as usual at Brisbane Times.

What Stynes (and let's not forget, George Negus) said was inappropriate and insensitive. But the level of pure bile and personal abuse spreading across social media, online forums and the dreaded comment sections did seem far in excess of justified, stern criticism.

I was going to put it down to simple internet trolling, but then I saw the Twitter hashtag #Kony2012, and eventually got the chance to watch the associated film.

Produced by the charity Invisible Children, this film is an inspirational way to spend 30 minutes of your time. It chronicles the charity's fight to bring Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony to justice for his truly evil crimes against humanity. The group is advocating a worldwide protest on April 20, to cover your local streets with posters and flyers of Kony, in order to "make him famous". The aim is to keep American military advisers in Uganda, to help the local army finally track Kony down and capture him.

The documentary is bold, it's beautiful, it pulls all the right emotional strings. The existence of child soldiers is truly one of the most abhorrent and perverted phenomena of our time. There is nothing to redeem Kony; he is a monster who deserves his number one ranking on the International Criminal Court's hit list.

And so the online world has exploded in fury that he continues to walk free, and the video has been shared at a rapid pace.

We are angry. And it feels good to be angry, particularly when somebody truly deserves it.

It's good to have a bad guy. A bad guy we could conceivably track down. A bad guy who doesn't force us to question our own role in his creation, a la Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden. Joseph Kony is an ideal supervillain.

And so our anger is funnelled there, even when it's potentially questionable, because we feel useful. We can wear bracelets, put up flyers, post photos on Facebook (even though the site has blocked a dissenting critique of the Tony 2012 campaign as "spam").  It's rock-star activism. We can turn our rage into action.

It is a good thing that social media can educate us all about the existence of people like Kony, but the reality is that his removal from the battlefield will not end the problems in Uganda. I wish I had answers, but I don't. The country, like many others in Africa, is still struggling with issues that took root decades ago. And once Kony is arrested, how much will the bracelet-wearers do to help those left behind? I hope for the best; but the cynic in me is not convinced.

Foreign policy and international conflicts are rarely simple. But complex is hard to fit into 140 characters. And right now, we need a target for our rage.

There's something about us humans right now that has us mad as hell, and not willing to take it anymore. The Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street movements of 2011 demonstrated this. Even the Gillard government's fresh attack on Australian billionaires reflects this. People are not happy with the status quo. We're sick of the bad guys, we seem to be frustrated that we're in the 21st century but are still waiting for the enlightened Age of Aquarius (in whatever sense you define 'enlightened'). Diplomatic talk doesn't seem to have gotten us anywhere. And frankly, it's boring, and takes forever.

So it's good to have a real villain like Kony, someone who deserves to bear the brunt of our all-encompassing rage. It's "good" trolling.

But in his absence we can always get riled up at faux-villains like Yumi Stynes. And my fear is one day we might forget the difference.

Lashed

I've been on the Queensland state election campaign for a while now, and I've been getting an increased volume of messages from people spotting me on the TV news of an evening, standing behind a politician.

I've been covering the ALP since the campaign started; tomorrow I switch to the LNP for a while. But no matter who I seem to stand behind/next to, the response I get from people is always:

"You look so BORED!"

I've even had a few people suggest that I should "smile more". But the thing is, there are very few facial expressions one can adopt when in such a position. Think about it. If you were to tune in and see me smiling away, you'd either think I was politically biased towards the featured politician, or just clinically insane.

So I try to go for the classic poker-face, but in my case, that seems to equal a vision of crushing dullness.

But there's another reason why I try to keep a straight face and my focus on my recorder.