From top left clockwise: Another ScoMo stunt, Tom Uren, Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, Zoe Daniel

ONE

On Day 8 of the campaign, I found this on Twitter, posted by ace Murdoch marksman Sharri Markson: “Exclusive: Anthony Albanese worked as an electorate officer – not a Canberra based ministerial advisor – during the time his boss, hard-left Labor figure Tom Uren, was a minister in the Hawke govt”.

The word that struck me was “hard”. Tom was certainly strong. During World War 2, on the Burma Railway as a prisoner of the Imperial Japanese Army, he saw men of all races being used as slaves and, in his words, dying like flies. Initially, he hated the enemy like his comrades did. But by the last year of the war, while still a prisoner, he had decided that the enemy weren’t the enemy, the enemy was militarism.

Not all Tom’s mates liked the fact that Tom started talking to the “enemy”, even teaching a couple how to box. Tom had fought for the Australian heavyweight title at the age of 21 and had a big man’s confidence and physical ease. In 1990, he went back to Japan and declared from a public podium that he considered dropping the atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima to be crimes against humanity.

I wrote a book with Tom titled The Fight. He was a man of whom it could be said that he loved himself but he loved plenty of others as well – his life was like a movie with a big caste. I spoke at his funeral which was held at Sydney Town Hall. Three former Prime Ministers sat in the front row, Anthony Albanese was the MC. Albo said Tom was the closest thing he had to a father.

Later, at the crematorium, I sat behind Albo, saw him hold his emotion in until the last then burst like a water main. I reckon I know who Albo is.

TWO

The great satire on the madness of our times, the film “Don’t Look Up”, is on the grand scale of “Catch 22”. It is not easily summarised since the appeal is in the detail and there’s a lot of it. Stated briefly, two astronomers at an American university discover that a large comet is six months away from hitting the earth and eliminating life on the planet.

When the astronomers try and warn the American public, they find their message distorted by the government and commercial TV in a surreal but wholly familiar way. Public opinion, for example, splits three ways. One group sees the threat. The second group starts with a whacky billionaire donor of the President’s persuading the President to blow up the comet with a nuclear bomb and mine the debris for precious metals. The President, while acting for the billionaire, argues (as they always do) jobs, jobs, jobs. The third group deny the existence of the comet.

Critics in America said the characters in “Don’t Look UP’ were unbelievable. I find Donald Trump wholly unbelievable, a gross parody of the qualities that made America great, a vain venal Godless man mistaken for a prophet of God, a person who has done immeasurable damage to democracies around the world with his Big Lie that the last presidential election was “stolen”…ScoMo has said in the past that he likes Donald Trump. So that is my first question for Scomo: What exactly do you like about Donald Trump?

What I think Trump and Scomo share is an understanding of politics as part of the entertainment industry. We’re trapped in a 24/7 cartoon. Scomo’s a clown. His big grinning head appears out the cockpit window of an airliner wearing the captain’s hat – next moment he’s wearing a helmet inside a sportscar at Bathurst. And he always looks like he’s enjoying himself. He’s the Ronald McDonald of Australian politics, a face with a grin – meanwhile, as Australia sinks to its lowest ever level on an international corruption index, he opposes a national integrity commission.

So here is my big question for Scott Morrison……who are you really? I mean it: who the bloody hell are you – really? I reckon I know who Dutton is. I reckon I know who John Howard is, who Menzies was. But I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you wouldn’t do. Former Labor politician Sam Dastyari says you are never to be underestimated. He was referring to your shady pre-selection saga – he said that anyone who would deal with his political opponents to knock off one of his own is never to be underestimated.

That’s my third question for the Prime Minister: do you believe in anything besides your religion? You define yourself as a Christian but your behaviour as a politician is not Christian in any way that I understand that term. What you seem to be about is getting power and holding it, all the while advancing like-minded people even if it means splitting your own party. You have been described as ruthless. A series of credible individuals, including the president of France, have called you a liar…and if you pull off a second “miracle” win, you’re going to have as much control over the Liberal Party as Donald Trump has over the Republicans.

You seem to have remarkably little interest in, or gift for, governance, but I saw a pastor from your church say God told you he wanted you to be Prime Minister 15 years before it happened. I hear media commentators saying what a great campaigner you are. We’re in “Don’t Look Up” territory.
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THREE

Joe Biden has said that one of the measures of our age will be whether we can preserve democracy. The far right is on the march in Europe and America, mixing toxic notions of religion and nationalism while serving the interests of ultra-wealthy individuals like those who are known in Russia as oligarchs.

I live in the Tasmanian seat of Bass and recently compered an evening in Launceston put on for the local Afghan community. The three major contestants for the seat of Bass spoke. Each was respectful of the other two, no cheap tactics were employed. The audience were people who had fled the violently undemocratic Taliban.

It was as if in this one room a democratic model was on display for a highly respectful audience. It was like visiting a shrine where something strong and precious is stored. The three candidates were sitting member Liberal Bridget Archer, Labor’s Ross Hart and the Greens’ Cecily Rosol.

Bridget Archer twice crossed floor to vote against the Morrison government – on the need for a national integrity commission, and the religious discrimination bill. In my letterbox I find a pamphlet from a Canberra address authorised by the Australian Christian Lobby – in large red print are the words “THE TRUTH ABOUT” and then in white, “BRIDGET ARCHER”. Beside Bridget Archer’s name is an illustration of a giant wrecking ball crashing through the front door of a church. The image says Bridget Archer is attacking the church. What she’s doing is defending secular values. I’ve seen the same image on Islamist propaganda.

At the end of the night, I said to Bridget Archer, “You should be the leader of the Liberals – you’re real”. I’m not saying she’s more real than Ross Hart and Cicely Rosol. I’m saying she’s more real than Scomo the clown who appears every night on TV grinning. The madness has to end or, as in “Don’t Look Up”, the madness will end us.

FOUR

What is making us mad? Here is one view I found on Twitter from a Ukrainian woman named Yaroslava Antipina (@strategywoman). Yarolsava tweets a diary from Kiev about the ordinariness of her days in a city under siege – the noisy neighbour, her daily cup of coffee, sirens going off, hearing explosions. Once, on an excursion out of her flat, amid the chaos of 21st century warfare, she found a bookshop that that was defiantly remaining open. If anyone ever deserves a Nobel Prize for Literature, that bookshop owner does.

This week, Yaroslava found a bookshop open in a shopping centre. She wrote: “Bought myself gift: 2 books. I asked bookseller for no war ones. We talked. She is worried about the future of books. 2 large publishers are from Kharviv. “ if Russians read more book & watch less TV” (she said)….her words are in my heart. ”

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FIVE

Two more “Don’t Look Up” type scenarios. The first – on Russian State TV, Vladimir Putin claims he is a victim of cancel culture at a time when he has ordered an invasion aimed at cancelling the culture of an entire nation. The second – American oligarch Lachlan Murdoch flying into Australia in a $90 million private jet to (1) rail against “media elites” in this country and (2) express his commitment to True Blue Aussie values.

Lachlan is CEO of FOX News which he described last year as a “Centre-right” media outlet. Centre-right?! I’ll exercise my right as a son of Australian culture and say, “That’s bullshit, Lachlan, and you know it”. To quote Malcolm Turnbull, you’ve created a market for crazies. Those who aren’t crazy to begin with will be if they tune in for long enough. You’re in the same loop as Scomo and Trump, politics as entertainment. You let the Big Lie fester and, if Scomo loses, I’m tipping a version of the Big Lie will surface in your outlets here.

Lachlan Murdoch is not Rupert Murdoch in the way that Jamie Packer isn’t Kerry Packer. Rupert Murdoch’s father was a journalist who broke one of the biggest stories in Australian history – that Gallipoli was a shambles. Rupert employed good journalists as well as bad and seemed to have some understanding of the difference between the two. I am yet to see that Lachlan sees any difference in that regard whatsoever. I think Lachlan’s harder than his old man.

SIX

Given Lachlan’s sudden enthusiasm for True Blue Aussie values, I’d like to ask him a simple question – is it okay, in Australian culture, to give yourself your own nickname? A pub test will quickly tell you it’s not. A little background – “nick”, as in the word “nickname”, is English slang for prison. A nickname is your prison name. Lachlan’s nickname would be something like the Lizard. His old man is Rupert the Rat. The word goes round the prison. The Rat says Morrison wins. That’s how it works, most don’t even need to be told. The Rat, I read the other day, was made a papal knight after contributing to the cost of a new cathedral. How very Middle Ages.

Scott Morrison gave himself the nickname Scomo. Scomo’s the sort of name you’d see on the side of a scooter buzzing about the city delivering pizzas. It’s quick off the tongue, comes with a grin, and, when played on endless repeat, creates a hum in your brain that makes Scomo sound as innocuous as Humphrey B. Bear. Albo’s not in the cartoon because he’s not a cartoon character. Meantime, for those who still read, the Lizard’s front pages shred Albo while endangered Liberal Josh Frydenberg is presented as both the herald and the sun on the front page of the Herald Sun.

As CEO of Fox News, Lachlan the Lizard provides Tucker Carlson with a forum. Tucker Carlson supports Putin’s lethal mayhem in the Ukraine. The former Ukrainian world heavyweight boxing champion, Wladimir Klitschko, says Tucker Carlson has blood on his hands and is part of the invasion. Carlson’s clips are used for propaganda purposes by Russian state media.

I propose a topic for Lachlan’s next speech at his cutely named “Centre for the Australian Way of Life”. I want to hear him reconcile Tucker Carlson’s deranged rants – and Lachlan’s own part in delivering them to a mass audience in both America and Russia, thus emboldening Putin – with the photo of the Ukrainian girl who lost her mother and both her legs in a rocket attack on a train station. Your problem in this country, Lachlan, is that you’re not fair dinkum.

SEVEN

When I started at the Launceston Examiner in 1980, North Launceston Football Club was being coached by former Essendon player Peter Daniel. He was tall and craggy and irascible. He was also a schoolteacher. His teams played tight skilful footy and won plenty. Zoe Daniel is Peter Daniel’s daughter.

After North Launceston, Peter Daniel coached Clarence in the south of the island and, by chance, took a house next door to my elderly parents. I thought no more of it until one night, when my Mum was in her 90s, she said, “That Zoe Daniel on the ABC news used to live next door”. I got interested and started following her work.

The image that sums up the contest in Goldstein for me was two photos married together. On the left was Tim Wilson in military costume, complete with helmet, posing against a military vehicle. On the right was a photo of Zoe Daniel in a helmet in a war zone.

I thought Zoe Daniel was a really good journalist. She could accurately summarise complex situations in a few short sentences and deliver them without any hint of false drama. I think any retrospective of Zoe Daniel’s career would prove that she has sound judgment. The day she announced she was running for public office, she tweeted, “If not now, when? If not me, who?”

This is a waterfall election. If we go over the waterfall, we’ll be a long time coming back, if we ever do.