I have been busy taking my message to the street over the last week, that's why there have been no posts… but you all know what I would have said.
I have been busy taking my message to the street over the last week, that's why there have been no posts… but you all know what I would have said.
Giovanni says:
Comrades,
Unless we keep logging old growth forests my grandkids won't have jobs.
It's a growth industry, it just takes ages to grow. What about our kids? Maybe your kids would like to go to university and become engineers, teachers, doctors and scientists. Maybe they'll pay 25% more under Howard. Maybe they won't go at all because it'll cost too much and because they attend an under-funded government school, perhaps one of the 9500 to receive a boost in cash under Labor.
But no. Save our jobs, for now. Save our towns for a couple more decades maybe. Don't invest in reskilling, retraining, eco-tourism, sustainable logging…
The real death blow to the timber towns will be that lack of foresight.
Curtis T says:
Don't be so negative Geeves. If we keep logging old growth forests, we can speed up the rate of global warming and exceed the IPCC projections of sea level rises. The 1 - 2 metre sea level rise in the next 50 years will impact most upon riverside and sea-side property, effectively fucking over the liberal voting richies who own that land.
Of course, the 1 billion+ environmental refugees expected in the next 40 years (mostly from low lying poorer nations) may have already taken matters into their own hands and taken that land for themselves. But hey, so long as some redneck fucker in Tassie has a job… who am I to talk long term? It just isn't democratic.
killer says:
i'm just sad we got through the whole campaign without someone using the phrase "polling the electorate"
howard has the sucked the fun out of everything
Giovanni says:
Election Party report:
After a 6:30am - 6pm days on hustings, I hit the booze hard. Whisson and Hester join me on the road to oblivion. "This is just the beginning of their reign of terror" I announce. The Socialist Alliance comrades shuffle in, mostly dispirited, others - half-wit others, chirpy with their article of faith that a Labor win would have been just as bad.
I get angry at Kiraz when she says it makes no difference that the Coalition will control the Senate with a little help from a crazy crank right-wing religious nut group. Really? It's [i]text[/i] worse?
It looks like Holt, a safe ALP seat in Vic will fall. I start yelling.
Other friends, not SA, arrive. I get angrier, yelling at Debbie "What do I want a fucking drink for?!" Later Whisson encourages me to "come out and have fun" so I bellow in his ear "don't tell me how to fucking live" then we laugh. We're both almost crazy.
We have a six-person conference in my room. I say "I think I speak for everyone here when I say… (and the screaming, howling begins all round).
The house and front yard are full now, SA speechifiers claim the Howard win isn't a defeat for the working class, empty motherhood statements, mealy-mouth assurances that the campaign went well from the SA.
Drinking continues, Hester is personally insulted by a stalinist and lets rip with some of his own, another comrade hurls a can at him and he responds by launching himself from the porch at his assailant. I throw myself between them and manage to hold back the 'H Train' before Whisson and I lead him away.
Whisson says "tonight I am smoking in the house and I don't give a fuck", I don't either. Does it matter? Neil says "the best we can hope for now is that the Libs control the senate in their own right and don't have to work with Family First". The [i]text[/i]? Aleksia starts crying. Neil and Jo flee to her place. We're gonna have to run further than that, I think.
Hasluck falls. Carita shows up, shattered, having worked with Sharryn on her campaign. Rob Corr too, looking stoney and stoic - he's such a trooper.
Cowan looks bad. "That's my parents electorate!" I'm furious. "My parents will not live in a fucking Liberal electorate!"
Stirling's gone.
Drunker. Angrier. Laughing my arse off.
A friend splits up with her partner at the party and he storms off, she cries. Another friend cheats on their partner. Another ends up pale as death, vomiting in our backyard. I give her my jacket and leave her to the capable administration of others.
It's all happening here.
I talk to Marina and become inflamed, rallying in the first bitter minutes of Howard's new day.
"So he'll control the senate. We can't beat him in the senate, then we'll beat him in the streets and in the workplaces. He can pass his legislation, but if he tries to enact it we'll stop it with industrial action and civil disobedience. That's where we can beat him."
Do I believe? Sure, why not. It beats accepting the alternative theory.
killer says:
[b]Election Day report - The Hill[/b]
If there was a vote for most rocking booth we would have won… in fact, if the events at Clifton Hill Primary were repeated around the country I would be a bit more optimistic about our future.
Our preparation for the day began on Friday night. Me and Fancy had gathered most of the ingredients necessary for a comfortable day at the booth;
-table
-chairs
-two bottles of rum
We drank one of the bottles of rum and went out to stencil the pavement, no one could enter the primary school without seeing the words 'Howard Lies'.
Saturday morning I got up at about 6:30am and began setting up. Labor and Liberal had come down earlier (it must have been sometime during the night, because no one was there at 7am) and put their posters on the fence but inside the school grounds was untouched. I checked with the AEC staff where the boundry was (you're not meant to hand out How-To-Votes or put poters up within 6m of the booth), they gave me the all clear to set up in the school and soon Greens' propaganda dominated the immediate area around the booth. This was Green country.
A Greens volunteer joined me at 7:45am and G-wain came down at about 8am carrying more gear. Roly swung by at about 9am with my esky and Lu (my flatmate) brought down the ice, juice, cups and rum mix.
We had four Greens people on the booth all day, at one stage we had about 8 people most of whom were old Perthies; G-wain, Fancy, Hamish, Patrick, Matt. To put this is context here is the scorecard for the other partys;
Labor: 2 or 3
Family First: 2
Richard Frankland (ind): 1 or 2
Liberal: 0 or 1
Democrats: 0
Now, I can understand the Democrats having noone there… but the Liberals!? For most of the day they just had a cardboard box on the ground with the How To Votes, many times voters would walk up and ask where the Liberal people were, I would just point to the box. I understand tactically this electorate was unimportant to them, they were quite happy to let Greens and Labor battle it out… but I thought they would have dug up at least one person for the few supporters in the area. In the afternoon a Liberal did come down, a smiley guy in a pants and tie who freely admitted that Howard did not deserve to get back in.
At 2pm Justin (my flatmate ) came down and played his guitar, a collection of Aussie favourites which fittingly started and finished with [i]You're the Voice[/i] (the official theme song of every election).
A father and his son paused to listen to Justin as they snacked on something from the cake-stall. Afternoon voters trickled in usually heading directly towards the Greens and Labor How-To-Votes. At 6pm when we started packing up I felt relatively good; very tired, very anxious, but upbeat.
At 6:35pm I felt like there had been a death in the family. Heart-broken. Devastated. Physically Sick.
At about 8pm Me, Fancy and G-Wain turned off the T.V. and headed into the city. We skipped the Greens party and went straight to the [url=http://www.polichicks.org/]Polichicks[/url] gig, although the Greens had some reasons to celebrate and a Liberal victory was not a huge shock, it was the swing towards the Liberals that gutted the Left… political hacks knew this was a disaster and we thought the mood might be slightly better with the Polichicks.
The gig was great, given the circumstances. A free pint of beer and some stage antics by the bands produced a slight smile, and the AC/DC cover band provided a suitable soundtrack as I handed $80 dollars over the bar knocking down one gin after another. Me and Fancy left at about 1am, strangely sober.
In a politically apt kind of way I would like to thank everyone who helped at Clifton Hill Primary, especially Fancy and G-wain who stayed up late and got up early to help.
Here is the tally for our booth:
<center>[img]http://www.kilbot.net/news/uploads/booth.gif[/img]</center>
B-Diddy DubSac says:
While that all sounds very quaint and sterile, punters DEMAND to know:
a) What type of cake were the father-son combo eating whilst pausing to listen to said muso?, AND
b) was it Bert and Matt Newton?
coz that woulda been awesome d00d!!111 LOLLIBERALS4MOREYEARSUNLOL!!11
killer says:
a) they were actually eating a sausage.. it was really more of sausage sizzle/jam stand than a cake stall.
b) i'm not sure if it was the Newton's - i'm not saying it wasn't - but i can tell you this for sure; they were communists and a good source suggested they practiced witchcraft.