32 days of campaigning will give Julia Gillard a chance to more than double her time in office. She's already overtaken
Frank Forde (8 days)
Earl Page (20 days) and
John McEwen (23 days) to become the 24th longest serving Australian Prime Minister - can she make it to 23rd?
32 days of campaigning is going to be like an advent calendar of uncomfortable moments with Tony Abbott. One sweet, delicious morsel of unintentional offence for each day. Better than Christmas? Unless I get a gigantic Transformer figurine at the end of it, no.
Tony sez: ask me about pre-marital sex!
32 days of campaigning will give The Australian an opportunity to unearth an angry ex-Labor member who was at some point verbally abused/sexually assaulted/physically maimed/shot out of a cannon by Julia Gillard back when she was close personal friends with Leon Trotsky. And Hitler.
32 days of campaigning might finally give The Greens a chance to articulate themselves as
a viable third alternative. With the essential collapse/waning influence of the National Party, the Democrats, One Nation and Family First the mantle is really theirs to take. And with Abbott and Gillard engaged in what appears to be a 32 day tribute concert to the political legacy of John Howard, there is surely a new political base to appeal to out there somewhere.
32 days of campaigning will give both parties an opportunity to craft an election campaign founded in a passionate, profound belief that something better is possible and that this is worth fighting for... No, wait. That's America.
32 days of campaigning will give Julia Gillard the opportunity to really nail the phrase "moving forward" and all its many permutations.
Up and atom, Julia!
32 days of campaigning will give Tony Abbott an opportunity to perhaps suggest some "real action" that doesn't involve simply jamming into panicked reverse everything the country is currently doing.
32 days of campaigning will give us, the voter, the opportunity to work out which of "Stand up for Australia" or "Let's move Australia forward" is a more meaningless slogan. I think my slogan is going to be "Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos".
32 days of campaigning means, blessedly, there is only time for one, single debate. Scheduled for the same time as the final of MasterChef. You figure if they could synthesise the two it might actually galvanise a little excitement for the coming vote. Campaign while you cook, you slackers! The people need to eat! Also, cry a lot. Apparently the people love that.
32 days of campaigning equals a good solid decade of polling data to parse. Did you know that Tony Abbott is losing support amongst the 22-22.5 year olds who are female, at university, have three children, regularly watch Masterchef and think potato is a verb? We have to nail that demographic! "Potato up for Australia"!
32 days of campaigning will give me the opportunity to re-enact the best bits from Hunter S. Thompson's 'Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail', except it will take place entirely in my room, without any actual access to anyone of consequence and with the Class A substance abuse replaced with pint after pint of a homemade mixture of green tea and Promite that I call "the worst fucking thing that you have ever tasted". It's my specialty!
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So, after all of that, are you excited? Are you?! I'm hoping so, because God knows I'm probably going to be writing a fair bit about this bad boy over the next month. I do hope you stick around. I promise I'll try and make it as painless as possible. I might even give you some of that green tea and Promite concoction.
But only if you're good.