Year of the Slog

As our 'friends' in Canberra dive snout first into the final week of Federal Parliament, it's a good time to reflect on the dog shit of a year that was 2010. A year that has consisted of progression, followed by regression and is ending in stagnation. In fact, we are without a doubt behind where we finished up last year. The country is split, one side says this, the other says that, and the vast majority says so what.

In the year up until now, we've gone from a popular, if dictatorial, Prime Minister, challenged by a progressive and thoroughly wet Liberal Opposition Leader, to a fledgling PM finding her feet amongst a hung parliament and up against a hard line conservative member of the A-team.

We've gone from almost certainly having an ETS, to almost certainly not knowing what the fuck is going on. We've gone from quiet resentment of refugees to full blown yelling at town meetings followed by leaflet dropping fits of hysterical fear. We've gone from patting ourselves on the back for how our banks got through the GFC, to wanting to rip them apart. We've gone from kowtowing to the mining industry, to kowtowing to the mining industry. We've gone from having polls every month, to having one every five minutes, despite the fact that they all tell us the same thing: We don't know what we want, but we want it now. Fast.

We have to start all over again. Issues that had consensus last year are now back to square one style bickering. Everything is back in committee. The status quo is fighting back, and it's winning. 2008 and 2009 were epitomised by the word 'change', 2010 introduced the qualifier 'as long as I don't have to'. It does not bode well for 2011.

In the mean time, you can look forward to some interesting announcements over the Christmas break. They usually slip them out while people are still too busy digesting their stodgy Christmas lunch, and the media are obsessed with fluffy cat-stuck-in-a-tree-happy-good-times. As for myself I will take a break until the New Year, or until something interesting happens, and by interesting I mean bad.

Merry Christmas and my God have mercy on us all.