Demolition Unspinable

This Saturday past, the State of New South Wales took out the trash. It removed a government so decrepit, so past its use-by date that it spent most of the election campaign apologising for even having an election. It had been coming for a very long time. The NSW public decided to kick them out about 10 minutes after Morris Iemma completed his victory speech on election night 2007.

The 2007 poll was a victory for hopelessness and ennui. No one liked Iemma and no one liked his government. They had been on the nose basically since Iemma took over from Bob Carr, because Morris Iemma is the very definition of mediocre, he is a glass of tepid water. The reason people voted for him is, well…there was no other option. Peter Debnam had to work hard just to be called mediocre, his standard response to questioning was to shuffle some papers in front of him, look nervous, apologise and promise to have the figures next time. During the election campaign his costings were hours late to a press conference “because of the photocopiers.” Morris Iemma was incredibly lucky. You only get one Peter Debnam in politics, that’s because most of them sell insurance or Amway.

Then came the scandals varying in content from corruption to paedophilia, Iemma’s resignation after being rolled at the ALP State Conference, a new Premier who had only been an MP for two years and would have struggled to inspire water to flow downhill, resignation after resignation after resignation, a Labor run council linked to property development sex favours, another new Premier, and the sale of a state asset at nearly 25% of the price that was offered a few years before. This government was not only an embarrassment; it was an ultra slow motion car crash on national TV. The polls have been rancid for years and there was not one person in existence who did not see Saturday’s massacre coming.

Surely then, this is an election that needs no real analysis. A party does not lose 31 seats because of one issue, or even from a bad campaign. People were just over it. Everyone. How can you spin this? Either side. Barry O’Farrell didn’t need to say anything. He could have changed his party name to the Hitler Youth and started habitually urinating in an old lady’s dog purse at Circular Quay, people would have voted for him. He didn’t need to have policy; he just needed to attend.

Yet the Federal Coalition has the temerity to suggest that the result was due to dissatisfaction with the Carbon Tax, something that has been thrown up in the last two months. Put down the crack pipe please. For God’s sake, THEY HAD TWO UNELECTED PREMIERS, A MINISTER WAS A CONVICTED PAEDOPHILE, PEOPLE LIED TO THE CORRUPTION WATCHDOG, THEY SOLD THE ELECTRICY NETWORK FOR SOME MAGIC BEANS AND A WRISTY BEHIND THE BIKE SHED. This wasn’t a government, it was one of those late era Benny Hill specials were most of the jokes were stolen from Italian TV.

But no, Tony Abbott thinks his ‘Big New Tax’ line and some bullshit about ‘real action on shit we don’t believe in’ had enough traction to deliver the biggest electoral landslide in Australian History. Get your hand off it.