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It was a very funny week on the Australian federal election campaign trail.

Light relief from Labor’s ‘me too-ism’, and all the predictable sniping and carping from the Coalition, came in the form of political satire – scripted by the politicians themselves!

I’ve been gnashing my teeth about the Religious Right’s attempt to embed conservative Christian values in national politics. The movement is led by the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL), which bills itself as a united, non-partisan promoter of traditional Christianity in national life but which speaks with a right-wing tongue and has been described as un-representative of diverse Christianity by the Greens. The values espoused by ACL are clearly pro-traditional family and anti-gay rather than inspired by the politics of the radical social justice campaigner, the friend of prostitutes and the ‘unclean’, in whose name they preach – Jesus. The political party most closely aligned with ACL is the one-policy ‘Family First’ party which campaigns hard against homosexuality and pornography and is currently in preference-swapping negotiations with the xenophobic Senate candidate, Pauline Hanson. But any reading of the statements issued by ACL puts Howard’s Liberal National Coalition at a close second.

Relief from my frustration with this culturally and politically conservative model of Christian values in national politics has arrived, though - in the form of a Tory-style sex scandal…naturally! On the day ACL launched their campaign, one of ‘Family First’s’ endorsed candidates, Andrew Quah, turned up naked on a swag of gay websites via a series of self-portraits in which he is seen topless and pulling his penis out of his pants for assessment. He defended the photos like this: "I might have been drunk off my face or my political enemies might have drugged me." Yeah, good one Andrew, your political enemies drugged you into flashing your 'bits' in a mirror and taking a self-portrait! He also claimed: "that's not my penis...it might have been photo-shopped." Witty scribes are referring to him as 'Australia's Smallest Loser'. Too funny! To top it off, later in the day he admitted to being a regular visitor to pornography websites. Suffice it to say he's been dis-endorsed and expelled from the party.

Meanwhile, the engineer of Howard's much maligned industrial revolution, 'Workchoices', Tony Abbott, had a shocker on Wednesday. He began the day with a mea culpa to the legendary workers' rights campaigner, Bernie Banton. Bernie has three months to live – he's a victim of the James Hardie asbestos scandal and the man who forced that recalcitrant multinational to their knees in the fight for compensation for thousands of asbestosis victims. But he's a thorn in the side of this government's anti-union campaign and Abbott took a swipe at him on the campaign trail. Big mistake. Then, the Health Minister (a former seminarian and another morals campaigner) arrived half an hour late to a nationally televised debate with his Labor opponent, Nicola Roxon. She won over the tough National Press Club audience by debating herself and offering to impersonate the minister. Abbott apologised profusely for his lateness - when he eventually did arrive - but then, at the end of the debate, he was sprung on tape swearing at Roxon and accusing her of taking advantage of his predicament…further apologies will no doubt follow.

Then, the Prime Minister was hounded by satirists targeting ‘yesterday’s man’. Howard was chased on his morning walk (during which he always looks ridiculous dressed in some national team's training tracksuit) by four women wearing vintage 50's gear (hats, gloves, the works!), carrying tins labelled 'Xenophobia in a Can' and a big card with the word 'race' emblazoned on it. They called themselves the 'John Howard Ladies' Auxiliary' and kept urging him to "Play the race card, Mr Howard." Howard is getting increasingly tetchy about the attention of humourists on his daily walk – the 'Chaser' boys are always hot on his heels. They’ve ‘chased’ him with a giant worm – mocking the PM’s refusal to allow the audience meter known as the ‘worm’ to track reaction to his performance during his controversial first debate with Kevin Rudd (and, if he gets his way, it will be the only debate we’ll see this election). They also tailed him in a De Lorean – the classic 80’s car used to transport Michael J Fox ‘Back to the Future’ – driven by a man in white lab coat and a grey wig impersonating the film’s eccentric inventor of time travel. Satire is the real star of this campaign.

Labor didn’t escape the week untainted by comedy either. Kevin Rudd was publicly humiliated by his taste for ear wax. Old footage of him picking wax from his ear and eating it (eewwwwww!) during a House of Representatives debate surfaced and was broadcast on CNN and, of course, it was run on a loop on Australian TV. But at least he managed a self-deprecating laugh at the expose.

Less funny for Labor was the ‘jocular’ gaffe of the former Midnight Oil front-man and Opposition Environment spokesman (critics would supplant ‘spokesman’ with ‘sellout’) Peter Garrett. ‘Big Pete’, let the cat out of the bag during an airport exchange with a shock-jock who took a swipe at him over Labor’s ‘me-tooism’ (i.e. the perception that Labor is campaigning as a Coalition clone with a younger face). Garrett’s naively unguarded response was to declare that the copycat routine was designed to win votes: "once we get in we'll just change it all" he reportedly said. Garrett dismissed the conversation as a case of ‘jocularity’ and then added the spin that of course things would be different under Labor – new leader, new vision, abolition of ‘Workchoices’ blah, blah, blah. He sounded like a broken record in the ‘setting-the-record-straight’ press conference which followed and was broadcast nationally by ABC radio. The sound of pedals in reverse, full speed, is really quite grinding.

Ah, what sport the pollies make for us! Who said politics wasn’t entertaining?    [read more]