The Clowncar School of Politics

(Note I originally wrote this a few weeks ago, but never got round to posting it)

Going on the evidence today, Australia doesn't have a parliament, it has a clown car. A great big clown car with a giant flag on top and covered in grass.

There are so many different things which point to the Clown Car model of government that I'm only going to have enough room to list a few in this post:

Question Time

Question Time in the house of Reps is the centre ring in which our clown car inhabitants perform. Whether it's Government back benchers hand balling marshmellow questions which all seem to follow the same formula:

"Will the minister/Prime Minister please explain how awesome we are, and by the way is there anyone in this house who smells like a diseased donkey carcass?"

Or its opposition members lobbing questions like the following:

"Why won't the Prime Minister admit that she hates children, eats small puppies for breakfast and hasn't worn a clean pair of knickers in years? Oh and she's barren by choice the anti-family witch!?!?!"

Then when the PM doesn't give the answer the questioner wants (which appears to be "Of course, how silly of me I'm going to go quit, get married and have kids right now!") the opposition launches a series of "Point Of Order"s (or POOs) or behaves like they never actually left year 9.

Then we have the daily censure motions.

Pretty much every freaking day Tony Abbott stands up in during Question Time and moves that Standing Orders be suspended so that he can move a censure motion against the Government. Of course when this happens, Question Time is essentially over for the day and we get half an hour of ranting and posturing that ends with the same result, the motion is defeated and everyones time is wasted.

Quite what the hell Abbott thinks he's achieiving is beyond me. 99% of people don't give a flying crap about what happens in Question Time, and the 1% of people who do have started running a book on twitter as to the time the motion to suspend will be called.

Joe Hockey, Shadow Treasurer and Twitter Clown

So, today was the anniversay of the Spillard. Those fateful hours in which the faceless men of the Labor party decided that because the polls were down, they weren't down enough so hey, lets ditch our leader. Rudd was elbowed out and Gillard stepped up to the plate to "take control" and "bring the government back on task".

Naturally of course, the opposition was going to be running with this all day. Never mind that the opposition leader did exactly the same thing to his predecessor, or that in fact the opposition leader managed to lose an election that by rights he should have romped home.

So what does Dear Joe do to celebrate this special day? He (or a staffer) spends the day taking a freaking cardboard cutout of Kevin Rudd around Canberra and taking pictures. 

What the hell?

Seriously?

This man gets paid at least $132,000 a year, his staffers less than that, but not an inconsequential amount. He has two jobs. Firstly and foremost, he is meant to represent the people of North Sydney. He is their advocate in the federal parliament and in the Liberal Party. Secondly he is the freaking Shadow Treasurer. He is meant to be the person who will step into control of our nations finances should his party win power in the next election, and this is how he spends his time?!?