All aboard the conspiracy bus.
The media pack following Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, in the absence of external stimulus in the form of policies, has turned inward.
We now theorise wildly about everything to do with this campaign. The trip is tightly controlled (although apparently not as rigid and paranoid as the Gillard campaign, where the media pack is rumoured to
be on the edge of revolt).
We never know where we’re going next.
So in those idle moments when we’re waiting for the Coalition’s annointed one to spring onto a stage somewhere, or when we’re sitting on a plane with our myriad electronic devices switched off, we speculate.
He hasn’t been to Adelaide yet, maybe we’ll end up there. But Gillard’s just gone there and he wouldn’t want to look like he’s following her. But there are some really marginal seats he needs to get to and the electorates are feeling ignored, so maybe it will be the City of Churches after all.
The spectacular fall from grace of Liberal candidate David Barker – he of the anti-Islamic comments and the topless poses amongst the ferns – prompt more Machiavellian thoughts.
The first question was “How on Earth did he ever get preselected in the first place?” Then, very quickly, there were revelations senior Labor members had been warned about his extreme views on Muslims.
Apparently they’d been warned he was a bit of a homophobe as well.
Soooo… maybe he was parachuted into that unwinnable seat in Western Sydney as a patsy, we speculate. There to raise those sort of popular bits of bigotry in the name of the Coalition, get that word out there, before the Party Proper feigned shock and horror and quickly got rid of him.
A neat way to speak to both sides, maybe.
And, in the wake of that leak on Gillard, all sorts of theories came out of the woodwork.
Was it Rudd? Or was it someone wanting to discredit Rudd? Or was it Rudd thinking people would think it was someone wanting to discredit Rudd?
You see how all this is interesting, but ultimately baseless and useless speculation.
It’s not, however, all our fault. We need more distractions. We need real leaders with real policies. Real debates.
The only joys of this election campaign lie in the rogue candidates, the David Barkers of this world.
The media ends up seizing on the smallest gaffe with joy. Was that a slip up on tax rates? Is Abbott’s tongue really protruding with concentration as he carefully works a mini excavator? Did that
candidate just say something that veers slightly away from the party line?
Of course the one conspiracy theory that is most likely to be true is that this charade is designed to restrict proper analysis. Early starts, late nights, hours on planes without connections to the outside world, fatigue, trips halfway across the country followed by short conferences followed by a trip all the way back.
This Magical Mystery Tour is really about keeping us like mushrooms.
Honestly, if they were smart they they’d keep us drunk all the time rather than putting us on ‘dry planes’, ensuring we have no free time, and keeping us busy reporting on trivialities. Let us impair our own critical faculties, it would be a win-win for all of us.
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@DarrenFerrari @andrewcatsaras And so he should be. He might be the chap humming in the background to the end of the recording.
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