Wish list: the hung parliament of my dreams

For me personally, the novelty of having an historic hung parliament wore off the minute I ran out of jokes about man-bits. A common sentiment is that both major parties failed to engage Gen Y. It’s probably safe to say they failed to engage anybody (except, of course, their various pets).

We’ve truly witnessed the yawn of a new era in Australian politics. Question Time hasn’t exactly made for riveting viewing of late and squabbles over war-zone flight itineraries have been less than inspiring.

We’ve had decisions to be indecisive and agreements to disagree. Powerful stuff.

I’ve had a fair bit of time since to think about what kind of party I would actually feel like voting for.

So as Parliament closes for the politically non-silly season, here’s what my “political” party of choice would look like:

1 Their “How To Vote” cards will simply say “make sure your numbers don’t go outside the little boxes provided”.

2 They will occasionally follow a booming, impassioned “Mr Speaker!” with something like “...what’s your favourite ice-cream flavour?” or “What’s heavier? A ton of bricks or a ton of assorted stationery?”

3 Each week a different up-and-coming local band will be contracted to release a cover of their favourite parliamentary speech or major announcement on iTunes. Little Red could set the timeless classic “Sorry Guys, ‘Surplus’ Was A Typo (We Actually Meant To Say Massive Deficit)” to some bright, poppy licks. Catchy.

4 They won’t win an election through a complicated series of deals whereby a vote for independent “X”, parties “Y, D and Q” or drawing a new box and labelling it “The bad guy from Die Hard” is actually a vote for said party.

5 They will believe in climate change, but not because the water features at their manor have been playing up.

6 They won’t shriek in terror, hide under a bed and cry until someone brings them a banana smoothie whenever they hear a boat-load of eight-year-old asylum seekers (a-hem, sorry, “filthy queue-jumpers”) has been intercepted.

7 Every ministerial statement will contain at least three pop-culture references to 80s action movies (e.g. “Yes, we probably shouldn’t have said that, but they drew first blood. They drew first blood…”) and a link to LOLcats.

8 Their Facebook and Twitter accounts won’t make us think “wow, your 23-year-old PR people are really in touch with Gen Y”.

9 When the Opposition points out a gaping hole in one of their policies, they will respond as follows:  “Oops. Yeah now that we really think about it, that’s a little bit shit, isn’t it? Okay tell you what, we’ll try and sort it out and get back to you in a few days with a better proposal.”

10 Once a month, they will “leak” a fake document that outlines plans to invade New Zealand, invest in Lego infrastructure or construct the world’s largest Backgammon set.

11 At least one senior party member will be a trained Karate expert so they can roundhouse kick Mark Latham in the face at various war veterans’ meetings and public gatherings.

12 If the party leader doesn’t understand the finer technical points of a policy, he or she will simply say “I’d better hand you over to so-and-so who can better explain that one”.

13 Every press release containing a boring, nothing statement will be appropriately labelled as such and include the warning “print at own risk”.

14 They will have their own hilarious party uniform (I personally like the blue jumpsuits and red beanies in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou).

15 If the election produces a hung parliament, they will make a penis joke.