Will the Australian ship of state drift on Rudderless, or will Monday see ‘woman overboard’?

This Big Bash sure ain’t cricket, in more ways than one.

But what it is is show biz at its most engrossing. They could sell tickets for it, and plaster lurid posters about the place – can’t you just see it. The Magpie can and will share his vision with you.

The state campaign grinds on in the background, and throws up the question: bad look or good judgment – The Brisbane Bantam Campbell Gunna Newman cuts short his FIFO campaign in the regions and flies back to his home roost of Brisbane, piqued at being upstaged by Canberra. Is this further vote-grabbing fodder for Katter’s badly trailing Cut Snake Party? 

And on the local scene, The ‘Pie keeps hearing that a certain former mayor might just still be a shimmering presence in the upcoming mayoral race.  NO NO stop packing your bags, it isn’t Capt Snooze.

For your weekly dose of misinformation and twaddle, it’s all here at www.townsvillemagpie.com.au

It’s been a few days of ‘poisonous soap opera’ , as Wingnut Abbott described it. Well yes, and it could also be a great movie.

‘Coming to a movie theatre near you, the stirring saga of Australia’s political Armageddon. Be frightened by the Faceless Men , get drenched by secret leaks from all sides,  thrill to the flash of blood-soaked knives, try to keep up with double and triple crosses, learn the sordid secrets of the shadowy corridors of the past power and be aroused by full-frontal naked egos … Yes, in vivid red and white, the stark choice for our future leadership, the blockbuster movie ‘Dud and Dudder’.

The producers say if this flick is the success they expect, there will be a daytime TV soap spin-off to rival As The World Turns … only the Aussie political version will be titled ‘ When The Worm Turns’.

And the only man happier and luckier than honeymoon killer Gabe Watson right now is the coalition leader, as Bentley points out.

With KRudd on the comeback trail, the nation is prompted to fall back on the dreaded C-word.

That word, to save you, gentle reader, from a mistaken fit of the vapors, is Cynical, although depending on your point of view and your personal propriety, another C word may spring to mind if not lip. And it ain’t Cripes!

There is the old truism that the only time a politician tells the truth is when he or she calls another politician a liar.

So, just when we thought it was safe to turn on the telly again, all of a sudden there was the familiar oily, insincere drone of  KRudd, complete with his trademark verbal tics‘ ….. I’ll tell you what’, and ‘ ‘and do y’know what’ – a style that The Magpie’s old nana used to call ‘creeping Jesus’ talk.

All of a sudden, he was keen to let us know that he had been fibbibg a bit and was in fact far from being his previously avowed ‘happy little Vegemite’. Indeed, if his verbal delivery wasn’t so ingratiatingly bland, the advertising character our former prime minister most evoked was that of Louie The Fly.  All the while looking like the Milky Bar Kid.

But if he was Louie, with thoughts of further despoiling  an already contaminated Labor Party, he suddenly discovered he was up against Mortein Julia.

Boy, when this gal gets her back to the wall … or, as Mongrel the Barrister so gallantly put it ‘ as close to a wall her alluringly large bum will allow’ – she displays a ferocity and directness we haven’t seen in a politician since Vlad the Impaler. Her measured flat vowels make it all the more menacing. No one could blame male reporters if they started wearing cricket boxes to media conferences if they were planning any tricky questions.

Or perhaps, in this overworked old load of metaphors, we should turn to The Muppets.

As the unedifying spectacle of KRudd and The Ranga ripping and gouging at each other kept us rapt in front of the screen, The ‘Pie realized there could be a much better – and lucrative – way to choose our PM, a television bonanza.

A celebrity bake-off a la Masterchef!!

‘Good evening, contestants. Tonight, we will want you to use the secret ingredients  of sour grapes, bitter chocolate and stale eggs to make a soufflé that can rise twice. Going to use any shorten in the mix? Off you go. And a warning again … remember if either of you reach for the milk of human kindness, you will be automatically disqualified.’

But the circular aspect of all this has one goggling in wonder: that the  ALP is even considering replacing a prime minister because of her disastrously low ratings in the polls (the ones they never take any notice of, remember) – with a person who was so equally unpopular when he was the top dog that he was knifed in the first place.  

A strange by-product of all this is its affect on the Queensland election campaign, with Campbell Newman cutting short his regional campaigning and flouncing off back to Brisbane. The stated reason was to ‘reassess campaign strategy’ which is the greatest load of codswallop of the week. The unofficial spin is that state messages can’t get through because everyone is 100% pre-occupied with the Canberra flapdoodle. If that’s the case, why is Newman campaigning not just in Ashgrove (with a suddenly available Tony Abbott) when no one wants to listen.

Surely with the spectacle of Labor publicly gnawing on its own entrails, this would be the ideal time to hammer home the message that it’s time to change. Instead, the LNP leader has made it look like a retreat from the bush for his preferred metropolitan heartland.

This is a bad look for the man who would be premier, and is fuelling the fires of discontent among those who perceive that the Bantam will unfairly fawn on the south-east corner if elected, at the expense of the regions. Possibly not true, but perception is everything in politics, and this is one of the rare times when Anna Blight got it right … she’s ploughing on among we yokels.

The one bloke who must be gurgling and squeaking happily is Bob Katter and his Cut Snake Party.  This is just the sort of thing he needs to bolster his meager numbers – he may well have paid for the Bantam’s air fare back south with a note of thanks for the votes.

Finally, can His Radiance (that is, Tony Mooney, remember him?) be completely discounted from having a crack at mayor again? Plenty of people are telling The Magpie that his popularity has been bolstered by what some have unkindly called a mediocre mayoral field. On top of that, The ‘Pie hears that when in public, he is constantly approached by scores of people, many of them strangers, begging him to have a go.

If he did, he’d probably win, but it  wouldn’t be going back to the glory days. For a start, he’d have a rag-tag-and-bobtail mob of councilors who may not be amenable to the old Mooney Labor-dominated one-armed aerobics class –‘all those in favor, raise hands, now down again, one, two’. And towards the end, His Radiance didn’t take too kindly to even mild disagreement, but his skin may have thickened up a bit by now.

Too late for him to put a team in place? No, not at all, because all he has to do is list those council candidates from any side that he would be happy to work with, thus endorsing a de facto team.

Be that as it may, anyone of any fairness who looks at modern Townsville must acknowledge that, rightly or wrongly, His Radiance was the pivotal action man who set the foundations to make it happen – both the good and the bad. (Not to mention, leaving behind a sizeable debt).

Although unlikely, what a hoot if he ran … all bets would be off, The Mullet would have her dainties in a twist, , Dale Last would start thinking about renewing his career as a walloper and Jeff Jimmeison, if he had any sense of reality, wouldn’t even bother nominating.  And if His Radiance got up, The Magpie would be set for four years of old-style fun.

Enough now, it is away to Poseurs’ Bar,  where The Magpie will be careful not to make bad jokes about ‘getting up’, ‘back to the wall’  or scurrying away leaving things half finished.