HOW WE SEE IT! Let the election campaign entertainment begin

With Bryan Littlely and Shaun Hollis

Last updated:
Cartoon by SHAUN HOLLIS

On what is surely the eve of a Federal Election announcement, I have to confess to quite often being a bigger fan of the stunts and pathetic plays for votes politicians (or wannabe politicians) are about to make than I am of the policies I need to consider.

I do try to keep across both, and for very good reason. Our votes do - or I still expect - count for something.

Then Prime Minister Scott Morrison in the 2022 campaign got it all wrong - more than once - with stunts… going viral for all the wrong reasons when the suited and bespectacled top dog fired up a drop saw without any safety equipment.

Earlier that year plenty of fun was poked at Morrison when he was trying his hand at welding and he lifted the welding mask for the photoshoot.

Speaking of face coverings, you cannot forget Pauline Hanson wearing a burqa in the Senate for sensational political stunts. Not in an election campaign but top end head scratching form by the “face” of One Nation.

Hanson’s 12 minute murder video made in 1997, a “last will and testament” after she received death threats, was another spectacularly odd stunt from her… then again there has never been any suggestion from any side of Australian politics or the public that the death threats were not real. The same, I consider, cannot be said about both of the more recent election campaign assassination attempts on the now leader of the free world.

Australian Democrats leader Andrew Bartlett killed his own 2004 Federal Election campaign by jumping from a great height on the Gold Coast… with a bungee rope attached.

The intention may have been to draw attention to the party’s policy on public liability insurance premiums but the “seriously weird” stunt saw the Democrats take a dive in the polls also… losing three Senate seats and recording their lowest vote to date.

And then, in 2014, there was Liberal firebrand Bill Heffernan’s show and tell during a Budget estimates hearing with senior officials from the AFP.

Bill pulled out a bloody pipe bomb of the kind he used as a young farm boy to “blow tree stumps to buggery’’.

I’ve been on scene first hand when election campaigns have had a stunt gone wrong, been accused of derailing some campaigns, and have also been thrust into “stunt like” media coverage.

I remember as part of the 2007 Federal Election coverage the theme used was to dress up one of my colleagues (now in the middle of a pressure cooker political environment himself) as an elephant to visit polling booths and crash candidates as they pressed the flesh with a message of “an elephant never forgets”.

I wouldn’t say chaperoning a bloke in a white elephant suit around Adelaide and writing about it was a highlight of my journalism career, but when a high profile candidate, the wife of a former coach of an AFL team, so mistakenly thought it was rising Federal Senator Nick Xenophon dressed as Dumbo, it did make for some great copy.

And I am told - at least by way of the political prospect himself barnstorming the daily metro’s front entrance security with threats to punch my lights out - that I derailed his chances of winning by revealing on election day eve the Family First candidate was a deadbeat dad who had not paid child support for the three eldest of his children for over a decade.

Genuinely, I think we deserve in Leichhardt to not have a scandal this Federal Election… but I do hope for just a little bit of entertainment.

 

Support public interest journalism

Help us to continue covering local stories that matter. Please consider supporting below.

Got a news tip?

Send a news tip or submit a letter to the Newsport Editor here.

Comments

Comments are the opinions of readers and do not represent the views of Newsport, its staff or affiliates. Reader comments are moderated before publication to promote valuable, civil, and healthy community debate. Visit our comment guidelines if your comment has not been approved for publication.