Carlo Sands

Having tried absolutely everything they could think of to win the support of voters besides push good polices in favour of working people, there was really nothing for Labor's parliamentary caucus to do except launch yet another leadership spill on March 21. It might have been a farce that will help worsen Labor's defeat in September, but it did reveal one startling fact: Simon Crean is still in parliament. I know, right?

Venezuela’s socialist president, Hugo Chavez, died on March 5, and if there is one thing we can take away from coverage in the Western mainstream media is there is now one less dictator threatening the free world. Sure, on the surface, Chavez didn’t really seem like much of a dictator, what with the whole coming to power through free elections and encouraging unprecedented political participation by ordinary citizens thing. But it is just like those serial killers whose neighbours always say seemed so nice until the horrible truth came out.

That Richard Hinds needs a few lessons in sports journalism.

“Such has been the atmosphere created by the Western Sydney Wanderers' fans, usually dispassionate critics have left Parramatta Stadium raving the experience makes the Camp Nou [in Barcelona] seem like a winter night at the Wentworth Park dogs,” Richard Hinds, the chief sports columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald, had the sheer gall to write on February 18.

“Enough is enough,” warned a full page ad taken out by the Mineral Council of Australia in the February 13 Australian, “in relation to the obsession with increasing taxes on mining in Australia." It was like an exasperated parent pushed too far by a naughty child. “Enough! Go back to playing with your toys. What about the welfare recipients? You love kicking them! Go on, leave us adults alone!”

Naturally, once Julia Gillard called the federal election for September 14, it was all hands on deck in Labor to spruik the party and its many great achievements to ensure Tony Abbott is denied keys to The Lodge.

This is surely a country that could use a bit of good news. It has been a tough few weeks with raging bushfires, severe flooding and, just when it seemed it couldn't get worse, the heartbreaking news we will be subjected to the longest election campaign in Australian history.

The Only Democracy In the Middle East (TM) held elections on January 22, which is what all good democracies do — even if not all those actually governed by the Israeli Knesset got to vote.

It is nearly that time again, the time to celebrate all that is great about this nation on the date that commemorates its founding by Europeans who discovered what they considered an empty continent. We have made a lot of progress since then. For instance in 1967 we agreed in a landmark national vote that Aboriginal people were people, and not fauna.

For a brief moment last month, as the bombs fell and destruction spread, Gaza was a lead story for the world's media. But now the plight of 1.5 million people living in an over crowded open-air prison, routinely attacked and denied essential medicines, has made way for a far more important story: an English aristocrat is knocked up.

It is a common refrain, repeated in Facebook memes and exploited in any number of corporate ads: “Be yourself! Celebrate who you are!” Which is all well and good, but what if you are a bastard? For instance, I don't actually think Alan Joyce should keep on “being himself”. The union-bashing Qantas CEO, who last year locked out his entire workforce, just can't seem to control his anti-worker impulses — announcing in recent weeks that 400 more engineering jobs would be slashed.

“In a war between the civilised man and the savage, support the civilised man.” So declared billboards on New York’s subways paid for by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) early in August. But, let’s face it, in these days of horrific mass slaughter, it can be difficult to determine who is who. So the AFDI ads spell it out: “Support Israel! Defeat Jihad!”

I have been reminded lately of that line from that famous song: “How many polls must an anti-capitalist win, before we call him a democrat?”