Shaggy Dog Comments...

Issue 740

The hip and groovy dudes at the Australian Electoral Commission are offering kids, aged 12-25, the chance to win a Sony Playstation 2 if they register to vote. To enter, go to www.thesource.gov.au/aec/aec.htm and explain in 100 words or less 'How will enrolling and voting in the upcoming federal election make a difference to your future?' Entries close on October 30.

Labor candidate Terry Flanagan claims to have knocked on 20,000 doors since he began his campaign. He doesn't mention how many were opened. The perils of door knocking were revealed by John Anderson when he opened MP Larry Anthony's campaign office this week. Speaking to the party faithful, he recounted: 'Doorknocking is not always easy. I went doorknocking the other day in Albury with Bill Bott the candidate down there. We knocked on the door of the first house - you know, television cameras everywhere. No answer. We knocked on the door of the second house. No answer. Third house. No answer. Fourth house, out comes a bloke about my age sort of blinking saying, 'I'm no use to you - I'm from Melbourne and I fly for Hazelton. And I'm trying to get some sleep'.'

The Nats call Anderson's tour of regional Australia 'The Wombat Trail'. Now, a wombat's main claim to fame is that it eats roots and leaves. Perhaps the trail was named in honour of retired MP Ian Sinclair.

Aging Nimbin hippie Graeme Dunstan was last seen in Aston campaigning as the HEMP candidate in the by-election, and accusing Treasurer Peter Costello of being a university dope smoker. He's back, with a motley crew of anti-war protestors in Lismore on Wednesday. When the deputy PM dropped by to open Ian Causley's campaign office after cycling around Byron and being sprayed with rose water at an essential oils company, new age John was happy to have a debate with the protestors, but couldn't get a word in edgeways and was told he was in a minority of 'fat white men' who would die of cancer if they didn't listen. But the absolute corker from the pacifists, who started fighting among themselves about whether they should let him speak, was when a young female protestor claimed that Hitler was supported by Australia and 'welcomed into this country when Germany was at war with Russia'. She needs to go back and check her Marxist textbooks. During WWII, Stalin was on Our Side, dear. Only Chamberlain was prepared to bargain with Hitler - and look where that got him.

One of the more respectable members of the rabble, posing as a journalist, managed to sneak inside, and joined the media scrum for a press conference with Anderson. While the national media grilled him about issues like the war in Afghanistan, the interloper speculated about aspirations the Nats could only ever dream of. She asked the deputy PM if he will become the next Prime Minister. The nation's bemused 2IC politely said 'no', but the interrogator pressed on undeterred, asking 'will you lead the Coalition?' A sanguine Anderson replied 'No, I lead the National Party'.

While hecklers were giving John Anderson hell a few doors up the street on Wednesday, this red-bellied black snake slithered into Labor's campaign office and curled up by the door. It was rescued from the election frenzy by a local snake wrangler. We're unsure whether it discovered any rats in the ranks, but it did seem to have more backbone than many in the party at the moment.