Category Archives: Election Cartoons

Cartoons about the 2010 election

Should have worried about stopping the speedos

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The Sunday Telegraph, 22 August 2010

In a classic piece of misdirection, Tony Abbott suckered the Queen of the Rangas into thinking that stopping the boats was the problem when all the time she should have been worrying about the budgie smugglers.

Is it any coincidence that Tony ‘s been running around the country in suspiciously bulging lycra and all of a sudden Right-Wing Budgies* are popping up all over the place? Especially in the warmer states where a bloke wearing speedos wouldn’t be out of place??

Coincidence? I think not.

The above map was my best guess of how the election was going to turn out for The Sunday Tele. Of course, the devil’s in the detail and crack squads of well-armed zoo-political commandos have been deployed to see what sort of exotic fauna is infesting the non ranga/budgie electorates. Whatever wildlife they bring back to Canberra, it’s going to be one hell of a circus.

*Right-Wing Budgie or melopsittacus megalodextrous – endemic Australian budgerigar particularly noted for its repetitive cry of “stop the boats!” while flying in circles.

Okay, here’s what you said…

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The People have Spoken and in the next excruciating episode of So You Think You Can Be Prime Minister, contestants Julia and Tony will be frantically scurrying around trying to tell us what we just said.

Having suffered through the whole hung parliament thing in Tasmania earlier this year, I should probably warn you that if you think the bullshit flowed thick and fast during the election campaign, you ain’t seen nothing yet. However, once all the shouting about the popular vote, who got the most number of seats and non-existent mandates is over, it will of course boil down to the only vote that really matters, which is who can muster a majority of votes on the floor of the House of Reps and convince the GG that it wasn’t a fluke.

While I am sure that the suddenly remarkably popular independents will mention the national interest more than once in the ensuing bargaining period, it’s Christmas for their respective electorates, and as a resident of  The Electorate Formerly Known As We’re-Taking-You-For-Granted (aka Denison), I for one can’t wait for my pressies.

Of course, if neither side manages to bully, bribe, blackmail or buy their way to 76 votes, it’s back to the polls we go, and if either Julia or Tony is in any doubt as to what the People Spake last night, I think it’s something along the lines of “stop treating us like idiots”, which is not to say that politicians don’t always treat us like idiots, it’s just that this time around it was so clumsily done that we finally noticed.

It’s nearly all over, shout the bar

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The Hobart Mercury, 21 August 2010

It’s nearly that time again. Anthony Green’s been taken out of cryogenic suspension and bunged into the ABC microwave to be thawed and ready in time for the frantic speculation to begin. Yes, I could just go out on the piss and wait for the adding up to be finished, but failing to attempt to second-guess the voting public based on statistically inadequate data would be to negate the one thing that modern politics truly stands for.

Sure, it’s been a shithouse election but bugger it, it’s going to be close and it’s downright unAustralian not to love a contest. Let us all celebrate The One Poll That Matters in all its obsessive, bewildering, 3-D graphical glory and for goodness’ sakes, somebody buy Abbott a proper beer tonight.

Happy election day

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The Australian, 21 August 2010

It’s safe to say that neither  of our aspiring leaders has exactly captured the public’s imagination in the last few weeks, and as the entire campaign has been all about our aspiring leaders, this probably explains why the result is so hard to pick. We get the government we deserve, so whichever side wins today, let’s consider all our sins paid in full and vow to try harder next time.

Happy Election Day and cheer up, whoever wins might not see out a full term anyway.

The baby-kissing bonus

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It’s possible you’ve been wondering why our pollies have been banging on about the catastrophic effects of voting for the other guy (or gal) for what feels like years, and yet the official “launches” only occurred just recently. Perhaps the delayed launches are meant to deliver some sort of subliminal message about stopping the boats, but the cynic in me suspects that it’s got more to do with the subject of the admittedly incredibly expository cartoon above.

Yep, until the election campaign is officially “launched”, the travelling circus designed to deliver power to our politicians and spit to the cheeks of babies in marginal electorates is on our dime. Tony’s launch was a week earlier than Julia’s, so maybe that’s what he means by “ending the waste”.

Anyway, next time a politician picks up one of your kids for a snog, I recommend buggering off to the pub to get a couple of hours’ childcare out of it.