The Australian 3 September 2011

Everything, as we all know, is somebody else’s fault. In a healthy democracy like ours, this is codified in the principle of the Separation Of Blame. The voters and the media generally blame the government and the government blames the opposition, the media and occasionally the judiciary for a bit of variety, but secretly blames the voters.

The judges tend to keep it to themselves except in a professional capacity, the smug bastards.

Leadership speculation is of course the media’s fault. Some journo gets a bit bored with the incumbent and says he or she looks a bit tired or has a nose-whistle or chews their breakfast cereal in an irritating fashion and everybody hops on board and soon we have a brand new Prime Minister to become increasingly disillusioned with.

Unfortunately in this media-savvy era everyone’s got wise to this and now the media can cause a leadership spill by not speculating about the leadership, as happened in the most recent case. So, rather than perpetuate this baffling postmodern trend, I humbly present my grossly irresponsible official leadership speculation cartoon above and another, generously suggesting a potential solution to the problem, below.

The Hobart Mercury 3 September 2011