Where do I even start?  I’ve been contemplating a post over the last few days about how terrifying and depressing I find US politics… but now Australian politics has descended into farce, which would be a lot funnier if the punchline didn’t look an awful lot like getting the mad monk for PM.  And while he isn’t quite as insane as the GOP seems to be on the subject of women generally, he certainly leans in that direction.

My choir has universally declared in favour of Malcolm Turnbull for Labor Party leader and PM.  (Point of information for overseas readers: Malcolm Turnbull is a member of the Liberal Party, and our best hope for dislodging Abbott.  He’d still make a better Labor Party leader than either of the current candidates, I suspect.)  I did suggest that Andrew Wilkie would be more entertaining, but someone else capped this notion with the Mad Katter, after which we all decided that we’d stick with Malcolm, thanks.

I do find it fairly disgusting the way the media goes on about how this is a soap opera, when they were pretty much the ones who wrote the script for it – they’ve been going on and on and ON about how Rudd is sure to challenge and Gillard can’t cope since about five minutes after she became Prime Minister.  And I have to say, Gillard’s supporters are not doing her any good – they are, on the whole, making Rudd look like the wronged party, and like the sane one.  Though Stephen Smith did a nice job of being diplomatic on the Late Show.  Maybe he could be the PM?

Just not Tony.  Please, not Tony.  Which means that Labor needs to find a leader who actually knows how to play politics *outside* the party room and parliament.  Because it really doesn’t matter, in the long term, how many of their colleagues they can convince to come to the party if the Australian public won’t vote for them.  And given what a horrendous job they have done so far of letting the public know what they’ve achieved (and they have achieved a fair bit, both under Rudd and under Gillard), and what an excellent job Mr PetulantWhinypantsIShouldHaveBeenElected has done of loudly criticising their every move, they are going to have to work hard to get any votes at all.

(and, actually, if I were the Liberal Party right now, I’d wait until the dust had settled and then have Turnbull successfully challenge Abbot for leadership.  Because Abbott is, still, a bit too much for a lot of Australians to swallow, but if we are given the option of Turnbull, there’s every chance Liberal will win in a landslide.  I can’t decide whether I want Turnbull to get the leadership or not, to be honest.  On the one hand, I really don’t trust a Liberal government not to knock us into the financial crisis that Labor has so far avoided – on the other hand, I suspect a Liberal government is inevitable, in which case I’d far rather have Turnbull in charge of it…)