Trying too hard

I was a side-line fan of the Democrats (the Australian ones) during their glory days with The Stott and The Kernot. The Democrats had that feel-good lefty platform of concern for all things green, for human rights and civil liberties, for reconcilation with indigenous Australians, for putting the nukes back in the cupboard, etc, that made me want to be a better person.

Then they did some silly things with the GST and one of their chappies got drunk and assaulted a Liberal Senator on the floor of Parliament and several Democrat senators decided they didn't want to play anymore so took their balls and went home without standing for re-election.

The result is national support for the party of 1.24%, and Andrew Winderlich, who has the inauspicious title of being the last remaining parliamentary Democrat in any Australian parliament. Woo yeah, go team!

But they're trying to turn it all around. They've launched a new website, www.bastardwatch.com.au, and have come up with a game called Grill a Bastard where you get to barbecue, as in 'grill' (haw haw), politicians from the major parties until they give you honest answers to their political rhetoric: Peter Garrett said "we should reconfigure our economy to harness instead of degrade nature" then approved a pulp mill; Malcolm Turnbull said his party would support an emissions trading scheme "come what may" but is now trying the delay the start of said scheme, etc.

Yeah sure the whole "keep the bastards honest" thing is a Democrat line from way back, but today they just sound like the kids in the playground trying to get people to like them by saying shocking words like "bum" and "fart".