Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Backpackers!

Actually, maybe I should've called this one 'SEX!' Just to pique people's interest:



But anyway, the Victorian State Election is done and is rapidly disappearing into the rear view for most people (Huh? Wha?) but I think it would be most remiss to let it go completely without some discussion of the 'Australian Sex Party' (not that I could ever actually let it go, of course).

You know those Sex Party people, they were the ones dressed in un-political (i.e. bright and interesting) clothes outside major polling booths, handing out the flyers about un-political issues (i.e. personal freedom and human rights). And they did quite well in the election, for a new party run by a handful of amateur volunteers, garnering nearly 13 000 first preference votes in the lower house and roughly the same in each of the four upper house districts they contested (running as high as 15 735 votes in West Metro). Not enough to get anyone elected but a pretty good showing nonetheless.

But that's not what anyone wants to read about when you mention something like the 'Australian Sex Party.' We want sex! And if we can't have sex, then we at least want something kinky, fruity, outrageous or un-political.

And they didn't fail to deliver in this area either. We had the battle over the Federal Government's dislike of female ejaculation... and the Sex Party's Bayswater Candidate Sortiria Stratis saying (gasp!) 'fuck' while on the campaign trail (well, sort of)... and their candidate for Richmond, Angela White, sending then State Treasurer Rob Hulls a porno film she'd been in:



To which Mr Hulls said something like, 'Sex? What's that?'

But my favourite 'Australian Sex Party' story relates to those volunteers I mentioned at the beginning. It seems that, small low-rent operation that it was, the ASP wasn't quite able to muster up enough people to man all the polling stations they wanted on election day. Their solution to this problem was simple: Pay a bunch of British backpackers $150 for the day to do it. ASP leader Fiona Patten confirmed that this had occurred and added that 'most of them we kept on to clean up after 'Sexpo' too.'

And this made me realise that we've been overlooking a vast, untapped resource in this country. The backpackers! There's lots of them, they're poor and they'll do anything for money! And not very much money! This is who we should have cleaning up our streets, planting our trees, emptying our bins and rebuilding our public transport infrastructure. It'll only cost about four bucks and a slab of beer. They're going to clog up our beaches and pubs all summer so we may as well get some bloody value out of them!

With a bit of luck and foresight, we could even end up with the same wonderful situation that people in the US enjoy:

No comments:

Post a Comment