Friday 29th of March 2024

Springwood gig ()

G'day.I'm home after a weird experience at Springwood in the lower Blue Mountains. I'd thought it was basically a book launch, but the poster outside the civic centre read 'Reclaim our Australia! A community forum on honesty and values in public life' starring the unholy alliance of former federal Liberal Party President John Valder and me. Shit - what am I, the left wing Pauline Hanson! About 250 people turned up through cold rain and we had a ball, with fascinating questions from the audience. As usual., the Not happy John! stickers ran out early. The forum was organised by 'Blue Mountains for a fairer Australia' and the energy was electric. I absolutely refuse to believe that Australians are apathetic about the sick and sorry state of our democracy, and I reckon that lots of citizens will do their bit to shake up the system come the election. We'll see. We sold 89 books - not bad considering that Gleebooks sold a record 105 at the Sydney launch last month. There's even a chance that book sales might reach what marketing people call 'critical mass', whatever that means. Penguin has reprinted another 5,000, bringing the total number of books printed to 24,000. A Blue Mountains community group is planning to print 50,000 stickers to meet growing demand. John Valder and friends have big plans to give John Howard a run for his money in Bennelong, which I don't know much about but will keep trying to find out. There's so much common ground between Australians who vote differently, and if we can just get together I reckon we can make the state of our democracy an election issue. Who knows? Why not have fun having a go?