During that time, same-sex marriage was legalised, Labor senator Sam Dastyari resigned from Parliament and two ALP MPs were referred to the High Court over potential dual citizenship.

The result was far better for the government than senior Liberal figures had been bracing for, and the swing was well below what a series of opinion polls predicted in the final week of the campaign. 

An ebullient Prime Minister said Mr Alexander "had everything thrown at him".

Read more:

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/bennelong-byelecti...

Actually, John Alexander threw most the things at himself, including sausage rolls, with really embarrassing jokes, a badly fitted bag o' fruit, a hanging brown leather belt under an embryonic beer belly and a suspiciously rabid right-wing backhand. Mind you, the Labor people had themselves to blame for the result. Keneally, despite being a nice Catholic person, had a bit of baggage with the likes of Obeid, now in prison, and some unsavoury development decisions in pristine areas such as Catherine Bay, etc. Apparently John Alexander has an "empty" house in the Bennelong electorate but prefers to live in Bondi, I have been told. His newly acquired acreage near Alan Jones Highland retreat, should give him the same respect commanded by the annoying idiotic rabid motor-mouth of 2GB. I hope the faded tennis star "believes" in global warming, contrarily to A Jones, even if he does not understand the problem. Let's hope the lurking gods of fracking won't disturb the newly acquired property which — according to the swimming pool and Sydney Harbour standard equivalent calculations — could house about 13,257 tennis courts or 39 heads of cattle, with a net negatively geared tax loss.

UPDATE: the NBN rollout in the Bennelong electorate is about 19 per cent complete (81 per cent non-existent) which is far better than the 0 (zero) per cent rollout in our area. 

The Communists have been defeated…

Blancmange, sweet lazy boredom and swampy stagnation with a coat of brown/puce paint is the go… As a SMH (18/12/17) reader writes it:

" … back then the people just decided Menzies was a better bet than Stalin. In Australia, the mundane and the ordinary will trump dictatorship and military excess any day." (Lyndall Nelson from Cremorne).

This is the beauty of this beaut country. Our dreams are small, we sleep easy under the sun and the stars — and our little comforts are underwritten by facile cash for jam while our collective heart pumps by winning a sporting event. Revolutions would never happen here. Too much personal debt.

Meanwhile the environment is degrading gently, with the koalas presently in the spotlight for being in the road of ordinary developments somewhere north of Sydney. So we should not protest too much as this could go against our colonial soul that demands land clearing. Nonetheless, we should indulge a tad in the guilt industry with a certain lassitude. Give cash to the former inhabitants of this non-inhabited land — no-one told us about their existence until we gave them the same food we ate (sugar, alcohol and strychnine) — but do not give them access to our little Crown arrangement which underwrites our lazy dependance on someone else, be it the Poms or the Yanks. Not the Chinese. We could not be their lackeys, though we love them-Chinese for making our merchandising spiritual trade a better deal than it could be, as they buy our dirt and sell it back to us as manufactured goods. We all know that manufacturing steel and other goods, like cars, out of some dirt is expensive and can only be done unless you have slaves. We were mad to abolish the slave system and silly to embrace the 48 hour week. This killed our industrious spirit. The only spirit we have left so far is in the wine and liquor production — despite a drop in local consumption due to stupid drink and drive crackdown. The weed market has not taken off, because of even more stupid stringent restraints. Yes I know, this is only a front-shop excuse to keep lawyers and judges in employment, otherwise they’d be like us, stacking shelves at the local Woolies for less cash in hand, next year.

We opted for the simplest form of government, which like the US constitution and the English system is based on an oligarchy of some kind. The more powerful and richest dudes take all and giveth the crumbs to the peasant, us, so we can live our mundane and ordinary little lives for sweet-and-sour pleasures, with the right to fart, but not too loud. 

Real democracy is hard work. Even the religious organisations have trouble dealing with it, and they are still structured with strong hierarchical domination, like oligarchic governments. Jesus would be appalled, though pleased with men now able to marry each others. Women disciples would have been very distracting, with the thought of sex interfering with the spiritual. Mohammed would be thrilled though, democracy was dead from day one — as the women folks are still not allowed to drink and drive — and atheists can be flogged to death...

It thus feels good to be half-alive in lucky Australia, as we do not rock our small rowing boat floating on the pond of this little warming up paradise. Should we care a bit more ? Is global warming such a menace ? Is repainting the floorboards enough to hide them white ants ? Let’s nail some corrugated iron on our leaky government house roof, add a tennis racket as a skylight and glue the rattling sides with some silicone… Silicone is so good that we can inflate the breast of under-performing women with it in our denatured search for improvements.

Yes, this is the silicone patch-up society, in which the Premier of New South Wales wants to protect the communities by destroying them first. Makes sense. See, if you change the old well established communities that smell of moth balls, by adding more young people — especially rich Chinese caffe-latte traders in search of a less communistic life and more freedom to have a dog on a leash — in high rise apartments (rabbit boxes) — you still conserve the community but with an improved and of course much higher (12 storey-high or more, like a James’ Casino) community spirit. I don’t understand why the people living in decent old brick houses near Channel Nine object to this obsolete TV site becoming a big hub of modern tall apartment blocks with views on their courtyards. My only complaint here would be the low ceilings. 

Build different sports tedious stadiums and, despite less people playing the game(s) or even watching it(them), you give the community what the TV operators (programming of 80 minutes addictive biffo between blockheads) and sports organisations (lots of grants) and merchants of chicken (advertising for bucket heads) want. Beaut. But the community by-and-large doesn’t want the demolition of perfectly existing good amenities which would be gigantic luxuries in some countries, including Russia. But the governments and their friends, the developers, know best. The communities will have to like the bigger bland and bigger lawns of new turf with the fizzling rim of electronic advertising and the new environmentally-conscious flame-cannons when a goal is scored. Imagine. No re-development, no jobs. The job markets rely on change and change relies on demolition, including the removal of old trees and old houses — as long as the mundane and the ordinary triumph architecturally in bland apartment blocks with hubcaps that could catch on fire, Grenfell-like. Koalas beware...

This is the future. The big change, yawn, will be the proportions of people on the drip feed, on the merry go-round and those on the gravy train versus a dying nature. Information is poor, but as you know, the less you know, the happier you should be. The Aussie media is doing its best to maintain this ideal.

Gus Leonisky

Your local know-all trying to known far less by adopting the more boring ignorant mundane.

Season's Greetings.