Tasmanian election fun (we should get out more)

While we were in Tasmania, they were having an election.

That is of course their business but for us it was a source of amusement, from counting the number of rural candidates with hats - a sort of ‘I spy with my little eye’ on long drives across the hinterland, and of course double points if it was someone we hadn’t seen before, to looking out for candidates with implausible names.

This game was a bit of a failure, the only candidate with a vaguely amusing name was the Greens' Tabatha Badger, whose name irresistibly reminded us of the mythical Gerald Tree-Frogg, a character in a BBC late night satire show who once appeared in a moth eaten baggy gardening jumper claiming to be the Greens’ defence spokesperson and suggesting that they would scrap the defence forces and replace them with a very large hedge. 

(I’m sure that Ms Badger is in reality a serious politician, and has no plans regarding the deployment of hedges, large or small.)

There was also a minor scandal caused by a satirical video by Juice Media that the Liberals claimed was defamatory - if you’re interested you can watch it via the Guardian’s website, which given the complete lunacy of some of Tasmanian politics is not as detached from reality as you might think.

For example, the Liberals proposed helping fund a chocolate fountain and promoted as job creation program that would encourage tourists to visit - like, you’re giving money to a multinational to build a chocolate fountain  ...

Anyway we don’t live there, so we’ll move on ...