Is it over yet?

By the time you read this, the 2025 federal election campaign will mercifully have less than 24 hours left on the clock but I’m still happy to declare it the dumbest campaign in living memory. A campaign of 5 weeks that seemed like 5 years, its main achievement has been showing Australians what a desperate lot of talentless, corflute-stealing, policy-free, reprobates, hucksters and attention-seeking nobodies seek to sit in the highest office in the land. Wave to Ralph Babet everyone.

It seemed to start off well enough for Peter Dutton, at least to the media, as he lined up his culture-war’s scraps to feed out the sensationalist crap our newsrooms need to fill their empty screens and pages. But middle Australia was already wary of the Dutton game, something the commentariat failed to notice in time.

Dutton has chosen a number of culture war hills to die on over the past couple of years; the hill of Gina Rinehart (yeah she’s a hill), the hill of climate change denialism, and the stupidest idea in his backpack – his nuclear energy fantasy. Never mind that Australia and the world is already on the path of converting to renewable energy, never mind that the market is already embracing renewables in the new economy, never mind that scientists, energy experts and lay people have laughed at the idea of creating a functioning nuclear power plant anytime within the next 20 years, Peter’s brain fart was that if he could convince at least some of the population he was serious about nuclear energy then mate, there had to be a few votes in it, what do you reckon?

The problem for Peter came when he had to back up his nuclear delusions with facts and costings and timelines, instead of fuzzy AI pics his team generated on Canva. Angus Taylor sat spluttering under David Speer’s questioning gaze on ABC’s Insiders, avoiding the alleged costings of the nuclear energy “policy” by repeating vague figures with little meaning, and then after that disaster that only Angus could have driven home so badly, it seems the entire Liberal team forgot their nuclear policy had ever existed.

Media: What are your latest costings for Australia’s nuclear power plants Mr Dutton?
Dutton: Milk and 2 sugars thanks.

Peter then waxed lyrical about where he would live when he became Prime Minister, clearly a sentence of genius that came to him when he was having a stroke. ‘I’ll be living in Kirribilli House,’ decreed King Peter in a throw-away line that must have had Andrew Hirst choking on his data sheets. Team Peter’s tactics on this was that Peter the man-of-the-people would be avoiding the elitist shit-hole that is Canberra at all costs, nope, not even living there, hurgh hugrh, forgetting that he’d owned an apartment himself in Canberra for many years and lived in it, happily charging taxpayers a parliamentary accommodation allowance for the pleasure. Yeah, boo Canberra, except for the place you all paid for.

The problem with this bone-headed statement of course, was that Peter, not for the first time, came across to Australians as an out-of-touch confabulist who thought he had the Prime Ministership in the bag and when he would ascend to the throne, the only thing good enough for him would be Sydney harbourside views in a $30 million tax-payer owned mansion. Peter’s already suffered one embarrassing premature projection in his career when he tried to wrestle the Prime Ministership from Malcolm Turnbull but couldn’t do maths properly and lost to the last mayor of Australia, Scott Morrison. You’d think that would have been a harsh lesson for him, but Peter has never resiled away from his own lack of intelligence.

His alignment with Trump over the past couple of years rang alarm bells for some in the Liberal party who felt they were hitching their wagon to something they couldn’t walk back from, and holy mother of the voting booth, didn’t that strategy come back to haunt them. After Trump hit the ground crawling and dribbling, Peter has had to perform a series of complicated double flips not seen since Josh Frydenberg tried to convince everyone he was a nice guy. Dutton’s suddenly gone from: Trump is a “big thinker and a deal maker”, and Trump is a “business genius” to pulling out his inner Mariah Carey at last week’s leader’s debate and declaring he doesn’t even know him.

Dutton’s real schtick is contrarianism, picking a fight just to pick a fight. Shoot off a hot pink flare, show your bare arse, whatever it takes to grab a headline. You say it’s purple, Peter will say it’s yellow. There’s no intellect required in denialism, all it requires is a dullard to wait for the thinkers, creators and policy makers to come up with the bold ideas and a vexatious litigant like Peter will shout it down. Look at the Voice. Dutton didn’t offer any alternatives, any solutions, just no, nope, not having it, but hey guys watch me twirl this highway flare.

The Liberals campaign has been a disaster. From candidates missing in action to old sexist social media posts resurfacing, what haven’t they had? They performed the resurrection by re-anointing the perpetually clammy Tim Wilson who put his tiny hands all over a floral wreath at a Goldstein Anzac Day service – again. Like a kid copying his test answers, Timmy whipped out his big Sharpie and wiped out the Beaumauris footy team brand, writing in his own name over it in big, Sharpie capital letters – surely another vote winner for Tim and his Victory Van.

We’ve had Scott Yung, who according to a latest Guardian report, almost denies being a Liberal, he of the brilliant idea to stand outside a school ground and hand out lollies. Liberal Team Leader: What haven’t we tried in Bennelong? Team: I know, let’s get a single male, someone like Scott Yung, to pop along to a primary school and hand out sweeties to little kiddies. Not at all weird and creepy. Done.

Then there was the Exclusive Brethren, the cotton-wearing, sin-avoiding cult that tells its members not to vote, who were caught muscling around the suburbs they didn’t live in, handing out fliers for the Liberal Party they can presumably never vote for. What exactly was the pay back this anti-abortion, anti-women’s rights group were hoping for from the Liberal Party? What does it matter when they’re all the same people.

And let’s not forget Amelia Hamer The Renter – who completely forgot she owns not one but two houses, I mean don’t we all do that – covering half of inner suburban Kooyong in posters and calling in her lawyers when the local council told her to stop allegedly causing car accidents, which is probably why she had to be baby-sat by Jane Hume for the past few weeks whenever she ventured out in public. And meanwhile, somebody in voter land in NSW smeared shit all over a Liberal Party billboard, something that can only be seen as an improvement to their messaging so far.

What a sad display of ego and power and very little else this has been. Instead of focusing on what’s important to their electorates, the candidates have engaged in lies and delusions and deranged corflute wars. No wonder the community independents continue to rise among all of this. 

On the Babet scale of idiocy, the election campaign has been a full 10. Instead of offering anything fresh or visionary or inspiring, it’s all been a case of hitting the electorate right in the John Howards – tired, confused and ready to die. If Australia’s 2025 election all feels like you’ve bashed your head and are just regaining consciousness, join the club darlings, join the club.