Remember Keating talking about his Liberal opponent Andrew Peacock who he said “should be put down like a faithful old dog because he is no use to his party or the nation”. And then of John Howard he said, “the little desiccated coconut’s under pressure and he’s attacking anything he can get his hands on”. He said Treasurer Peter Costello “was all tip and no iceberg”. He saved a couple of crackers for Liberal Wilson ‘Ironbar’ Tuckey: “You boxhead, you wouldn’t know. You are flat out counting past 10. You stupid, foul-mouthed grub.”

Neither Dutts nor Albo can be insulting and funny at the same time. They missed out on that gene. They’d never get a job as gag writers out there in television land. For the Dutts-Albo stand-up duo it’s all very serious … you know, this election business. No time for wise cracks or tom-foolery. It’s all about fuel prices and golly-gosh, have you seen the price of broccoli today? I heard that a company is installing their debates into one of those put-you-to-sleep devices. You can choose the sounds of waterfalls, rain on a tin roof or Dutts and Albo debating. Zzzzzzz.

What all this means is that us plebs up here in the nose bleed seats sipping on $18 plastic cups of tepid beer, have to endure talk about housing affordability, petrol pricing and the cost of groceries. Yes, yes, we know these are serious issues, but please fellers, at least try and crack a joke and throw some decent insults at each other. Don’t you have people around you who can feed you a few clever lines?

The problem is no one wants to make a wisecrack these days. If you do, especially if you are wanting to become Prime Minister, you risk saying something that will have you in hot water with those earnest people who spend their lives looking for verbal transgressions and before you know it you are being blasted all over social media for being either a racist, bigot, warmonger, tree hugger, bunny hugger, right-wing Nazi dropkick, commo, narcissist (do you remember those innocent times when hardly anyone knew what a narcissist was?) leftie, woke, sexist, homophobic, misogynistic, transphobic, vegan nutjob, ageist, greenie deadbeat, greedy capitalist moron, oxygen thief, house-hogging baby boomer, media scumbag, keyboard warrior, Trump arse-licker, armchair athlete, redneck or yokel. You know where we’re going?

This is why Mr Albanese and Mr Dutton are sticking as close as they can to the dull, tiny-target scripts they trot out daily. Yawn, yawn. But guys, fair suck of the saveloy, we’ve paid for our tickets up here in the nose bleeds. We want some bang for our buck. As Paul Keating might have said, let the insults fly you pair of boxheads.

Unleash the Barnaby

EVEN if you listen hard, you won’t hear him. Normally in an election campaign we’d be hearing him loud and clear. Sometimes he’d make a heck of a lot of sense. Other times we’d go “huh, I dunno what he’s on, but I want some”? Barnaby Joyce, I’m talking about. He’s the solution to all this election boringness. Barnaby is about as popular as a death adder in a lucky dip with his LNP mates, but they should forgive and forget. Instead the LNP bosses have their best unguided missile under lock and key in his comfy seat of New England. He’s not allowed out because if he was he might do something like declare war on New Zealand or call for an open season on wombats.

He must be spitting chips. Last I read, he had lost 15kg after giving up the grog. This was after a wobbly boot episode when he was pictured babbling into his phone while lying on a Canberra footpath. For Chrise sake, the bloke’s only human. He’s not the first feller to get on the turps and make a goose of himself. But, like Napolean to Elba, Barnaby was exiled to New England for his sins. If the LNP want someone who can slice through the verbal diarrhoea and talk to Aussies in a language they know and understand, unleash him on the Australian public. Let the old dog off the chain. Forgive and forget. As some bright spark once said: To err is human, to forgive, divine.

WHAT about the ABC’s April 14 Australian Story featuring Bob Katter? National Party Senator Susan McDonald has complained about the timing as did Kennedy’s LNP candidate Annette Swaine. You have to agree with them that this isn’t the sort of program that should go to air during a campaign. You know, if it looks like a free plug, sounds like a free plug, it probably is a free plug. But, I think if it was a topic being debated by the intelligentsia in the Suave Bar at the Karumba pub it’d be a case of yeah, nah, yeah, nah. They should have put it to air either before or after the campaign but really, when the sun goes down on this election campaign is it going to matter? With a margin of 13pc Bob Katter has a death grip on Kennedy that never seems to weaken. People will say I’m blowing wind up his clacker, but MPs half his age in electorates half the size of 567,000 sqkm Kennedy couldn’t keep up with 79-year-old Bob. He just never stops moving from town to town. He can walk into any pub in this sprawling electorate that runs from Mt Isa in the northwest to just below Cairns and people will know the bloke with the snowy hair and the hat. If they’re lucky he might just shout a round, but that’s if they are lucky.

The day Bob Katter loses Kennedy will be the day hell freezes over and pigs fly in arrowhead formation across the dawning sky. But, I’ll cover my backside and say that if Annette Swaine drags Bob out of the Kennedy saddle it will be a case in LNP HQ of move over Keith Richards and hello Annette Swaine. She will be the new LNP rock god.

And here is a little known fact carved into a gidgee post just north of Maxwelton. It reads: “The LNP candidate who unseats Bob wins a weekend for two in Cloncurry (Bob’s home town) staying in the luxurious honeymoon suite (ensuite, aircon and colour TV) at the Post Office Hotel, meals and drinks laid on.” Oh, and a tour of the local tourism resort town of Kajabbi is thrown in as well. If that’s not incentive for the Swaine camp to give it their best shot, I don’t know what is.

THERE has been a bit said about why the ALP/Lab leaders are not spending much time in the north. Labor must think the Townsville seat of Herbert is a lost cause so why waste time campaigning there when they can put that effort into a marginal seat elsewhere? Likewise, why would Mr Dutton spend much time there when it’s pretty damn safe and he has other seats at risk of being lost. Mr Thompson holds it on just under 12pc. If you were Albanese you’d write Herbert off as a possible waste of time and instead start pumping petrol into something you might have a chance of winning.