Turning a wrecking ball into a land of hope and dreams

The Boss crowd surfing at Rod Laver. Spot him?

It was hard to attend the Bruce Springsteen concert this week without thinking about Wayne Swan. That really did almost kill the mood for me as I walked into a sold-out Rod Laver Arena. Swan penned an infamous essay in The Monthly last year attributing The Boss the dubious honour of having inspired Swan’s politics – something about battlers and Rineharts and Palmers and a mining tax that’s proved to be anything but taxing.

Confronted last week by a journo about his biggest political fan, Springsteen seemed bemused at the suggestion that our Treasurer would build a fiscal policy platform based on   his music. 
“I’m not great with money,” he chuckled.

But listening to Springsteen’s latest album and the title of his current tour, Wrecking Ball, something began to dawn on me. Forget all the old, angsty Darkness on the Edge of Town stuff. It feels like Swan and Julia Gillard may have been sharing a couple of beers and an air guitar while listening to the tracks on this latest album and using them as inspiration.

While Tony Abbott has had an extreme personality makeover, which pretty much involves him saying absolutely nothing while keeping his blue “I’m a decent bloke, trust me” ties on high rotation, Gillard seems to be recasting herself from the object of his misogyny to a “tough, feisty bastard”. When she blurted, “Take your best shot” across the Parliamentary table last week, we all assumed she’d been listening to Pat Benatar to channel the new “feistiness”. But actually, it’s Springsteen who’s her inspiration with his title-track lyrics:

Through the mud and the beer, and the blood and the cheers,

I've seen champions control freak PMs come and go

So if you got the guts mister, yeah if you've got the balls

If you think it's your time, then step to the line, and bring on your wrecking ball

Bring on your wrecking ball

Come on and take your best shot, let me see what you’ve got

It’s there! Right there!  And now with all the pesky business of the challenge that wasn’t over, Swan and Gillard are gearing up to move to track 10 – a soaring belter of a tune called “The Land of Hope and Dreams”. No doubt this was piped through the Canberra halls as she sat down to pick through the remaining loyalists to assemble her new team. The synergies couldn’t be more compelling, with the lyrics:

Grab your ticket and your suitcase

Thunder's Electoral annihilation’s rolling down the tracks

You don't know where you're goin'

But you know you won't be back [To Kevin. Like. Ever.]

Darlin' if you're weary

Lay your head upon my chest

We'll take what who we can carry

And we'll leave the rest [To rot on the backbenches]  

So it’s all aboard the train bound for the promised land – a place where the sunlight streams – presumably an imagined world six months from here where Gillard and Swan will rein supreme over adversity and “faith will be rewarded”.

Swan will be singing sweet nothings into Gillard’s ear, channeling his muse:

Well I will provide for you

Ya and I'll stand by your side

You'll need a good companion now

For this part of your ride

Ya leave behind your sorrows

Ya this day at last [He’s dead! Kev said never again!]

Well tomorrow there'll be sunshine

And all this darkness past

And while the Rudd agitators have been shoved off at the last station, the train’s carriages are flung open to all other people – saints and sinners, losers and winners, whores and gamblers and lost souls, which pretty much offers forgiveness for all other transgressions (take note Craig Thomson!).

So while the Labor gentry shake their heads forlornly at the decaying carcass they see before them and are probably downing cheap bourbon to Springsteen’s wretched “This Depression” or “Swallowed Up (in the Belly of the Whale”), Jules and Swannie are singing obliviously along to “You’ve Got It”:

You've got it in your bones and blood

You're real [Julia] as real ever was

Baby you've got it

And as the ‘Wrecking Ball’ riff continues, Gillard and Swan will be clinging to its repeating lyric: hard times come, hard times go. They’ll just be hoping for no more “unseemly” derailments.

2013: What the Year of the Snake means for Abbott and Gillard

This week heralds the beginning of the Year of the Black Water Snake in the Chinese zodiac. Given that China is our new BFF due to single-handedly digging Australia (and all our mineral reserves) out of the GFC, it seems appropriate to examine how the reptilian character from the ancient zodiac may influence the behaviour of our pollies and this election year.

Clearly, both Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott have been boning up on their Chinese astrology, which describes the Snake as a calm, gentle creature that will only attack if under threat or hungry. Julia has donned a quieter, more deliberately pitched tone in her voice. And the glasses?  Obviously, they’re a nod to the Year of the Black Water Snake being ideal for “steady progress and attention to detail.” The new specs will no doubt help her to keep an eagle eye on those pesky Rudd agitators. Forget Kevin ’07. Gillard’s got this year’s mantra sorted and it goes something like: “Kev’s a Has-Been in 2013”. Ok, it doesn’t rhyme as well, but it fits the bill for being on-message.

Meanwhile in the off-season, the Opposition has clearly been undertaking some high intensity training, which for their sakes, I hope didn’t involve the use of peptides or human growth hormones. Another portent of the Snake is “focus and discipline will be necessary for you to achieve what you set out to create”. Malcolm Turnbull led the way – as most Australians wish he’d get the chance to do for us all – with a trip to a Chinese doctor (you getting the synergies here?). A few herbal concoctions and a fasting regime later, saw him emerge trim, shiny-eyed and bushy tailed.

That route proved a bit drastic and well, just too much like hard work for jolly ol’ Joe Hockey, who opted for the gastric band, which means he can still chow down on a hamburger, as long as he throws it in the mincer first. And it looks like Julie Bishop’s been lending the boys some of her tan-in-a-can, because the entire front bench looks like they spend cabinet meetings sunbaking on the back of Gina Rinehart’s yacht.

But of course, Tony Abbott has had the greatest metamorphosis of all. There’s the unrelenting wearing of the pale blue tie to perfectly accent the “I’m a Good Bloke, trust me” informal tag line. And it does look suspiciously as though he’s taken a few tips from the PM’s hairdresser and partner, Tim Mathieson and rinsed the grey edges from his crop. His catch cry morphs to “I’m a good bloke, I help out the Nippers and look! I’m A New Age Guy not afraid to colour his hair, heh heh heh!”

But the Year of the Snake emphasises the need to be on the defence. No bold moves unless provoked. Which is probably why Abbott has decided to pull the plug on his regular TV appearances. Everyone knows that this is his election to lose, and you lose unlosable elections by stuffing up. So it makes sense that his team would be micro-managing his appearances within an inch of his life so he can avoid the inevitable gaffes that the ALP is holding its breath for him to make. He’s going to stay in the long grass, watching while his frontbenchers stick their necks out. They’ll bat away at the Government and let him hibernate. Sure, he’ll plant a few cold kisses on babies’ cheeks, wave a few ‘vision things’ around and keep wearing the blue ties, but there will be a lot less of him hustling from the sidelines. His self-talk is likely to be, “When in doubt, wheel Hockey/Turnbull/Bishop out’ to face the media scrum.

For Gillard, this poses a challenge: how to lure the snake out of the grass long enough for him to be exposed and vulnerable to a gaffe of misogynistic proportions?  Pretty difficult, especially when he’s dimmed the lights in the gladiator dome of breakfast television. But he’s not her only worry. According to some Chinese astrologers, 2013 will see “fire in the water” (although “fire in the hole” is perhaps a more apt description regarding the Craig Thompson effect on the ALP).

Interestingly, 2012 was the Chinese year of the Dragon; renowned by being dramatic, full of lavish and unpredictable events. As our politicians shed their damaged skins from a turbulent, aggressive and largely unproductive 2012, it will be fascinating to watch who emerges victorious in a year when cunning, intellect and quiet, steady progress is favoured to bode well.