NAKED CITY: THE HANGOVER – REVISITED

The election night party, in the style of David Williamson’s classic 1971 play “Don’s Party”, was once a staple of the Australian political landscape. Booze, a barbie, banter and the live TV coverage were the perfect combo as the nation awaited its future. With last weekend’s result a foregone conclusion, it’s fair to say that most of the ebullient social gatherings were in LNP territory.

We are guessing most Labor and Greens voters would have preferred to stay at home, watching the bloodbath on TV and wondering what kind of headlines the Murdoch press would unleash in their filthy Sunday rags. We did hear of one ‘swinging’ voters party, not surprisingly at a well known ‘swingers club’ in Leppington where couples of all political persuasions were encouraged to shed their inhibitions and get jiggy regardless of the result. Needless to say there was little ideological conflict as swingers jostled for space in the hot tub and the TV coverage went virtually unnoticed.

So now that the inevitable has been decided and Tony Abbott will be our leader for the foreseeable future, what can we expect apart from the usual honeymoon period and an ongoing endorsement from the Murdoch tabloids? Given that Abbott’s support is entrenched in the right wing of the LNP, we are tipping that the immediate years will be turbulent to say the least!

We will certainly revert to a more polarised electorate than existed during the  previous hung parliament and maybe politics will play out more in the streets than it did during the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd era. Good Lord, could we be suggesting a period of unbridled anarchy? Something vaguely akin to the glorious turmoil of the 1960s when protesting meant more than just sending an angry tweet or sounding off in a weekly blog.

For those of us who can remember the 60s first-hand it was indeed an inspiring era of social change. It was a time when people of all ages, but specifically the young were prepared to put their bodies on the line and challenge the evil status quo. We haven’t seen a decade like it since but surely the time has come to rekindle that revolutionary spirit and reinvent good old analogue rage!

Yes, forget the Arab Spring, and all the impetus that was attributed to Facebook and other social media. We didn’t need that technological crutch back in the 60s and we don’t need it in 2013. Talk to your friends, face to face, work them to an impassioned frenzy and tell them to get off their bums and express their discontent in a physical way. We need placards, not throwaway ‘likes’ on Facebook and nothing unnerves a conservative politician more than a hostile reception wherever they go.

If you had a horrible hangover on Sunday morning, after a Saturday night at home, anaesthetising the inevitable with a steady consumption of alcohol or other numbing substances, it’s time to emerge from that daze, shut down your Twitter and Facebook accounts and look back to the 1960s for that recipe for change. Forget about the “swingers party” at Leppington in three or four years’ time. Sex will still be on the agenda but the enlightened swingers will screen out anybody with even the slightest conservative baggage. It you want to twerk your rump in the jacuzzi then you better be out to change the world. Time to reinvent the rage!