Amateur Hour and Bush League Bookmaking

Those full of hope and optimism call it the wind of change. We are on the verge of a political revolution, they say. It’s time. The day and the hour are now and the man who will rise up like a bespectacled pixie from the ashes of the slaughter will be Kevin Rudd. He will be remembered in lore and in history as the great warrior who slayed the evil and tyrannical John Winston Howard through compromise and deceptive mirroring. He has united the True Believers and will destroy any remnants of The Victory.

Of course, anybody with a decent ear and an association with anybody who fancies themselves as a little to the left of the political centre has heard this all before. Every election, in fact. Mark Latham is the great saviour, a man of the people. He would warm the hearts of all hard-working, decent Australian’s and lead us to the promised land of prosperity. Three years on and his name is clothed in shame and those same Laborites who screamed his credentials joyously to the heavens now turn red and deny ever really supporting the madman. Even when it was the grand old loser of Australian politics Kim Beazley, the True Believers still held the faith of a dying Mormon. They believed, oh Lord, they believed.

But, as always, they were wrong. And they will be again. This isn’t just the prophecy of a proud conservative and acolyte of John Howard. These are the words of an astute gambler who has a taste for a dollar and the right kind of mind for politics. And when it comes to a conflict of interest, the gambling streak always gets the upper hand and uses it to beat all other forms of loyalty and inclination to a bloody mess.

I sat at a table in a restaurant in the heart of Surry Hills that was as red and baron as the fallopian tubes of a middle aged woman, when my dining companion, a wonderfully intelligent woman whose only shortcoming may be her bleeding heart, started to espouse the qualities of Kevin Rudd that would take the ALP back to The Lodge. The day was hot and we were both suffering through the severe depression of the day after and the red walls were doing little to help our mindset and warm coffee and cigarettes were all I could stomach. And that included leftist political diatribe. But I smiled, content that those in touch with the common man and those with a decent perspective of the political scene were all well aware that we were working ourselves up for another Howard victory party.

I was, seemingly, wrong. Not in my political opinion of course. There are few more sound political analysts in the game and most of those who are don’t understand the gambling business. But in the feeling that it was only the bleeding hearts and the chardonnay socialists and the middle class do-gooders who thought that Kevin Rudd and the new ALP were any hope come polling day. Those waving the flag of the Left have indoctrinated newspaper editors and university students and even, astoundingly enough, oddsmakers with their perverted spiels regarding the great hope of Kevin Rudd.

Common sense has seemingly evaporated from political thought in this country and one cannot help but feel just a little sad. Then one realizes the magnificent opportunity for financial gain and most of the sadness dissipates like a Berocca hitting a glass of water on a seedy Sunday morning. For some reason, known only to the bookmakers themselves, the Australian Labor Party are favourites to win the next federal election. At least on the ledger, where as much as $2 is being offered. Mark Read seems pretty keen to lay the Coalition and that is exactly what he is about to do.

To get even money on the incumbent good thing in an election often requires diving deep into the quagmires of varying political circles and more often than not sees you wandering the street and speaking the double talk of a drug dealer or ticket scalper. Not this time. A simple telephone call to the operators of International All Sports and you are set and assured of the payout without needing to resort to means of violence or extortion.

For a brief second, just think about what factors cause an individual to vote the way they do. Then consider what may have happened between the last Howard victory and now that may have caused Johnny and Jenny Citizen to change their vote. The answers to those two ponderings are relatively simple. Punters vote for who they will be better off under and nothing has changed in the last three years to suggest they won’t be better off under a Howard led Coalition than the ALP. The champagne-sippers want to talk of Iraq and distrust and internal divisions within the Liberal Party but in doing so, they show a fundamental misunderstanding of the Australian electorate. Australian’s nearly always vote on their own economic prosperity and there isn’t too many who want to throw the dice on Labor after a decade of economic stability.

History also doesn’t look too kindly on the prospect of a Labor election victory. In the last half-century, there have been three ALP Prime Ministers. Two have been elected purely on charisma and at a time when internal divisions were hurting the Liberal team. Gough Whitlam stood larger than life over the Australian public, promising the world. And Bob Hawke had the common touch, a man who could talk the working man’s rap. The only other man to win an election for Labor was Paul Keating who, despite being the most competent ALP PM, only won at the polls due to the ineptitude of John Hewson. Kevin Rudd certainly falls much closer to Doc Evatt and Artie Calwell in the landscape of ALP leaders, intellectuals who have not been capable of winning over the Australian public in the face of the popular political giants they have been forced up against.

So it looks like we all have a bet. And come election day, no matter what your political inclination, we can all bask in financial glory and gambling success.