Between Borders

There are 54 people standing for 11 open seats in the upper house this election and some of them are truly awful.

Now, I could vituperate these folk. I could suggest Barbara Pannach and Basil Hille (the two One Nation candidates) are representatives of a paranoid, xenophobic, anti-intellectual, anti-reality, ‘I can’t handle complexity and want things to be the way I thought they were when I was young and stupid’ party.

I could say that Dennis Hood (number one candidate for Family First) is a hateful fundamentalist who’s arrogant swagger and self-righteous religiosity remind me more of Elmer Gantry than they do St Francis of Assisi or Hillel the Elder.

But it’s a lot more fun to put the numbers 52, 53 and 54 against their names as I finish laying down my preferences.