July 3. Day 185. Winging it

When I went to bed yesterday it was already today. As a bit of a politics tragic I had watched the opposition leader's speech and it was only right and proper that I give the Prime Minister the same amount of respect. The clocked ticked and ticked. The political observers discussed how the speech writers would be in overdrive working to get the tone right given that the result was still unclear but the victory line was perhaps in sight. And after midnight the PM appeared, said he was confident that the coalition could take government and then launched into one of the most bitter, defensive, angry diatribes I've heard on an election night. And this is from a man who just said he thought he was on the winning team. Huh? For a bit I thought the lateness of the hour was playing tricks on my brain. Perhaps this wasn't the speech of a man who seemed to be operating on a wing and a prayer, perhaps he wasn't winging it, perhaps this was the well considered rhetoric of a team of professionals. But political brains far greater than my own seemed to agree with my assessment that both the timing and the speech sucked. Maxine McKew said it was "insulting" we'd all been kept waiting so long, Laurie Oakes said the speech was "pretty pathetic" and Mike Carlton called it a "flabby failure". And people wonder why the opinion of politicians is not high. And that's coming from a journalist. I promise this is not a party political assessment. It's the assessment of someone who watches politics with interest and is prepared to call out bird brained decisions when they happen.