Interesting article Peter but quite a lot taken for granted, assumptions made not really backed up with concrete facts. The swing Labor to Liberal was some 2.9%, not a huge swing & also a little uneven. Grylls final choice of political bed mate was hardly kingmaking stuff but actually playing safe, if he had shown a little more enterprise & chose Labor it would hardly be the act of a suicide bomber! Emotive language Peter! Porter, Buswell, Nahan, have yet to prove themselves under parliamentary fire so surely one is a little presumptious to describe them as talented performers? Gryll asked both Liberal & Labor leaders to provide his "Royalty for Regions bounty as a condition of helping to form government, hardly a "slush fund",or, your other throw away line: "pork barreling". With regard to the CCC findings, todate only reports have been published nobody has been charged with any criminal offence. Again you are pre-judging outcomes. Every Australian state has one vote one value legislation. It is not a question of any party being stripped of their political representation but fair political representation for all Australian citizens regardless of where they reside. As a Political Science graduate I can only assume you wrote this article with your tongue in your cheek.

Yep, Peter, as an old agrarian activist from the Depression days when Labor saved us cockie's future with the single-desk, I reckon us - backers for the cockie battlers - will be required.

Not that we love Labor, but as Brendan Grylls has implied it does encourage us cockies to possibly move either left or right to save our bacon.

Such is now proven by the way PM Rudd has ditched our precious single desk which was to keep out Bunge and Dreyfus, in Depression days known as Big Biz racketeers.

Now through Rudd Bunge and Dreyfus are back here now with Cargills, a mob from the business mafia if ever there was.

In WA now here with Barry Court's Pastoralists and Graziers, the pressed on favour is for the much smaller niche markets in preference to guaranteed fair prices for the whole wheat industry, even though maybe a little lower.

Certainly with Rudd's hasty policymaking on the run, he is also losing the interest of not only old stirrers like me, but certainly coming young protectors of rural life and indusrtry like Brendan Grylls.

Cheers, BB, WA.

Colin Barnet has to thank you Peter for all the good work you did for him. You ridiculed the idea of banning uranium mining, you ridiculed Alan Carpenter for calling a snap election after the Conservatives demoted Troy Buswell. You gave more stick and ridiculed Bill Johnston for reminding the electorate that Troy Buswell is a bra snapper, chair sniffer and testicle squeezer. It is amazing that Troy now has the second most responsible job in Parliament when he should have been sacked for bullying and intimidation under the equal opportunity act. Your opinions have always favoured the Conservatives and your bias is extremely blatant but that is the reason why you have regular slots on the Fairfax, Murdoch rags. Through your misguided opinions you have now put our children in peril by giving the o'k to mine uranium with no thought on the toxic gases and waste that it sheds on us humans. This is all about money and greed to the detriment of human existence. If you lived in Britain you would get a knighthood for what you did during this election. You must surely sleep so soundly in your bed while many miners will die the same death as Bernie Banton due to radon gases.