And some of them, like the two we have just got rid of, could not put two words together, without one of them being a lie.

The late Bryce Courtenay summed things up
thus:

"Some words run softly almost soundlessly on tiptoe.
Others clump around like an under-nine football team
in a cement floor dressing shed.
Some soothe like cold cream on sunburn.
While others set your blood pounding and your heart
singing.
There are words so rounded at the edges and softened by
wear that they are no longer words at all, but the
sounds that people make for happiness or despair, joy
or anger.

There are words that are randy, but not dirty. And sacred
words that have become soiled with improper use.
Some words stick like burrs and punish at a touch.
And there are others that nurse the ego and heal the heart.
Some words remain unspoken, clamped in a throat that aches
to let them out. And sometimes they are the most meaningful
of all.

But words without a story are like a fart without a
smell, nice to have passed silently in a crowded lift,
but causing no reaction whatsoever, except as a relief to the
farter that he got clean away.

Let your ear be your dictionary, while your eye observes
the details and your mind constructs the storyline.

Each of us has been designed for one of two immrtal
functions, either as a storyteller or as a cross-legged
listener to tales of wonder, love and daring.
When we cease to tell or listen, then we no longer exist
as a people. Dead men tell no tales."

Interesting speech. I wonder who wrote it?

warmair, Abbott's comments about Labor were more accurate than saying the Coalition had a great result (they got lots more seats, not lots more votes).
Labor lost heaps of votes, but the Coalition's vote hardly budged.

Those lost votes went mostly to alternative parties, hence the strange results in the Senate.

Abbott talked about the nation (we), Rudd talked (forever) about his team (me).