Authorised by Whoever Gets the Most Media Coverage

Getting media coverage is difficult enough when competing against an AFL grand final, brawling construction workers and a warming planet.

Getting good media coverage is impossible, even on the journalistic left.

Our party has been authorised by the Marquis de Tabloid to put coal miners in the federal parliament.

The party has been authorised by a trade union credit card to keep coal miners happy, at least until a coal mine kills them.

The party has also been authorised by an overcrowded hospital emergency department, with or without the authority of the CFMMEU or a Liberal ex-minister.

Building hospitals creates jobs.

Providing healthcare workers for hospitals costs money.

Keeping jobs in coal seats keeps those seats out of Coalition hands, at least in theory.

Putting policies in place to encourage Australians to do harvest work on farms is another matter entirely.

Our activities are authorised by high-vis big blokes in hard hats, or at least the vaccinated ones willing to work through their tea breaks.

Media coverage requires good visuals and great sound bites.

People doing their jobs is not newsworthy, even if those people are opposition politicians.  Publicity stunts are needed, or really big scandals authorised by colluding and conspiring mates.

Our candidate selection policies are about getting media coverage, not good policies and good representations of Australian society.

We support diversity, at least as a slogan.

Our research tells us our policies are authorised by a parachute, a Roman Catholic priest and an ethnic legal practitioner more often than not.  They are sometimes even authorised by a plastic shopping bag.

But we are much better than the other mob, even if the Marquis de Tabloid says otherwise.