Aussie voters plump for the ranga goanna over the mad monk

Nobody asked me…but, the upcoming Australian election is giving me a nasty, nightmarish sense of déjà vu about recent political history.
It seems in all probability that our trans-Tasman neighbours are going to elect a cold, emotionless, childless, professional politician as their first elected female prime minister.
Sound familiar? Creepy, even? Kind of scary? You betcha!
I wake up in the middle of the night in cold sweats and shivering, scared that the she-devil, who Kiwi voters finally killed off in 2008, is about to exhume herself from the political graveyard known as the United Nations and make a bid for the top job across the ditch.
Because it looks very much as if the lucky country’s punters about to put Julia Gillard into the PM’s Lodge in Canberra. Gillard – a female politician with no children; a hairdresser for a boyfriend; who has the worst bogan, Aussie accent - that sound like a blunt chainsaw hacking through ice – is about to be the new Australian Prime Minister! In my book, this makes her Australia’s very own version of Helen Clark; but with the added curse of having red hair!
I don’t know what offends me more about this very real prospect. My misogynistic aversion to unattractive, cold, detached, females – or my ginga-vitis and aversion red heads in general. Whatever it is; Ms Gillard just ticks all the wrong boxes for me.
And I thought the same would be for Aussie voters. Just what the hell is going on in the great, arid continent? Or to use the vernacular of that great Australian – Alf from Home and Away: “Stone the flaming crows!”
C’mon Aussies. I would have thought that in a country that has built a culture of success on the back of mateship, irreverence and the little Aussie battler, then Tony Abbot should be a shoe in as the next PM when put up against the ranga goanna (i.e: ranga is Aussie for red-head and a goanna is a cold, blooded lizard) in Gillard
You would have thought the odds of Aussie voters backing Abbot – a former trainee priest – dubbed the Mad Monk – and a God-fearing, rugby-playing, boxing, surf lifesaving, triathlete and married father of three over Gillard the agnostic, bookish, childless, career-minded woman with a hairdresser for a partner would have been pretty good. But it looks like times are a changing in the land of sun, surf and budgie smugglers – which Abbot is not shy about parading around in I might add.
The country diverse and wonderful that invented the term chunder and airplane black box is about to get its very own version of Helen Clark as PM.
All I can say is thank god I live in New Zealand.
Good luck Australia – you will need it!