"If you read it, you'd be laughing!"

I didn't watch the news last night - too busy bracing myself for Nigella and her cooking and oh my goodness the chocolate cherry trifle and excuse me while I salivate slightly over said trifle... - but I was up late and caught Lateline.

"Good golly gosh" was only one way in which to describe my thoughts on the first item, which was about how it appears supporters of the Liberal candidate in the Sydney seat of Lindsay, Jackie Kelly, had been distributing pamphlets from a fake Islamic organisation, praising the Labor party for "forgiving" the Bali bombers and how they'll support building more mosques in the area.

Particularly amazing was the way in which Andrew Robb, vocational education minister, went from saying the pamphlets were bad (which they are) to attacking the Labor party for being unhappy about it. It was like he was in a six-foot deep grave, shoveling away while saying, "Yes, it was bad. But you don't see MY point. I'm right and you know it! The Labor party are evil! We've done nothing wrong at all! Bad! And I quite happen to like digging, thank-you VERY much!"

Of course, they ran out of time for what Robb and Penny Wong had been brought on the show to talk about...

Also surprising was the way in which Kelly has "laughed" off the mail campaign "allegedly" involving her husband (and also apparently doesn't know who really was the naughty person/people behind it but they have told her they were chased by Labor people and the Labor people are like totally evil and horrible and included "unionists"! and they followed us, they forced the pamphlets into our innocent hands and made us distribute them, therefore it's not our fault).

Dismissing it as a "prank" (when if the Labor party had done it, they would have been all over them like a rash) also doesn't make much sense to me - I think because it seems just so inherently racist and stoops to such a new political low that in some ways it's almost incomprehensible. I know there are people in Australia who are racist and who don't like people of Islamic faith. But to deliberately be going out to target that dislike for political gain (or any gain) is just something that sickens me. So divisive, so dishonest, such race-baiting rubbish. And it disgusts me to think that it's gotten to a point in Australia where this sort of thing has the potential to work, where people's prejudices are so easily appealed to over sense.

I'm very glad to see John Howard has condemned the letter drop, though. Particularly after listening to Kelly being interviewed on the ABC and going around and around and around saying how she had read the pamphlet and thought it funny, but had actually only read about it in the newspapers this morning, yada yada, blame Teh Unionists. This isn't something that can be dismissed as a joke. It is definitely something that should be condemned, regardless of the parties involved. You can't really do something like this letter-boxing scam and not expect to get caught out with it at some point or another, particularly if you're involved somehow in a political party.

So, just how much has Australia lost its moral compass?

For other people's thoughts on the issue, check out The Age's Your Say bit or on the ABC. Also worth enduring the Kelly drivel is the vid on this story from the Today show for Lauie Oakes's comments at the end (it's around the six-minute mark if you want to get to the point). Right on the money.