The Outsider’s daily election campaign diary continues, with news of watermelons, clowns and weed.

Fruity imagery

The Outsider reported yesterday on Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi’s personal plea for donations to fight the evil scourge of the Greens party.

Now, he’s stepped up his rhetoric, with the bold decision to describe the Greens as “watermelons” – green on the outside and red in the middle.

Fruity imagery has some unpleasant historic overtones that we won’t go into here, but in this context Bernardi is likely to have been inspired by conservative writer James Delingpole’s book, Watermelons: the Green movement’s true colours.

Here’s Delingpole’s teaser for his book’s argument:

“Imagine if everything you knew about the environment was wrong. Imagine that global warming was something to be desired, not feared. Imagine that organic food, sustainability, biofuels and the WWF were far more harmful to the world and its inhabitants than GM food, industry, oil and ExxonMobil.

“Imagine if it didn’t matter one jot how big your carbon footprint was and you could go out and buy as many Hummers as you liked or accumulate as many air miles as you wanted without the need to feel the slightest sliver of guilt about the environmental damage you were causing.

“Imagine if carbon dioxide were our friend.”

It sounds like Delingpole might be a fan of Dennis Leary’s famous song.

Isn’t it rich? Isn’t it queer?

The week began with Rupert Murdoch’s Sydney paper, The Daily Telegraph, calling on voters to kick Kevin Rudd’s “mob” out, and it’s finished with Murdoch’s Brisbane organ, The Courier Mail, describing Labor’s star recruit, Peter Beattie, as a clown.

Rudd has been tussling with Murdoch on Twitter and Labor made no friends in News Corp with its attempts to regulate the media.

Which proves once again that politicians shouldn’t pick fights with people who buy printers’ ink by the semi-trailer load. However, with plummeting print newspaper sales across the country, the adage might need to change to a “ute full” of printers’ ink.

Weed good, religions bad

The Australian Sex Party has a clear blueprint for boosting the Federal Government’s budget position – legalise marijuana, tax it and then kick back on the Treasury verandah with some trip-hop and a bucket of fried chicken as the money flows in.

The party also wants to tax religious organisations, perhaps forgetting how much government welfare work has been passed off on to the churches over the years.

Yeah, we don’t know what any of this has to do with sex either.

Now you see it

Keen readers will have noted a little scoop in InDaily yesterday about former Prime Minister Julia Gillard buying a home in Adelaide.

The Advertiser followed it up quickly on its website – but then, mysteriously, the story disappeared within a few hours.

Nothing in today’s newspaper either, although the Tiser’s stablemate, The Daily Telegraph in Sydney, has given it the star treatment – front page pointer, and full page story on page 9, including a picture of Gillard, partner Tim Mathieson and Reuben the dog photoshopped in front of the home’s swimming pool.

Fairfax’s The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald also prominently cover the story today.

The Outsider is publishing a daily diary at InDaily during the election campaign. Normal transmission will resume when the circus is over.