'Sounds of the ALP' echo shifting demographics

When you rub a balloon there's a stretching sound. It's the sound of the suburbs expanding all over Australia in cities and towns, in the east and the west, in the north and the south. The houses are growing to fill the blocks of land they sit on - right to the edges! - and the stretching sound is what you hear as they gradually get larger. It's the same sound that's generated as the ALP shifts - slowly, incrementally, and with great effort - to the Right in order to retain the votes of the people living in those ever-more-voluminous houses. Listen carefully and you can hear it. Sqeeeeeeeeee!

But there's another sound, too, Australia. You can do more than one thing with balloons, after all. Let's see how we can let the air out of a balloon! This is the sound some people in Australia generate as they trade in their full-size locally-made cars for compact European models with auto-start wipers and removable rear seats. Stylish! And it's the sound - the sound of air escaping from a balloon - that the ALP makes when these people decide to vote Green. It's a bit like the sound of the value going out of the Euro. With their European styling and concern for human rights, their environmental consciousness and committment to rational values, these people know that they are as chic as the one percent. Squeeeeeee!