I’d been thinking lately that my local MP, Fran Logan, hasn’t done much for the people of Cockburn over the last four years. He certainly hasn’t made the impact of good ol’ Norm, who retired at the last election. Yesterday’s West Australian confirms that my MP is just the most convenient bloke that the party room could plonk into a newly-vacated safe seat — he lives in Swanbourne, 30km from us peasant folk. I guess that’s what you get when you live in Labor heartland.

Much more interesting than the election itself, though, is the emergent slanging match between our two main newspapers. First the West Australian accuses the Sunday Times of making up extravagant figures for the cost of Colin Barnett’s canal, apparently in return for the Government granting them the coupon scheme for Gallop’s free Royal Show tickets last year. Now the journo who made the $10 billion claim reckons the Labor Party was spot-on in alleging The West of bias, pointing out that they’ve published 10 anti-Labor front pages during the campaign, but none pro-Labor. And today’s editorial says that Gallop deserves another term.

So we have an independent paper backing the Liberals wholeheartedly, and a Murdoch-owned paper (that often pretends it’s a Murdoch tabloid) gunning for Labor. Strange times, indeed.