Jim Hopkins: Who to vote for? The answer's at the pub

They came in droves and rusty utes. They came with Priscilla in queenly buses and in strange, black, armour-plated vehicles with slit windows and rocket launchers and dead kangaroos stuck in the gaps between Mel Gibson's teeth.

They drove for days across the empty outback, often asleep at the wheel for hours at a time on the long, straight, endless roads. Sometimes they woke, startled, some urgent presentiment of danger having roused them, and swerved to avoid Uluru or a Baz Luhrmann movie set, or a man-eating possum lurking in the trees. And sometimes they stopped to cook a simple meal of wichetty grubs and wombats or carve another didgeridoo for Rolf Harris.

At night, they would camp by a billabong, under the shade of a Coolibah tree, and when Nicole's wild, brumbie dreams of Hugh Jackman made her buck and whinny and toss off her blankets, they would tucker bag in again so she didn't get cold. Then, in the morning, they would jumbuck up, eager to discover what it was they so desperately needed to know.

Finally, tired and parched, they reached the Ettamogah Pub (Free Poker! Every Thursday night) where all the birds wear boots and Kylie Minogue once spent a wild night with Ned Kelly. The corks on the brims of their hats kissed gently in the breeze and the uranium dust glowed bright in the copper sun as they watched the dehydrated flies on the veranda, crazed with thirst, dive like tiny kamikaze into unguarded schooners of VB, XXXX and Fosters.

"Where the bloody hell have you been?" snapped a gorgeous supermodel in a bikini, the words "I hate Michael Clarke" tattooed on her thigh.

"Awww, jeez, fair dinkum, we've been everywhere, mate, cobber, digger, darl," they replied. "But nowhere have we found the answer that we seek. Which is why we've come here, to the Ettamogah pub. We want to ask the smartest person in Australia who we should vote for."

"Sorry," sniffed the supermodel, "but Robbie Deans has gone. He's trying to turn the Wallabies into a rugby team."

"Awww, strewth, heck, fair suck of the dingo," they jeered. "Robbie Deans? Jeez, stick me up a gum tree and call me a koala, he can't even beat the All Blacks. How can he possibly be the smartest person in Australia?"

"Exactly," sniffed the supermodel, and roared off in her near new Aston Martin.

Bereft of answer, shorn of hope, they watched, as glum as Slim Dusty at the pub with no beer, their shoulders sagging, their baggy greens an ashen grey, while the disappearing Bingle faded in the distance like a scantily-clad Kevin Rudd.

Suddenly, the door of the Ettamogah pub burst open and a wild-eyed, bespectacled man rushed out, tripping over The Wiggles in his haste and knocking Sadie the cleaning lady into the spittoon.

"Tie me cockatoo down, sport," shrieked the frenzied stranger, heedless of the harm he had done. "Y'wanna know who to vote for? Well, pickle me left goanna, am I the man for you! Go on, ask me. I'll tell y'who to vote for or m'name's not Mark Latham."

"What is it then?" they asked, suspicious of their new-found friend.

"It is Mark Latham," the stranger replied, realising his jest had whizzed over their brylcreemed heads. "But you can call me Underbelly. I was the leader of the Labor Party back in 2004. Now I'm covering the campaign for Channel 9. And doing a ripper job, may I say."

"Okay, Mr Underbelly cobber," his audience said. "Tell us. Who should we vote for? Should it be Mr Rabbot, as the gibbering journalists consistently call him, or the recently elevated Julia Gilah?"

"Don't vote for either of them," declared their learned adviser. "There's no point. They're both as useful as pockets in your underpants. Deny each your tick, I say. Leave your ballots blank - like them. If you really want some half-evolved mammal running the country, vote Platypus."

"Ohhhh, mate!" they cheered, tossing their salary caps high in the air. "That's brilliant! Forget Mr Rabbot. Forget Ms Gilah. They're drongos. Vote Platypus instead! How good is that!?"

And they hoisted Underbelly on to their jubilant shoulders and marched, ecstatic, past the gobsmacked emus on the dusty street, happy that, at last, a politician had fearlessly confirmed the calibre of his kind, thus proving to the world that Aussie Rules isn't a game, it's a statement of fact.

Footnote: Meanwhile, in the other Anzac nation, an envious people, mired in another futile debate about the merits of raising the drinking age to 18.7 or 19.1, were amazed when they heard what Underbelly had said and dreamed of moving, as soon as possible, across the Tasman to the luckiest of countries.

Some even practised singing Advance Australia Fair - but, sadly, Qantas said they wouldn't.