Bilegrip is a big fan of Catherine Deveny. Besides the venerable Alan Ramsey and Phillip Adams, she is just about the only mainstream media lefty who speaks without restraint or self-censorship. In fact, she outdoes Ramsey and Adams in cutting to the chase.

Her impassioned plea today, Australians have a chance to prove they're not all that bad, reminds us in spades that the last eleven and a half years -- the era dedicated to making Australia safe for conservatives by scaring the bejesus out of frightened seniors and greedy aspirationals -- must come to an end on Saturday.

Here are a few excerpts from her article:

This election is an intelligence test. A test to prove we can see past the spin, the dog whistles, the short-sighted rhetoric, the scare campaigns, the pork-barrelling and the fearmongering. A test to show that we are smarter than the Government gives us credit for.

If we do not seize this opportunity for change we will go down in history as the most greedy, gullible, mean-spirited, selfish, short-sighted, tight-fisted generation in the history of Australia. How will it feel sitting in front of that $5000 plasma TV watching reruns of American reality shows, wearing clothes manufactured in a sweat shop and sitting on a sofa made by Third World slaves? How will that feel when our public education and hospitals have been gutted and our environment corroded to a point of no return? How will it feel knowing we have turned our back on people who need us most: the poor, the broken, the scared, the sick, the elderly and the vulnerable? How will it feel when you turn to your children and say, "I believed him"?

This election is a gift. Look back at the past 11 years and imagine the next decade as more of the same. The divides becoming wider, the damage becoming irreversible and the lies and deceit in politics becoming normal.

On Saturday you will have a rare opportunity to prove to our past, to our present and to our future that we are better than this. And we are not stupid enough to swallow the short way round but the long way home. At my grade 6 graduation, I stood side by side with Greeks, Yugoslavs, Macedonians, Poles, Italians and Maltese and we sang: "I'm as Greek as a Souvlaki, I'm as Irish as a stew, I'm as Italian as spaghetti, I'm as Danish as a blue, I'm as German as a dumpling, Middle Eastern as a lamb. I'm an Aussie, yes I'm an Aussie, yes I am."

And we believed it.

Over the past 11 years, I have lost faith in the Australian people. I've felt shame at the spin they have swallowed, the politicians they have believed and the values they have embraced. I'm horrified at how politicians have chosen to lead our country using fear over faith, greed over bounty and us and them over we. I just hope I am not alone. There's plenty for all of us.

Fortunately, I was at my usual corner table at the coffee shop, for I wept as I read this call to voting arms. Coming unglued in public, I realised how all these years of pent-up despair and anger had long ago turned to hate. And what a miserable thing it is to hate.

Be that as it may, hate combines with prodigious vomiting when watching Anna Coren's interview with John Howard and Peter Costello. If you missed it, and you're in need of a purgative, you can watch it here. Click on "Interview with PM and Treasurer to see the Twin Dullards collapse in a heap of treacly phoniness.