In the lead-up to the recent state election, The Greens saturated Victoria with leaflets, billboards and other propaganda. The primary slogan in this material, because of the use of the party’s symbol in such a way that it could be confused with an organisational signature rather than a part of a sentence per se, could easily be (mis-)read as “This time, vote”, as if in appeal to those who did not do so last time. This time, it seemed to say, you should participate in the electoral process.

Absent this way of reading it, the Greens’ slogan says very little except perhaps by sounding a very faint echo of Whitlam-era new broom-ism.

By contrast, trade unions are continuing the use of slogans to reveal everything that needs to be said about the agenda at play in their campaigns.

Who could forget the massive anti-Kennett rally in 1992 decorated with a large banner turning the traditional ‘united we stand, divided we fall’ into something infinitely more revealing of the nature of contemporary trade unionism: “United we bargain, divided we beg”?

Well, there is a scene in the film ‘Flying High’ in which the doctor played by Leslie Neilson explains the progression of symptoms of the condition which is crippling half of the people on the plane, a list in which muscle spams are “followed by the inevitable drooling”. Keeping with this sequence, the ACTU has now launched a substantial campaign supposedly about opposing the Federal Government’s industrial relations legislation. For a while trade unions were producing material against the Liberal’s IR laws using the slogan “your rights at work - worth fighting for”. They have now taken this and dribbled it into something so much clearer: “Your rights at work - worth voting for.”

Victoria’s Trades Hall Council is currently festooned with a huge sign urging people to vote for the Australian Labor Party, while the ACTU and many of its members are trying to fill the Melbourne Cricket Ground with people against the IR laws, hoping to use this opposition for the electoral advantage of the ALP.

Continuing loyalty to the script of ‘Flying High’ would require that those suffering from this condition become “a wasted mass of jelly”.