Worm – 1b any of numerous relatively small elongated soft-bodied invertebrate animals: eg: (1) a (destructive)caterpillar, maggot, or other insect larva.

The New Penguin Dictionary, 1986

It had to be seen to be believed. The outside could be forgiven for thinking that Australians had, as a collective, taken to gardening. ‘The worm is out there.’ What worm? Compost and rich soil, where are thou in this drought-ravaged land? Well, an election campaign is taking place in Australia, and, as ever, terra australis offers the world a rather different perspective on politics. One is the remarkable instance of punishing the voter for not voting: it is an obligation, not a right, to vote in Australia. The other might be called an eccentric fad, an act of madness between lucid intervals. This, dear readers, is the worm, or what American pollsters have called a ‘perception analyser’. It is a political meter, a measure of audience satisfaction television stations decided to name after a humble invertebrate. How far we have come: In Rome, audiences signalled their desire to the gladiator to slay one of their number after a fight. Hands and fingers would move – the die would be cast, with the fallen gladiator either despatched or spared. Now, we use touch pads to signal our approval for suitable performance, which is almost as impoverishing as voting for the intellectual midgets on Big Brother. A line runs along the television screen like slime, slinking either upwards or downwards depending on how the political candidate is warming the audience. (The audience, ostensibly 100 undecided voters, is selected beforehand, though there is much debate how reliable they tend to be as a measure of public opinion.)

In the television debate on Sunday between Prime Minister John Howard (gladiator name: the ‘lying rodent’) and opposition leader Kevin Rudd (gladiator name: ‘Kevin 07’), the worm gave its verdict: 65 votes went to Rudd; 29 to Howard. All Rudd had to do was open his mouth, and the worm moved north. In fact, Rudd could have just stood there, exuding the charm of a corpse, and the worm would have moved in his favour.

The result was not surprising. The opposition leader has always benefited more from these debates. The incumbent, especially one as lack-lustre as Howard, can only bruise and batter. Evidently, the invertebrate is not so cunning as to predict the election result: Howard has won four elections on the trot. Rodents tend to be more cunning than worms. Those watching the televised debate might as well don their debating hats and go back to school. Elections and debates are not, evidently, the same thing.

Ideas are subordinate to the appearance of political debate. Political terms in Australia are so short (a mere three years), that Australians tend to vote almost as often they drink. Dizzy with anticipation for the next election, politicians have barely warmed the seats of parliament before going on their next round of electioneering. The result is a proliferation of pundits and election pollsters who give the Americans a run for their money. The worm is simply another distraction, an anthropomorphised nonsense to keep ideas out of politics and the pollsters happy. The cupboard of election strategists has led to the occasional export: Lynton Crosby (gladiatorial name: the ‘worm’), for one, imported by Michael Howard’s conservatives for a failed bid to oust Blair.

The political scene in Australia, so rehearsed and so stricken of thought, provides the manure for such a creature to flourish. This is evidenced by the politics surrounding the use of the worm in the first place. The governing Coalition had registered a dislike for the creature, and demanded its banishment in specified circumstances. One of the broadcasters of the debate, Channel 9, who provided the debating venue, had a licensing agreement not to use it. Showing the trustworthiness of a Taliban warlord (or the Packer family of World Series Cricket fame), it revoked it. The worm made a dramatic appearance on the screen. The thread was pulled, and Channel 9 had to tap into another broadcaster. The viewers were left to ponder the deluge in the worm’s wake, and policy was, thankfully, no where to be seen.