@#%\!: Who Your Favourite Punctuation Will Vote For – Luke Barber

Who your favourite punctuation will be voting for in the upcoming Federal election…

luke BarBer!?@#%$^&*()!!!!!!!!!!!!!

With a Federal election just around the corner, it is looking to be a close one where every vote will count. Here at Pelican we take election coverage very seriously, and that’s why we have put together this comprehensive list of who every punctuation mark will be voting for! Enjoy!

! - The United Australia Party

The energy of our friend ! is exactly the same as the energy of Craig Kelly barging into your text DMs with an unsolicited warning against any party bigger than his. It is loud, it is forthright and it has all of the presence of Clive Palmer without any substance, policy, or political talent to back it up, and that’s why the UAP has its vote.

. - Labor

This little dot is barely noticeable: very good at making himself seem as small as possible to avoid scrutiny or criticism. This is the exact tactic that the Labor party seems to be employing this time round, astutely realising that all they have to do is make as little fuss as possible and they can basically let ScoMo blunder his way into a loss. Squeezing themselves into an invisible

. has proven effective so far. In particular, a clever touch has been timing major scandals like parachuting “great Australian migrant success story” Kristina Kenneally out of her Northern beaches home and into a diverse Western Sydney electorate, to coincide with weeks when the Liberal party is dealing with even larger scandals, like cheeky little secret million-dollar donations that should have been kept on the DL.

< - Katter’s Australian Party

Many of us would have learnt in primary school that this symbol, <, is a crocodile mouth, open wide to eat the larger number. Well, < is rooting for our old mate Bob Katter this year, as he is the only politician of the whole lot who is giving crocodiles the airtime they deserve! Let there be a thousand blossoms bloom as far as < is concerned, but every three months a person is torn to pieces by a crocodile in Far-North Queensland.

… - The Nationals

Barnaby Joyce loves …, and … loves him right back. Barnaby Joyce loves … so much that he can barely go a sentence without using …. Below is a definitely real excerpt of Hansard taken from a speech in Parliament Barnaby Joyce recently gave.

“Coal…Farmers…You can’t say you’re gonna marry a person and then say you’re gonna marry someone else…Disgusting Carp… Drought…Carp…Call me old fashioned if you like…It doesn’t matter if Johnny Depp has been awarded sexiest man alive twice… CARP.”

the complete absence of punctuation - The Greens

It is part of the official Greens party manifesto that they would advocate for the destruction of civilisation as we know it and the abolishment of all existing traditions and institutions. As such, The Greens strongly believe in the abolition of all punctuation as it is a carbonemitting and archaic construct that needs to be discarded. Sally Rooney took the first step, but we need to go further. The Greens will not rest until all punctuation is discarded.

? - The Liberal Democrats

This little guy is ‘just asking questions’ and absolutely loves to play devil’s advocate, so of course he will be voting for The Liberal Democrats - the official party of people who take pride in arguing against other people’s opinions just for fun. Having realised that if you have enough false self-confidence you can find a reason to question everything and anything, ? will be voting for the party that does this until they’ve convinced themselves government is pointless.

/ - The Liberal Party

What’s boring, very straight, and leans to the right? You guessed it. The little guy who held all of our Pelican themes together all year has been officially outed as a Liberal voter.

Perhaps we knew all along. Perhaps it was intentional. Is the centering of / above all other punctuation in 2021 an implicit endorsement of Scott Morrison’s leadership by Pelican? No comment.