This is it then. Drop everything not essential to life because we need all hands on deck. This is a mobilisation of decent human beings to end an ugly era. People have alluded to Whitlam's 'It's Time' campaign to describe the exent and the fervour of this mobilisation, but I think we have something before us today which is at once more desperate and more interesting.

More desperate because there is far more at stake. If the people of Australia actually vote for this government again, ignorance will be no cover - we will be consciously, popularly, voting for our country to move in the wrong direction. It is a direction social democracys have taken before, and the popular ideology behind it is simple - you need ruthless, distant, elitist government in order for the trains to run on time. To defeat Howard, and the Howards of the future, at heart is the need to defeat this ideology.

This mobilisation is more interesting and more hopeful because unlike, 'It's Time', 'Not Happy John!' has emerged as a broad-based expression of the people, across party lines. It is not a mobilisation for Mark Latham, but for democracy, and it is not even under any illusion that Latham might mean democracy. I truly hope that after the election there will remain many of us who can see that the defence of democracy has only begun. But right now, and for the next six weeks, there is only one task, and that is to rid our great country of a malignant wart.