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Yahoo! My Yahoo! Mail More Yahoo! Services Account Options New User? Sign Up Sign In Help Yahoo! Search web search Home Singapore Asia Pacific World Business Entertainment Sports Technology Australia China India Indonesia Japan Malaysia Philippines Thailand Vietnam Fake candidate mocks Australian vote campaign AFP - 54 minutes ago Send IM Story Print Fake candidate mocks Australian vote campaign SYDNEY (AFP) - – He's a man built by the people who would govern for the people, and like his real-life opponents, "Perfect Australian PM" Peter Best is a man of unswerving beliefs. "I stand for something I wont compromise on: whatever people want me to," the parody politician said. Best, the fictional brainchild of Sydney's Daily Telegraph tabloid, is the product of 13,000 online surveys of the city's residents about what makes the ideal Australian leader. Part-atheist, part-fervent Christian, Best changes his tune to suit the often fickle public as he campaigns around Sydney, in a dig at Australia's opinion poll-driven politicians. It's a duty he takes seriously. Faced with overwhelming demand for a married leader, Best wed his childhood sweetheart. He followed voters' wishes by backing offshore processing for asylum-seekers and a lower mining tax -- just like Australia's real leaders. Best also has an answer to the action-heavy slogans of Prime Minister Julia Gillard (Moving Australia Forward) and opposition chief Tony Abbott (Stand up for Australia). "My physical action is probably the hokey pokey -- you know, 'you put your left foot in, you put your left foot out, you put your left foot in and you shake it all about'," Best, played by an actor, told AFP. "I get all my actions from going to our online polling, then I go out and road-test them in the field, then I check the polls again to see if Im supposed to change my mind. Its pretty much one big party." Creator Joe Hildebrand, a political journalist with the Telegraph, says Best is a dig at the increasingly populist nature of Australian politics, but comes with a serious message. "We really wanted to say something about the shameless poll-driven nature of what the two parties are representing in this election," he said. Instead of an election fought on ideas and policies, he said the August 21 poll was a "vote-grabbing" exercise whose tone was set by Gillard's shock axing of elected prime minister and Labor party leader Kevin Rudd in June. Rudd's ouster, prompted by poor opinion polls in marginal seats, was a nakedly cynical act of "rampant populism" never before seen in Australia, Hildebrand said. "We thought if both the parties are going to be so shameless we'll do it too, but we'll do it properly: we'll do it right and we'll do it honestly," he said. "You want a poll-driven prime minister, we'll go all the way." Both Gillard and Abbott have carefully tailored their messages to undecided voters in about 15 swing seats, promising an easier commute, fewer asylum-seekers or even cash rebates for school uniforms. Gone are the sweeping visions of Rudd's 2007 landslide election victory, where he vowed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and tackle climate change, as well as deliver a long-overdue apology to Australia's indigenous tribes. But the small-target strategy has left large sectors of the community disengaged, bored or even angry, said political analyst Nick Economou. "No wonder the voters are saying how dull is all this, how uninspiring is it, and when's it going to end?" said Economou, from Monash University. It had the makings of a fascinating campaign: a plain-speaking, Welsh-born former lawyer -- Australia's first female leader -- meets a gaffe-prone ex-trainee priest and boxer turned swimsuit-wearing iron man. But both are desperate to claim their rival's stripes, with Gillard swapping her progressive feminist past for right-wing pragmatism and famously hardline conservative Liberal party leader Abbott touting himself as a moderate everyman. The surreal backdrop was underscored by Gillard's promise to rip up the traditional rulebook and present the "real Julia" when her polling started to flag, which left many puzzled about who they were seeing before. "Youve got a PM whos basically admitted that shed been faking it for the first two weeks -- not something Im used to hearing a woman say," joked self-confessed "ladies' man" Best. Pundit John Keane has dubbed it the "discount chain store" election, where voters are treated as consumers to be bought off with promises and the competing brands are almost indistinguishable. "This feels like a rather poor theatrical performance and not surprisingly... I haven't come across anybody who waxes eloquent about 'the great choosing day'," Keane told public broadcaster ABC. Economou said it was simply a return to Australia's natural political state, where government is seen as a "practical exercise" of problem-solving rather than an inspired national movement. "The vast majority of Australians are not interested in philosophy or ideology or visions," he said. But Hildebrand begs to differ. "People are raising all kinds of things that they don't feel are being addressed in the mainstream debate," he said of Best's phony campaign. One punter asked Best to develop an Australian space programme as one of his policies, with grand plans to construct a giant pub on the moon. But most were strongly against, for example, detaining refugees in countries which have not signed international human rights treaties, as advocated by Abbott. "Australians like people who are candid and honest, there's a thirst for it out in the electorate," Hildebrand said. "And the mainstream parties aren't providing any of it. There's a gaping hole." 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