Devotees of Australia's federal political life are used to having it on tap. If you need a little politics, there's always a little going.
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Even if parliament's not sitting - with its live streams, updates and Dynamic Reds - you can tune in to pollies' Twitter feeds, a 24-hour news channel or catch the Lateline repeats online.
But yesterday, the political degustation menu was extended with the addition of the Labor Party's National Conference. Starting with the Prime Minister's opening address, we had party members gracing the microphone with their opinions on the four Es; economy, education, environment and employment.
And yes, it was gracing. In many ways, the Labor Party Conference seemed just like, well, a conference. With a few exceptions, people spoke to their three-minute time limits. And when they went a little over, there was no one yelling at them for being an idiot, simply a moderator politely saying time was up.
People were uniformly referred to as ''Delegate So and So'', as if there was some genuine respect happening.
Voting, for the most part, was just an aye/no affair - not a tedious division in sight.
Admittedly, some contributors (e.g. Doug Cameron) became passionate enough to observe that Tony Abbott ''hasn't got an economic brain between those two wing nut ears'' and warn that ''you should never have a fetish for a surplus''.
But as far as the cameras were concerned, everyone played together nicely. Besides, Doug told Wayne Swan he was a stand-up Treasurer. With all the apparent goodwill, one couldn't help but wonder why things couldn't be like this all the time; plugging through the issues, stopping for a decent lunch, before plugging away some more.
That is, before you realised that the Opposition wasn't there! Oops.
And of course, there were plenty of reminders this was a Labor event.
Apart from the heavy usage of the term ''comrades'', the different conference segments were punctuated by shiny happy videos.
These consisted of grabs of Julia Gillard and Co talking seriously about the serious issues interspersed with clips of Labor's past ''achievements'' and all of it set to the tune of urgent but uplifting pianos and strings.
In other words, they bore a disturbing resemblance to bank ads.
No one seemed to mind, however (they must have been too moved by the music). Just as no one seemed surprised when the Prime Minister made a reference to ''gourmet dog biscuits'' in her address.
After beaming a beatific welcome smile (I'm still here!) Gillard told a hard-luck story about a Melbourne woman who, despite a disability, was making a motza selling said canine cookies over the net. Somehow Labor policy was involved.
It just goes to show, when you don't have an Opposition there to pull you up, or a parliament to control, you really can say what you like.