I was drawn to this book because the news reports about it made me feel ill. As a female senior Cabinet Minister who's just toppled the Prime Minister attempts a mandate for what she's stolen, the daughter of the ousted PM has published a novel based on someone doing what Julia did to her Dad. Is she a new Nostradamus?

If everything from a political leader's mouth comes from an arsehole, why not vote for an egg? Get a giggle from the Sunny The Egg campaign ad on Youtube and you'll be in the mood for Jessica Rudd's Campaign Ruby. It's a lightly humorous easy-read, and if it was film you'd call it a "chick-flick". Underneath the flippant veneer is an Election Campaigns For Dummies, a lesson for the less-politically-tragic of us on how predictable politicians' paths can be. Where Mungo MacCallum's Advice To A Young Politician was a primer on how aspirants to The Lodge should plot their courses, Jessica shows us the media circus and the scripting that are presented to us in the weeks before someone's given the keys to Kirribilli.

Given that the fiction in this book so closely correlates with our current political reality, there's one major aspect which Miss Rudd appears to have gotten badly wrong. She's believed that because of the Global Financial Crisis this election would be fought in a campaign centred on economics. The proverbial "elephant in the room" has not been given any oxygen by either Abbott or Gillard through the use of a simple ploy. Julia's asked to discuss it, Tony's declined, so neither's given anything away. The elephant's still there, but both opponents ignore it so steadfastly that it appears to be non-existent. An underestimated and very broke voting public, however, will see the pre-mentioned pachyderm quite clearly, and this can't be doing any good to anybody's "cred-factor" in the slightest. Do either realise how cynical they're making the Australian population become? Miss Rudd, through her protagonist's role as an investment banker come Liberal economic advisor and spin doctor, based her plot on what should have happened but didn't

I'm still a hundred pages from the end of the book. The election's round 48 hours away. While reading I've been listening to Julia invoking Kevin in the Brisbane show last night,. "If Kevin was here tonight," says she " he would be saying that he's come off a sick bed to campaign for the re-election of my Government – he doesn't want to go back." I found myself asking "Go back to where, Julia? Back to when he was the popularly elected Prime Minister about to campaign for his second term?" If Kevin's tears on the day of the leadership spill are anything to go by, he'd go back without a second's hesitation.

I used to think elections were about voting for people and believing in policies. It seems now that the reason we vote is to oppose what we don't want. Given such a negative karma, can such a sick form of democracy do anything but deteriorate? Maybe Mark Latham's right, and we should reply to the blank pages we've been given with blank ballots? It would send a clear message that we're tired of this game and don't want to play any more. Many would argue (as I've done often) that non-participation revokes the non-voter's right to a political voice. I can't help but wonder, though, what might happen if eighty per cent of Australian voters told our would-be elected leaders to stick this form of democracy up their backsides.

I await the ending of both Campaign Ruby and the campaign of Labour's redheaded Brutus with great eagerness to learn how closely one reflects the other.

PS The "Brutus" tag comes deliciously from the book, and I've just realised where Jessica got the name "Ruby" – the two monikers share the first three letters.