Whichever way you look at it…. Scomo has a whiff of ‘Billy” about him….

Dear reader, we return to our saga, still no nearer to finding out who it was who defiled our tea- lady Ms Culthorpe after she did a stint as an intern in the nations parliament. Poised perilously our heroes overhear a conversation between Dutto and Sophie and know that they may be slotted at any time. With Benny-boy unable to provide us with the level of protection enjoyed by Afghani villagers in the field they know they may come to a sticky end. Have they come to a sticky end? A sticky date with a date-pudding of their own making? Find out in this next carboniferously dated episode as they deal once again with titanic forces aligned against them. Their crime? like Assange it’s so long-winded the ‘reason why’ is no longer relevant. It’s beyond Kafka. Not even the Immigration Minister can make a decision, because the decision has been cast Cassandra-like as a Grecian tragedy. How much does a Grecian urn? Will Bill Papas come back from his Grecian sojourn?  Is there money left to burn? But time is ticking, and in Greece, as in the desert wastes, the hour glass is draining of sand, and sawdust is needed to sop up the blood that may be spilled. 

Do you think perhaps there are other forces at work? 

” Who’s Billy’? You may ask?

What forces more powerful than Angus, Tudgey, Clive, George, Craig and the bloke they call XI?

Or forces so metaphysical that we just cannot begin to  explain, because they have their own supernatural energy. A life- force all of their own. Like Clive who seems to have a logical explanation for existing in the first place. 

Whilst Sophie and Peter talk of allegiance and the oath of loyalty they gave to their lobbyists and the firms standing in line to further monetise decision making in the Nations Parliament. Ces and Quent work out one last desperate measure. In doing so they put their lives at risk.  But rather a swift end to a fate or they be “Assanged’ for the term of their natural lives. 

Ces, tapped Terry on the shoulder, “I say Terry, do you know these people?” 

Terry shrugged, and turning to us, said matter of factly, “Nup mate, I’ve been down here so long I lost track when the currency changed from duo-decimal to decimal when was that’? 

‘1966’ Quent chipped in, ‘I can still remember the jingle’! He hummed the jingle…….. 

Billy was the P.M who lost to ‘GOUGH”!

‘In come the dollars and in come the cents,

To replace the pounds and the shillings and the pence

Be prepared folks when the coins begin to mix,

N the 14th of February 1966’

‘What a grouse tune’, Ces enthused. ‘Indeed, Ces, those tunes  are embedded in Australian folklore’. 

‘A pity’, Ces reflected, it would have been a stand- out as our national anthem over ‘Advance Australia faire’.  

‘Yes indeed,  so they ditched ‘God save the Queen’? Terry asked in a semi abstracted state.

 “Yes, it was Gough or Malcolm who put the kibosh on ‘God Save’, as they reckoned it didn’t reflect our image as a forward looking self-reliant nation. 

Have we ever been self reliant’? Terry asked with a smirk.

‘Nah, we’re still up to our bum-holes with the yanks, but the optics are everything’.

‘Who’s Gough’ ? You may also ask?

‘Pity though the dollars and cents jingle sounds a bit like ‘Click go the Shears’, and I think that’s a truer sentiment than all the confected pomp of ‘Advance Australia’. Yep, and less ironic.

So we’ve still got the f1-11’s?

Jeez Terry you’ve been down here such a long time, that was donkeys ago. Now we have yank ships that wont float, yank helicopters that wont fly and a new fighter the F 35, that’s so temperamental it makes the Brewster Buffalo look like reliable. Mate the alliance is worse than ever, and whichever way you look at it, as dint of the fact that we have no foreign policy cept imprisoning refugees we’re up to ‘Pussy’s bow’ in hock to the yank military Industrial complex. And wait for it we’re gonna go nuke on Submarines. Wouldya believe it’? 

Gough had policies that promised change. and other worrying trends, not like “Labor-lite”.

‘Submarines’!!!!   Who would’ve thought, then perhaps there is a future for all of, (he pointed to the stygian city below), ALL OF THIS”! 

WE could see a glimmer of pride as Terry stroked his chin and thought, perhaps all these decades down here will come of use after all? Suggesting his years of tireless duty were not in vain. He reflected a bit more, Ces and I nudged each other and let him digest all we’d told him. The shock of the new and yet the reassurance that at the highest level Australia, hadn’t changed. 

‘So is the Country Party still holding the government to ransom’?, 

‘Yeah mate, cept it’s not the Country Party they’ve called it the National Party, a sort of aggressive agrarian kleptocracy run by the coal lobby. ‘Wow! No longer sheep and wheat’?, 

Billy, offered change of a more nuanced type. His dog-whistle only audible to those who were tuned to his frequency… short wave on the AM dial.

“Nah mate that went out donkeys ago with the EU and futures markets’. 

‘Futures markets’? 

At this Terry looked flummoxed, A futures market? Where could we begin, who was possessed with enough economic jargon to describe the experiment of  neo-liberalism, housing affordability,  hedge-funds, synthetic futures, non-fungible tokens and bit coin, let alone the rise of wheat futures and the ban on barley? It was a Gordian knot with no hope of untying. Will our heroes have time to possess Terry of futures markets? Will there be a future? Find out in our next chronologically challenged episode; ‘A future is past’, or ‘Two ticks and you’re a Tic Toc short of the Ticker’.