Dear reader. Just as things couldn’t get any more exciting.
Did Tudgey or Christian design Robodebt? We may never know. Perhaps Brittany or SCOMO of the ‘ Five Ministries” may know?
Just after the Robodebt Royal Commission hearings left you choking on your cornflakes. Just as the toast freshly buttered and spread with a generous layer of marmalade fell from your hand as no one could remember just who was responsible for the harsh, punitive, doctrinaire policy designed to humble shame and KILL welfare participants can get. There’s something much worser yet to come.
(The editors would like to apologise for this grammatical inexactitude, but sadly we had to let them go as they have taken on much more lucrative positions with the ‘Peoples Daily’ and the ‘Global Times’. We wish them well in their enterprise. We recently tried to contact them for an update but were informed that they’d gone ‘Hong Kong bookseller’, which we assume to mean are both editing and publishing fiction. We wish them well.)
Was Robodebt Tudgey’s Love-child?
Worser than the ungrateful lawless, (another apology Op Cit; the Editor) and drink fuelled nightmare that’s happening on the streets of Alice Springs as we write. And worser still, (ibid; The Editor) than the ongoing sage of Brittany Higgins, who like our temp Ms Culthorpe was cruelly ravaged in the corridors of our parliament and still no one knows what really happened. Yes Folks, as we await not just for Robodebt, not just for peace from the torture of rivers of grog and the who dunnit frame-up of our greatest and most noble war hero ever Benny Boy Roberts Smith, we fly back into the fray. To find out what the hell is going on. And why we can’t afford more believable script writers cos they’re all working on Cardinal Pell’ s posthumous biography;”Kiddyfidlers and the blind eye’. And, why the engines on the Rotodyne at the precise moment of dramatic climax just stopped.
We return to our saga.
‘What the’.. all we could hear was the roaring of the wind, the battering of hail, snow and the tempest as we corkscrewed like Dorothy in the ‘Wizard of Oz’ onto the upward trajectory to who knows where. We just held on. And as the Rotodyne stilled, lifeless, and uncooperative to formal control mechanisms, was lifted with the ease of a redacted copy of the internal transcripts behind the five ministries scandal in the Canberra air by titanic forces. And the best we could do was hope that somehow or other the engines could be restarted. And if we came through this ordeal alive, we may yet have another chance, like a Robodebt victim, of a second life.
Perhaps not the best- seller, that ‘ Spare ” turned out to be. But just as heart wrenching.
The atmosphere inside the cabin was eerie. The instrument panel glowing menacingly showed us what we didn’t want to know. The fuel gauge on absolute empty and the altimeter whirling faster than the casino wheel in the highflyers lounge at Barangaroo.
Ces was the first to appraise the situation,
‘Hey Terry has this thing got parachutes’? Terry, another camel stuck to his bottom lip replied ; ‘Nup’
‘Have we got any spare fuel on board’? Terry, the bottom lip moving imperceptibly replied again, ‘Nup’
‘How’s about a raft, have we gotta life raft’? Terry nodded in the negative before offering another cursory ‘Nup’
‘Well the does this thing float?’… ‘Nup’
‘Well then’,
Ces wiped the sweat from his brow, ‘I reckon’,
The sort of Low- Life, bludging filth Robodebt targeted.
Terry completed the sentence; ‘you reckon we’re fucked’ .
In disgust Terry whose hands had gripped to the wheel more tenaciously than John Barilaro gripped to his sinecure in the NSW parliament just threw his hands up. Pulled out another Camel and kicked at the dashboard with the sole of his boot. Briefly the lights of the control panel went dim, and then, a new light beamed brightly and with it a glimmer of hope it read, ‘Emergency landing, fasten seat belts’.
‘Hey Terry, do we have seatbelts on this thing”?
‘Nup’
‘Well then this is it’…
To question Robodebt was…. er…. ‘Unquestionable’.
Through the tempest, through the roar of the wind, the elements, and the speed of eternally lifting they rode the Rotodyne until it seemed they must be at the absolute rim of the stratosphere itself. They felt the craft, their bubble, their cocoon, their coffin, change, and just stand still, poised above the abyss. ‘We must be at the absolute top of the updraft? Yep and you know what they say, about the Chinese economy? Two yuan don’t make a dime?
Nup mate what goes up must surely go’…
His words were wrenched from his open mouth mid-stream as we felt the aircraft plunge vertiginously and for a moment we all gathered weightless under the ceiling of the cabin as the fall accelerated, and we knew that this time, our number was up.
All we could hear now was another sound from behind the cockpit. Reliable as ever it was Sophie; ‘Youse fucken bastards, my hubby whose high up in the Liberal party will twist yer balls off their mountings and poke your eyes out with a cattle prod. Then he’ll tie a length of nine gauge round yer necks, put youse on the back of the ute and drive through the bush until your heads pop like corks, then he’ll put youse in the mulcher’,
We’ve received numerous calls from readers confused about the similarities between Robodebt and the Rotodyne.
We kicked the door. “SHUT-UP SOPHIE!
And for good measure we all accepted one of Terry’s Clamels and decided if were gonna go by rapid descent, we might as well give and unhealthy habit one last go.
The plunge seemed eternal, and we could see nothing. Where once only minutes earlier bright day, now just the ethereal inky blackness of the storm and the sense that we were prawns in the sea of life. Prawns, pacifically speaking on an eternal game pacifically speaking between forces so banal they were beyond evil and the forces of apathy, which to all intents and purposes was Australia at large.
As you can see the internal working of the Rotodyne were entirely transparent. Not so for the Robo-debt.
And before we could say ‘Sensible climate policy under the Coalition’ we emerged just like that! Into bright sunshine. We could see below us a massive mountain range, maintains so high and us pitching and swirling underneath another updraft as the incredibly the short stubby wings of the Rotodyne acted as a sort of aileron and directed us towards the highest of the peaks. The peak of this massive looming mountain range itself, shrouded in cloud and the vortex of snow, ice, rail and hail that still enveloped and clutched at the flimsy fuselage. We grimly held on.
We knew one thing, that we were headed for that peak. And it seemed certain we were going to run smack bang onto the top of it or very near. We held on, knuckles blanched in sheer terror, the voice of Sophie in the distance describing in intimate and gory details what her hubby would do to us. Another updraft lunged, we braced ourselves. We felt the cockpit spinning and the wings straining and then as we knew our end was nigh. We must hold on, knowing that holding on was just letting go. And that wherever we landed we were more likely going to end up chopped mince than choppered.
Is this the end of the trio? Can Sophie save them from the tempest? Or has their luck finally run out?
In this image we can clearly see where all the pieces of the Rotodyne fit together.. Not so for the Robodebt. We cant even find an instruction book.
Find out in the next episode, ‘Too Choppered to chop” or ‘Operation mince-meat fooled no one but the makers of Spam’.