Dear reader as you recall, our heroes had made some astonishing discoveries about Jam-land and its overlord Angus, but to our surprise we discovered there was someone even more powerful and higher up the food chain than China.  An individual who went by the name of ‘M’. If we could unlock the identity of ‘M’ we could at the very least  ask for a share of the Rivers of Gold derived from screwing the Australian taxpayer, and get off the Job Seeker. 

We urge you to read this next thrilling instalment with a sympathetic understanding of the weight borne by senior bureaucrats in government departments who deserve Prime Ministerial salaries because the work to ensure the status quo is maintained for those on Job Seeker. 

Ces was explaining to Quent, how the investments work, and how the money goes round to make even the most morally bankrupt kleptocrat look like a philanthropic LEGEND

‘Jeez beats working for a living’ Quent replied, aghast at the reach of Angus and his connections through the Cayman’s.

‘Yep’ affirmed Ces; ‘and on the parliamentary pension, you can index it against your investment portfolio and philanthropic trust and pay no tax’. 

‘Jeez he’s got it worked both way, how do you know all this’? 

‘Well it pays to be one jump ahead of the pack that’s how I got the tax concessions and leverage to run pcbycp. We allegedly give funding so that little indigenous kids can go to top schools like Scotch Grammar and Melbourne College, and then we get entitlement to talk with Twiggy and Gina on what Australia really needs. And it makes us look really good in making those kids from outback whiter than white, and get a job as a third tier underling with no real prospects of ever becoming “ establishment”  in one of the rich kids investment brokerage firms. It’s done for the betterment of all’.

‘Education, health, equity and the overarching principle of the benign and nurturing  Commonwealth’? 

‘What the fuck are you on about?, It’s about  money and wealth and prestige and standing? It’s like Uni Vice Chancellors. They don’t give a stuff about students, but if their salaries are questioned for doing nothing, they go APE SHIT’!

‘What about ordinary Australians’?

‘Fuck this tin-pot country! No, Im talkin bout standing where it counts! On the ski fields of ASPEN!. If you aint got a portfolio of stinking wealth at least a hundred mil, no one will even look at you, they wont even let you on the ski fields’. 

“Would they stop you at the gate,”? 

‘Jeez Quent you don’t know much about being successful, they wouldn’t let your helicopter land. No one DRIVES to Aspen’.

‘And you Ces, do you condone this sort of behaviour? Is it moral’? 

‘Christ Quent when were you born? Morality aint got nothing to do with it. It’s POWER! Ethics, morals, social responsibility, it’s all immaterial. We get the money, and in the end that’s all that counts’. 

‘But isn’t that cynical’? I suggested timidly (I was taken aback by Ces’s mercenary underside), 

“WHAT’! Ces looked at me as if I was an alien, surprised, “and give the rest to China’?

‘But what’s fair, as a principle’?

Ces laughed, ‘in politics and in high finance nothing’s fair,  it’s what your entitled to as an instrument of power and that’s the  principle’, 

‘But that’s tantamount to graft and nepotism’?

‘Funny I just call it  ‘plain ol good luck’. And that’s how the meritocracy works. We work bloody hard, send our kids to the right schools, to make the right connections and expect a bit of gravy’

‘What’?

‘Cos you idiot, that’s how the world goes round’. 

‘Oh’! I had to admit, Ces had it taped, he was worldly that way. I had to admit, I’d lived an insular life and needed to get out more. 

But will we get out of this fix? Who is this mysterious M? Does he hold the key? And if he does, will it unlock the whole business and once and for all save us from the menacing, nefarious and rampaging nemesis of China? We’d got no further to uncovering the link with Angus, but with Ces’s inspired leadership we gained an insight into how the Minister for Energy ticked. And it was more a tok tik than a tik tok, that alone was reassuring. At the very least in screwing the Australian Taxpayer he was putting us ahead of China. That was deeply reassuring. 

Stay tuned to your next episode. 

‘The Great Caterwaul of China’, or, ‘Maos littler little red-book carpet ride’.