A report from Bunty Beresford-Basingthwaite, (from the upper sixth MLC).
Bunty. Opening Bowler in school’s first eleven.
Dear readers, It’s an exciting time in the Australian body politic, and i’m sure you’ll agree with that nicely spoken man our P.M for innovation Mr Turnbull, that the future is ours, and there has never been a better time to be an Australian. I know some people grumble about generation Y and their forlorn hope in ever getting a house, but we generation X’ers are the new broom, and understand that through hard work and enterprise, the world’s literally our oyster. It is with such promise I just had to report to you all on the subject of a really stirring speech given the other day at that figurative bauhaus of modern women, the Methodist Ladies College.
Peta, ” fearless and forthright”
Last week, a very powerful woman, the architect of the recent electoral success of the federal Liberal party, Ms, Peta Credlin, came to our school assembly and gave us all a breathlessly stirring and inspirational speech. It was stupendous, and how we all roared when she stood up on the stage, grasped the podium with the strength of a Russian gymnast, gave a wave of her leonine hair, and announced, ‘seize the day, we are empowered!!’. It felt like my veins had been coursed with molten liquid fire, to hear her, see her, and just ghasped at her command of language, power of expression and long suffering capacity to deal with bores, dolts, and people who are just so frustrating because they are, as Peta put it, Dummies. ‘How do you lead for dummies’? That was the topic of the speech, and I hung on every word, because I know as captain of the open schoolgirls hockey team, first eleven, head of the debating society and current holder of the (International baccalaureate) Alliance Francais scholarship how incredibly frustrating it is to be surrounded by dummies. In my experience people must be cajoled, whipped, and thrashed into activity. And they irritate me with their questioning. It is so frustrating being surrounded by dummies, and I’ve got to tell you, they’re everywhere. And after the 2014, budget, it seems the whole electorate is brimming full with dummies!! I get a sense of it, when I’m on the number eight tram, and common people get on at the corner of Chapel street and Toorak road. Everything about them frustrates me, and they have no sense of intelligence, personal responsibility, ambition, or, I know it’s unfashionable to use this term, “class”.
‘Louise Adler, (an outstanding ‘old girl’) though I still can’t find the records I need to do a bio on her for the school magazine’.
Peta’s talk was much more than this, she told us all that in spite of the betrayal of her protege Tony Abbott, she was working tirelessly to ensure that the Liberal party stayed on track and demonstrated strong leadership. She reminded us that as a woman, you must strive to counter wet, wishy washy sentiment. Never be swayed by the weak, the meek and the dispossesed. Hard, strong, deliberative leadership is what this country needs. And by hook and by crook she’s a leader, true and firm. Such a pity that the “wets’ in her party betrayed her trust. Those wets, who are just too stupid to realise what they were doing.
No room for Dummies at the top.
After the school prayer, the head of the school council, Louise Adler, (an outstanding ‘old girl’, though I still can’t find the records I need to do a bio on her for the school magazine) got up, and with a thrilling applause described Peta as ‘a truly amazing woman’. ‘A woman of vision, and a woman of conviction’. I asked after the speech if I could interview Peta for the school magazine, but I was physically brushed aside by Louise who intimated that; ‘Peta and her were under contract, and I should mind my own business’. At first I was taken aback, and then thinking of the school motto, (Deo Domuique, ’For God and for Home”) realised that Louise was doing me a favour by being direct and not wishy washy and not being compromised by effete values like manners and emotional intelligence.
I shall treasure this speech night, and treasure the memory of two game changing powerful women who prove by their demonstrated actions that the boys club has real competition. As daddy said; ‘a strong woman like Maggie can really make a difference, and make this country great again’. And I do hope for posterity’s sake Louise encourages Peta to write a book, so that Melboune University press can have another deserved best seller. Rather hear Peta tell us about leadership than those silly, stodgy, wet, wet, wet, papers they used to publish by jaded academics, who talked of social theory and the recent political past, as if anyone cared. Like those useless novels we have to read for english literature, the past, like history, is bunk.