Dear reader, we hope you don’t mind, but it’s time for a diversion to the murky world of politics. Please excuse us as we indulge in the dim craft and shed another half light upon a non problem.
As you can imagine, things are not so rosy in the Lodge. That’s because no one lives there. They’re not that fresh at Point Piper either. And judging by the external appearance of the PM’s house, painted in glorious salmon pink stucco, there’s something clearly wrong with australian politics. Salmon pink should not be evinced anywhere outside the Mediterranean, and even there the salmon has been fished out.
We hate to be judgemental and loathe to invoke matters of taste, but to be quite frank as a colour it’s in poor taste. Almost, parvenu. Now I now perfectly nice people who still live on the harbour and who aren’t crowded out cheek by jowl by over-renovated stucco mausoleums. They’ve managed for almost half a century to be content with the off-white, the cream, and the plain red brick. Sydney is a lovely interplay of these subtle, and well tried colours. That’s what made it the chosen destination for painters, who sought to capture the light and the exuberance of plein air.
‘That’s why Peta gets credit where it’s due. She coined the term, “ Mr Harbourside Mansion”, and in doing so eschewed her undying love for the PM that replaced her Tony’.
These days, i’m afraid to say that being on the harbour in Sydney is synonymous with being quite gauche. There you go! I’ve said it. It strikes of nouveau riche. And to be quite frank, demonstrates a sort of manifest destiny of the insecure and bombastic. Ostentation personified. Almost impossible to find, as in the old beach road in Sandy or Brighton, a house that hasn’t been enhanced with a sort of suburbanised version of elephantiasis. Everything is enlarged. This exctasy of enlargement finds its ultimate expression the closer you get to the waters edge. I know this, because just prior to the election, people, (journalists) were indulging in commentary from a boat, poised within spitting distance of the PM’s house. And come to think of it, it’s the first time we’ve had a real P.M who has really really outperformed on the harbourside mansion. That’s why Peta gets credit where it’s due. She coined the term, “Mr Harbourside Mansion”, and in doing so eschewed her undying love for the PM that replaced her Tony.
Malcolm’s front gates. Is that a Prius in the driveway?
What has this got to do with the price of fish in India? Well I’ll tell you. All the other PM’s have been bog suburban. Even Keating with his froggy clocks was anchored in the half shade of Jack Lang-dom, bottle drives and the Apex table in the park. Not so our current P.M. He has credentials that are the sine-qua non of the manifestly successful. But has he the ticker to be the P.M? Only John. E.Howard can tell us that! It’s all about Mr Harbourside Mansion. In evolutionary terms he’s already the superior species. What could he possibly have in common with the unwashed? Not much. But now, post election, he’s discovered the truth about Medicare. And he admits now that the electorate don’t trust either him or the Liberals to leave it alone.
Dufy painted nicely. Note absence of Salmon Pink.
But how can he really emphasise? We have a solution, spend a week somewhere else. And Canberra is not counted. Try a caravan park, or just, dull normal suburbia, and then, that salmon pink may be just a little dun-coloured. It’s all a perspective, but in Malcolm’s place, it’s not rose coloured glassed, nor salmon pink, but dun coloured. Of everything that palpitates beyond his somewhat garish over ornamented wrought iron gates. Sort of Dufy with a Penis enlargement, and Botox. And that is the question, that is often forgot. Like the price of fish in Indi, which believe judging on the spot price of Integrity is on the rise. Good news for all of us, cept you can’t eat the fish caught in Sydney Harbour. It’s unfit for human consumption. Not much Salmon to be found there either.