‘The Australian Way’, a piece of paper to ensure a credible climate policy?
‘A White Board in which even the black bits are …. white’. P.M trying to find the climate policy amid the funding for carparks metrics.
Dear reader, we recapture the excruciating moment when Ces, Quent and ‘Benny Boy’ are about to remove the gag from Sophie. They are expecting a torrent of colourful language and violent assertions, and that’s the good bit. What will happen next? Only the Coalition’s Climate policy is more labyrinthine. Fitting then, as our heroes hope for a labyrinth to get them out of the underground bunker, the arsenal of pommy nukes, and the clutches of arguably Australia’s most powerful woman, now exalted bench person of the Fair Work Commission, Sophie, ( is that an ex uni law professor in my back shed?) Mirabella.
Read on , if you so dare.
‘Allright then, I’ll do it, but if she tries anything funny, I’ll give her a good nudge with my desert boot’, Ces was intent upon finding the humanity behind Sophie. Benny and I were doubtful, but Ces, one of the old guard still believed in humanity as an unstoppable force of goodness.
P.M to Barnaby, ‘just pretend you care, everybody else does’!
‘Allright then Ces, but I’ll tell her how it’s gonna be.
If she doesn’t get it we’re stuck here anyway so what’s the difference? And besides, do you really think Sophie is gonna help us out. Has she ever helped anyone but herself? I dunno Ces, she’s helped other fallen women. She helped Bronnie get on her helicopter, she helped Gina dodge the resource rent tax, and she’s possibly gonna do a stint in London as our special trade envoy when Tone gives it away. Whichever way you look at it, she’s irrepressible and looms large in our public life. Yeah, but what has she ever done for anyone’?
There was a pause, we couldn’t’ think of anything she’d done other than featherbed, help the old law professor out and yet, we knew that somewhere in her past she must’ve done some good somewhere.
Barnaby to Keith; ‘if you dont pretend to care about carbon and all that lefty bullshit my face will explode in parliament’!
‘Look we’ll be here all year if we have to scour the earth finding anything she’s done that was public spirited, but for now we’ve gotta get outta here!! There’s no more McWhilliams Cream Sherry, there’s no Para Port, and the tin of sardines here (he held it aloft in the pallid light) has a use by date of 28/09/58. That was a good day Ces’, offered Quent. ‘Why? It was when Collingwood won the granny and Norm Smith invented the Norm Smith medal for being the most average Australian. Back on 58 you couldn’t be more Australian than have a name ‘Norm Smith’ even if ya tried. You should take stock in that. That was before, (he paused to gain greater emphasis) before they’d even invented multiculturalism, and complex multi syllable surnames, and SBS, and soccer on the telly. It was a wholesome era of nothing much happening and Ming asking the poms to set off nukes in the outback. It was, he gazed around the four walls, a … GOLDEN ERA’!
Ces was in full force; ‘It is said that on that date no tinned food ever went off, as if it were anointed by……(Quent paused for emphasis) . God’.
Another great piece of paper that fell just a little short of the mark.
Benny had heard enough; ‘You’ll be anointed if you don’t get us out of this mess, now quit your mucking about and let’s get this gag off, For Gods’ sake. For Sophies sake and the sake of all clean-living Australians who’ve haplessly managed for two and a half benighted centuries to get by without the boom of NUCLEAR POWER’!
Ben had a point, we had to move, with the times, and by our reckoning 1956 weren’t all that bad as it did mark the era of telly and pretending to round up Abo’s and other flora at Maralinga.
There was no choice, and deftly Ces untied the gag, saying, as he did, “Now listen to me Sophe, you tell us how to get outta here and we’ll grant you your freedom, and in the end , you’ll be back on the bench of the Fair Work Commission, disenfranchising ordinary Australians as you’re supposed to do. But no tricks, no funny business, and none of us, want to be the next retired law professor stuck in a shed on the back paddock of your property, cos we have standards’!!
This, and he emphasised to the towering countenance of Benny Boy, who stood with his familiar gaffer taped AK 47, the bandolier of 50 cal, the grenades, claymores, and Bren gun carried in honour of fallen Anzacs who ghasped their last at the footy, this is your LAST CHANCE’!!
Vladimir gives the thumbs up to Strayla’s Climate policy. “Best Policy they’ve ever had to be sure, no worries! Who is this Barnaby git? Is he the bloke who tried to shirt-front me? fucked if I know’.
And with that, and one deft pull of the knot the gag fell to the dusty floor,
At first there was nothing ,
Will Sophie take them for a ride? Will their descent be Dante-esque or Hogarth-ian”? Find out in the next inclinational episode, ‘A step in the dark with Sophie”, or ‘First steps to a nuclear future, on Matts Canavan’s Circus Caravan’.