Category: Politics

You sense that today will be the start of something different. The signs look good – no burnt toast, your new coffee beans deliver a delicious complexity, and your decision to iron your underpants and shirt last night means arrival at the bus station just as your bus arrives. Your favourite upstairs seat is vacant! Can it get much better? You settle, hat and brolly resting on the vacant seat.

My gosh, things are all falling into place wonderfully. Your newspaper has a full report of your team’s success last night, they won by a point, on the siren! The front page confirms the Government’s decision to accept your Cabinet Briefing Paper. You recommended ditching those ridiculous nuclear submarines. They also agree with your recommendations about stronger resourcing of cyber-security and greater emphasis on diplomatic discourse!

The bus winds through suburbia as you surreptitiously peel and eat your breakfast banana. You imagine a parallel scenario within the tree-lined streets, a myriad families at their breakfast tables, some childish squabbles, but school departure schedules on track.

Your mood responds to the dappled sunshine coming through the trees, you sense a minty freshness in the air as you ponder the day ahead. Sitting, gently jiggled in your elevated seat, you’re distracted momentarily by the number of rooftop solar installations. Could you engineer some federal assistance against the hugely expensive battery storage packs? You note the yellow-topped wheelie bins lining the curbs, sentinel to their smaller, red-topped companions. A moment’s panic: did you remember to put your bin out this morning? Of course!

The bus pulls in. Just a five-minute walk to the revolving door, through Security – “Morning George”, into the lift and your twenty-six-second ride to the thirtieth floor. Another coffee? Why not as you greet colleagues and close your office door.

You prepare to pick up from yesterday. Your laptop’s startup throws a duck-egg blue complexion around the walls. As programs load, your mind is briefly drawn to the window, to the miles of leafy enclaves running out to the distant mountain range. Roofs are mostly hidden; the trees and general greenery dominate the vista. You are keenly aware that much of your policy work will impact the residents inside those homes and you are beholden to political masters to ensure nationally-protective securities are in place, are effective and judiciously legitimate.

But the rigours attaching to yesterday’s challenge reengage your focus. You sense success. The weeks of tangled cogitations and considerations, Pythonesque in their defying complexities are nearing resolution; solutions identified, now merely needing execution.

A sharp knock on the door. It opens. Your PA asks “Have you heard the news? Both of the candidates have been ‘taken out’. Separate events, but the Signals Directorate think they’re connected.” She senses your overriding irritation at the interruption and withdraws.

For a moment, you ponder the news. A smile acknowledges that things can only get better from here. You pick up the secured mobile “Well done, guys!” You return to the Budget Estimates.

I was taking time out, kicking back after finally winning the prestigious nature-photographic competition – and a hands down win too, I might add. I was wandering in a hitherto unexplored stretch of forest and suddenly, in this space, there it was, as plain as day!

I cannot remember ever seeing a weasel before but there, not fifty metres away was a long, slinky animal with its iconic reddish-brown fur. I was sure it wasn’t a ferret, or a stoat.

It seemed to be transitioning through some unprecedented event, possibly an incapacity to pass excessive gas, judging by the rhyme and rhythm of its antics. As I watched I sensed it was possibly over thinking how it was going to move forward. It snapped, screamed, kicked and at times walked backwards in its frustrations, caught in a space that offered limited, if any temporary targeted or proportionate opportunities of escape.

I found myself musing on the possibilities of keeping a weasel as a pet, training it, possibly even upskilling its capacities into a new normal? I wondered if this was just a numpty idea. But the concept just kept returning – the notion of reskilling a wild animal.

Success would certainly tick a few of my boxes – imagining a trained, performing weasel providing a circus draw card, leading to substantial future proofing of my rather parlous fiscal outlook, easing mortgage originations and providing a timely break from my unprecedented, structural unemployment status.

I started to consider my capture-techniques and aspirational powers.

I (together with the UN and Malcolm Turnbull) had birthdays last Sunday, 24^th October. I drove through Tenterfield, on my way to the NSW north coast. I belatedly discovered that on that same day, 125 years earlier, Sir Henry Parkes, one-time NSW Premier, delivered what has become known as the Tenterfield Oration, a general ‘call to arms’ for the peoples of the seven Australasian colonies (the seventh being NZ) to unite and form the one Federation!

Travellers approaching Tenterfield from the west first notice the Henry Parkes motel on the left. Looking further along Rouse Street, a large sign heralds the Peter Allen motel, the town’s other famous son. Two hundred metres further, on the right (extreme?), is the office of Barnaby Joyce MHR, soon-to-be former leader of the National Party and Deputy Prime Minister. I hesitate to call him the 3^rd famous son.

The juxtaposition of these three pieces of real estate struck me immediately. Referencing the father of Federation, the man joyously heralding Australia as his home and the man who leads a party doing its darndest to split Australia asunder – “the weatherboard and iron “battler” versus the “woke inner city raving lunatics” – all cheek by jowl, on the main street of Tenterfield. What karma is at work?

I might ask a savvy journo to consider this situation further.

Australia’s American-built, nuclear subs arrived in 2049 and were deployed almost immediately on an extended, secret mission. In fact, they were kept ‘off the surface’ for fifteen months, moving surreptitiously around the Pacific, poking around the kelp forests of the South China Sea, around Hawaii, Japan, New Zealand, looking, sampling, forever on the move.

But the crew were tired, cranky – they all needed a surface break; sunshine and the sky, to see the horizon, to feel a breeze! Arguments were breaking out regularly, things were tense. They also needed to know the actual rationale behind their extended voyage!

“Senile, indeed! I’ll have you know that there is absolutely nothing amiss. The results reflect the agreed methodology.” Captain, Dr Ahab stormed out of the lab, slamming the bulkhead door as he left. The crew shuffled, uncomfortably.

“Mmm, that went well”, observed Ishmael, to nobody in particular, moving across the pod, picking up the interim report, scanning the pages. “I think he’s right. We might still need a bit of tinkering, but we’re on target. Stubb, maybe you and Starbuck could run those seaweed analyses again – keep looking for that tell-tale oxidatic marker.” Ishmael went in search of the captain.

The League of Governments had confirmed Nori’s adrenal-thyroid oxidative (NATO) properties from analysis of a small sample washed up on Bruny Island, two years earlier. It demonstrated a capacity to counter the ‘new normal’, the devastating, post-pandemic lethargy that had settled over the planet.

But finding sufficient Nori was proving to be the contemporary ‘Golden Fleece’. The race was on, nation against nation, scouring the depths in the hope of finding the ‘mother-lode’. Synthesizing and cornering production would be a world-beater!

The oceans were awash with submariners and on more than one occasion, HMAS Matilda had had close encounters with other vessels. They thought they had cracked it a few months earlier – near what had been Tuvalu. The drowned nations of Kiribati and Nauru had offered similar, false excitement.

Meantime, Ahab and Ishmael were in the Command module. They had agreed it was time to unpack the secret statement, sealed, and safely secured in the small safe. But the door had jammed. They sprayed the hinges, inserted screwdrivers, swore: all to no avail. Another squirt of WD 40, a shared bar of chocolate, and they waited.

The lubricant eventually worked and the tiny hinges creaked open. The safe had a single sheet of paper with the words, writ large ‘FIND AND SECURE NORI – Make Australia Great Again!’

Unknown to Matilda’s crew, both Tonga and Timor Leste had both found quantities on their beaches and their laboratories, with Indian financial backing, had achieved a synthetic form.

Matilda kept searching the ocean’s depths!

What exactly are your bi-monthly trips to the hair salon about? Are they insecurities coming to the fore, your fear of aging, of possible relevance deprivation? Are they countering a potential loss of virility, a perceived threat from the young Turks?

You walk around the office bleating about grey hair; glancing in mirrors, window glass, and even into the large shiny trophy that sits in the Board room. It is now a standing joke about your ‘incidental’ glances, into whatever reflective surface crosses your path!

Are you aware there is a photograph of you pinned to the wall in the downstairs loo, head tilted towards a large soup spoon you are holding – presumably just snitching a closer look for any encroaching greyness? Have you read the caption underneath? “Black hair matters…!”

You and your mate’s preoccupation with hair, or lack thereof, is drawing hundreds of media articles every week. You have created a distraction from our campaign. The media now follows your pate, its encircling fluff, and your mate’s secured “golden fleece”, both having attained their own aura, the photojournalist’s must-have, essential pic.

Do we really need to listen to your cacophony about the greying of your tonsure? OK, OK not strictly a tonsure, but your head muff. The decision to paint over your ensuite’s mirror, with red paint, for Christ’s sake! As our Il Capo, maybe you are taking things just a little bit too seriously.

Do you understand that about two-thirds of men suffer some degree of hair and pigmentation loss? Most accept it graciously, albeit probably with some wistful nostalgia, memories of former glories.

Do you think your behaviour goes unnoticed? You deny the obsession’s existence, ignoring your colleague’s advice for an adroit awakening, of the need to accept some graceful aging. Consider reducing your workloads and resist that extra double espresso in the morning. These are all consequential! Things could all end badly, suddenly. Your constellation might implode, with a mighty exhalation.

After the media captured, and maliciously posted your most recent hair-malfunction, don’t you think it’s time?  The spectacle of that goo moving slowly down your face. That went around the evening TV bulletins nicely. Not your finest hour, and again, just a serious distraction from the real task at hand – the positioning of fake news!

Hey, you’ve got so little of the furry stuff left, why are you bothering with the pretence? Are you really just trying to keep up with the blonde cowlick? Imagine for a moment, you’re in Fantasyland, and it all went black again, do you really think that your colleagues, the media, or even the El Presidente would think any more or less of you?

The ol’ pate-muff needs to take a backseat. It’s not alopecia, or a failing, it’s just your body talking to you. Let’s present the real you! Let’s start planning your relaunch. What could you call it? Maybe “My muff and I” OK, just joking. But you really do need to reconsider the priorities at stake here.

“Nothing to see here. Yes, ah no. Look, the Minister enjoys the full confidence of her cabinet colleagues. Pardon? No that is ridiculous! Expert advice is directing the roadmap, …”

My phone vibrates. I looked across at the PM, lifting the phone to my ear. I purposely turn, and walk through the doors, into the building. Steady, don’t run! I turn left, along the corridor and into the loos. I choose the furthest cubicle and sit. Do not start to cry! Stop it. Control!

That bloody bastard. He just threw me under a whole shitload of buses. That fucking … I feel my lower lip start to tremble. Stop it!

A click, someone enters the room. “Come on girl. Jesus, come on. Your not the first, and your not going to be the last! Suck it up.  You knew this was likely. Why did you flee the presser?”

There was a quiet chuckle “You should have seen the look on the PM’s face as you turned, and left! Mmm I suppose you will, on this evening’s bulletin. He’s gonna want your guts for garters!”

“Just piss off and leave me alone” I yell at the Whip. There is a hesitation, but heals scrunch and depart.

White hot steam continues to surge! Jesus, how could he? Twelve loyal years, family sacrifices, late nights, the boozy meetings, the sleazy inuendo, travel!  That’s it. Bugger em! Jesus, how could he?

I call Comcar and quietly leave the building, picking up vodka enroute to Manuka. The phone rings incessantly, unanswered. I turn it off!

Ice tinkles as I sit, staring blankly, reviewing the last few hours! I keep coming back to his “… she enjoys the full confidence…” the bloody, fucking, prick, slimeball, snake – wriggling out from under, again!

I check the bottom draw of my desk. The folder is still there, thirty odd pages of colour-coded spreadsheets. Just another slosh, tonic, ice. Mmm. Shit, they will be here shortly. Better get photocopying!

Thrring. Two guys in grey shiny suits at the door, asking for the folder. What, oh, er, yes. I go over to the desk, withdrawing the manilla envelope. The shorter guy undoes the strings, flicks through the document. They leave, advising that the PM instructs me to join his next presser at 9.30 tomorrow morning!

I still cannot really believe what’s happening. My political career kaput, just like that! My God, the calculated treachery! How long has it been in play? Who else is involved? I betcha that baldy-headed, close-eyed potato is at the table, Moshi too!

Senior cabinet portfolio gone! Crossbenches here I come but first, I better call Michelle. “Yer, just wondering if you have a moment to pop over this evening, yep, quietly. That’s it, great. See ya then.”

I take a leaf out of Julie’s playbook and wear my stunningly blue shoes, the Armani stilettos. Moshi stands between me and the PM. Probyn fires first. PM-obfuscation. Gratton’s question, delivered quietly, skewered the bastard!  My face remains inscrutable.

My great-grandmother, Jacqueline Ardour, became the first President of the United Australasian Republic, after successfully steering the unification of New Zealand and Australia. The move, discussed since 1894, finally came in the aftermath of the continuing waves of the Coronavirus pandemic, in the 20s.

I came across her diaries recently. They were on an old USB stick I found as I was clearing out Mum’s house. The library still had USB technology!

My Gran described her world in a surprisingly matter-of-fact manner. She interspersed notations of domestic and international issues with a note, that as winter is coming, she must remember to plant the broad beans and daffodils.  It was also noted that she needed a new cardigan, against the invitation to attend the funeral of assassinated US President, Donald Trump!

There was a whole folder dealing with the Coronavirus pandemic: outcomes of the several strategies adopted to deal with the waves of infection that followed the relaxation of containment measures. Jacqueline noted how China, the US, the UK and much of Europe desperately competed to get their economies kick-started first, with their eagerness estimated to have cost two hundred and ninety million lives over the intensely infectious, first four years. I found it fascinating to read the assessment of the pandemic’s inability to penetrate the small Pacific nations and the largely forgotten Indigenous communities – a fortuitous consequence of isolation and government inaction!

She allocated a couple of pages to documenting the collapse of the oil industry, the shift of the geopolitical base towards South America, and the rise of extreme nationalism and civil unrest as borders closed against the pandemic. Jacqueline noted the rediscovery of home gardening!

She served two, four-year Presidential terms, and by the eighth year, her advisers were reporting that digital conferencing and home officing had slashed aircraft and vehicle movements. Combined with the breakthrough in battery technology, it seemed a reduction in Global Warming was achievable! Polar monitoring confirmed a decrease in ice sheet and permafrost melts, with climatologists confident the planet could repair itself.

An odd inclusion in her diaries was the transcript of the first line of the then, new UAR National Anthem. I suspect she had a wry smile as she wrote:

“I am, you are, we are Orz-tral-iaise-eon.”

The Centennial celebrations of United Australasia start next week. There is to be an unveiling of her statue in the Capital, to mark the occasion.

 In a bedroom, somewhere within the Canberra ‘bubble’, a fly, on the wall, is listening!

“Jude, it has been a hell of a few weeks; I don’t seem to be able to take a trick. Do you reckon they would come at a new, multi-million-dollar research facility, to finally nail down Clean Coal? Could I convince the faithful that the pictures of me holding that lump of coal were manipulated, … you know, fake news? Arsonists have lit over 35% of the fires and yet we are still being blamed! It’s as though they expect me to man the trucks!”

“This climate thingy is a global phenomenon and, our share of emissions is only 1.3%. We are doing our fair share. We have to protect the economy – jobs and growth! But how do I convince those woke, inner-city lefties?”

“Relax hun; you need to relax! Your marketing spin will win the day, it always has. Thoughts and prayers might help, too! “

He ponders and absent-mindedly starts considering options. He settles deeper into the pillows and starts to relax. “OK Jude, we need to cuddle so where the bloody hell are you!” The mood softens and the fly retreats.

In the morning the fly has moved to the kitchen. The couple are sitting down to breakfast. The bloke is distractedly licking excess jam and crumbs from his plate. “What about the religious discrimination business? Or a media stunt, demonstrating my record of under-promising and over-delivering! Maybe ‘throwing somebody under a bus’. Enthusiasm lifts his spirits – yer, that’ll work! What’s her name, you know, the girl who runs that sports funding program – er whatsername!”

The mood lightens significantly as the idea begins to take form.

“You know Jude, I reckon we deserve a holiday. Why don’t we leave all of this behind, for a bit. We can take the girls to, err … weren’t they talking about Vanuatu? We can slip away quietly and be back before anybody knows we’ve gone!”

The whiskey is costing fifty dollars a shot. We are on our third! “We have lost the confidence of the Board,” whines Jim “This is serious, we can be rolled, maybe even lose our annual bonuses,” he maffled into his Glenmorangie.

“I agree, Jim, it’s an absolute ‘cluster’, but I’ll be buggered if I saw it coming.” We hunker down morosely into our chesterfields, ice tinkling, both of us nursing glib thoughts, pondering how this has been allowed to happen.

“Obviously that stupid bloody decision to hold the Shareholder’s get together was very poorly timed, made worse by the decision not to insist on everyone wearing masks. Jees, we have two dead Board members, two in Intensive Care and three in iso. The AGM is nine weeks away, plus we have a motion to spill the Board. And we have nearly twenty hoi polloi nominating to fill the two, possibly four, vacancies!”

I shook my head, still incredulous that my three-week holiday absence had resulted in such an unmitigated disaster. The sacking of my deputy CEO had been the easy part. Undoing his handiwork was going to be tricky!

“I mean … well, old Hedley, jees he should’ve shuffled years ago – no loss, really, in the scheme of things. But David, our Chair – he’s a big loss and a strong supporter of us! Have we had any update from the hospital, about the others?” “Not so far.”

“Jim, you’re the Chief Finance Officer, it’s going to be your job to protect our bonuses. I can’t afford to lose this one, I promised Fiona a new red Alfa Sports, and Christmas in Rio. And the Portsea holiday shack, the wife still wants a pool installed.”

“We need a strategy” bleated Jim. “You’re the CEO, you’re the brains trust; imagine if some of those nominees get a seat. We don’t need any new eyes around the table. The ACCC were on our heels last year, and we don’t need them at the door again.”

“Righto, steady on Jim, don’t lose your cool. We need to be sharp and resolute, if we’re going to claw things back.” The donkeys nominating for the vacancies were my immediate concern, but I thought I could handle them, with a little judicious tampering of the ballot. Mmm, yes, that’ll work.

This morning’s emergency meeting has broken up in disarray. My plans for the shareholder vote has been rejected. I was bloody rolled, silly buggers, a bit of a slinging match across the mahogany. Fortunately I write the minutes and they will record an eventual endorsement of my strategy. It’s a slight brush with reality, but look, the ends justify…

The other issue is the merger. We each stand to make a motzer when it goes through. I have 100,000 preferential shares.  Just a few more weeks!

Jim and I both notice the two, dark-suited guys walking through the lounge. They are out of place: the dark glasses and identical ties. They approached, meaningfully.