Ever since the welcome and suitably humiliating demise of the egregious ecclesiastic from Manly, Friar Fuck’d, I’ve been pondering who’d be the most suitably iconic secretion to take his place as a figurehead for the awfulness of the wretched regime that is the L/NP.

* * * * *

The Liberal/National coagulation is awash with talent: talent for greed, corruption, deceit, nastiness, book burning, malice and incompetence, from the lowliest grifter-in-training on the backbench through to that fatuous, smug twat who believes his subscriptions to Jesus-R-Us have purchased the big guy in the sky’s approval to lead the country towards the rapture.

With their tag-team bastardry how to pick just one of them as the symbol for the farce that is this “government”? Someone whose persona says “if it wasn’t so serious it’d be funny”, someone of sustained fuckwittery, someone who can replace the rabid Abbott in that role?

Of course ScumMo has the required profile and exhibits all of the symptoms for him to be the de-facto standard bearer, but as always in the L/NP there are challengers lurking.

Frank Bainimarama, PM of Fiji on ScumMo: “Insulting… condescending… nothing can be worse than him.”

Michael Bobblehead McCormack: “Hold my beer.”

Bobblehead leapt to his feet to gazump ScumMo’s insults and condescension by suggesting inundated Pacific Islanders can fall back on fruit picking in Oz once their own countries have disappeared beneath the waves. This rustic non-entity has more nasty ideas than an Al Qaeda suggestion box(1) – from disparaging Pacific Islanders, gays and women’s sport to championing corporal and capital punishment.

He’s so narrow minded his eyebrows meet at the back of his head. He’s lowered the IQ of every room he’s ever entered, including the empty ones. He would be more suited to a career as Wagga Wagga’s town scarecrow if he had the required intellect or personality; hence he’s a strong candidate to assume the mantle of Tory exemplar.

However, let’s not forget my personal favourite flag carrier of comical idiocy for whom no humiliation can undermine an opinionated self-regard – Bobblehead’s arch foe Alvin Purplehead from New England. The barmy, smarmy fornicator wants his old job back and he’s embarked on an image refresh in pursuit of that cause. There’s now no topic that’s safe from Barmaby’s ill-informed opinions as he struggles to keep his puce mug in front of the cameras; the problem being that his logic always has more holes than Oscar Pistorius’s bathroom door.

If Barmaby resumes jogging as part of his re-imaging crusade we can expect car park boom-gates all over Canberra to go berserk when Barmaby’s gelatinous white thighs thunder past as he sweats off another bender. I’d like to accelerate his fitness regime by tying a bacon butty to his fat arse and having a rotweiller chase him home.

Then there’s Peter Spud-Dutton, a graduate of the Myra Hindley Charm School who couldn’t get $5 for his autograph if it was on a $50 note yet, convinced of his own appeal he skulks, shiv to hand, waiting and plotting . His cadaverous, dead-eyed presence would suck the joy from a puppy frolic. He’s a malevolent hairless Hitler whose own dog would bite him. When his dishwasher stopped working he had her immediately deported. But Spud is a poster boy for the autocrats and the thought police who, if he ever realises his ambition, would no doubt qualify as Australia’s worst PM on his first day in the job.

But it’s not just the pollies who contribute to the gene pool of rancid nastiness that is so characteristic of the Tories. The self-aggrandising mavens of rabid right-wing propaganda and disinformation in the media have valid claims to being symbolic of the feculence of the L/NP. They are many – Kenny, Albrechtsen, Devine, Bolt, Dean et al but two stand out as the essence of putrescence.

For an over-stayer in public facilities and author of love letters to school boys(2) Alan Gloria Jones has a warped sense of proprieties with his trademark, misplaced indignations. A cranky, poisonous, sad old soap dropper, defamer and outdoor Opera House horse race projectionist who vilifies women from behind his bully pulpit Jones wields an authority far beyond his audience of taxi drivers and querulous septuagenarians. Politicians of both sides line up to feed his ego, tugging their forelocks and polishing his apples thereby making the pathetic old fart far more dangerous than is warranted.

Peta Credlin was Tony Abbott’s groom of the stool during his short-lived glory days as the country’s most prominant vandal. Multi-tasking as the ringmaster of the circus that was Abbottism she maintains the same rabid right-wing mindset that saw the whole farce come crashing down around her boss’s flappy ears. That level of chutzpah and her Cruella De Vil persona make her a stand-out.

* * * * *

While Bobblehead McCormack has risen briefly above obscurity to pull the headlines it’s only a temporary reprieve for a man who will disappear himself back beneath the waves of his own vapidity. McCormack will resume his old role as ScumMo’s chief noddy and then perhaps publish his memoirs as a colouring-in book with a free set of grey pencils.

Despite the rigorous competition my favourite Abbott replacement and therefore hate figure is still the smirking happy clapper from The Shire. But it’s only a matter of time.

(1) Bill Bailey

(2) Jonestown: The Power and The Myth of Alan Jones – Chris Masters.

This article was originally published on The Grumpy Geezer.