To be fair to Porky he did qualify that he didn’t want to exterminate koalas – just their habitats. Regardless, as per historical precedent, he was encouraged into exile after it was revealed that the only submission Barilaro had received promoting such ecocide was from a clear-felling developer mate and party donor.

Dungowan Estate is Barrels’ personal Elba – a sprawling, bucolic pile in the favoured Southern Highlands retreat of Sydney’s negatively-geared glitterati and Range Rovered, cos-play country squires where he’s no doubt pondering the workings of rorting from home.

The most surprising thing about Barrels’ posturing is not that it exposed his grifting or that he openly endorses the monetisation of species extinction, it is that he got nailed by Gladdy when all he’s been guilty of is adhering to the Tory’s pre-pandemic playbook. In Barrels’ absence his stand-in, the nominative deterministic Paul Toole has refused to explain if the National Party is accepting donations from property developers and then lobbying on their behalf.

Porky, it should be noted, is a protégé of the voice from the bush, our $80 million water boy Barking Barmy Joyce. He’s the master’s apprentice. Barking has been in the dog house (unavoidable pun) ever since his tendency to file his junk in other people’s spam folders became public knowledge but you can’t keep a good sex pest down – his subsequent public appearances have the subtlety of an outboard motor in a grease trap. He may be a corrupted idiot but at least he’s entertaining. Less can be said of his L/NP partners in crime.

Porky and Barking Barmy are the clowns in the L/NP goat rodeo, distracting the punters from the criminality that is the new normal under this tainted regime. Australia Pty Ltd is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the fossil fuel industry and the L/NP is its marketing department, reverting to type now that they’ve worked out their tactics for implementing their disaster capitalism agenda.

Nev Power’s spokesman SchMo McCacky keeps at smarm’s length from any and all accountability, relying on plausible deniability and blame deflection as his primary defences should he ever have to front the beak to explain his behaviour; and he’s betting that a cowed, complicit and conned media will continue to meekly suck his toes.

Bridget Bam Bam McKenzie (the Devine Brown of politics – she can blow a huge grant) and the sports rorts imbroglio have demonstrated to SchMo that he can brazen out the transgressions Trump-style. Let’s call it herd impunity – there are so many Tories with their fingers in the till, the rort-a-thon is so widespread and the lies so prolific that scrutiny is fleeting – some dogs may bark but the caravan of corruption moves on.

SchMo’s shovel-ready smirk, his curries, cubbies and chook pens is Looney Tunes does Goebbel’s performative propaganda from the PMO’s PR machine. They’re waving their contempt for us punters in our faces; distracting us with balloon tricks while rummaging through our silverware.

The arrival of COVID briefly interrupted the Tories’ festival of felonies. Treasurer and $60 billion man Mibrane Hertz wore the expression of a punched quiche when it dawned upon him that he’d been left with a warehouse of Back In Black coffee mugs – now going at 3 for $2 on Gumtree. The tunnel-visioned Tories, after being caught with their pants down, have quickly pivoted via the Hertz smash and grab budget, back to their dirty deeds of shovelling largesse to mates, donors and Tory electorates.

The Tories’ coagulation of corruption, incompetence and malice is their business model, their arrogance and disdain being fronted by a vapid solipsist, a believer in both miracles and a punitive deity on whose behalf he seeks to persecute the undeserving – those who are not in on the game of mates.

Minister for Population, Cities and Urban Infrastructure Norbert Bellende, a man accused by a Federal Court judge of indulging in criminal activities continues to sit uncontrite in Cabinet, the judge’s accusation dismissed as “commentary” by Attorney General and chief law officer Duncan Stool.

Fidel daFigueres, Minister For Monetisation of Emissions, Caymans Islands’ aficionado and water entrepreneur uses his number juggling skills to demonstrate how spewing extra carbon into the atmosphere is really a reduction. The rest of the world will be unamused as they slap penalties on our exports in retaliation and pay for clean energy produced elsewhere. Australia’s promised technology roadmap will be a guidebook of stranded assets.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Deputy PM Forgetful Jones extols the virtues of a $30M purchase of land valued at $3M, leased back to the party donor mate at the lower valuation with a $10M cow under-pass thrown in. The best that the Nationals can come up with as their party leader is a man who can be hypnotised by a chook and who’d struggle to keep the crayons inside the lines of the pictures in his autobiography – Elvis Parsley, Return to Sender.

These are a small sample; soon to be forgotten road signs to the endemic corruption of a crime cartel whose diversity program has cultivated spivs, stand-over merchants, water thieves and neo-con cultists led by a smarmy narcissist who’s failed upwards his entire career, a man who dodges responsibility for the 676 aged care deaths that occurred under his watch, a right to life, anti-euthanasia ayatollah who will nevertheless happily toe-tag your granny to boost the share dividends of Maserati-driving old folks home investors.

“All tip and no iceberg”, “You choke on your Weeties”, “What we have got is a dead carcass, swinging in the breeze…”, “Like being flogged with a warm lettuce.” PJK quotes, aimed at the Tories and now could be applicable to the ALP, an Opposition in name only. How good’s getting a free run?

At least in his Budget reply Albo showed signs that he’s re-discovered his mojo. Keep it up please, Albo – these are dark days getting darker.

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