This appeared as one of those links to similar articles and, as it was written about ten Defence Ministers ago, I’d forgotten all about it. You can be the judge as to how much I got right… Ok, not very much, but I’m happy to put be judged on my inaccurate forecasts, unlike much of political commentary we hear…

It’s 2024 And Not A Royal Wedding In Sight

As one gets older, one is immediately confronted by the shock of dates… No, I don’t mean going on them… Although that would be quite a shock too. I mean, the shock of when someone says something like, “When the GFC hit ten years ago…”, you tap your watch and go, “Ten years ago, I’m sure it was just this morning”.

It’s with this thought that I am buoyed by the fact that the Federal election will be held any moment now and next year’s Hot Cross Buns will be appearing.

Of course, the other thing that age does is makes you wary of predictions. As I often remind people ninety percent of everything is very predictable, but it’s that which lulls into a false sense of security and gives us the shock when we actually have that Black Swan moment like Brexit, the election of Donald Trump or the Liberals releasing a coherent policy on jobs.

So, in spite of this, I’d like to peer into the crystal ball and annoy all the rationalists who insist that I have no psychic powers by telling them that I knew they’d say that.

A Peek Into The Future

It’s 2024 and there’s not a Royal Wedding in sight, although there’s a lot of speculation from royal watchers that Prince George may be dating. There’s also a lot of speculation from Republicans that the whole Royal Family idea has already dated, but the recent death of the Queen means that it’s too soon to mention the idea that Australia should hold another referendum on the Republic. Similarly, in Britain, there is discussion about whether the Queen’s death should result in Charlies now becoming monarch or whether they should just embalm her and wheel her out for public ceremonies as Her Majesty is still more popular than Charles. 

Meanwhile, in the USA, Kanye West has become President on his platform of eliminating all mention of slavery and the promise to rename the State of the Union Address: “At The House With The Kardashians”. 

Australia has just spent twenty billion dollars celebrating the tenth year of Coalition government. The 2018 election was surprisingly lost by Labor after Peter Dutton’s Border Force arrested all Labor candidates as a threat to national security. 

The 2024 Budget reminded us all how many jobs had been created and how the unemployment rate had been reduced to zero with the idea that anyone who spent their time breathing could be considered fully employed. The Treasurer repeated the oft-quoted line that “the best form of welfare was not to complain too much” because complaining got you nowhere. In reporting this, no journalist mentioned that – in fact – complaining could get you quite a long way. Deportation, if you weren’t a citizen. Citizens, of course, still had the right to complain so long as they did it quietly enough that nobody reported them for Sedition. 

The 2024 Budget also announced measures to counteract poor people forming companies to take advantage of the government’s company tax arrangements. After cutting zero company tax rate to minus ten percent in 2021, some poor people formed companies so that they too could be given money simply for existing. In abolishing this loophole, the Treasurer told us that poor people were only here as a cautionary tale and if they got money for simply existing, then it would encourage more of them to exist. Henceforth, only companies that made a profit would be given money from the government and any shelf companies which existed purely as a scam would be outlawed unless they could show that they were part of a multinational company tax minimisation strategy or had a history of political donations to approved parties.

 

Ok, it may all sound far-fetched, but go back just three years and tell me if you’d have believed me if I”d written Donald Trump will be President, Prince Harry will marry someone in “Suits”, Tim Paine will be Australian cricket captain and the Budget will be in surplus by next year…

 

Actually, that last one still sounds a little dodgy, but Scott Morrison said it so he’d hardly risk looking ridiculous by getting it wrong. Although I guess, he might still think that he could use the old “We don’t comment on operational matters’ that worked so well when he was Minister for Sinking The Boats.

Hopefully that won’t be picked up by someone on Sky and become the story of the week… Or given that the Liberals are going to great lengths to paint Albanese as such, the story of the weak…

Whatever one thinks of the current government, one would have to say that there’s a concerted effort by certain sections of the media to attack them with whatever they can find no matter how ridiculous the beat-up.

So Samantha Maiden breaks the story that Albanese’s dog, Toto, travels with the PM on overseas trips. Personally, I wouldn’t have a problem with that no matter who the leader was. I think it’s good that politicians have pets to calm them down and – even if they’re prepared to go to war and kill people who are less than human in their eyes – remind them that in any war the pets will suffer too, so I have no problem with anything that might encourage empathy…  In fact, I’d have a bigger problem with Toto getting his own VIP jet or being bunged up in some fancy kennel that charges more than some hotels.

Next we have the story about Albanese tasting a $500 wine while on holiday in WA. This has somehow morphed into suggestions that he’s drinking $500 bottles of wine, and this is all paid for by the taxpayer. While I don’t know the actual circumstances of his tasting, I do know that people are often given wine tasting by winemakers at minimal or no cost. Amazingly, I once tasted a bottle of wine that was $85 about twenty five years ago… and in those days, that was enough for a deposit on a house… ok, not a very large deposit but I’m writing this story to make a point and anything misleading I can do to make my point is just good journalism!!!

I get it. The media want to make the point that politicians are out of touch and it’s only by listening to down-to-earth people like Gina and Rupert that we’ll fix this country and that people will be happy to be earning $2 a day because it’s all about getting enough experience that you can work your way to the top by kissing their bottom.

But, honestly!

If you want to attack the Labor government, then pick on them for their inability to simply say to Peter Dutton that they’re not playing his racist games when it comes to immigration policy. Or their approval of coal and gas mines. Or attack them for not raising the payments to the unemployed by enough.

Not things that are just absurd, such as when Labor were accused by the Coalition of covering up when they knew about the cover up that the Liberals did with Brittany Higgins. In the end, in much the same way that I don’t care what a surgeon does in his spare time. I don’t care if politicians are wearing Gucci or drinking expensive wines. What matters is how well they operate and whether the operation makes things better.

If the media were attacking Labor for improving relations with China when we should be doing everything possible to ensure that they stop importing our goods and sending students here, then I could understand it. If they were to suggest that their economic management was terrible because they’ve delivered the first surplus in fifteen years, then it would make sense. Or if they suggested Labor have an unemployment rate so low that it’s putting pressure on the RBA to raise rates, then there’s some logic to it.

But focusing on wine tasting makes no sense unless you compare it to every other politician’s wine tasting habits. Strangely they didn’t criticise Senator Price for actually drinking $300 bottles of champagne on the Voice was defeated.

I know it’s a lot to ask for consistency from people. Just this morning I read something on social media where a climate change denier was suggesting that Cyclone Jasper was being “manipulated” by those people that are trying to push the climate scam… The climate scam being that there is no climate change because nothing we do can affect the climate… The weather is – apparently – a different story.

Just like all those people who are suddenly concerned about marine life and how offshore wind turbines will upset whales when they’ve never worried about such things in the past. Just like people who complain that solar panels and wind farms are “eyesores” but open cut mines and the smoke from coal-fired power stations are things of beauty.  Just like those pushing for nuclear power are quite ok with storing the waste while they tell us that there’ll be a problem with storing the solar panels and wind turbines once they’ve reached their use by date.

Can’t wait to see what the next exciting offering from Samantha Maiden will be. Which of the following seems most likely:

1. ALBO REJECTS TRADITIONAL PUDDING ON CHRISTMAS DAY
2. TOTO DOES NOT DENY RUMOURS ABOUT HUMPING CUSHION
3. DUTTON ACCUSES LABOR OF BEING WEAK FOR DOING WHAT HE SUGGESTED
4. DUTTON ACCUSES LABOR OF BEING WEAK FOR NOT DOING WHAT HE SUGGESTED
5. ALBO IN SECRET TALKS WITH PRINCE HARRY ABOUT BECOMING GOVERNOR-GENERAL

If you cast your mind back to the Black Lives Matter protests and remember the response from some was: “All lives matter!” and the argy-bargy about how could such a simple statement be racist.

Of course, sometimes it’s not what’s said but the context in which you say it. For example, if a work colleague tells you that they’ve just lost their grandmother, it’s not fine to say: “Yes, it’s been a terrible day all round. The left lane was blocked by road works and it took me an extra twenty minutes to get to work today.”

While what Usman Khawaja wrote on his shoes may seem innocuous enough, it’s the context that matters. I mean, it’s hard to argue that “All lives are equal” and “Freedom is a human right” are controversial statements, the fact that it’s happening at a time when the idea of a ceasefire in Gaza is being debated makes it a political statement and some people get terribly upset when sportspeople make political statements… unless, of course, they’ve just been offered a pre-selection for the party that the person who’d normally object to sportspeople doing anything more than running, jumping and catching balls votes for.

I even saw a couple of comments on social media hoping that Khawaji got a duck in both innings and I have to say that comments like that are so un-Australian that I feel that whoever made them should be deported…

Whatever it’s clear that the writing on the shoes was meant to convey support for the Palestinian people. Clearly by suggesting that all lives were equal, he’s suggesting that somehow Israel’s response to the October 7th atrocities was also an anathema and that killing people is never justified when we all know that the best way to bring peace is to kill a lot of people who’ve done something bad and – unlike you – when you kill people on their side, they are more inclined to just forget the whole thing rather than fight back.

Ignoring the whole Gaza situation for a moment, I’d have to say that I’m finding the Opposition’s recent tactics rather interesting. It seems that focus groups have told them that Albanese is perceived as “weak” by some, and so they’ve decided to hit this button as often as possible.

It may be an effective tactic.

However, there is a big problem with just constantly hitting the same button for two reasons:

1. The first is that it’s pretty easy to anticipate the tactics and have a counter strategy. If a tennis player has a weak backhand and you always attack to their backhand, then they’ll soon either work to improve it or simply run around onto their forward because they know where the ball is going. If a football or basketball team always pass it to the same player to score, then it’s easier to cut it off. If you keep saying that a politician is heartless, it’s easy to get a puff piece of how they always visit their mother on Mothers’ Day. And if a politician is weak, he simply needs to find some way to demonstrate strength… like doing something heartless which The Greens will attack.
2. The second is that it ends up lacking nuance and eventually you end up attacking something which most people support or where what you’re attacking just sounds ridiculous. You can suggest that people should do more to help themselves and that you believe in personal responsibility but when you try to suggest that someone who’s lost their leg should learn to stand on their own two feet you demonstrate the same careful thinking that made Tony Abbott an ex-PM…

All of which brings me back to Australia’s vote at the United Nations. To suggest that voting against the USA and Israel and supporting the ceasefire is weak lacks all traction when your friends in the media and you attack it. Added to that the fact that most Australians are tending towards support for a ceasefire, even if they were appalled by the attacks by Hamas.

Don’t get me wrong. Australia’s foreign policy is only partly what we decide and partly what’s decided for us. In the case of the UN vote, it may well be that we abstained a few weeks ago for fear of upsetting certain allies (such as the US), but we were quietly told that it wouldn’t be altogether wrong if we were to come to our own decision and to put pressure on Israel because the US doesn’t want to do that… at least, not publicly.

And so, the Coalition will be attacking Albanese as weak at every opportunity which gives him the great opportunity to say that he doesn’t care what they say because he’s tough enough to ignore what they say and to get on wth the job just like we’ve done at the recent COP meeting where we stood up to the fossil fuel lobby and pushed for renewables. (Ok, the reality of what we’re actually doing may not match the rhetoric but it won’t be Peter Dutton and fiends calling him out on that!!) To suggest that Albo meekly followed the rest of the world in doing something about climate change when our party is suggesting tripling nuclear energy in Australia – which means precisely nothing because three times zero is still zero – is not the winner you think it is.

As I said before, it’s all about context. You may get some traction with some people who care more about sport than politics when you say the two shouldn’t mix. And they may agree that they hope that Usman Khawaja goes out cheaply. But you might find that they don’t appreciate you cheering if he goes out in the fourth innings when Australia was nine wickets down, needing just two runs to win!

Sometimes people may get the impression that Dutton and his band of smiling assassins enjoy it too much when things go wrong.

Is a Marxist, a socialist? And If the Nazis were the National Socialists does that mean that they were left wing because they had the word “socialist” in their name? And if the Nazis are socialists, does that mean that US Republicans should despise the Liberal Party because of the word “Liberal” in their name and we all know that liberals are responsible for evils like women’s rights and books in libraries? And should we consider that Nationals suspiciously because they share at least part of their name with the National Socialist Party or Nazis? 

That’s your essay topic and you need to write it in less characters than will fit on a tweet so you can inform everyone of your opinion and change their mind with a thoroughly explored, reasoned argument. (Just to explain: I saw a comment on The Platform That Used To Known As Twitter before Elon Who Used To Unknown Before He Showed Why Nobody Should Be Allowed To Have More Money Than Functioning Braincells and I know that I can no longer say that I saw a tweet because that is inaccurate and some pedantic person will point out that I shouldn’t have called it a tweet so I’m calling it an X because if Twitter had tweets then X should have Xits and clearly Elon should have an exit but… >sigh<)

Just to help:

Marxism: Surprisingly, not a series of ideas developed by Groucho Marx and John Lennon about how capitalist society was doomed and only humour and music could save it. In fact, it was developed by a German whose family was so ahead of its time that they converted from Judaism to Christianity because they could see the writing on the wall once Wagner, Nietzsche and others wrote the sort of socialist propaganda that suggested that not all men were created equal and various other things that Hitler used to create the idea that the best way to eliminate racism was by eliminating everyone who wasn’t a blue-eyed blonde. Of course, this would later lead to the expression, “You should take a good look in the mirror…”, but Adolph was immune to irony.

Liberalism: A philosophy which argues that people should be free to do anything that person arguing believes to be ok, and that people shouldn’t interfere with the rights of others unless the person arguing thinks that the person doing it has a moral right to do so. For example, I should be able to shit next to your table at dinner but your objection is an infringement of my rights and part of the whole political correctness gone made and cancel culture.

Nazism: A right-wing political movement from pre-WWII Germany which has since been redefined as left-wing because right-wing politicians espousing similar policies, didn’t like being called Nazis.

Education: Something which is meant to be occurring in schools. From time to time it does, but whatever the results, politicians and the media will say that they’re not good enough, and if only teachers stopped asking students to think and told them what to think then we’d all be ok, unless they told them to think the wrong things, in which case they’re Marxists and they shouldn’t be introducing politics to the classroom…

Ok, I saw an X the other day…

Oh, I hope I don’t have to explain the whole tweet/twitter problem again because you weren’t paying attention or because you’ve forgotten it because it was several paragraphs ago…

Anyway I saw a thing on that thing which asked (without a question mark): When did Australia become communist.

And I couldn’t help but wonder how I missed the revolution. I mean I can still remember the Skyhooks singing:

Whatever happened to the revolution
We all got stoned and it drifted away
Whatever happened to the revolution
I think it died just yesterday

Whatever happened to the revolution
We all got stoned and it drifted away
Whatever happened to the revolution
I think it died just yesterday
I think it died just yesterday

Well I remember back in Nineteen Seventy
The army wanted you and the army wanted me
There was a war goin’ on we were out in the streets
Wearin’ our badges and stampin’ our feet

There’s a hundred thousand people all on my side
We didn’t care if we lived or died
Hundred thousand people going to make it come
Hundred thousand people had the man on the run

Everybody thought we could win with a vote
So the band went home without playin’ a note
We forgot about that war but it still went on
I’m alright Jack see you round so long
I’m alright Jack see you round so long

And now today everyone’s a bit older
We’re gettin’ richer but we’re gettin’ colder
We’re lookin’ for somethin’ that just ain’t there
And it don’t mean nothin’ to have long hair
So when you’re ready to make a stand
Open your mouth and raise your hand
When you’re sick of your parties and sick of your sweets
Get off your arses I’ll see you out in the streets

Of course, it’s harder to get out in the streets these days… and I don’t just mean because my hip’s acting up. They’ve got laws that mean you can be arrested for protesting unless you’re wearing black and saying that you’re protesting to make Australia white… seems confusing to me… but I’m finding it hard to understand most things.

Like, why are some people innocent until proven guilty but anyone who was released from indefinite detention who has assaulted someone not being prefaced with the word “alleged”? Is it because we just know they’re guilty or is it because they don’t have the means to sue because they don’t have a large enough income or someone prepared to give them a blind trust…

Now, I’m going to divide you into two groups here:

1. You read the headline and were appalled.
2. You read the headline and immediately realised that in any large group it’s likely that half will be below average.*

And, of course, it’s not that those of you in the first group lack basic numeracy or statistical skills; it’s that you probably didn’t think before reacting.

This week I read a few articles about our failing education system. These were written in response to the latest PISA results. Actually to be fair, I suspect that many of them were written before the PISA results came out because the conclusions overlooked the fact that Australian 15yo students ranked ninth in the world in reading and science, but a shocking tenth in maths.

In reading the conclusions about our education system I couldn’t help remember the “Herald-Sun” article after NAPLAN results which talked about how the lockdowns had led to devastating results for Victorian students. The only problem was that in nearly every table Victorian students were first or second but in true Murdoch media fashion never let the facts get in the way of a good attack on whatever the latest thing you want to get people all agitated about.

Now let’s be clear here: Education is a complicated business with a large number of KPIs, very few of which are generally accepted by everyone. Schools will be judged on NAPLAN, ATAR, and a whole range of tests which most people know nothing about such as PISA, but then they’ll also be criticised because kids are leaving schools without the necessary skills to make their prospective employer happy. And what about these life-skills that people should be taught at school? Not to mention manners… I mean, those kids on the train last night… Then you’ll have some politician complaining that schools aren’t teaching kids values and every school will get posters of Simpson and his donkey and a list of Australian values, before a couple of years later, politicians complaining because schools are indoctrinating students and the classroom should be values free and politics should be left out of the classroom which is a problem if the subject is Legal Studies or Politics…

Yes, Sally got an ATAR of 99.4 and got into Law but she started using drugs and is now in rehab and Freddy got an ATAR of 99.2 and got into medicine but he dropped out because he couldn’t handle the pressure but they’re still a great success story in terms of the school because no school is judged on what their students do five years down the track, unless it’s one of those exceptional things that probably has more to do with the student themself than anything the school did.

The concerning thing, however, was the great divide between those with wealthier backgrounds outperforming those “less-privileged” families…

It’s a great euphemism, isn’t it? “Less-privileged”… It sort of implies that you are privileged but not quite as privileged as those who don’t have to worry about things like money, food and shelter…

Anyway, this was the cue for “The Australian Financial Review” to editorialise about how tossing money at education had failed and Gonski reforms hadn’t worked and teachers should be taught how to manage classes and go back to all the things the research shows work and it’s all really simple. I could point out that the Gonski proposal to fund all schools to a minimum standard was never fully implemented but, again, let’s not let facts get in the way of the argument we want to make. I could also point out that, generally speaking, most of the things that simplistic editorials argue schools should be doing is what schools are doing. I could also point out that – like all science – when people talk about doing what “the research tells us works”, there’s a lot of research and not all of it agrees with each other but tell me again that teachers are quite determined to ignore what works because they all like being criticised for poor results…

It’s always interesting that any so-called failures in education lead to calls for less funding, but, if the security forces failed to predict a terrorist attack, there’d be calls for more funding. Similarly, if hospitals had patients left on trolleys or not being treated in a timely manner, we’d expect more funding. More road accidents doesn’t lead us suggest that we spend too much on repairing roads and eliminating black spots. Only in education does an “unsatisfactory” performance lead to a call for cuts.

It also interesting that the same politicians who argue that money isn’t important when it comes to education, are outraged if it’s suggested that the private school they went to might be able to do without the third practice room for their orchestra.

So in a similar spirit, I offer this editorial to corporate Australia:

“While some companies have made large profits, some companies have been less-privileged. To those companies I say that the time has come to abandon what you’re doing and to go back to what research says is best for companies which is to do thing that makes you profits and stop all this following the latest fad and asking for tax concessions because just throwing money at the problem won’t work!”

*This is not necessarily always true. Sometimes there can be outliers so large that they distort the figures so that average is meaningless and the median is a much more reliable number. For example, if Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and I were all on a plane, my presence would bring down the average wealth to the point that everyone but me would be above average wealth for the duration of the journey. If Elon Musk were to step out of the plane mid-flight, it would bring down the average wealth on the plane but improve the state of the world generally.

Recently I saw this alert on a film I was about to watch which warned me:

STRONG NUDITY

And I couldn’t help but wonder if there are films with weak nudity…

And if there are, exactly what constitutes weak nudity. Is it people who don’t have abs or pectorals? Or is it nudity where the rudest bits are hidden by appropriately placed pot plants?

Whatever, I immediately thought of this video I saw a few days ago, where Ralph Babet talked about how masculinity was under attack before explaining how the left hate strong males, and I couldn’t help but wonder if someone will ask him if he prefers strong males and we’ll have a whole lot of confusing debates about homophobia and LGTBI rights until Ralph says something which gets him even more publicity.

Words are strange things I also keep reading about Bruce Lehrmann and how he strongly and strenuously and consistently denies what is alleged to have happened…

Now I’m not making any comment about the substance of his denials because he has the right to the presumption of innocence. And if he says that he’s not guilty, well, the law is on his side.  And, after all, if you can’t trust a man who’s honest enough to admit that he’s lied to his boss, about the whisky and on the Channel 7 interview, then who can you believe? Certainly you can believe Channel 7 who told us that they didn’t pay him for the interview which is true. The fact that they paid for his rent for a year or so is not the same as paying for an interview so you can certainly trust them when they broadcast the news…

When I was a teacher, we’d occasionally get an email at this time of year reminding us that we couldn’t accept expensive gifts worth more than a few dollars. I suppose I could have reminded my students of this and added that this didn’t preclude access to a holiday house or free use of a car should any of their parents want to ensure that their child received that marks that someone with such caring parents deserved…

Speaking of education, I noticed that a Senate committee expressed concern that the behaviour of some students in schools was nearly as bad as politicians during Question Time.

But back to the way people use words.

What strikes me as weird is the idea that when people are accused of crimes that the denial is strenuous or strong. You know the sort of thing, “Mr X issued a strong denial” or “Mr Y strenuously denied the accusation.”

Like I said before, are there films with weak nudity? Are there times when a media report says: “Mr Smith lethargically denied all charges”?  If an accusation gets to court, the defendant isn’t asked if he or she pleads Vehemently Not Guilty, Passionately Not Guilty, Strenuously Not Guilty, Partially Not Guilty or Guilty.

I started to think about this in everyday terms. For example, if my wife were to ask if I drank the rest of the red wine that was sitting on the buffet and I replied, “No, I had a sip and it had definitely gone off so I tipped it down the sink!”. it seems a reasonably response which is quite possibly true. Either way, there’s no proof and unless she finds a way to do extensive forensic testing, then any suspicion that I’m lying is unlikely to be proven that it’s best to assume that I’m telling the truth.

However, imagine if she were to ask me and my response was: “No! I strenuously deny drinking the wine. It’s just not true. There was far too much wine there for me to drink in one sitting and I’m outraged that you’d even think such a thing!”

I can’t see that the passion of my protestations of innocence has anything to do with my guilt or innocence, so I don’t know why people have to add adverbs that have no real meaning into their statements. It’s not like we have a rating system where strenuously is better than strongly and vehemently tops them all.

The actual headline in The Australian Financial Review was

“Send miners to parliament and students to work, Gina Rinehart says”

Now, I can’t help but feel that even they found Gina Rinehart’s speech a little over the top, but it is hard to tell. Anyway, Ms Rinehart did have some pearls of wisdom in her sermon.

Apparently, “Platitudes and press releases move precisely zero tonnes of iron, copper, nickel, rare earths or any other mineral.” An observation that I found less than educational because I already knew that moving such things requires heavy machinery. However, as Gina was talking to a bunch of mining executives, it makes me wonder how out of touch they are.

Speaking of out of touch, did you happen to catch the transcript of Reserve Bank Governor, Michele Bullock’s, latest pearls of wisdom. Inflation is apparently now “domestically driven” and it’s the service industry that’s particularly showing this. To quote the RBA Governor directly:

“Hairdressers and dentists, dining out, sporting and other recreational activities – the prices of all these services are rising strongly…”

She went on to suggest that it was easier for businesses to raise prices rather than increase output. Call me economically ignorant but I fail to see how an interest rate rise will encourage dentists to pull more teeth or hairdressers to take more off the top.

Still, if people have no spare money, they may just decide not to dine out or get their teeth fixed. In the latter case, this may lead to them working less efficiently and losing their job. This would go some way of achieving Bullock’s aim of increasing unemployment to the sort of levels that would discourage workers from seeking pay rises that almost keep pace with inflation and stop them going out to dinner, going to sporting or other recreational activities, leading in turn to more lay-offs and more unemployment. While that seems like a shame, as the RBA head told us, she only has the blunt instrument of interest rate rises and she’s got to think of what’s good for us collectively…

Just like Gina who understands that getting rid of ridiculous red tape that stop people mining wherever they damn well please without having to check whether there’s some reason not to:

“Now I’m suggesting something in addition, encourage and support people from our industry, to put themselves up for parliament. We need strong people in government, not afraid to stand up for common sense, and for mining.”

She urged her audience to spend fifteen minutes a day advocating for mining. I think she could have added that they should also spend a further fifteen minutes praying to the god of production asking him to remove all obstacles to production such as politicians that she doesn’t own and laws that she doesn’t like.

Anyway, she went on to praise Peter Dutton as an outstanding leader, which is odd because all I remember him leading is the failed coup against Turnbull that led to Scott Morrison being elected Liberal leader and the current opposition. (Speaking of Peter Dutton I noticed that he recently argued that, unlike our current PM, Scott Morrison didn’t go overseas when he was needed here… Given that Scotty secretly snuck off to Hawaii during those bushfires, it does tend to suggest that Peter Dutton thinks that Scott Morrison was never needed here… or anywhere!)

She also attacked today’s youth for being work-shy.

“Too often today, youngsters who’ve been to uni don’t want to do work they think is below them, and want to jump into senior roles for instant success skipping the hard metres, perhaps with the feeling that their private education or time at uni means they should pick and choose what work they do. I think part of my success was, despite a private education and, with what was required back then, high enough marks to get into uni that this didn’t give me such an attitude.”

Now I’m sure that a part of Gina Rinehart’s success was having the right attitude. I mean plenty of people who inherit millions from their father and a trust fund worth billions don’t go on to become the richest woman in Australia. And it takes a lot of work to make sure all those politicians kiss your ring… I was going to say something about Gina working her way up from the bottom but maybe it’s the other way round.

The other day in Parliament Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton moved a motion which linked Prime Minister Albanese’s overseas trips to the rise in anti-semitism and the High Court’s decision that holding people in detention forever wasn’t consistent with the Constitution. In moving this motion, he made a speech and I’ve been searching for it on the internet but all I could find was the following which – given I found it on the internet – must be in some way accurate. Even if it isn’t I can repeat it because we have no laws about misinformation so nobody should have a problem if it’s not completely true:

Mr Dutton:

Mr Speaker, this is a time for all Australians to band together and ensure that we don’t allow the Labor Party to divide us. Labor, The Greens and those inner-city elites tried to do that with the Voice but we managed to silence them and I’m glad that we stopped something that would have been divisive but our work won’t be done until we’ve rid Australia of every person who would divide us.

Recently, the High Court made a decision and the government has failed to respond it decisively because the Prime Minister has been out of the country. If I were in charge I would have pre-empted the High Court and already had legislation to prevent the Court from making decisions that aren’t in the national interest. People need to be aware that the legislation that the High Court trashed has allowed people who are the worst of the worst to be released from indefinite detention. Their crimes include rape, murder and political activism – these crimes are made worse by the fact that none of them are Australian. Just like those African gangs that made Melburnians afraid to go out to dinner, these people are particularly scary because they’re not your average Aussie criminal like Chopper or Ned Kelly.

And we all know who’s causing the divisions in our society. It’s those people who don’t agree with John Howard. As he told us, unless people are prepared to give up this multicultural nonsense and accept that we are one nation, under God, then Heaven help us because it’s when people disagree with his vision of a united Australia all voting for the one party that we have problems.

So I call upon the Prime Minister to abandon any plans to travel anywhere and to stay at home so that he can deal with the rising antisemitism as well as the rising cost of living brought on by his failure to rein in the crippling inflation or to stop interest rate rises.

I call upon the PM to censure anyone suggesting a cease-fire because that would only help the sort of people that he’s failed to keep under lock and key just because the High Court said that he can’t. If he were any sort of leader, he’d ignore the High Court because if there’s one thing that a Prime Minister should do it’s to punish those who don’t believe in the rule of law.  All lawbreakers should be locked up forever unless they’ve donated to the Liberal Party.

Rather than go to some talk-fest overseas, I’d urge the PM to call an urgent meeting of the National Cabinet so that I can complain that he’s trying to circumvent the Parliament.

This motion further calls on the Prime Minister to:

1. Understand that his role is to heal division by condemning Hamas and banning members of his government from criticising the Israeli response or calling for a cease fire.
2. Demonstrate strong leadership by introducing whatever legislation we tell him to.
3. Demand that China withdraw from the United Nations and give their spot to Taiwan.
4. Reaffirm his support for the Stage 3 Tax Cuts.
5. Cease reminding people that any on this side of the House were ever in government because it causes division.
6. Ban the Aboriginal Flag because that’s what the people voted for when they voted No.
7. Withdrew any legislation relating to misinformation because it will lead to massive job losses in the Murdoch and Nine media companies.
8. Refuse to pose for any photo shoots.
9. Appoint Scott Morrison as Ambassador to Israel to prevent any leadership challenge.
10. Agree to vote with me when I move that the member be no longer heard.

Like I said, we have no misinformation laws, so it doesn’t matter whether that’s what he actually said. Whatever, it’s close enough.

“Good afternoon, today we are fortunate to have the pleasure of interviewing, Miss Information, who works for the Proper Gander Party. First question, why do you have a problem with the proposed laws threatening to ban you from being heard?”

”Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?”

”Can you elaborate?”

”It’s perfectly clear that this is the government’s way of trying to shut me up. I have as much right to be heard as anyone…”

”Some people are suggesting that you never tell the truth?”

”What’s truth? I mean what you consider truth, I might consider is nonsense.”

”But certain things are facts, aren’t they?”

”That’s true but what if I have alternative facts?”

”Are you referring to Kellyanne Conway’s statement where she defended the lies about the crowd numbers at Trump’s inauguration?”

”Not specifically but that gives me a case in point. If you ban misinformation, how would she have been able to counter what the people were saying about the numbers being lower?”

”Er… she wouldn’t because they weren’t!”

”Exactly. If you banned people from making things up, then you’re giving an unfair advantage to those political parties who are telling the truth.”

”Is that a problem?”

”Well it is for me.”

”But shouldn’t political parties who tell the truth be given credit?”

”I don’t see why? Can you show me one example of the truth doing anyone any good?”

”Lies certainly don’t help.”

”Who says? I mean Tony Abbott lied about his views on climate change and that helped him get elected.”

”They may have helped him but they didn’t help the country.”

”So you’re saying that we’d have been better off with a Labor government. It’s clear where your political leanings are.”

”I just meant that we’d be better off with a government that didn’t say one thing to get elected then do something else when they were in power.”

”You mean like the current Labor government? After all, Albanese promised on four hundred occasions that he’d end the war in Ukraine and provide a yacht for every family but did he keep that promise?”

”He didn’t do either of those things.”

”But that’s the problem with the proposed law. You’d be banned from saying what you just said.”

”No, you’d be the one who’d have to justify what you said because it isn’t true!”

”Wouldn’t that be the problem? Deciding which of us had the right to speak.”

”Look, some things are clearly facts and some things are matters of opinion…”

”But isn’t it a matter of opinion what things are clearly facts?”

”Not always. If we take the cricket, for example, people can argue about whether Jonny Bairstow’s dismissal was in the spirit of the game, but everyone agrees that he was given out.”

”That’s just a point of view. I can find plenty of people who have not only have no idea about whether he was out or not, but they don’t even know who Bairstow is, and their opinion is just as good as anyone else’s.”

”But they won’t have an opinion because they don’t know what we’re talking about.”

”You’ve got an opinion and you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

”I do know what I’m talking about!”

”That’s your opinion.”

”So you would have no problem if someone were to say that interest rates have gone up every week since Labor got in and that it’s all their fault?”

”I don’t think people should be censored.”

”Even if they’re saying something that is demonstrably untrue?”

”Again, who is to say what’s untrue?”

”I do agree that that’s the question, however, some things are clearly disprovable.”

”Such as?”

“You say: ‘Peter Dutton is an intelligent man who’d make an excellent PM’ and you also say: ‘Peter Dutton has a policy of introducing slavery into Australia’, one is a matter of opinion and the other is clearly a lie.”

”Yes, but which?”

“Look, are you against misinformation laws in principle or is it just because you’re worried about how they’ll hamper you?”

”I don’t understand what you mean by ‘in principle’.”

”I see. Well that’s all we have time for. Thanks for being here.”

”I wasn’t.”

”Whatever!”

One thing that I’ve come to believe about politics is that it helps to have a strong narrative. Note that I said “strong” and not “plausible”. And the reason for that is simple. Think of all the successful Hollywood blockbusters of the past few decades. For every one of them that’s had a completely plausible storyline, then there’d be several others that fail the pub test. Even allowing for willing suspension of disbelief and accepting that a spider bite gives you special powers or that we can bring dinosaurs back from the dead or there’s a school for wizards where they play Quidditch, the behaviour of the humans in most of those movies would be completely implausible if it were not for the fact that Trump is the front runner for the Republicans or that neither Scotty nor Boris thought it would be embarrassing to be hanging out with the other one.

Notwithstanding Donald, Scotty and Boris, one has to ask why people in movies always run away from crowds instead of calling for help when being chased by the villain, or why they always make the same mistake in the sequel that they did in the first movie…

Like I said, you need a strong storyline, not a plausible one which gets me back to Airbus Albo. It’s the sort of storyline that could do damage politically because some people will buy it. However, when you’re running that line, it sort of weakens the line that you’re trying to run when some of the Liberals – like two-time loser, Shave Darma – suggest that he should be going to Israel. (Ok, Dave lost out and isn’t one of the current mob but surely they’ll give him the vacant Senate seat to spare him the embarrassment of another loss). It also dents their credibility when they’re doing it from London… After all, the most senior Liberal left in Australia was Sussan Ley and that was just because nobody’s talking to her after her recent failed attempt to muster the numbers and people are worried that Dutton will use his Border Force mates to check who’s taking the calls…

See, I just made that bit up about Ley… and the bit about Dutton actually having mates. But it doesn’t matter because it sounds plausible… Ok, maybe not the bit about Dutton having mates, but the bit about Sussan doing the numbers sounds plausible until you realise that she’s in the party that had Josh Frydenberg as Treasurer and he was only $60 billion out on his estimates.

Anyway, it seems that the Liberals have abandoned any attempt at winning the thinking voter…

Yes, I know I’m only saying that because I’m one of these elites who’s had an education and I don’t understand how the real-world works… or doesn’t work. And I should be more understanding that it’s only thanks to the Labor Party that we have the war in Ukraine and the Middle East driving up the price of oil which contributes to inflation and that interest rates will bring peace in our time…

Anyway, as I was saying, the Liberals have abandoned any attempt to win the thinking voter, and this is not to say that there couldn’t be a great pitch to the thinking voter based on what Labor are actually getting wrong. However, when behave like that Coalition MP who was complaining that the government weren’t doing enough to fix the problem with the Optus outage, you know you aren’t going to win over someone who can go: “Hang on, this is a private company and aren’t you the ones who believe that governments should just step aside and let the market fix things?”

It’s always worth remembering that Pauline Hanson was the Liberal Party candidate until she was dis-endorsed for revealing the Howard government’s strategy before the election. This, of course, raises a number of questions:

1. Why were the Liberals the sort of party that Pauline felt comfortable joining?
2. Why was Pauline the sort of candidate that they felt comfortable endorsing?
3. When was the last time the Liberals attacked anything that Pauline said?
4. Why doesn’t Pauline sue them for copyright every time they adopt one of her policies?
5. How many overseas trips has Scott Morrison had as backbencher since losing and why is there no Airbrush Scotty memes? (Sorry this one belonged somewhere else but if you want quality arguments that follow logically, you must be one of those inner-city elites that likes evidence-based writing that makes sense…)
6. The Airbrush was deliberate; don’t feel superior pointing out my mistakes. This isn’t Twitter! Neither is Twitter.
7. Can Albo trust Xi JinPing? But if he can’t, should we ask Peter Dutton if he can trust him also? And while on the subject, can Dutton trust Netanyahu not to endorse Scott Morrison as the future leader?
8. Can the journalists asking the gotcha questions trust the Liberal MP sending them the questions to arrange for their release if they get arrested for asking such a question in China?

I had several other questions but I’m having to go and prepare for the war on Christmas because apparently some people are refusing to say, “Merry Christmas”, just because it’s November, while others are attacking the Christian tradition of having hot cross buns in the shops for Halloween suggesting that they should be confined to Easter which is a violation of religious freedom…

Anyway, it’s time that Albo went to Israel so they can use the term Airbus Albo again. Or else it’s time that he didn’t so they can complain that he’s staying home…

“Good morning, Mr Howard, now before I continue I’d just like to establish that you’re a work of fiction for satirical purposes and as such I have a fair bit of leeway with what I can get you to do or say.”

“Certainly, but you’ve got nothing on George W. He could twist me into almost anything with the right amount of heat… That ‘man of steel’ comment was all about the shapes I could be bent into in order to please him.”

“Yes, but we’re more concerned with recent events. You’ve recently said that you don’t have much time for multiculturalism.”

“That’s right. I think that if someone comes here then they should be prepared to leave their old culture behind and immediately embrace Australia and its values.”

“Is that why we took so many years before we stopped singing ‘God Save The King’ and decided to have our own anthem?”

“Well, I need to pick you up on that. For most of my life it was ‘God Save The Queen’ and may I say that we were lucky to have such a fine lady as our head of state…”

“But she’s not Australian!”

“I know that. Of course she’s not Australian. I don’t understand what…”

“Back to your comments on multiculturalism. You seem to be suggesting that you feel that people don’t have a right to keep their own values and culture.”

“I don’t mind if it’s the same values and culture that we have in Australia but when you have Labor allowing the sort of people who threw their children overboard…”

“Hang on, nobody threw their children overboard! That claim was proved to be false.”

“Was it? I don’t remember any court of law that said that so the claim is entitled to the presumption of innocence.”

“That’s not how presumption of innocence works. A person is entitled to that but claims need to be proven before they…”

“Look, Peter Reith said that he had video but unfortunately he taped over it by mistake when he wanted to record an episode of The Sopranos…”

“Returning to multiculturalism, what are you actually suggesting? For example, is an ex-pat Englishman booing the Australians in an Ashes test not embracing our culture?”

“No that would be personal choice.”

“What about someone from China cheering their national team against the Socceroos?”

“Well, soccer’s a very divisive sport, but I think that if we’ve been good enough to let you in, then you should back us all the way…”

“Why the difference?”

“Ah, obviously one is a proper country that has a long history that we share, while China is communist.”

“It’s got nothing to do with your comments in the 1980s about your concern about the Asianization of Australia.”

“I don’t think that I ever used those exact words… but I did think that it was a concern that we were in danger of too many people migrating here that wouldn’t assimilate. However, I changed my mind when I discovered that many of them were likely to vote for our party.”

“So it was all about getting elected?”

“I wouldn’t put it quite like that but one does have to consider that unless one is in government one can’t do anything, so if we’re going to stop Labor from pursuing their agenda then we have to be in government.”

“Stopping Labor? But what about the Liberal Party’s own agenda?”

“Stopping Labor IS our agenda. As long as we can stop them, then we can let the market decide which industries to keep in Australia and which to send overseas.”

“On another matter, you’ve no doubt heard that Tony Abbott has told a gathering that anthropogenic global warming was ‘ahistorical and implausible’?”

“Quite right. I did say that my intuition told me that climate change wasn’t real and…

“You back your intuition over science?”

“Of course, when was the last time a scientist was made Prime Minister? Anyway I have a lot of time for Tony. He’s someone who always speaks his mind…”

“But how can you say that he speaks his mind after he lied when he said that he believed in climate change and that he never said that the science was crap.”

“It’s not really a lie if you say it because you have to. I mean he only said those things in order to get elected and you can’t really count them as lies. It’s like marriage vows… there’s certain things that you’re expected to say and if you were to say that you’d forsake all others apart from the odd staff person on a cold Canberra night… well, it just wouldn’t sit right, would it? I mean everyone knows who’s cheating on their partners but papers still run those happy family puff pieces. Not everyone has the same happy marriage that Jenny and I have…”

“You mean Janette?”

“Yes, that’s the one… Slip of the tongue. Ha ha…That can get you into a lot of trouble these days but once it was just the way things were…”

“But surely Abbott’s admission raises a whole lot of problems for Peter Dutton. I mean isn’t someone going to ask him about his commitment to climate change or whether he really meant it when he said that he was sorry for boycotting the Stolen Generation Apology?”

“Of course they won’t. I mean has anyone asked Tony how Margie feels about him spending all that time overseas without her? Has anyone asked those calling for an audit into how money is being spent on certain things if they’re concerned that it might find out that it was really poorly targeted while they were in charge? Did anyone think to ask Peter Dutton if he really thought that Albanese should go to Israel when they’ve been attacking him for his overseas trips? And nobody will point out that Abbott is admitting that he wasn’t committed to doing anything about climate change because we all knew that at the time and if the media stop pretending that they don’t know what’s really happening then people may ask them why they’re not reporting it… Look what happened when people discovered that Simon Benson knew about Morrison’s five ministries even though Scott hadn’t told the relevant ministers. People started rambling on about transparency and the like and nobody asked if Benson had told Bridget or whether he really did keep it to himself and if he told her then who else knew and if he didn’t… Sorry, I’ve forgotten the question.”

“I think we all have.”

Ok, for those of you confused about the situation in the Middle East it’s pretty similar to what’s been happening in the world since things began.

There was one group of people who went somewhere and did unspeakable things to innocent people, so those who identified with the innocent people got very cross and decided to teach the first group a lesson, leading to them retaliating and also doing awful things to innocent people, which meant that the first group felt justified in what they did and so they decided to do more of it, leading to the second group feeling all the more justified in doing even more things and this normally leads eventually to a shortage of people prepared to do unspeakable things instead of just ordering them, leading to some form of peace agreement.

Of course, in the case of the Middle East, it’s different. There’s a tale about a scorpion and a frog which I’ll get to later, but I want to take a few moments to tell you why I feel qualified to talk about the situation when I have no links to the area. Neither have I studied the situation in any detail.

As such, nobody can refer to me as an “elite” or “one of those academics”, and I’m therefore the sort of person we should listen to. Although I have just finished my afternoon nap, so one could say that I was “woke” by the phone call that reminded me to take the washing from the line, although I’m not sure that is actually what people mean when they refer to someone as “woke”. In fact, I’m pretty sure that most of the people using the word, don’t have any idea what it means either…

Although we did have one of the anti-woke crusaders, Mr Howard, telling us: “I have my doubts about multiculturalism, I believe that when you migrate to another country you should be expected to absorb the mainstream culture of that country!” So I guess that means that if he were to have moved to certain islands of Vanuatu, he would have renounced his suit and tie and dressed in nothing but a namba (penis sheath). Two tribes on one island were respectively named as either Big Nambas or Smol. I suspect Little Johnny would join the Smol tribe in order to absorb the culture.

Anyway, the story of the Scorpion and The Frog:

One day, a scorpion needs to cross a river but because he cannot swim, he asks a frog if he could ride on the frog’s back. “No,” says the frog, “you’ll sting me and I’ll die!” 

The scorpion says to the frog: “But if I did that I’d drown and we’d both die.” 

The frog considered and decided that what the scorpion said made sense so he allowed the scorpion onto his back and they began to cross. Halfway across the scorpion stung the frog and they began to sink.

“Why did you do that?” asked the frog. “Now we’ll both die.”

The scorpion replied: “Hey, it’s the Middle East, you expect things to make sense!”