My wife watches a lot of murder mysteries, so I’ve sort of picked up how this should be done. You examine all the potential suspects one by one and then in the final reveal you announce that it was the least expected…
Ok, now I’m aware that some politicians have become very trigger happy with litigation, so let me just remind them that I have some very good lawyers prepared to represent me in any case just as long as I can find several thousand dollars a day and I’ve assured them that they should have blind faith in me. They suggested that they’d rather a blind trust account, so I said, “Set one up, why should I care where the money comes from.” One of them suggested that this was dangerous because some criminal enterprises could use it to launder money and I said that so long as I don’t know where the money comes from, I’m ok. After all, it’s not as though if I suddenly found that I had millions of dollars that I didn’t earn that any government agency could ask me to explain where it came from. At this point, the lawyer told me that I needed to retain him/her before they gave me advice explaining the law and how people who couldn’t tell the government where their money had come from often had problems with a whole range of different agencies…
Bloody lawyers!
Anyway, it seems that when you’re a Christian, all sorts of people spring to your defence… And not just the lawyers.
So, because I’ve given up on politics and gone back to writing works of fiction and because I don’t have blind trust in the legal system not ripping me off, I’m going to pitch my fiction to you in the hope that you’ll be prepared to back me to get this fiction on to the screen. I’m going to call the character, Eric.
Mulligan Let’s imagine that Eric considers a journalist called Lucy Mulligan has defamed him. (This is work of fiction, so if there’s any journalist out there by that name – or any similar sounding name, I’m prepared to change the name so that she doesn’t feel the need to sue me.)
Eric decides to sue her but taking legal action can cost more than a humble man like him could be expected to raise, but hey, principles are at stake here so he decides to engage lawyers anyway… Mm, that’s a bit implausible unless the lawyers are prepared to work pro bono.
I know, let’s have a mystery person offer to stump up the cost for his lawyers.
Yeah, that works. Except who tells Eric? And at what point? Look, this is at the pitch stage. We’ll work out the holes in the plot later…
Ok, so he sues. This Louise or whatever her name was and the organisation behind her, mounts a truth defence. After reading the defence, Eric decides to settle for mediation. After mediation, Lucy or whatever her name was, says that I’m not apologising. To which, Eric says fair enough at least I didn’t get my day in court and this story has a happy ending because – after standing up for his principles – Eric can tell us all that he had a great victory because Lucy has promise not to reveal the allegations in return for paying the cost of his parking during the mediation session.
Now this is an elevator pitch and I’ve already taken too much time unless the elevator is stuck between the floor working on a federal integrity commission and the floor purchasing aircraft to battle bushfires…
The big climax where the intrepid journalist gathers all the suspects in the one room and reveals the forces working against her.
- Is it the man who blamed her for spending a year in jail for a crime that the Highest Court in the land found that he shouldn’t have been found guilty because juries don’t quite get the law and can’t find people guilty when we don’t like the decision?
- Was it the Chinese who hoped that by saving him, they’d one day be able to make Eric the leader of our country? Or even more implausibly, a popular name?
- Was it the friends of Lucy Mulligan who hoped to one day force Eric into an admission of guilt because they’ve formed the blind trust with the name “WeScrubPhotos&OtherEvidence.”
- Was it some elaborate EricKeeper scheme whereby the taxpayer was billed through some elaborate scheme?
- Or was it the white-shoed friend of the ghost of Joh Bjelke PetaSon who through channelling Joh, understands that you can bankroll most politicians and they’ll be prepared to head your party…
Ok, there’s a few flaws in this. For a start, at what point did Eric realise that he was being set up by taking the money? I mean, he can’t be completely stupid or where’s our hero.
And, if I make it suspect number 5, isn’t that a little too predictable given he’s been using his money to buy political influence since I didn’t have blind trust in our political system.
And, why did Eric decide to go ahead with things unless he already knew about his benefactor?
And why didn’t the High Court open up Western Australia?
Oh wait, that’s a whole other story…
Anyway, my lawyers will be drawing up my GoFundMe page so that I can get this work of fiction actually onto the big screen… or the little screen… or just made into street theatre.
Please contribute… We need all the blind trust we can muster.
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