Monday, 2nd February, 1998
I’ve never sought to hide the fact that I am a Queen’s Person, and the Republic debate is in my belief a noisy skittish diversion from my government’s ongoing core purpose, that of kicking the head of any impertinent pauper (the term battler I think in this context has reached its use-by date) still able to afford dog food and thongs and a mouldy tent for his consumptive extended family; and shrinking the ABC to a monthly amateur hour with bird imitations in Leichhardt Town Hall, unbroadcast owing to budget constraints.
I and Minchin therefore proposed that election to what is not inappropriately known in abbreviation as the Con Con be (1) by me, or (2) by filling in twice, using three sides of the paper only, the already prenumbered squares of an 802 page voting form you didn’t, owing to postal difficulties, in fact receive. And that of course was only if you wanted to. I hoped thereby to achieve a jolly foregathering of postally stable and crossword-literate blue-haired monarchists enjoying tea and lamingtons, in the not inappropriately named Kings Hall, and singing Her song and waving flags.
What I got instead, I’m sad to say, was a swift widespread infectious plague of what I can only call Democracy, with the Chardonnay Jacobins of pinkest Paddington in the nightly asnigger on prime time television and tumbrils gathered on Parliament lawn. Minchin, perspiring, quickly proposed (and his head you mark my words will be the first seen gnawing the side of the basket if this fails) that he and one McGarvie put up, and force through, a model so comprehensively inane and vacuous (the status quo, no Queen, and my own ongoing benign dictatorship) that I then as Temporary Lord Protector could justly respond, ‘Why, good heavens, it’s almost exactly the same as what we have now, so I can’t see why it’s worth expending taxpayers’ money on a costly cosmetic exercise whose only imaginable purpose is to upset my close friend Her Gracious Majesty Lillibet of that Ilk. I will, however, don royal robes, and perhaps a laurel crown, and open the Olympiad myself. And that should please everybody.’ If asked to cop this, Minchin slyly avers, the Mob would then angrily and scornfully vote it into outer darkness thus over time accrue for me a well-placed Knighthood of the Garter (and a butt of Malmsey perhaps) from His grateful Majesty Charles III.
Tuesday
Minchin’s triple-sideways-back-flip-with-pike has gone down so badly (as did the prattling jellyfish McGarvie) that Costello and Abbott, in their usual matey knees-up antiphonal lather of smirking and thigh-slapping happiness, then abruptly chorused their support for Mobocracy, followed within hours, astoundingly, by all my loyal cabinet, excepting McLachlan, who was uncontactably outdoors observing the Crutching, and Tim Fischer, who was upstairs reading Proust.
The talk is now, amazingly, of my replacement and Costello’s imminent fuhrership (and coronation as Peter the Greater) under the New Order, with Reith as Himmler and Abbott, sadly, as Rudolf Hess.
And this is only the second day.
Watch this space.
Name:
Tim Fisher was upstairs reading Proust…WOW, I always thought he was better than the rest of them…
He was only reading Proust for the relevent passages about Choo-Choo trains.
…for me it is enough if any Liberal holds a Proust’s book in his hand….one day he might read it…better than reading The Australian as one’s Bible.
Helvi your generalisation about Liberals is quite concerning. Our PM is a self-confess non-reader whilst the opposition leader is a Rhodes Scholar and author. Wake up.
Verily, I wasn’t referring to boating manuals or to the one book you have written yourself, I talking about Literature, books that our Foreign Minister reads….
And of course I’don’t know what private people are doing….
Helvi its on the public record that Abbott is a voracious reader of classics – dislike him, but it is wrong to suggest he is not a reader of literature. Despite Bob’s recent change of tune about his former friend, he would no doubt confirm this to be the case.
As for our new Foreign Minister, he certainly knows his way around a book, and adds a depth of intelligence in this sense to the entire Labor caucus.
I am a very keen reader and keenly aware of the importance of reading to our culture.
HOWEVER.
It’s worth pointing out that Robert Doylre, the portly Lord Poo-Bah of Melbourne, reads Powell’s ‘A Dance to the Music of Time’ annually.
He thinks this makes him a cultured individual. It doesn’t. It makes him a guy who reads ‘A Dance to the Music of Time’ once a year.
Ah but who are you to make that judgment? Who am I? Who are any of us? People can be mutli-faceted and unless explicitly stated we cannot know why someone may choose to read a classic – is it for love of the book, does the story resonate or rekindle memories of when first read, or is it as you state to simply trot out to others as a sign of ‘culture’.
“Ah but who are you to make that judgment?”
Someone who read an extended interview with Mr Doyle, and then compared his stated views with his public actions.
Why read the classics at all? Why read any book? Always and only because you are looking for something in that book, and you can feel that book looking for something inside you.
I publish this heartfelt plea received today from an impeccable source, and without comment by me:
“On behalf of my ancestors I say that they have been wronged.
In Darwin recently ‘no other reasonable explanation’ was the finding, a damning finding which blackens the name of hundreds of my ancestors, without the benefit of representation, without a proper trial and without the due process of law to which all Australians are entitled.
My ancestors came into this great country at least 40,000 years ago and they are entitled to the benefit of the customs and the laws of this great nation.
On behalf of all dingoes everywhere, I call upon the Australian nation to end the denigration of my ancestors ans accept that dingoes don’t kill people, people kill people.
Thank you for your attention to this plea.”
“The talk is now, amazingly, of my[Howard's] replacement and Costello’s imminent fuhrership (and coronation as Peter the Greater) under the New Order, with Reith as Himmler and Abbott, sadly, as Rudolf Hess.”
I think Abbott has been auditioning for the role as Goebbels lately, with his Big Lie.
As it changes, so it stays the same.