What a week for the country.
Not only do we now know that tax cuts, hand-outs and billions in bribes to Greens and Independants are actually planet-saving environmental policy, we also had a whole new range of Real Julias to choose from!
It all started on Sunday with the long-awaited bribes disguised as a “clean energy future” revealed by Carbon Crusader Julia.
But this was no ordinary Carbon Crusader. This wasn't just Julia in a cape. Oh no. Julia took every chance available to invoke the legacy of John Howard and Margaret Thatcher, the Man of Steel and the Iron Lady.
This was all designed to let us know we weren’t dealing with just Julia. No folks, we were dealing with Titanium Lady!
The previous week she was Mother Julia telling us to be good little plebs and eat our vegies, but on Sunday Mother Julia ducked into the telephone box and lo! Titanium Lady was revealed.
Titanium Lady fronted the press pack and informed us she could knock down brick walls and carry the whole country through the gap to a sunlit, cost-free future.
But there was a softer side to Titanium Lady. Intuitively recognising that the public are too stupid to understand how a tax to reduce emissions that resulted in more emissions in 2020 than we have now is a wonderful thing, Titanium Lady deigned to venture out amongst her children and calm their fears.
Unfortunately the newly minted Titanium Lady ran into Beryllium Lady, a granny, at a shopping centre in Brisbane
Grannies can spot fibbers a mile off. Titanium Lady was standing close enough to this granny to try a few condescending pats on the arm, so was close enough to discover that even the hardest metals become brittle when faced with a freezing look.
Titanium Lady had suddenly become Steel Lady. Undeterred, Steel Lady walked into a forum in Brisbane
GetUp! did its best to put a bit of shine back into Nickel Lady with a Dorothy Dixer session, but you could tell that the furnace was taking its toll.
It is appropriate, when you think about it, that GetUp! should organise the Dorothies, given it is the Australian political equivalent of the Flying Monkey squadrons from the Wizard of Oz. Every time the Wicked Witch of The Waste is in strife, Bruce Hawker sends an emergency call to Squadron Leader Simon Shriek: “Release the monkeys”.
The analogy is frighteningly appropriate, what with Wayne Swan wandering around looking for a brain, ALP pollsters looking for a heartbeat and the caucus looking for courage.
Despite the best efforts of Shriek and his fawning monkey squadrons, Nickel Lady was struggling.
By the time she walked into the National Fan, sorry, National Press Club she had realised that Titanium Lady, Steel Lady and Nickel Lady were flying like a lead balloon.
So, into the Fan, sorry, Press Club strode Tin Lady, but lo she wasn’t Tin Lady for long. No, she was Shy Girl!
Shy Girl is just finding it hard to explain why she is screwing us all over for political expediency because, you know, she likes to hide herself away.
The suspicion that we would all be better off if she had stuck with that plan is hard to shake, but she tells us she is sacrificing herself to lead us into a new sunlit future and so the Reason for the Day is revealed.
Shy Girl teared up, which would have been believable if she hadn’t been reading from a prepared speech which she MUST have read and approved beforehand.
Nothing like a bit of spontaneous, rehearsed lip quivering to soften those cynical Fan, sorry, Press Club hearts.
(This tactic is well known to immature, desperate Australian males who can’t find anyone to sleep with them. It is called ‘going for the sympathy root’.)
But wait, Shy Girl showed that there was still mettle in the metal as Tin Lady re-appeared to tell the adoring throng “don’t write crap!”
The mixed message was too much: Shy Girl telling the nation’s scribblers not to write crap? Back to the workshop for a bit of re-casting.
Saturday saw the emergence of Aluminium Lady, reduced to hiding out in the Latrobe Valley
The “conversation” didn’t seem to have the required effect if the reaction of those on the receiving end of the condescending monologues Aluminium Lady mistakenly labels as conversations were anything to go by.
She stood revealed as Mercury Lady, a slippery blob of half-truths impossible to nail down.
By Sunday night, Busted-Arse Beer Can Lady was reduced to defending $25 million on an advertising campaign to sell the Re-election Tax to the stupid electorate.
Honestly, how many of these Julias does Bruce Hawker have stashed away? Can you accessorize your Julia doll? Buy a new persona, complete with policy position, for every occasion?
I’m sure it is great for Tool-Man Tim, who is in the unique position of living the fantasy of choosing from a different woman every night while remaining in a monogamous relationship, but the benefits to the rest of us are a little harder to identify.
One can’t help think that perhaps Bruce should be trotting out somebody with slightly fewer personalities and less fibs on the resume to sell the re-election, sorry, environmental policy, but the sad truth is his options are clearly limited.
We have a PM who, if there was any natural justice which allied occupation with ability, would be spending her days wearing a hairnet and gloves and sorting fish fingers, but who’s backing her up?
Window-lickers like Swan, Roxon, Bowen, Garrett, Ludwig, Mark Arbib et al, that’s who.
Bob Hawke had his faults, but his ministerial line-up was probably the most talented the country had ever seen.
If the likes of Arbib had wandered into a meeting of Hawke’s cabinet, Bob would have said: “Aagh, another round of sandwiches and VBs thanks son. Oh, and tell Swannee to make sure he shines my boots properly this time … and make sure Roxon washes my car.”
As for Bowen, what else is there to say but run Forrest, run!
Honestly, you could see this lot arriving at community cabinets in the little orange bus, all wearing little name tags and lined up on the footpath in pairs, tied together with string to make sure nobody gets lost.
And at the head of the line, shepherding the Labor kiddies along would be Father Bob, King of the Brownies.
Having extorted a carbon tax – complete with $10 billion slush fund to throw at every commercially unviable dingbat renewable program on the planet - out of The Great Negotiator (So Bob, Tony, who should I write the cheque out to?) Gillard, Bob is obviously feeling his oats.
If he wasn’t he wouldn’t be demanding World Government and Rupert Murdoch’s head on a stick would he?
And who could blame him?
He is laughing all the way to the Green Rort Bank while all of those Julias are copping the blame.
Bob, temporarily blinded by power, may perhaps have over-stepped the mark, but we’ll let the man have his time in the sun – God knows he needs it if that cadaverous pallor is anything to go by.
Personally, I don’t think Bob has much of a self to be, having sacrificed it to gobbledegook groupthink many years ago, but at least he’s true to whatever self he has left.
Bob’s box of chocolates may offer only one choice and it may taste like crap and you may say ‘no thanks’, but at least you know what you are going get.
Who does Bruce trot out of the clone factory this week? Engaged Julia?
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