SIR,

A cry for plans and foresight,
For calm and common sense,
From leading Aussie pollies
Is laboured in your tense,
A call for well-thought logic,
Not slogans all despise,
I hear but cannot share it -
My love is otherwise.

I love a pygmy country*,
A land that wastes its brains,
Forget our schools and unis,
We’ve mines and quarried gains!
I love her short horizons,
Her working family,
Protection of her borders,
No refugees for me!

Poll-driven slaves for leaders,
Who choke their souls with grime,
Catfights and mincing poodles -
Their best at question time,
Abuse of Aussie syntax
Like ‘mateship’, ‘un-’ and ‘strewth’,
A land that hates discussion -
Where scripts are gospel truth!

Core of my heart, my party!
Your future is supreme,
By ending waste and handouts,
We aim to run on dreams -
‘Move forward’ with ‘real action’,
Cut tax to build a surplus,
Stop boats of brown skinned Muslims,
Spend less but give more service.

Core of my heart, my party!
Home of the sweet sound bite,
No need for any thinking
If the polling says its right,
My shelter in student days,
My teacher of dark arts,
Without you I’m a rodent -
A horse behind a cart.

A navel-gazing country,
Where good times never end,
And you who have not loved her,
You cannot comprehend:
Tall poppies are for cutting,
The experts always lie,
Long live pygmy politics,
Where ideas come to die.

Party Leader
Head, IN Sand.

*With apologies to Laurie Oakes as well.

See what they did there. The state is made of GOLD.

Choice selections from
the performance piece
“Politician, heal thyself”

- “The current lot couldn’t pull the
skin off a rice pudding”

- “The political parties cast off leaders
the way Dame Edna Everage
casts off frocks”

- “Both the main parties have been for
and against an emissions-trading system,
the issue that most divides them today.
Even the Greens…have voted against
the only one they have been offered.”

- “Some see a non-stop Punch-and-Judy
show promoted by talkback radio,
where the chat is both blunt and sharp,
even by Australian standards, and the prime
minister is quite likely to be called Ju-liar.”

- The level of political discourse is not high…
politicians … seldom bothering to explain
a policy or answer a question without
short-term political gain being
uppermost in their minds.

- Mr Abbott … [and] His party seem
to have no philosophical principles at all.

-” The net result of all this is a lack of
seriousness in Australia’s politics.
The show … is a spectacle.”