The Scion, the Wheat, and the Cabinet – Chapter the Last

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TOM LEWIS writes:

Damned inconvenient. Cricket on. You’d think they could spice it up a bit by losing the third test just to get the odds up a bit and increase the take at the gate. Yes, a double, m’dear.

Now, where was I? Don’t really know since I died, but what was it I wanted to say to you lot? Oh yes, ran into Jack t’other day and he’s got a few tidbits of a yarn. Apparently that wheat thing’s over. No James, the massage is at 3, isn’t it?

Um, where was I? Ah yes. Well, old Jack tells me he’s got another yarn and I’m s’posed to see him next week to get the guts of it. Dunno, really. There’s a Chrissie party on and were having a memorial for Harold Holt over at the Chinese down the road at the Cheviot Beach Club so we mightn’t get a chance to get it all down before this bloody mob close down for Christmas. Journalists. I ask you. Always the same: never let a good news story get in the way of a holiday.

Anyway, here’s the last bit Jack gave me about the wheat thing. Happy Hogmanay and we’ll be back in the new year or so. Have to rush – the massage was at 2 after all.

Love to all and remember: vote Liberal. They may be a pack of incompetent bastards, but they’re our incompetent bastards. Mud in your eye.

 

 

The Chronicles of Nadir

As told from the grave by Tom Lewis

 

Tale the First

The Scion, the Wheat, and the Cabinet

Chapter The Last

The Final Report

As clouds of smoke billowed around the Teak Table and the bush firefighters were gaining Labor [sic] pre-selection in droves, other momentous portents were occurring in the land of Nadir. While the snow melted and the water rose, rats were leaving sinking ships like a drawn treader and faster than the increasing drought could reduce stock numbers (or even numbats). Little Lucy’s husband was making a concerted push on the water front and had made so many feel-good announcements that she was, victory over the Lady Jadis apart, clearly flushed with success.

Meanwhile, on this side of the Cabinet, Little Johnnie, in a public relations coup the like of which had not been seen since Mrs Petrov was dragged screaming from a Lermontov airliner in Darwin, the coalface had been closed down as a gesture towards appeasing the lunatic fringe on global warming.

AW Board had escaped by the skin of his teeth and had them firmly sunk into the double board shuffle somewhere in the Channel Islands while his erstwhile colleagues slowly committed suicide pending their respective committals.

With the Christmas hols rapidly approaching, the children had spent useful time relieving the tension of their adventures by installing themselves on their respective thrones in the park outside the Goulburn RSL. Although it had caused a bit of a stink at the time, as is the way of these things, like the coalface, time heals all wounds and things are easily forgotten if not always forgiven or vice versa.

Alexander had become both Queen of the Faeries and Foreign Minister as a fully-fledged member of the Inner Cabinet (price $482 plus GST – the modern equivalent of 20 pieces of silver, or, a pound of flesh as it was known in Treasury, the portfolio the now enthroned King Peter had been given and the only kingdom he was ever likely to rule). As a further diversionary tactic a former Jewish journalist, and Middle East expert, Rosie Rosie (always a red’s red) had been appointed as ambassador to the newly created territory of Palestine, a traditional historical homeland the size of Monaco which now sat on a floating island half a kilometer above the ancient land of Brobdignag.

Queen Amanda, for her part, had become, well, slightly larger than she formerly had been in life, and was given extra responsibility as a new Australian Territory in the Great Southern Ocean about 50º 25’ E, 28º 45’S where she was now inhabited by a colony of lesbian sea lions, all of whom had passed the recently introduced dictation test, knew all about mateship, Australian values, bbqing in cold climates, and turkey basting as well as having promised to vote Liberal for the rest of their natural lives. The turkey basting had initially seemed odd and could have been scuttled until it was explained to Jeanette, a well known animal liberationist (after all she had taken Little Johnnie away from his mum) that there were no actual turkeys involved just a long plastic tube and a thing that looked like the business end of a Klaxon horn on a model T Ford. Jeanette had always had a soft spot for the model T and from time to time had fantasies about Corder and a dickie seat. She often had fantasies about dickie seats but that still hadn’t stopped THAT WOMAN getting pre-selection for Southern Highlands.

For Little Lucy, being a Queen was little different to being a Little Lucy really. After all, once one was born to rule, one was born to rule (although there had been a tad of trouble about that combined with being a Roman Catholic in 1688). Still, time heals all wounds, even being thrown over at your fist popular election as Lord Mayor for a bedraggled chook the age of Methuselah with the brains of a herring (and personal hygiene to go with it).

Mr Patel, on the other hand had struck up a clandestine correspondence with Mr Lodhi. Both were planning a break-out known to the law as an appeal. The thin-lipped veinless Ruddock had his eye on them like a, well, not like a hawke, (he, after all, was from the other side) but more like a Caldwell (come to think of it, he was from the other side as well but, it was an old saying: two Wongs don’t make a white and there was no point in playing with a Lodhi weapon.) Of course, every cloud has a silver lining and at least Mr Patel knew he didn’t have osteoporosis – he could now see the bones in his wrists for himself.

So, as the fire gutters and sleep draws on, gathering the loose ends as any good children’s story does, we find the four at the end of their particular adventure, returned from the Land of Nadir, blessed by the Scion and happily ruling over a grateful populace seemingly forever. Yet, while this is a children’s’ story, we live in an adult world with the dangers of war not yet receded. Home by Christmas becomes yet another casualty of realpolitic if not of a terrible war. In fact, in the time it has taken in the telling of this tale, the dangers only increased. ‘Tis but the way of the world (and of tedious, crude, laboured, Christian allegories) that the struggle never ends.

Unbeknownst to them, the children, Little Johnnie, Jeanette, Corder and all their fellow travellers were about to face their greatest challenge since the days of the Communist Party Case.

From the North, suddenly, unannounced, except by himself, had come the threat of Prince Crispian now allied with the Wicked Witch of the South, an evil, fire-breathing, unmarried, childless, whining, grating, gyrating, combinationalist, red both in hair and craw, Jules of the Galliard, who was to Dowland and courtly Elizabethan dancing what the rulers of the Peoples’ Republic of China had been to Tiananmen square. Suddenly, crocodiles were developing Hawke eyes.

Like the endless ebb and flow of the big bang cycle, force against force was aligned and the ever to be repeated battle loomed. Once more unto the breach, the mettle of their pasture was again to be tested: this time it would not just be about wheat.

770 thoughts on “The Scion, the Wheat, and the Cabinet – Chapter the Last”

  2. I had to laugh last night when Rolly Sussex, an academic specialising in language, was referring to the use of punctuation. He told us of a sewage truck bearing the signage –
    YESTERDAY’S MEALS, ON WHEELS

  3. On Credlin’s continuing role as Abbott’s chief of staff, and trusted advisor, Bishop stopped short of saying the prime minister should replace Credlin but said the concerns from his own MPs about her level of control needed to be heeded.

    “Peta Credlin is a very powerful figure in the sense that she’s strong, she has a lot of opinions and she is very protective of the prime minister,” Bishop told ABC Radio.

    “I think people have been frank and blunt in their the assessment of the prime minister’s office and the prime minister is a smart man he will take those issues into account.”

    http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-02/10/c_133982478.htm

  6. Leone,

    Much as I loathe giving The Government Gazette a click, you must remember this:

    Tony Abbott rates himself among the world’s coolest dudes in politics and says he’s got the threads to prove it.

    The opposition leader almost constantly wears a “uniform” of pale blue tie, dark suit and white shirt.

    Today he defended his choice, saying blue was the coalition’s traditional colour.

    “I did notice a couple of years ago that Barack Obama and David Cameron, who are two of the coolest dudes in politics, tended to dress with a dark suit, a white shirt and a blue tie,” he told Sydney radio 2SM’s John Laws program.

    “I thought well, look, if it’s good for them it’s probably good for me.

    “If you’ve got more or less the same uniform on every day, people they just take it for granted and your appearance doesn’t become something that people talk about.”

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/abbott-is-tied-to-his-cool-dude-uniform/story-e6frg6n6-1226582686904

  7. http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/news/politics/senior-nationals-mps-could-have-walked-if-turnbull-returned/story-fnkerdda-1227214517052

    http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/news/politics/victorian-premier-daniel-andrews-says-labor-will-be-a-government-of-action/story-fnkerdda-1227214226595

    http://johnmenadue.com/blog/?p=3226

    http://www.theland.com.au/news/agriculture/general/politics/country-party-contests-nsw-upper-house/2723251.aspx?storypage=0

  8. It seems that every nation around us is building. What’s happening to us?

    By the year 2020, Tokyo hopes that there will be 6,000 fuel cell vehicles on the road, as consumers buy vehicles from Toyota and Honda.

    The fund will be used to build up 35 hydrogen refueling stations near Olympic venues to keep the vehicles fuelled. In addition, the city expects to have 100 fuel cell buses operating by that time, helping transport athletes between Olympic venues. It will also be used to promote the vehicles.

    By the year 2025, Tokyo’s goal is to have 100,000 hydrogen passenger vehicles on the road along with 80 refueling stations, helping pave the way for a “hydrogen society.“

    http://www.businessinsider.com.au/tokyo-and-hydrogen-fuel-in-2020-olympics-2015-2

  9. leonetwo

    Another “convenient” bit of timing . The deputy police commissioner who popped up to announce it was in front of this parliamentary enquiry yesterday . Currently a cage fight amongst senior police.

    NSW Police bugging scandal: Catherine Burn continues to give evidence at explosive inquiry

    DEPUTY Police Commissioner Nick Kaldas accused his fellow deputy Catherine Burn yesterday of actively working to put him into the investigation in which he was bugged for two years and a corrupt former policeman wore a wire and sought to entrap him.

    http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/nsw-police-bugging-scandal-catherine-burn-continues-to-give-evidence-at-explosive-inquiry/story-fni0cx12-1227214310872?nk=3000a6f08f64e9df1ce43d69f5da7067

  10. On the blue-tie affair..ever since the gutless MSM. played the gender card against Gillard and her “men in blue-ties” comment, we have seen the increase of wearers amongst those “follow the leader/which leader?” LNP. sympathisers. It proves the petulance of those little boys seeking any modicum of notoriety as a vehicle to prove their “masculine” independence. To see Christopher Pyne of all the piss-ant LNP. ministers squaring up “manfully” with his litmus tie is ample proof of the mentality of their personalities!

    Fiona: Edited out of prudence.

  11. Ashby is another one chewed up and spat out by the Liberal machine. Their best friend when he was useful to them, on his own now. I have no sympathy for him at all, he was such a willing participant that he deserves all that’s coming to him. But it is worth shackling him to the overall callousness of the LNP and their tendency to outsource evil to those they can apply plausible deniability to. To say Ashby ought to die in a ditch is not too harsh an assessment; but I note Pyne still has a ministry, and Mal Brough is still sitting on the government benches. They’re both just as culpable. And I still think a plot to bring down a sitting government via a whopper of a lie qualifies as treason. That story ought to be chased down to its end points, but I doubt that’ll happen now.

    Kathy Jackson’s another one. She’d be friendless now, nobody would be returning her calls.

  13. “I did notice a couple of years ago that Barack Obama and David Cameron, who are two of the coolest dudes in politics, tended to dress with a dark suit, a white shirt and a blue tie,” he told Sydney radio 2SM’s John Laws program.

    “I thought well, look, if it’s good for them it’s probably good for me.

    Yeah, we already know he’s a dickhead. I don’t see why he feels the need to go out and prove it every single day. And whoever advised him to characterise David Cameron as ‘cool’ probably shouldn’t have the job he has – or be left unsupervised around cutlery, for that matter.

  16. Kirsdarke,

    Great choice.

    Aguirre,

    One of abbott’s many problems is he doesn’t realise he’s a dickhead.

  17. Meanwhile out in space a couple of shots taken by Rosetta last week of the comet it is orbiting starting to “wake up” as it gets closer to the sun.

  18. Dan Andrews is cementing his persona as a true progressive. Linda Dessau is a superb choice. About time Victorian had a female Governor. Somewhat in contrast to Sir Pository’s choice on Australia Day.

  19. A Pyrrhic Victory.

    No!..I’m not talking about Tony Abbott avoiding a spill-motion over his leadership, although THAT was such a “victory” that another would lose him the backing of his entire back-bench!

    No..I am talking about our nation’s democracy. Another “victory for democracy” like last federal election, where the LNP. lied it’s way into office and we will be finished as a democratic nation. For how were the voters to know how indebted to Murdoch was the Leader of the then opposition so that he gave a near one billion dollar tax write-off gift to Rupert’s corporation as a “payment for services rendered”..and it didn’t end there…The newly elected LNP. govt’, under the callous, cynical hand off their “minister for non-communication” set about dismantling the national infrastructure of the broadband network so that the olde worlde media mogul could inflict “slow-band” onto us all…at a price!

    It was a Pyrrhic victory that gave us the “guiding light” of the IPA. wish-list..a recipe for social disintegration if ever there was one..AND right down the line for a Tony Abbott government…A wish-list that dissolved every safety net, medical-service net, social needs net and laid waste both community and society. If ever there was a group of people more in need of investigation for tax evasion and interference in political manipulation it is the IPA. When one reads or hears their spokes-people wax lyrical on the benefits of a dog-eat-dog society, one can only visualize juvenile delinquency followed up by a good dose of horse-whipping.

    Combine these with a totally unprepared opposition, an opposition that cruised into power on the coat-tails of saturation negative MSM. hyperbole against a well-managed economy , with many vital infrastructure projects steaming ahead, and we have this chaos now floundering around like a bull in a china-shop…we have this “terror panicked” bunch of inept buffoons, squabbling amongst themselves, not over policy..THERE ISN’T ANY!..but over vanities….: A silvertail spurned, a mutton-dressed-as-lamb prancer, a “the buffoon is a balloon” treasurer and worse of all ; a leader who is being led by his “lance”..all of which combined with a line-up ministry of jerks, jokes and jackeroos that are giving cartoonists a field day and the satirists a heart-ache , but opening up a new line of career training in the art-schools around the country!

    Has there ever been a more disastrous and volatile situation in this country’s history, where our noble institutions of electoral fairness, voter rights and democratic freedom has been cynically used as a vehicle to drive into power the most useless, gormless, hopeless, inept and gutless collection of bumbling clowns that have ever had the moxxy to claim the name of “Politician”?………I don’t think so!

    “One more such victory will totally undo us!”

  20. Rude bastards.

    Coalition MPs stage walkout after Bill Shorten raises budget in Closing the Gap speech

    Bipartisan consensus on Indigenous policy ruptured on Wednesday when several Coalition MPs walked out on a speech by Labor leader Bill Shorten calling on the government to reverse $500 million in budget cuts.

    The presentation of the annual Closing the Gap report to Parliament is usually a time when both sides of politics re-commit themselves to work together to end chronic disadvantage.

    But Wednesday’s proceedings exposed deep differences between the government and opposition, with Indigenous leaders clapping the speech by Mr Shorten after responding in polite silence to an address by Mr Abbott

    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/coalition-mps-stage-walkout-after-bill-shorten-raises-budget-in-closing-the-gap-speech-20150211-13bla7.html

    Abbott’s speech did not go down well with the indigenous audience. Neither did some of his remarks at the closing the Gap breakfast this morning.

    there was also some agitation around among attendees at the closing the gap breakfast this morning about an aside from the prime minister about indigenous people being first class citizens.

    Here’s the Abbott quote:
    “The closing the gap statement is important. It should be an annual statement because it forces us to stay committed. It forces us to stay focused and as far as I’m concerned there is no more important cause than ensuring that indigenous people enter fully into their rightful inheritance as first Australians and as first class citizens of this great country.”

    For some attendees, this aside suggested they weren’t currently first class citizens. Abbott certainly would not have meant it that way – but some people took it that way.

    Labor senator Nova Peris gave the prime minister a bit of a clip around the ears on the ABC before.

    We are citizens of the world – shut up with the categories, please.

    “We heard Tony Abbott this morning talking about Aboriginal people one day can be first-class citizens, we talk about Aboriginal people saying we are second-class citizens.

    For goodness sake, we are human citizens of this world. Australia is so rich in so many areas, we’ve got a lot to be ashamed about in the treatment of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples

    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2015/feb/11/joe-hockey-says-hes-best-person-for-the-job-and-stands-by-budget-politics-live?CMP=ema_1731

    Good government Day 2 – not happening yet – still waiting.

  21. Leone,

    It would take all of us at The Pub several weeks to work out how to be as gratuitously offensive as abbott is almost every time he opens his mouth.

    A sad reflection on a sad, paltry person.

  22. Stuff the walkers . This from L2’s link speaks volumes.

    “Indigenous leaders clapping the speech by Mr Shorten after responding in polite silence to an address by Mr Abbott”

  23. Polite silence is more than Abbott deserves. He won’t give that to others. And for a man who recently referred to Australia pre-1788 as “nothing but bush”, they owe him nothing.

    I’m referring to that walk-out by Liberal MPs as the Walk of Shame.

  25. Katharine on THAT quote from The NE:

    For some attendees, this aside suggested they weren’t currently first class citizens. Abbott certainly would not have meant it that way – but some people took it that way.

    That’s Murphy The Omniscient speaking.

  26. Abbott and indigenous affairs.

    Yesterday there was yet another ‘Tony is such a nice bloke’ piece of crap in The Age. Whoever wrote it, following the long traditional of political ‘journalists’ being too fracking lazy to do research, claimed ‘he champions reconciliation, teaches in indigenous schools’.
    http://www.theage.com.au/comment/tony-abbotts-government-is-not-conservative-at-heart-20150209-139m3a.html

    I didn’t think that sounded right so I checked – it took me five minutes maximum to find the truth.

    In August 2008 Abbott spent three weeks in the Cape York township of Coen. He seems to have stayed the whole three weeks, instead of buggering off early as he does these days. He said, in his own blog – he tired of blogging his adventures after the first day – that he would be acting as volunteer literacy tutor in the mornings and working with an income management group in the afternoons.
    http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/22487/20091201-0957/www.tonyabbott.com.au/Pages/Article2f79.html?ID=3621

    That is a long way from ‘teaching in indigenous schools’ and as Abbott seems almost incapable of reading anything these days you have to wonder how much use he was to that school.

    Another day, another MSM lie……

  28. Come to think of it, Murphy has learned well of Her Master’s Voice: how to be gratuitously offensive in three easy lessons.

  32. If you want to look at them have a bucket handy

    “Down on the farm, with Mike Bowers. Two beautiful shots.”

  34. The Walkers of Shame

    Libs:

    Russell Broadbent – McMillan – 2PP 2013 61.83%
    Andrew Nikolic – Bass – (why is it they like ex-military types so much down there?) – 2PP 2013 54.04%
    Melissa Price – Durack – (one of the Libs’ non-blonde females) – 2PP 2013 53.98%
    Angus Taylor – Hume – (another Rhodes scholar) – 2PP 2013 53.97%

    Nats:

    John Cobb – Calare – 2PP 2013 57.85%
    Ken O’Dowd – Flynn – 2PP 2013 56.53%

    All sort of rural; none of them knife-edge (in any sense).

  42. Someone has suggested that those welcoming Hodgkinsons may be related to Katrina Hodgkinson, “loathsome” Member for Burrinjuck. Couldn’t possibly be true.

  43. BB
    They were little darlings! Will you be feeding them every night now?

    HI has taken that dubious responsibility upon herself.

    Feed them and they will come.

    DON’T feed them and they will raid the kitchen unless I lock the place up every night.

    Mind youse, this plonking moralizing comes from a man who bribed Raoul The Rat with 16 mini dog star bikkies every night, so that he would keep away from the more succulent, more human-orientated goodies in the pantry.

    This did not end well. Raoul met Renata, and the rest was history.

    I have learned my lesson… but has HI?

    Well? HAS she?

  44. BB

    YOUR possums are indeed magnificient creatures. Love their eyes.

    I have my own possum who comes in winter at around 7pm when night falls. He’s a shy little fellow who doesn’t like being observed. Like a baby, with two “hands”, he crunches the slices of carrots as we would eat a delicacy. Harmless animal.

  45. More from The Guardian on the reaction to Abbott’s closing the Gap speech – sorry to quote Ms Murphy, but at least she is providing some decent opinions. (Not her own, thank goodness)

    My colleague Shalailah Medhora has been chasing reaction to the closing the gap speech among Indigenous leaders.

    Michelle Nelson-Cox, the chair of the Aboriginal health council of Western Australia, says she was bitterly disappointed that the prime minister failed to mention constitutional reform, and at one point thought she might leave.

    “When you have a diversity of Aboriginal people sitting in the room, you would have thought he would have acknowledged custodians and visitors to this land across the board. At one point there, I was thinking about getting up and walking out. There were a couple of us from the forum that we represent. There were a couple of us who were bitterly disappointed.”

    Kirsty Parker from the National Congress of Australia’s first peoples said the prime minister is a bit on the back foot. She’s back on the broad consultation point.

    “We seen him make some pronouncements that haven’t been helpful around the history of the nation. So in some senses, he’s a little bit on the back foot.

    The thing is, when you have a relationship with people you can almost say anything, and you can work it out.

    But you can’t have that level of trust if you don’t have a relationship”

    Was Abbott’s farm visit just a ‘look over there’ stunt to distract the MSM from the unfavourable reaction to his woeful performance this morning?

  47. QT not up to much. Shorten asked Abbott about his commitment to the Indigenous population. Abbott talked about policemen. Then he got a dixer so he could crap on about death cults. The Shorten asked Abbott about tender processes re subs and Abbott frothed at the mouth and shouted a bit. Then Bishop got a dixer about terrorism and she muttered a bit.

    Shorten now asking again about Senator Edwards and what he was offered. Abbott is about to start shouting again. First time was asked today he rephrased his slur about Shorten being racist, now using ‘xenophobic’, and suggested Shorten wants us to get subs from Putin or Kim Jong Un. This time he just ranted about how long the ALP took over getting our subs. He’s nowhere near what he was asked.

  48. Rant indeed:

    “What do they want now? They want an open tender. Now they don’t understand the difference between an open tender and an evaluation process, a competitive evaluation process.

    Do you know about an open tender? Anyone can compete. What the leader of the opposition wants, he wants anyone to be able to compete to provide Australia’s next generation of submarines.

    He might want the Russians to compete, Putin subs is what we will get from the leader of the opposition.

    We might get North Korean subs. This is what Labor wants.”

  49. Wilkie asking about GP co-payment now. Abbott’s currently telling us what a great Health Minister he was back then. And now he’s telling us doctors are important, which is a helpful observation.

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