“Good morning, Mr Howard, now before I continue I’d just like to establish that you’re a work of fiction for satirical purposes and as such I have a fair bit of leeway with what I can get you to do or say.”
“Certainly, but you’ve got nothing on George W. He could twist me into almost anything with the right amount of heat… That ‘man of steel’ comment was all about the shapes I could be bent into in order to please him.”
“Yes, but we’re more concerned with recent events. You’ve recently said that you don’t have much time for multiculturalism.”
“That’s right. I think that if someone comes here then they should be prepared to leave their old culture behind and immediately embrace Australia and its values.”
“Is that why we took so many years before we stopped singing ‘God Save The King’ and decided to have our own anthem?”
“Well, I need to pick you up on that. For most of my life it was ‘God Save The Queen’ and may I say that we were lucky to have such a fine lady as our head of state…”
“But she’s not Australian!”
“I know that. Of course she’s not Australian. I don’t understand what…”
“Back to your comments on multiculturalism. You seem to be suggesting that you feel that people don’t have a right to keep their own values and culture.”
“I don’t mind if it’s the same values and culture that we have in Australia but when you have Labor allowing the sort of people who threw their children overboard…”
“Hang on, nobody threw their children overboard! That claim was proved to be false.”
“Was it? I don’t remember any court of law that said that so the claim is entitled to the presumption of innocence.”
“That’s not how presumption of innocence works. A person is entitled to that but claims need to be proven before they…”
“Look, Peter Reith said that he had video but unfortunately he taped over it by mistake when he wanted to record an episode of The Sopranos…”
“Returning to multiculturalism, what are you actually suggesting? For example, is an ex-pat Englishman booing the Australians in an Ashes test not embracing our culture?”
“No that would be personal choice.”
“What about someone from China cheering their national team against the Socceroos?”
“Well, soccer’s a very divisive sport, but I think that if we’ve been good enough to let you in, then you should back us all the way…”
“Why the difference?”
“Ah, obviously one is a proper country that has a long history that we share, while China is communist.”
“It’s got nothing to do with your comments in the 1980s about your concern about the Asianization of Australia.”
“I don’t think that I ever used those exact words… but I did think that it was a concern that we were in danger of too many people migrating here that wouldn’t assimilate. However, I changed my mind when I discovered that many of them were likely to vote for our party.”
“So it was all about getting elected?”
“I wouldn’t put it quite like that but one does have to consider that unless one is in government one can’t do anything, so if we’re going to stop Labor from pursuing their agenda then we have to be in government.”
“Stopping Labor? But what about the Liberal Party’s own agenda?”
“Stopping Labor IS our agenda. As long as we can stop them, then we can let the market decide which industries to keep in Australia and which to send overseas.”
“On another matter, you’ve no doubt heard that Tony Abbott has told a gathering that anthropogenic global warming was ‘ahistorical and implausible’?”
“Quite right. I did say that my intuition told me that climate change wasn’t real and…
“You back your intuition over science?”
“Of course, when was the last time a scientist was made Prime Minister? Anyway I have a lot of time for Tony. He’s someone who always speaks his mind…”
“But how can you say that he speaks his mind after he lied when he said that he believed in climate change and that he never said that the science was crap.”
“It’s not really a lie if you say it because you have to. I mean he only said those things in order to get elected and you can’t really count them as lies. It’s like marriage vows… there’s certain things that you’re expected to say and if you were to say that you’d forsake all others apart from the odd staff person on a cold Canberra night… well, it just wouldn’t sit right, would it? I mean everyone knows who’s cheating on their partners but papers still run those happy family puff pieces. Not everyone has the same happy marriage that Jenny and I have…”
“You mean Janette?”
“Yes, that’s the one… Slip of the tongue. Ha ha…That can get you into a lot of trouble these days but once it was just the way things were…”
“But surely Abbott’s admission raises a whole lot of problems for Peter Dutton. I mean isn’t someone going to ask him about his commitment to climate change or whether he really meant it when he said that he was sorry for boycotting the Stolen Generation Apology?”
“Of course they won’t. I mean has anyone asked Tony how Margie feels about him spending all that time overseas without her? Has anyone asked those calling for an audit into how money is being spent on certain things if they’re concerned that it might find out that it was really poorly targeted while they were in charge? Did anyone think to ask Peter Dutton if he really thought that Albanese should go to Israel when they’ve been attacking him for his overseas trips? And nobody will point out that Abbott is admitting that he wasn’t committed to doing anything about climate change because we all knew that at the time and if the media stop pretending that they don’t know what’s really happening then people may ask them why they’re not reporting it… Look what happened when people discovered that Simon Benson knew about Morrison’s five ministries even though Scott hadn’t told the relevant ministers. People started rambling on about transparency and the like and nobody asked if Benson had told Bridget or whether he really did keep it to himself and if he told her then who else knew and if he didn’t… Sorry, I’ve forgotten the question.”
“I think we all have.”
Like what we do at The AIMN?
You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.
Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!
Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.
You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Andrew Mitrovica
Mort Laitner
Nikkei Editorial
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
Rami G Khouri
visit website
