Out of the Political Grave

Well, ladies and gentlemen and others who need not be ignored, the good news is that the Dear Departed Leader has emerged from the entombing cobweb cocoon of hemi-demi-semi-retirement (i.e. the twilight of the political gods, not to untowardly and unduly blaspheme, you understand, I trust), Kim Beazley has emerged, I say, to vouchsafe upon our as-yet-unwitting world the inestimable pearls of his undubitable hard-won wisdom, to wit, his much-anticipated and much-analysed oracular and orotund pronouncements pertinant to, and reflective of, the upcoming Federal Election in our wide, brown, but nonetheless generally pleasant land, viz. Australia, an election, one must acknowledge upfront and cleanbreastedly but with heavy heart and heavy chest-heaving, the which Mr Kim Christian Beazley, Esquire, will regrettably but undeniably not be contesting in his erstwhile manifestation as the highly esteemed - and highly missed, needless to add, but add it I unswervingly will - loyal leader of her Majesty's steadfast Australian opposition, to wit, the Australian Labor Party. But to come to the nub, the kernel of the chestnut currently in question: the Great Man has enunciated an earth-shaking dictum that has percolated through the caffeine-addicted netherworld of what passes for journalistic praxis in this afflicted desmesne; namely, that the upcoming, aforementioned electoral and gladiatorial contest will be none other than the proverbial 'make-or-break' Armageddon of the Antipodean political landscape, and, to express it in blunt and concise fashion, will spell the veritable end for one or other of our major political actors, i.e., either the Australian Labor Party will cease to exist due to the decimation of its Trades Union base under the swingeing assault of the Orwellian misnamed, so-called 'WorkChoices' package, or - in stark contradistinction - the Liberal Party (with whom we of course taxonomically bundle their hapless, hopeless, hackneyed, hasbeen, hayseed lackeys, the ingloriously misnamed National Party, who comprise but a pimply rump of the once-significant Country Party of Black Jack McEwen et alia, of whom the much-vaunted and much-vented Barnaby Joyce constitutes but the final, flickering flare of a fast extinguishing ember), the Liberal Party - to return to my theme - whose continued existence is posed point blank - at the point of a veritable electoral revolver, no less - by its consistent and consecutive defeats at the hands of various assembled State-level Labor administrations, and whose inevitable and unregrettable demise would be obviously accomplished by its defeat in the aforementioned Federal poll. To sum up: the upcoming Commonwealth election will indubitably result in our nation becoming effectively a one-party state, with the ineluctable extinction of one or other of the major competing parties for the aforementioned diverse reasons. We, the general public, seated round our TV dinners, can only be transfixed by this burst of politically analytical brilliance and await - with breath bated or otherwise - the unavoidable transmogrification of our political life. One can only hope that Kim will continue to share such scintillating insights, with those of us that are willing to listen, in the extraordinary times that clearly lie ahead.

A Valediction

At the outset let me say our hearts go out to the Beazley family with their recent bereavement.

As you are reading this, the political career of Kim Christian Beazley Jr is deceased. His commission has been terminated. His Napoleonic-cum-Churchillian baton is firmly and fastly stowed in his proverbial knapsack as he marches stalwartly and stoically into the time-hallowed sunset of the Labor icons. Sic gloria transit mundi. From cock of the Labor roosters to knick-knack-brushing feather-duster in a vertitable eye-blink of vertiginous Antipodean politics. As the Bard hath it, 'nothing in life became him like the leaving of it.'

He will always be remembered as a big man from a big country, indecently obsessed with building it even bigger, manically measuring out the hard yards and the cubic inches of heated air, concretely laying down the base of principle plus practicality and creatively erecting the gossamer superstructure of rhetorical effusion, enumerating the diverse dimensions of this nation's future prosperity, propensities, and proportions. Of course, the loss of such a Collossus to Australian public life will be catastrophic and incalculable, but nonetheless it would be a gargantuan case of Goliath with quadruple quintuplets if he was to continue to serve the great Australian Labor Party in any imaginable capacity from henceforth. As to regrets, he has accumulated a mythic myriad, namely 4332*, which doubtless he will enumerate in analytical triplicate when his much-anticipated diary is released in coming weeks (to be published by Dancing Bear Press).

Let me say in closing that Kevin Rudd will be a very good leader with very good qualifications, very good policies, and very good strategies which will indubitably enable him to have a very good result against the Moriarty of Australian Politics, our Prime Miniature John Winston Howard. You will never hear me say the merest whisper against Mr Rudd, nor a word that is not in full and unequivocal affirmation of the goal of a strong and united team - viz. the Australian Labor Party - being fielded in the 2007 Ashes Match.

Kevin Rudd - over to you!

[*Approximately. To be reassessed on further examination.]

It's On!

It's on! In response to the aforementioned internal rumblings, Kim Beazley has courageously and correctly precipitated a spill, as part of a strategic manoeuvre to clear the air, which will amply demonstrate who can cut the mustard in the leadership stakes and who merely cuts the cheese. Presumably, the constant tedious talk about the absence of ticker - the needless nagging nattering - will be brusquely banished to the nether regions of the never-uttered-again as the concomitant consequence of the occurrence of this bold coup d'etat. Moreover, the outcome of the spill will hopefully be carthartic. The stark and unforgiving choice currently confronting the Caucus of the Australian Labor Party is between an experienced bloke who has gouged out the hard yards of solid exertion and who appeals at an undeniable gut level to the average Australian household dutifully seated around their time-hallowed kitchen table trying to make proverbial ends meet under the swingeing impact of the double whammy of the traitorous interest rate rises and the unAustralian WorkChoices legislation, a man of indubitable substance, a global statesman - no less - who bestrides the international stage like a veritable Canberran Colossus, a masterly tactician and rhetorician, and - on the other hand, in inapposite opposition, alone and palely loitering in the shadowy parliamentary wings - a pallid, pasty, pastel-wearing, Mandarin-speaking former Foreign Affairs mandarin who is uncannily evocative of a Da Vinci Code villain, namely, Kevin Rudd. The political tennis ball is now well and truly in the figurative court of the Caucus wisely and well to detemine the ultimate victor of this pivotal contest and thusly to annoint the party leader by whom they are desirous to be led in the inevitable approach in the direction of the electoral battle that is obviously looming large on the not-too-distant event horizon, i.e., the future. We can but trust they will vote with a sagacity that well befits the trust in which they have been placed by the rank and file of the Australian Labor Party and the great Australian public, in whom, through whom, and for whom the governmental sovereignty of this great nation soundly rests.

Internal Rumblings (Again!)

The internal rumblings on the backbench have reached a not-so-carthartic Caucus crescendo, as the effluent hits the proverbial ventilator and scuttlebutt claims the airwaves. The rump that is trying to destablise Kim Beazley - I quote from none less than the Sydney Morning Herald here - has inflamed the situation without precipitating any productive movement, and - needless to say - Beazley will not evacuate from the throne.

Needless to say, this issue - or lack thereof - has provided an unwelcome diversion from the anti-WorkChoices campaign - if you forgive that ugly neologism - which has achieved apolectic apotheosis in the National Day of Action today. Of course, the routine identity parade of usual suspects - the same old carping critics and snide sneerers - has already unleashed its collective unpleasant load of vulgar disparagement on this worthy event, a mode of behaviour which, I have to say, is ironically tinged with disappointment at the very outcome in which it ostensibly revels and reviles.

Of course the assembled and dissembling media will play merry hell with this apparent non-eventuality - namely, the leadership challenge - until it grows sick of this its lacklustre plaything and moves on to something more shallowly enticing. Until this point, the Australian Labor Party seems regrettably stymied and doomed to exist in a species of Sisyphean limbo from which the only quietus is the sweet escape of temporary sleep or, perchance, timeless death. Ah, but this is but the errant voice of unabashed pessimism evoking its varied essences in a profitless echo of needless nihilism.

Let us rather rejoice in the ALP gaining a candidature of such a lustre as that emitted by former SAS (Special Air Services) commander, Peter Tinley, at the same time as we commemorate with regret, but also sorrow, the untimely demise of the young SAS soldier(s) in the Black Hawk tragedy in the vicinity of Fiji. If only their sacrifice had a commander-in-chief sufficient to its gravity. We can but hope that the upcoming electoral contest gives birth to an outcome that is satisfactory in this aforementioned regard. Indeed.

A Global Statesman

As Howard thoughtlessly forges an inexorable course towards an awful nuclear future, it is clearly beholden on the Australian Labor Party to render this exorable, to wit, to wrest the metaphorical tiller from the unresponsive hands of the Great Pedestrian, and to steer the ship of state past the melting icebergs, into the halcyon seas of clean coal and renewable energy.

Meanwhile Howard and his men and women of straw await the winnowing of the Wheat Board Enquiry which will hopefully separate the grains of truth from the chaff of bureaucratic subterfuge and parliamentary evasion and provide the yeast from which a wholesome, fully-baked Labor Government can emerge at Federal level. This, of course, reminds one to extend one's heartfelt congratulations to Steve Bracks for his resounding victory at the polls in yesterday's Victorian State Election, though one's stomach cannot but help registering tentative misgivings along the lines that the continued dominance of the Australian Labor Party on the median tier of governance - welcome though it indubitably is - bodes ill for altering the other verity of our current political status quo, namely, the conservative stranglehold on the upper tier.

Unfortunately, this juncture - precipitated by Beazley's trivial slip of the tongue with regard to Rove McManus - has seen the re-emergence of the backbench rumblings which threaten to unseat our leader. The guileful Gillard has given an interview to the popular talkshow host, David Tench, for instance. Now while Tench is respected by all other real Australian men, the consensus is that he is a little lightweight, and one cannot but recall under this rubric Gillard's erstwhile and unlamented mentor, Mr Latham, whose televised antics at the Big Brother House would have had Eric Blair (better known as George Orwell) turning over in this grave. For his part, the ever-ready Rudd has been trotting the globe like a ubitiquous gnome, popping up on a ornate throne in the Great Hall of the People and obviously chagrined that he missed out on the opportunity to garb himself in one of the Vietnamese APEC gowns. What the Caucus and the carping critics of the media need to realise is that it is Beazley, and he alone, who is the global statesman; he alone of the Labor alternative Prime Minister contenders has the substance to don the ceremonial robes of such occasions; and if he is not comprehensively au fait with the latest trends in popular culture, that is surely no barrier to taking his rightful seat in the highest office of the land, rather it is reflective of the fact that his mind is pre-occupied with loftier matters, matters which may well constitute a blimp on the radar of the more mundane commentators, but are far more than hot air to one like Beazley who has his head in the clouds.

Rove Astray

Well, as Kim Beazley has opined recently, a political leader has no friends of good or bad odour - but, it should be added, he has a veritable multitude of mates of various manifestations, both great and little, 'mate' being a valuable verbal device in the great Australian vernacular to cover for the regrettably inevitable lapses in memory - specifically with regard to personal nomenclature - to which we are all prey from time to time, especially those of us who perennially pirouette on the pinnacle of public life and for whom the passing parade of colourful personages becomes oft little more than a kaleidoscopic blur. The occasion that has summoned forth these philosophical-cum-psychological observations is, of course, KB's misplaced conveyance of Australian sympathy to Karl Rove - known in popular parlance as 'Bush's Brain' - over the loss of the Iraq War, rather than sympathy to Rove McManus, not to be confused with Susie Annus, or the annus horribilis that Labor seems to be painfully passing through at this moment...

Needless to say, all manner of carping critics have seized on this misspeaking to once again lambast our embattled leader, linking this present incident to the previous instance in which Beazley was confused as to the name of model Michelle Leslie who was then, like the unfortunate Chappelli, entangled in the clutches of the Indonesian justice system (though it should be acknowledged in his defence that 'Michelle Lee' was how this hapless individual was first introduced to the readership of the Sydney Morning Herald) and taking this opportunity to cast aspersions on his leadership credentials and mental capacity to the extent of asserting that he is suffering from Chateaubriand, Member for Brand, or whatever the alleged syndrome is called. Of course, nothing could be further from the facts of the matter: the truth is that Beazley's mind is a self-contained 'knowledge nation', a labyrinthine library of Umberto-Ecological proportions, a cavernous cathedralline cadastre of complex thought, which no mere mortal can comprehend, such that minor mishaps of synapse and syntax may occur within the majestic tapestry of his subtle cogitations - or, as Sydney's Daily Telegraph would put it, he is a 'noodle brain'.

Betrayal!

Well, ladies and gentlemen, yet again we bear witness to a bare-faced backroom backstabbing betrayal by the stockmarket bear-garden bowler-hatted bureaucrats of the Reserve Bank of the hard-working households of this great nation, who honestly and innocently seated round their humble kitchen tables have been trickled down on from a lofty height by the merciless economists of financial correctness in this latest edict of monetary stringency, i.e. a one-quarter-percent rise in official interest rates. But, make no mistake, dear reader, this savage, swingeing blow against the very marrow of Middle Australia has been signed, sealed, and delivered by none other than his Mendacity, the Prime Miniature, John Winston Howard, whose lips may say 'economic management' but whose eyes say 'austerity' - nay, whose intimations of sunshine are but a haunting harbinger of nuclear winter!

This man's very being is suffused with Orwellian duplicity, whereby even a fall in unemployment is a dread messenger presaging further interest rate astringency. His cultural canker has insidiously corroded the very soul of Australianism, so that our sadly beset land is facing not only the daunting prospect of having to wrestle the sacred Ashes back from the clutches of our bastard fathers, the hated Poms, but also the receding vision of the Melbourne Cup being borne off on the steeds of the denizens of Nippon. Can our country endure the shame!