Australian Values

Another week brings with it another sad passing of a great Aussie bastard - I mean that epithet, of course, in the time-hallowed Australian way, that is to say, not at all - with the untimely demise of Steve Irwin, whose enthusiasm infected millions worldwide and whose loveable catchcry 'Crikey' was brazenly filched by those cynical assassins of cyberspace, the manic slanderer Stephen Mayne and his sardonic sidekick Christian Kerr. Sharper than a stingray's barb is Mayne's ingratitude, Shakespeare might have said. But enough of them - Steve was a true Australian hero in the fullest sense of the word and died doing what he loved. It is what he would have wanted, and for once I concur with our Prime Minister in saying that many of us Australians aspire to that.

From the epitome of Australian values I move to their antithesis: the deployment of foreign workers to undercut Australian working conditions and destabilise the kitchen table of the average family. Let me say this at the outset: it ill behoves Amanda Vanstone to cry foul to the effect that we in the Australian Labor Party are substituting the foghorn for the dogwhistle of racism - backhandedly admitting the penetrating charge many a time and oft laid at the door of her mealy-mouthed maladministration - for the sound that she hears is merely the chickens coming home to roost. I have a bone to pick with John Howard, and my beef is this: he wants it one way with the English language when he's casting aspersions against a particular segment of the populace whom I shan't detain you by nominating, when he's rattling his tin sabre in the bully pulpit in time with the drumbeat of war; but he sings an entirely different tune to the boardmembers in the backrooms of the big end of town when he plots and plans to dud the mums and dads of Middle Australia. The unprincipled duplicity on display in this instance is of a piece with the grotesque mendacity of this man and the gargantuan imposture he has foisted on this fair land.

Beazley, you should be Prime Minister at this hour! Australia has need of you! She is an endangered wetland of stagnant - and, I dare say, polluted - waters mismanaged by shortsighted pedestrians! And you, at least, genuinely appreciate the riches of the English language.