Does ScoMo pass the skol test?
It might seem incredible, but if ScoMo were to beat the odds, drag his Coalition up off the canvas and KO Labor on polling day, May18, he might have Bob Hawke to thank.
We are not suggesting that the old Leftie warrior would do anything to give aid and comfort to the enemy. Far from it.
But it just might be that ScoMo the super salesman (or some other bright spark in the Liberal camp) has decided the path to electoral joy is for the Prime Minister to morph into a version of that lovable larrikin from Labor’s glory days, the bloke who could skol a beer quicker than anyone on the planet, You’re sceptical? You want some proof? Well, all we can give is circumstantial evidence while reminding you that many a miscreant has been convicted on just that.
First, let’s walk down memory lane and have a good look at the scallywag union boss who was drafted into parliament to win an election and became Labor’s longest-serving prime minister.
Bob Hawke is a good, old-fashioned Aussie mug lair. In his heyday he was one of the boys, a knockabout fella who could out-drink, out-talk, out-party everyone, a leader of the pack who might have been called a high-class ocker yet had the charisma to be a magnet for women from all walks of life. In his Oxford University days he set a world speed record for drinking a yard of ale, about 1.4 litres.
He had the character to give up the grog in his time as PM, reasoning that the nation’s leader needed a cool head at all times. When he got out of politics, he made a point of showing he could still handle the booze like a fair dinkum Aussie. Seven years ago, at the age of 82, he downed a schooner of beer in one go during a Test match at the Sydney Cricket Ground to the cheers of an admiring crowd.
And with a touch of the old bravado, he shook the glass over his head to demonstrate that it was empty, not a drop fell on those wavy white locks. The Silver Bodgie was still one of the boys.
Enter ScoMo — not at the SCG, but at Canberra’s Manuka Oval six months ago when he hosted his first Prime Minister’s XI cricket match against South Africa. (The ground, we might remind you, where Hawke once hit a six and had press photographers rounded up to record the event.)
At Manuka, quite out of the blue, ScoMo downed a beer in one gulp.
And you know what he did next? Right! He shook the upside-down glass over his hair-deprived head. Not a drop of the amber fell, but it’s a fair bet that a lightbulb had lit up inside that soccer-ball skull.
You can win this election, the glowing globe told him. You can win if you turn into Bob Hawke.
And that’s what this slick salesman has done. He mightn’t look like Hawke, or talk with that sharp edge the Silver Bodgie had to his voice, but he’s a bloke who can hold his grog and mix it with any knockabout sporting crowd. Cricket, tennis, basketball, table tennis, lawn bowls — you name it, he can do it; he can punt or drop-kick a rugby ball, even score a long-range goal with the round ball or tap the jack with a bowl.
Subsidiary evidence (also circumstantial): There’s no one else from the Liberal side to be seen on the election trail. No Peter Dutton, though that’s understandable, Greg Hunt and Tony Abbott are only doing debates in their electorates … barely a peep from any of Morrison’s dreary front-bench cohort.
No, for the Libs this is an election about Bob Hawke, reborn as an all-Aussie sports-loving, wise-cracking, good guy conservative pitted against a colourless union man who merely has an agenda. What’s an agenda worth, when we can have good old Hawkie back?
Curmudgeon hopes the voters will see through ScoMo’s strategy. But not with any great confidence. If Morrison drags the Coalition over the finishing line first on May 18, he should send a bottle of J.P. Chenet cabernet-syrah (shiraz) to Bob Hawke.
If Bill Shorten loses, he should empty a schooner of beer over his head without bothering about the preliminary skol.
An election white wash
Rev Bill Crews of the Exodus Foundation has come up with a splendid notion to promote humility in the political class. Bill has been around a long time (Curmudgeon remembers interviewing him when we were both novices in our chosen fields) and we find it heartening that he can still dream up something challenging for other people to do. He’s urging ScoMo and Short Stuff to get down on their knees and wash each other’s feet. For the benefit of fellow heathens, we should explain that washing of the feet is a biblical allusion, Jesus taking on a task usually reserved for the lowest of servants by washing his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper and recommending that they also take up this ego-taming practice.
We can only imagine how a foot-bath between the two leaders might go: ScoMo and Short Stuff meet in one of the members’ bathrooms in Parliament House. Each of them is accompanied by a second to ensure that the other side adheres to the rules of engagement.
Short Stuff has taken off one of his shoes and is about to shed the other when ScoMo’s aide intervenes.
“The Prime Minister must have his feet washed first,” he says. “The Prime Minister is after all the Prime Minister.”
“Not for long,” Short Stuff quips happily.
“Don’t be like that, Shortie” ScoMo says. He sits on the plastic waterproof chair used by senior parliamentarians taking their ablutions and stretches his legs out towards Short Stuff.
SS sinks reluctantly to his knees, takes off ScoMo’s right shoe. It has studs on its sole and mud on the stubs.
“Been out on the golf course, eh?” he says with forced good humour.
“No, mate, I’ve been kicking a ball around with the Cronulla Sharks. Or was it the Warrnambool Wanderers, or the Kalgoorlie Kangaroos … one of those teams that like to play ball with me.”
ScoMo smiles smugly.
“Anyway, Johnathan Thurston went for a run with me this morning,” Short Stuff sniffs. He has Scoie’s left shoe off by now and jerks back in horror when he sees ScoMo’s hosiery. “Crikey, you’ve got psychedelic socks!”
“There are a lot of old Nimbin dropouts in my electorate.” ScoMo says primly.
Short Stuff pulls a steaming tub of hot water towards him, dips a large fluffy washer in it and extracts it with a pair of metal tongs he has fetched from the members’ bar.
“Hey, no artificial aids,” ScoMo’s aide shouts in alarm — but too late.
Short Stuff throws the hot washer onto ScoMo’s bare foot, ScoMo screams in agony, plunges from his plastic chair and hops one-footed across the tiled floor to a row of basins fixed to the wall. Steam hisses off his beetroot red foot as he douses it with cold water.
“Well, I guess that’s that,” Short Stuff says as he gets to his feet and heads for the door, accompanied by his second.
“Aw, no you don’t,” ScoMo screams. “It’s your turn now!”
“Short Stuff forfeits his turn,” his second shouts. “He washed his feet in the shower this morning.”
ScoMo’s heavyweight chest heaves in anger. In panic, SS and his second grab for the door handle together. They get into a tangle. Hopping on his good leg, Scoie snatches a fire extinguisher from the wall. He sprays Short Stuff head to toe with a thick white foam. He also sprays the second. They bolt out into a corridor. ScoMo is after them, making good ground hopping on one leg. “I’m going to cream you on polling day too,” he bellows as SS claps on the pace.
A group of Japanese tourists, led by a guide holding a Japanese flag, stops and they all take out cameras and selfie sticks.
Several Tokyo news channels that night use stills from the scene in segments explaining the strange rituals of electioneering in Australia.
(Yeah, we’re confident it will go something like that.)
Deaths on the hustings
Sad to say we have witnessed two political deaths on the election trail this week, possibly three.
It’s ironic that Barnaby Joyce should sink in the quicksands of public office, on radio snarling “Labor, Labor, Labor, Labor, Labor …” with an unwarranted mania and a fervour difficult to comprehend. Barnaby’s showing signs of PTSD, what we used to call shell-shock.
Once our deputy prime minister, he’s been sliding down a slippery pole heading towards curious oblivion ever since Johnny Depp put the hex of Hollywood on him a couple of years back. Curmudgeon has a sneaking soft spot for Barnaby. With his Dickensian name, his comic cowboy hat and unusual visage he was fated for a topsy-turvy life. He will surely lose his seat. We hope he thrives in whatever direction he meanders.
It’s impossible to dredge up even a morsel of empathy for Steve Dickson, Pauline Hanson’s now-discarded Senate candidate. Can there ever have been a grub who more epitomises that well-known term, grubby politics? In just a few hours in the US, Dickson and his devious sidekick James Ashby managed to paint Australia for the world to see as a land of lowlife and morons. First, they reveal plans to cosy up to America’s despicable National Rifle Association and hit it for up to $20 million to turn Australians into a nation of heartless gun-slingers.
Now, Dickson is unmasked as a low-life opportunist who manhandles a near-naked pole dancer as he puts the hard word on her. He can’t deny it: the film, with audio, tells the whole pathetic story. He gives his usual excuse: I was drunk. Curmudgeon’s tempted to ask, Are you ever sober, Dickhead?
An absolutely livid Pauline Hanson gives her usual excuse: They were set up.
Boy, weren’t they set up! And what a good thing!
Curmudgeon will be very surprised if there aren’t more set-up revelations to come. Hopefully, they will be obnoxious enough to make Hanson the third political death of this election. Narrow, bigoted, racist … she’s been a blot on our political landscape far too long.
Right on the button
The Mueller Report has provoked some strange reactions from political commentators in the United States, especially from critics of Donald Trump. It’s as if the report, which forensically dissects Trump’s personality and character, has finally given them permission to say what they really think of their president. One recent offering begins “President Donald Trump has committed so many brazen acts of cruelty, dishonesty and stupidity in full view of the public that it’s not really a surprise to hear about the cruel, dishonest, and stupid things he does behind closed doors.”
That’s precisely the point. While Mueller uncovers new information about particular distasteful incidents and episodes involving the president, it doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t know about the man. He’s so patently a 12-year-old spoiled brat, emotionally undeveloped with no self-control, and is so nasty, vicious, malicious, that the world will surely wake up one day and say, did that really happen? Did we inflict this upon ourselves? That’s if he hasn’t pressed the button before then in a fit of juvenile pique.
Ping-pong politics
So, Curmudgeon’s grand plan to free the world of dreary, pretentious politics and of self-serving, humourless politicians moves into phase two. You may remember that we recently alerted you to the rise of neo-politics which, in the northern hemisphere is also known as the Zelenskiy method.
To quote ourselves:
“The Zelenskiy method is named after our good friend Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who right at this moment is contesting the Ukraine presidential election against two political know-alls, Petro Poroshenko and Yulia Tymoshenko.
“Our friend Volodymyr’s method is to know nothing. When Yulia asks Volodymyr what balance of trade means, Volodymyr just laughs and says, “You will have to ask the tight-rope walker.”
By now, you’ve probably noted that our mate Volo got over the line. He smashed his two rivals and did so with a smile on his dial while playing a game of ping-pong. Which more or less sums up his political agenda … it goes to and fro, you win some, you lose some.
Poroshenko said Zelensky’s election was “not funny”. Poor old Petro is right off the political pace of his country and got what he deserved.
Now he is president, Volo will press home his reforms.
Top of his list surely is changing his country’s anthem to Send in the Clowns. He must look forward to gatherings of his citizens standing shoulder to shoulder, hands on heart (in the American tradition) belting out …
Don’t you love farce?
My fault, I fear
I thought that you’d want what I want
Sorry, my dear.
But where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns
Don’t bother, they’re here.
Privately, Volo concedes that clowns have not always made good national leaders. The US tried Dubya for eight years with disastrous outcomes for the rest of the world. Not satisfied with that sobering experience, the Yanks have brought in the biggest clown of all. Volo might have to write new lyrics for his national song to keep up with our volatile world; perhaps an anthem update every month or so.
If the MAGA Clown ever gets to build his wall, Volo might replace Send in the Clowns with the Battle of Jericho … you know, where the walls came tumbling down.
Whatever, the Ukraine is poised for a laugh-a-minute makeover. Go, Volo!
