Fred Goldsworthy | Opinion, August 29, 2015

I caught your Question Time the other day: I hadn’t realised that Billy Shorten was taking us back to the White Australia Policy or that he had run death squads in the last government!

Thanks for the alert mate.

I really appreciate the way you tell it like it is!

Fearless!

Reliable!

Your mate Boohoo has the same approach but a bit less exciting – first up we’ve got an extreme economic crisis then no crisis – solid as a rock.

I knew he was joking when he gave away those mining and carbon taxes and presented that $9 billion bonus to the Reserve Bank that they didn’t ask for.

Masterful – keeps us sharp mate, on our toes.

And I love the way he learns from history – Thatcher and Reagan took up vacuum cleaner economics to suck value away from the masses and transfer it to where it belongs with the elite; now we see Boohoo polishing up his economic Dyson for the next budget.

Tax cuts for the wealthy will restore “fairness” he tells us, wealthy people must be “rewarded for their efforts”, he says wisely.

Bracket creep is a terrible thing – the worst of all creeps – likely to endanger the divinely ordained distribution of wealth.

But I’m a bit off track here; I mostly wanted to recognise the way you give us certainty and stability.

I liked the way you helped stave off that silly republican urge when you were working with Johnny; the way you keep us safe from windmills and ludicrous green energy; the way you saved us from making theological and biological fools of ourselves with equal marriage – equal to what I hear you say.

I suddenly thought of a wonderful old English hero, King Canute who proved to his courtiers that God was more powerful than kings because the tide would not obey his order to stop rising.

And I thought of you Dear Leader trying to stop all these inevitable things with the majesty of Canute.

Now as his modern emanation and knowing how you love awards, I think it would be appropriate for you to institute a new highly prestigious award system: the Canute Awards.

Though an outstanding example, I reckon you should be ineligible for award but have responsibility for selecting recipients.

Now I know how good you are at autonomous picks but I humbly suggest that awards should go for effort as much as success especially in reflection of the old King.

I reckon you’ve got a few contenders: Scotty Morrison must be obvious for stopping the boats; Boohoo could get a gong for stopping stupid forays into disturbing tax arrangements for the wealthy; Dutton’s got to be a candidate for trying to hold back information from our New Guinea and Nauru prison camps; Abetz could be up for trying to hold back leaks; Hunt should be in line for an ingenuity Canute: trying to stop pollution by paying polluters – genius!

Anyway mate, the list goes on.

I hope you like the idea, good luck! It’s such a simple comfort having to look only backward to see the future. Hooroo.