Diary

October 25th 2004

Shining like the Star of Bethlehem, Canberra's National Tally room on election night was a beacon of promise for the directionless. If the federal poll was useful for nothing else it gave us at least our compass for the orienteering course ahead. The public's overwhelming affirmation of John Howard's stewardship has proved that we have been deploying our resources in entirely the wrong constituency. The safe Fauves seats were converted by our missionary zeal some time ago. Out in the marginals, however, we are taking a beating. It is time we began to talk to ordinary Australians about what they want to hear.

Even as I write my colleagues are in an adjacent room working on a concept album about interest rates. This record will be the first part of a trilogy that confronts the three great issues of our time (sport and the weather being the others) and explores them in profound philosophical depth. While the UN wrings its hands in impotent anguish at Third World poverty, AIDS and Middle Eastern conflict, the great humanitarian tragedy of our time - interest rates on the mortgages of middle class Australians - goes unnoticed. Even a rise of just 0.1 of a percent on these rates could have heart rending consequences for the thousands of Australians who will automatically owe 20 to 30 dollars a month more in repayments. Maimed children crawling blindly through war zones cradling their viscera in disfigured hands? Flies swarming over the distended stomachs of malnourished Africans lying dead in the dust of a refugee camp? Try imagining an Australia where people may have to delay the purchase of a new car, mobile phone or overseas holiday if you want to look into the true heart of human despair.

It's exciting to ponder the Australia that awaits once the Conservative bulldozer scoops up its mandate and continues unabated, adding ever more new lanes to Aspiration Highway. There will be no tolls on this road! Money will be saved on bitumen by paving over the mummified corpses of all the lost causes ever pursued by the intellectual 'elites' who for too long have held our families' potential to ransom. It is a tribute to Australian egalitarianism that our nation can remain so steadfast in its refusal to be engaged by any issue that fails to directly address the dream of everlasting increases in material prosperity. For generations we've been happy to have a roof over our heads. But what, I ask, about 2 roofs? Isn't it the right of every decent, white, hard-working, Christian, heterosexual, Family worshipping, comfortably well off Australian to have a second roof in case of a really heavy downpour? * (*Downpours may drop in frequency once greenhouse emissions have warmed our desiccated earth to the temperature of a small blast furnace. This issue is discussed in our song 57 Air Conditioners and I Can't Stay Cool)

Out on the electoral battlefield the weak, the uncertain and the indecisive were hopelessly defeated. Every harebrained policy that failed to pay due deference to economic Man's pre-eminence and crushing superiority before every other living creature was cast asunder. Like blood-stained heraldic banners of Anglo Saxon Britain strewn across the battlefield at Hastings, the woodchipped limbs and blackened stumps of Australian forests everywhere lie as a silent reminder that every ancien regime must eventually yield its place to a new conqueror. Those few outdated trees hanging on in grim denial of Progress will soon be felled by rural Australia's very own Normans; brave warriors with chainsaws, logging trucks and 1080 baits. Small birds and native marsupials, those queue-jumping refugees of the wilderness, will stagger away like cowards in the poisoned death throes of defeat. These anachronistic totems of 'nature' have had their day, superseded by the one endangered species that truly deserves to live - the majestic old growth logger. Once the last unproductive rainforest is forever annihilated, work will get underway to set up Australia's largest free-range zoo. Now free to stop worrying about interest rates, the enthralled tourist will be able to view these magnificent creatures in their natural habitat. Monoculture regrowth forests of plucky saplings will improve infinitely on the untidy random squalour of tangled vegetation that latterly denied the noble Australian consumer more land for shopping centres, car parks and housing estates; on whose mortgages the interest rates will remain forever low.

When our courageous forebears first landed on Australia's unimproved antediluvian shore they found a country much run down. Armed only with gunpowder, rifles and a Biblical rectitude they set about rounding up the malingering hordes of dissolute and indolent savages who were squatting on our rightful real estate. The indigenes were like bad tenants who had neglected to mow the lawn or weed the gardens and were several tens of thousands of years behind in their rent. Quickly the continent's true landlords evicted these good-for-nothing interlopers and began making capital improvements to the property. It seems hard to believe now but across all 7.6 million square kilometres of Terra Australis not so much as one acre was subject to an interest rate levy. And indigenous Australia complains that it's got it tough! Unbelievable! As Cook's Endeavour trawled along the east coast there were aborigines living on prime freehold land in the heart of Sydney, with harbour views, paying not one cent on their home loans! How about they remember that next time they try to make everyone feel bad by dying 20 years younger than the average white Australian struggling to pay off a mortgage!

Chardonnay and café latte Australia likes to believe it has a mortgage on moral propriety. What it doesn't have to worry about, however, are interest rates on that mortgage. Disgusting homosexual, drug taking, atheist environmentalists want to see your homes and families lost to you forever in a apocalyptic fire of rising interest rates. As little as one sip of one of Australia's cool climate white wines will render you and your children as effete, ideological pansies, rushing desperately for the tissues to staunch the flow from your bleeding hearts. The seeds of our destruction lie hibernating in the bottom of a million empty latte glasses. Had we successfully banned immigration back when we had a chance, the scourge of espresso coffee may never have infected the enfeebled minds of the Hammer and Sickle leftists who want your kids hooked on heroin. The only mistake Robert 'G for God' Menzies ever made was in not proscribing this imported beverage, a libertine potion that foments communist thoughts in all those who drink it.

The fiscally prudent band will quickly realise that any meaningful future lies within the cantilevered bosom of the evangelical church. Spiritual and financial salvation await those acts prepared to seek out the halls of piety and salvation dotting the desert of outer suburban Australia like oases along one of Moses' Walks Against Want. The 'Assemblies of Fauves' tour later this year will take us through the God-fearing heartland of our great nation. Naturally, much of our old material will need revision, given that its offensive blasphemy is a product of that undead period of our lives when we wandered aimlessly waiting to be born again. Take the song Dogs Are The Best People. With a little anagram juggling the word dogs is easily refashioned into Gods and we are on our way to the sort of devotional and revelatory hymn that sings both of praise and a burgeoning share portfolio. Obviously the polytheistic connotations wrought by the word Gods must not be allowed to stand. This sort of Neanderthal savagery is best left for exactly the kind of dusky animists and pagan heathens we had to subdue in order to start this country turning a profit. Before long a bestial and wholly unsavoury dirge has a new life as a profound paean to the Chief Executive Officer of Humanity Corp.

We'll be selling the album on a pre-emptive basis. Camouflaged troops will deliver the new CD from Bradley tanks and Black hawk helicopters before many lucky customers even know they want it. The guileless consumer is often shackled by a CD collection that is entirely undemocratic. This problem can usually be addressed by regime change, a process whereby we forcefully overthrow an old music collection and supplant it with one altogether more in tune with modern market realities. Amazingly, this can usually be achieved at the cost of as little as several thousand lives.

The track listing is coming together nicely. Like an acoustic duo at a local wine bar we'll primarily be doing covers, with the occasional original thrown in to allow the thirsty a chance to refill their glasses.

1. Advance Australia Unfair - It's often said that making the first million is the hardest. We look at ways to ensure your second million comes even easier.

2. I Still Call Fortress Australia Home - We investigate the potential of adapting some of the home security products already on the market to the broader purpose of border protection.

3. Trees (What Are They Good For?) - ABSOLUTELY NOTHING Whoa whoa yeah yeah! Say it again…

4. Aussie Aussie Aussie. Oi Oi Oi - A heartfelt thank you to every Aussie Olympian who recorded a PB in Athens.

5. Our Don Bradman - Perhaps the only way to improve the government's front bench would be to get the Don in there somewhere

6. Relax - The old Frankie Goes To Hollywood tune reworked in an effort to reassure middle Australia that their interest rates aren't going anywhere.

7. Our House - Now that the Senate has been added to the Coalition's property portfolio we have some fun speculating on what Janette is going to do with the curtains.

8. When I'm 74 - The 2013 Federal election campaign starts here.

9. Down Under - If you want a picture of the future imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever (George Orwell). Let's make sure the right people are wearing the boots!

10. Are You Gonna Be My Girl - Jet waited at least 25 years before they ripped off their influences. We're giving it just 12 months or so.

Previous diary entries

September 29th 2004
July 22nd 2004
June 2nd 2004
April 22rd 2004
April 3rd 2004
November 11th 2003
September 18th 2003
September 1st 2003
June 30th 2003
June 5th 2003
May 14th 2003
March 13th 2003
January 30th 2003
November 26th 2002
October 9th 2002
September 4th 2002
August 22nd 2002
August 10th 2002