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Sluggo and Heil: The bot and the zombie
Harold Hark
28 June 2002

While Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad appears to be losing his mind, Australians are having to deal with the fact that their plug-ugly "Workplace Relations Minister," Tony "Sluggo" Abbott, never had one.

A product of Artificial Intelligence, the "Sluggo" model reflects the difficulty of adapting the complexities of the human mind to neo-Liberal mechanisms. Witness the fixed visage so typical of A.I. in its early stages: a kind of permanent half grin that communicates to the world that it might have just said something stupid and the human to its right or left or in front or behind is going to tell us all about it.

Artificially programmed to reflect the community standards of albino under-rock wrigglers, the Sluggo may be finally breaking down. There's a rumour making the rounds that it's Christian-based operating system has been corrupted by the technician in charge, who may have inadvertently implanted an amphetamine virus in Sluggo's portfolio software. Result: Every morning when the tech spreads the bot's cheeks to backload the day's tasks, the bot goes troppo.

How else to explain the science-gone-mad perseverations as it responds to questions on no matter what subject by claiming the unions did it?

At any rate, Sluggo never lets up in its strident attacks on the rights of workers. And it's incessant tirades seem to be working, for many of the workers it keeps kicking in the guts keep supporting the Coalition. But then, that's the problem with the working class.* When, on occasion, their attention wanders from whatever sport is on the chump channel or radio to pay attention to politics, it's not usually to what Sluggo is saying, but to what Heil Ruddock is saying.

Now Heil is no robot. He is genuine fleshware, though slightly dead. In fact, he's a zombie, but a very good one. Indeed Heil Ruddock is a walking, talking tribute to the voodoo art of revivification, easily superseding the vintage Reagan experiment.

Heil's specialty, hating wogs, will get the attention of the working class any day, even if they're wogs themselves, by diverting their attention away from the daily screwing by employers.

This clever little trick is precisely what kept the workers who suddenly found themselves out of a job without warning and without entitlements from rebelling against the Coalition at the last election.

"Hee-hee-hee," says A.I.'s John Howard model. "It's all so easy."

*Apologies to the vast majority of working class people who can put two thoughts together to form a third and who are not referred to in this article.

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