THE SUBS 'N' DUDS

REPORT

• Hark's Barks
  • Coalition Inflames Pitchfork-Toting Mainstream
  • Deregulation/Self-Regulation: Dracula Downsizes the Blood Bank
• Where's Me Tablets! by Gort Slypesunder
  • Life in Tory Australia
  • Sir Bully and Lady Bubbles

HARK'S BARKSby Harold Hark

Coalition Inflames Pitchfork-Toting Mainstream with a Campaign of Destabilisation

John Howard has learned well the lessons of Jeff Kennett, Czar of Victoria. With intent to polarise, the PM has introduced a new term--"un-Australian"--to replace the formerly "fair-go" attitude that made Australians proud of their country. Suddenly it is "un-Australian" to question authority, to fight deceit and oppression.

Rarely in the media and certainly never from the government do we hear that the reasons behind the violence in Canberra lie squarely in the lap of John Howard and his policies. His vendetta against those who kept him out of office for thirteen years, along with the EconoRat ideology espoused by those who would enslave, have created an atmosphere of divisiveness not seen for decades.

We hear the likes of Peter Couchman and reporters for AM and PM bending over backwards to hammer ACTU officials over the unacceptable behaviour of some of their members on budget eve, but do they put the question of culpability to Peter Reith and John Howard? Is someone forgetting that Australia has participated in every war for the last hundred years, that this country has a reputation for fighting oppressors? Did the Eureka Stockade happen in some other country?

Helping to pave the way for mass capitulation, John Howard's underlings have also leapt to the attack:

AMANDA VANSTONE, Minister for Advanced Unemployment and Education for the Elite, has denounced students opposing her higher education cuts as "self-interested, stupid little brutes," who were acting like "squealing pigs." Say, Amanda, that's the way to inflame those intellectual-hating mainstreamers so devoted to the Party Line. When they take up arms against the students--their own children--will you call them squealing pigs too? Not a chance.

PETER REITH, Minister for Industrial Warfare, has mounted a relentless attack on Jenny George and the ACTU, insisting on an apology to the nation for the Canberra riot. Like a flatulopetic squidgereen who has shot his prey from a safe distance, he steps in with atavistic joy to kick the corpse for signs of life. Did his policies cause the violence in Canberra? He continues to deny this at his (and everyone else's) peril.

JOHN SHARPE, Minister for Slavery on the Waterfront, says 'Hey, I wanta kick the corpse, too!' Don't accuse him of intent to negotiate, because his only agenda is to destroy the unions.

Chaos, industrial and otherwise, is just around the corner. This government is hell-bent on it. That they are inept and stupid beyond belief goes without saying. Witness the recent gaffes of Little Lord Downer over DIFF, Viper Eyes Wooldridge over private insurer hikes, and now Richard "Frankenstein" Alston over the full privatisation of Telstra. The problem with Liberal politicians is that from their vantage point atop a burnt pea in the bottom of a blackened saucepan, they think everyone else lives there too. Maybe they're right.

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Deregulation/Self-Regulation: Dracula Downsizes the Blood Bank

The twin concepts of deregulation and self-regulation in business require us to believe that Dracula would do nothing untoward were he given ownership of the blood bank. But we know what he would do, just as we know that without government regulation of trades and practices, most businesses will cheat. They will systematically reduce wages and benefits to their work force while providing consumers with increasingly inferior products. Left unregulated, businesses will skimp on maintenance and materials, and cynically insert hidden costs in their transactions while providing expensive advertising to convince consumers that the product is better than ever.

Business treats people as mugs. How many of us feel a sense of security when we buy a car, a toaster, a television set? Unconsciously we are prepared to be ripped off. In the past, government regulations gave us a sense of protection. With deregulation and the ludicrous idea of self-regulation, that sense of protection has turned into the foolish hope that by some miracle we won't be ripped off.

For years we have seen airplanes going down--particularly in the US, where deregulation has achieved a glorified status--because maintenance has been relaxed to boost profit. Banks have used self-regulation to provide consumer-cheating record profits. We watch, helpless, as elite businessmen help themselves with impunity to obscene salaries funded by gullible shareholders and powerless taxpayers. We see that it is practical to cut corners, to be cost-effective at the expense of quality. Probity has become weakness.

The model for this 'era of the shonky' is the Mafia, who have certainly enjoyed deregulation all along. Witness Jeff Kennett's recent use of the term, 'in the loop.' The Mafia have been using it for years.

Deregulation and self-regulation, that is, the abdication of government to insure safety and quality, have wrought a legalisation of deception and fraud that our younger generation sees as not only acceptable but desirable. We are the poorer for it, and dangerously so. In reality, the human race is not evolved enough to employ such lofty ideals.

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WHERE'S ME TABLETS!
by Gort Slypesunder

Life in Tory Australia

• Bruce Guthrie and Steve Harris fought it out on Jill Singer's Today Tonight, on the occasion of the Herald-Sun's criminal sentencing survey. The body language of the two editors said as much as their words. Steve Harris, slinking ever lower in his chair, spoke hesitantly, with the voice of a Mafia rat caught in the act of betrayal. Bruce Guthrie, speaking on behalf of journalistic integrity, seemed to grow in stature as he demolished his opponent. Jill Singer looked as if she were falling in love. The PPF, aghast at Steve Harris' slimy decision, immediately cancelled their subscription to what now amounts to no more than the Official Organ of the Kennett Government.

• Surprise, surprise! John Elliott goes free on a technicality. Let's face it, whether he did or didn't has to be taken in the context of business. John's a businessman; these things are done. Trouble is, these days business is government.

• The Budget: Standard and Poor's upgrade Oz from AA Stable to AA Positive. Well, hal-the hell-elujah! Here I thought those soup lines were gonna be a bummer.

• Dear, oh, dear. Victorians (that is, Jeff Kennett and a few thousand hoons) may be out of a Grand Prix next year. Sickly Twerp, Bernie Ecclestone, is being challenged by a rebel group who threaten to take out the biggest names in Formula One and run their own race. Oh, God!

• Private health insurers raise premiums a tick after Clueless John announces the great rebate. And who did the government blame? A public servant in the Health Department (shades of Little Lord Downer), who just happened to forget to tell Viper Eyes Wooldridge. "It is now known that at least nine funds were given permission to lift their fees by up to 17.5 percent before the rebates were announced. One fund has revealed that by the time the scheme comes into effect next July the fee increases will have wiped out the value of the rebates altogether," says The Age Editorial 30/8/96. Mainstream Australians are riding the roller coaster of ideological ineptitude and (according to AGB McNair) loving it.

• Rob Hulls, Gibbsland's shadow attorney-general, called the recent Herald-Sun's write-in survey on criminal sentencing an "absolute joke," stating that "American legal experts were stunned that a government would seek views on sentencing through a newspaper." A spokes-stooge for A-G Jan Wade, responded: Is he "saying that the 40,000 people who responded to the survey are a joke?" A very sick joke, indeed.

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Sir Bully and Lady Bubbles in:
"The First Lady Goes Shopping"

There I was, on assignment at the Safeway. Mission? Obtain dinner items, bikkies for the ankle biters, and...oh, yes, a container of washing up liquid. As I wheeled the ornery trolley into the detergents 'n' creamy cleansers aisle, I noticed this lanky, well-heeled tomato at the far end, talking up a storm. Strewth, I muttered, is she talking to herself or that box of Lux in her hands? As I drew near, she raised her short skirt nearly to her hip and scratched her thigh. Totally oblivious of me she was (or was she!) even though I was about to pass her by. Cor, I blurted under my breath (and with a bit of a roused old fella, to boot) as I wheelied 'round the corner and up the organic polenta 'n' cold-pressed honey aisle for a few deep breaths, that's the wife of the tyrant!

Cobber still a tad a-throb, I wondered what would happen if I followed her to the till. Would I catch her eyeballing Cosmopolitan's latest hints on competitive-edge fellatio? Would her face be flushed and her breathing heaving? Damnit, why couldn't I turn that trolley around! Ah, but the chump chops, the bloody spuds...and hey, I forgot the detergent!

Mope-faced, I pushed on, wondering if she'd been fantasising herself in a porno Soap Opera, awash with ecstasy in the double sink of love.

Then again, maybe her mind was gone, living all these years with the most hated man in the land. What was she saying to those Lux Flakes?

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