THE SUBS 'N' DUDS | Number 2 |
REPORT | 22 April 1996 |
| Editor: Harold Hark | Melbourne, Australia |
Decriminalising Pot: The Dead Cat Swings Again? "With the doom and gloom emanating from Canberra, we need all the drugs we can get," said Noel Pearson on Maeve O'Mara's '7 Days,' Sunday 14 April. Though disavowing the use of drugs, his jest was metaphorically accurate. He was, of course, commenting on the new Federal government's old attitude to Aborigines via Jeffrey Gibb Kennett's proposed decriminalisation of marijuana. And what a mindblowing proposal it is. The man who once suggested building a railroad around the periphery of Australia is now building a gambling palace over the future of Victoria. And since gambling and drugs go hand in hand, it's no wonder he wants it all legalised. Masters, Servants, and Proles, is what he's after, and once his mates at the tobacco companies start producing, the taxes will be enormous. Imagine, everyone strung out and paying...not organised crime...but the government! Jeff knows full employment is bad for business (more jobs equals higher interest rates equals lower share prices), and besides, there are too many people around for what jobs there are. Life as a Master might be easier if Servants had the jobs and the proles were kept in ghettoes, stoned on pittance benefits. As to keeping a potential 40 per cent of the population out of jail, or the fact that prohibition deters no one, especially organised crime, well, there's that too. Too bad for Jeff it will never happen. His own subs 'n' duds will defeat him. They're scared to death of any drugs but hard-core alcohol and tobacco. Give them something, like marijuana, that intensifies, broadens, heightens, is given to contemplative thought, and they'll start shooting. Then again, maybe he just wants the Kew Cottages disaster out of public consciousness. Or his kids are about to be prosecuted for possession. Or it's all a dead cat to bring the pro-legalisation/ un-Victorians into the open, a way of weeding them out from the Body-Snatched, those MBA-types ululating and pointing at civilisation's remaindered, people who regard the almighty dollar as a mere byproduct of a life creatively spent. Where will he send us? A one-way ticket to Queensland? Conscripted into the Kennett Kadets and sent to fight aborigines? But what perverted irony if it does pass. The state which can be said to be a world leader in anti-social EconoRat reforms also becomes the (developed) world leader in bringing to an end the war against Marijuana. The Americans, who started the PR war back in the thirties, did a bloody good job. Every man woman and child trembled with fear at the thought of descending to the realm of fiends and libertines. Instead they looked to the likes of J. Edgar Hoover and Clark Gable for safe role models. The supreme irony for Victorians will be the freedom to get high in a state where rights are being stolen. WHERE'S ME TABLETS! Happy Futures Visits Kew Cottages Nancy and Ronald Reagan never knew that people all over the world wanted them to be tried and found guilty of their gormless crimes against humanity and then to be sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in a small but comfortable cell, stoned on LSD and forced to watch endless reruns of The Waltons and Little House on the Prairie on a flickering black and white TV. Like America's loathsome first couple, Michael John too is incapable of assessing his (lesser) crimes against humanity, particularly with regard to the Kew Cottages tragedy. The epitome of a boot licking yes man, he vigorously set about to discredit a group of people--patients and parents--who, by even Attila the Hun's standards, could never, ever be discredited. Michael John would have had an important position with Hitler and Stalin. His mindless disregard for human suffering would have served him well in carrying out the inhumanity so necessary to feed the psychoses of his masters. He's done much the same under Kennett. All that money spent on people who were better off dead! Little Michael must have hit the bottle with frustration, but what could he do? He was just a servant of the people's dictator, paid to go to church and assign the impaired to oblivion. He'll be happier now, scuttling around Parliament House seeing to this renovation and that extension. Little Michael's dull eyes will glitter more brightly than a five watt globe, now that the real world is in someone else's portfolio. BWANA IS BACK IN CANBERRA, and you black devils better watch out. And so say all of Them, for they are jolly good Coalition supporters, which no wing-nut or coon can deny. (And if do, will suffer Benevolent Reeducation at the hands of Australia's forthcoming premier security force, the Kennett Kadetts.). 'Sheriff John' Howard is leading us into another century all right, the nineteenth. Accountability--one of the horror words of our times--is being used to turn ATSIC into an ineffectual puppet, a servant of the Coalition. Unlike South Africa, Australia will boast a benevolent (there's that word again) apartheid. (Didn't Bronwyn Bishop express reverence for the concept of the Benevolent Dictator? Though the 'benevolent' bit is little more than a schwa to her and her ilk, like 'duh'.) Apartheid's collapse in the old country doesn't seem to have the former evil-doers worried though, for Bishop Tutu is presiding over an inquiry whose findings will provide forgiveness instead of punishment. Right-wingers everywhere will surely be sniggering over that one. Because when they capture the left they take no prisoners. Here in Victoria, Jeff Kennett has thus far only marginalised the left through legislation, whereas that role model for the right, Ol' Pol Pot, just had 'em shot. Then there is Borbridge v. Yanner. Signs of the times. Queensland run by an affable sub is no match historically for a man who sneers at trading the land for a billion dollars. Ron Borbridge will be a footnote in whitey's historical account of the era, but the story of Murrandoo Yanner will be told for the next 40,000 years. Precisely because he probably hasn't long to live. Recent advancements by the Koori nation ended March 2, 1996. But that's no exception in an age where the advance of civilisation, mostly horizontal as always, is coming to an abrupt halt all over the world. 'Mad Dog ' Kennett Snapping At Bruce Guthrie's Heels Again. Oh, dear. Encapsulating just about every reprehensible trait known to humankind, the Premier of Victoria is once again acting out his Hitler fantasies. Just imagine if Neil Mitchell were to suddenly evaporate and Jeff could grab that 3AW mic sure in the knowledge that there was no one left to stop him, and that a speaker was prominently set on every street corner of every town in Victoria and he could then cut loose in guttural Teutonic--forefinger wagging demonically at an audience of the arm-risen--with passionate denunciations of The Age and all other organisations and people which represent the very first person who told him he was an arsehole. The Free Speech Committee meeting of 28 March has encouraged the Political Prisoners of the Future to remain incognito. Too many stories of concerned citizens being hounded and harassed for speaking out put the chill of totalitarian retribution up our spines. If, in a so-called Democracy, those people used moderate language to expose corruption only to find state-owned thugs at their door to frighten their children and confiscate their property, what chance do we have, using immoderate language? We hope this position does not compromise our credibility. But then, we are not aiming to be credible. As a Green Party candidate said during the Federal election, "We don't want to keep the bastards honest, we want them out of office!" (Ed. Note: Of course, we are now out of the closet.) |
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