(Above: we have our eye on you. And now it seems the partisan Liberals have adopted the sign of the mighty American dollar, formed clubs and turned mason. Read on ...)
Truly, reading Christopher Pearson gets better by the minute, provides even richer reading for the garden mulch by the hour, provides a haven for surrealistic thinkers anxious to drop a little acid by the day, and proves that Lewis Carroll lacked imagination when he shoved Alice down the rabbit hole.
How's this for an opener for Spin and bad timing obscure silver lining:
Last Saturday I introduced readers to the Club Sensible, a discreet freemasonry that extends across the political class in Australia. Its members are conspicuous for a bipartisan approach to policy fundamentals, shared perceptions of the national interest and a conviction that duty and friendship should normally trump party and sectional advantage.
I'm afraid I sprayed the cornflakes right across the breakfast table. Club Sensible? What, a club that includes the Pellites and the Latin mass and the most retrograde conservatism running around in Australia at the moment?
And I'm afraid I can't overlook the abuse of freemasons, discreet or blatant. Not for a moment would that exclusive brethren stand this kind of Catholic tosh. The brothers at the lodge still harbour bitter long term memories of persecution by the Catholic chuch. Why not so long ago Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, as he then was known, issued this reminder:
"... the Church’s negative judgment in regard to Masonic association remains unchanged since their principles have always been considered irreconcilable with the doctrine of the Church and therefore membership in them remains forbidden. The faithful who enroll in Masonic associations are in a state of grave sin and may not receive Holy Communion." (here)
Take that, Club Sensible, and your discreet freemason secret association. You're all doomed to hell, doomed I say, and you can't even enjoy John Huston's great movie The Man Who Would Be King.
(14k symbol from the show available here for dedicated eccentrics for thirteen hundred smackeroos and no we don't get a kickback).
And don't think the use of lower case can keep you out of jail or hell. When the Catholic church (and in recent times the Anglican) sniffs out freemasonry in whatever guise it finds it, it knows it's found a useless bunch of heretics and unbelievers adhering to a kind of alternate deistic religion.
What a hoot, but then the reference to a bipartisan approach to policy fundamentals is the real cornflakes sprayer.
How's this for a bipartisan approach to the matter of smoking:
At the end of an unusually chaotic week, readers may be wondering how members of the Club Sensible are likely to have viewed the ways new federal policy and its attendant politics played out. Perhaps the first thing to be said, in the wake of Thursday and Friday's spontaneous demonstrations from smokers of all ages about the uncovenanted new taxes on tobacco, is that this is a high-risk decision and not a very sensible move in the context of a tightly contested election.
Oh you can just imagine Pearson in sackcloth and ashes. Won't someone think of the smokers, he whines, and their rebellious and fractious ways, which at least means we won't have to think of the children for at least a day or two. Unless of course the children are smokers, despite the very best efforts of tobacco companies to keep their coffin nails out of children's hands.
What a hoot. Bipartisan! But hang on a tick, even Tony Abbott, with much reluctance and a great show of concern for a great big new tax, rather akin to his desire to mount a great big new tax on business to fund his parental leave proposal, has joined the conga line of smoke taxers.
The sad truth is that the language police should be knocking on Pearson's door right now and arresting him for an abuse of language.
Calling himself a member of a bipartisan club is a shameless misuse of words. There's actually nothing wrong with being partisan - after all, who can disagree with the Greek pasans of World War 11, and sundry other partisans who pressed their case against Nazi Germany?
Trained as I am by the movies in my world view, how many times have I yelled at the screen "Go partisans" or "Go Maquis"?
Pearson doesn't do himself or the language any good by pretending either that he's bipartisan or that he's sensible. That's why he can continue with a standard nanny state rant, as if somehow he really cares about the taxing of smokers:
Taxes to impose nanny state virtues are seldom popular, no matter how plausible the health benefits for individuals and the public purse. That's why purposeful governments tend to introduce them as modest slugs, early in the term. Smoking is arguably a special case, but wise administrators take care not to be too intrusive or disdainful in interfering with people's enjoyment of licit pleasures. Tony Abbott or, as some have taken to calling him, Spartacus will be anticipating grudging backing from young, inner-urban voters previously immune to his blandishments and a firming of support in outer metropolitan marginal seats.
Hold on a second. Wind that one back. Spartacus!! Tony Abbott is Spartacus??!! But I always preferred the Roman patrician and general Crassus (played by Sir Laurence Olivier), and in particular the scene where Crassus embarks on a discussion with Antoninus (Tony Curtis) about the pleasure of eating oysters and snails. It was so hot that when they finally put it back in the restoration cut, Anthony Hopkins had to do Olivier's voice.
But I digress. Who on earth has been calling Tony Abbott Spartacus? Well it turns out it's that other fiend for bipartisan politics, Arthur Sinodinos, who back in December last year penned Spartacus leads grassroots revolt.
Oh indeed, I couldn't have put it better, in a bipartisan way, myself. But I digress, let us return to our splendid Pickwick, port in hand, muttering at the ceiling in a bipartisan way about the pain and suffering of betrayed smokers:
Surprise taxes usually feel more of a betrayal than expected imposts and are most resented when they look like tax on the run. The execution was unsatisfactory because Kevin Rudd announced through gritted teeth that no compensation would be paid to tobacco companies, as though he were occupying unassailably high moral ground and even smokers shared his view that nicotine suppliers were public enemy No 1. That's not the case, of course, and those of us who enjoy a fine Turkish cigarette - let alone a Havana cigar - with their post-prandial drink can console ourselves that we're rapidly moving to a post-Kevin environment.
A Havana cigar? Has it come to this, as we clutch our post-prandial pretentious ports, in a bipartisan club, having left the ladies to whitter amongst themselves?
Havana? Do we care so little for our great friends in the United States that we should so freely embark on the consumption of goods denied them? Oh yes, in the United States, it remains illegal for US residents to purchase or import Cuban cigars regardless of where they are in the world. This means they have to go - eek, oh no, say it isn't so - to Canada for their puffing and puffery, or hop on to the Internet like a band of pirates.
So much for solidarity with our great ally, at least when feeling the need to emulating patriarchal stereotypes from Victorian gentleman club days. (here).
Never mind. Forget Tony Abbott backs Kevin Rudd's cigarette tax. Who cares if Spartacus is willing to tax the slaves?
On and on Pearson rambles in a splendidly partisan way, as he has an anxiety attack about the fate of the intellectual property rights of the tobacco companies:
Most people also know the Constitution obliges the commonwealth to compensate every person or business "on just terms" for taking away traditional rights and even impairment of brand value of the kind that plain paper cigarette packaging envisages. It sounds like another protracted, expensive legal mess in the making. Club Sensible members will be left wondering: did Rudd really need the money that badly to pay for his burgeoning, ad hoc health package now? Couldn't he have waited until a few months after the election?
Actually by this point I suspect the few remaining members of Club Sensible must be wondering why they keep on reading this huffing puffing silly billy, who purports bipartisanship in the same way that a brothel keeper might purport to simply running a matchmaking club.
There's way more, of course, in his bipartisan survey of the political scene. Ken Henry is de facto political treasurer, the electorate will be unsettled by his report, the spin doctors upset "the Club Sensible" with their guile, the sudden steep tax on tobacco is a sure sign of a government in terminal decline, the mining and resource industries are up in arms, and the dropping of the ETS, while ostensibly a triumph for bipartisanship, was in fact a clumsily executed U-turn.
So how does this bipartisan report end? Well with a hurrah for Julia Gillard gesturing hypnotically, Mandrake style, towards a voucher system for the school system, and this stirring bipartisan conclusion:
Oh verily brothers and sisters, come on over to Spartacus, fight as helots, or slaves if that be your status, join the dark side, and earn the right to enjoy a Cuban cigar with a pompous post-prandial port. Provided you can understand that sensible might mean insensible, bipartisan might mean strictly partisan, and masonic might only be allowed if done in a Catholic way.
Is it also bipartisan I wonder to hope that Malcolm Turnbull decides to stay on, first of all to maintain the Liberal grip on Wentworth, but also in recognition that this Spartacus might be heading for defeat, and down the track, the chalice, the preciousss ring, might still be within his grasp ...
Sssh, there's bipartisanship, and then there's heresy, since the Brutus we have has no desire to see the wounded Caesar return to life.
And remember, if anyone asks of Spartacus, here's what you must do, though if you want to substitute the words "I'm Tony Abbott", no doubt the members of Club Sensible will approve:
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