Bronwyn Bishop, and when you hear latte mentioned, is it time to reach for a poem?

(Above: how to get a sensible environmental policy debate started. Go for the latte-laden heart!)

What was it Göring was fond of saying?

When I hear the word 'latte' used in an argument, I reach for my gun ...

Yippee, Godwin's Law broken in the flash of an eye, and who do we have to thank for that?

Come on down Bronwyn Bishop, all too rarely turning up in the pond these days, but scoring a bullseye with:

Never a word of feeling for individual farmers and rural businesspeople who work hard to provide food on the table for the latte lot that prefer the environment over people.

Actually thanks to Woolworths, we get our garlic shipped in from Peru or China, but never mind, I'm sure Bronnie spends her days in Mosman thinking about the lot of farmers and the perfidious greens, and never mind the cosy supermarket duopoly.

Alternatively, could it be that Bronnie doesn't give a whit or a toss for a sensible discussion, as opposed to the cantankerous joys of shit stirring, possum baiting, and bunging on a do.

Most likely the latter, as Bronnie spends all her time in Weird green science sells the people up the river explaining how the Murray Darling Commission and the Water Act has nothing to do with her or the Howard government, even thought the Howard government invented both beasts, and randomly taking sprays and pot shots at greens, who it seems are little better than the Incas:

The green people consulted “the science” and demanded human sacrifice to the river to make it well.

What next? Well there's always the hysteria of book burning to bring us truly back to the time of Göring. Oh wait, they've already done that.

You can read the entirety of Bronnie's piece without reaching any further understanding, but with a full panoply of rich rhetoric.

How to defuse an emotional situation? Why talk of weasel words, and explain how the Greens are begging for more farmers' blood. And then make a joke:

Senator Hyphen (Hanson-Young) tells farmers they have to “do more with less water” and ensure “river communities can be guided through a difficult transition time”.

O O O O that Shakespehering rag, it's so elegant, so intelligent.

And so to the bit about latte, and Bronnie proving that she can easily match the limbo lowering standards required for a business class seat on loon pond:

... you can bet the real power in the Labor/Greens alliance will push for more human sacrifice to their avaricious utopian ideology.

Human sacrifice? Avaricious utopian ideology? Phew, the macaws are already noisy this summer ...

You mean it's not just the Catholic church and transubstantiation and Mel Gibson doing Apocalypto who are in to human sacrifice?

Actually I wouldn't mind betting that even conservatives blessed with a half a brain cringe at the way the mad aunt comes down from the belfry, bringing the bats with her (and for bats in the belfry, here's an explanation of the phrase).

The Liberal party collectively must have breathed a sigh of relief when the mad uncle, Wilson Tuckey, got the shove, and surely there must come a time soon when the posturing of Bronnie is given the push.

I mean, it's possible to write in loon pond an abusive piece totally devoid of content and policy, but that's because it's a pond for loons, and loonish ways and loonish understandings.

If you like that kind of childish rhetoric, next thing you know you could be suggesting that Bronnie's loutish anti-latte scribbles are a sure sign she should hand back her salary, because she's not up to the standard we expect of professional politicians.

Oops, I see it's Bronnie who's demanding that Tony Burke hand back his ministerial salary ...

So it goes, but it was pleasing to see that Bronnie has a deep love of Dorothea Mackellar's poem My Country. We too love it, especially its second verse:

I love an irrigated country,

A land of sweeping dams and and weirs and locks and barrages

Of trickling rivers and ragged motorways,

Of built up cities and desalination plants

I love her coal deposits

which we can ship to China over jewel-sea

Her declining marsupials

Yep, the wide brown fucked over land for me.

Oh okay, the rhyming and the scansion's perhaps not the best, but what can you expect of latte drinkers?

Perhaps it's time for a piece, Weird Bronnie loves a sunburnt country, and the more sunburn it gets the bloody better for all of us, and stop your bloody latte whingeing and just peel off that flaky sunburnt skin ...

Oh yes, and don't forget to throw in some bits about human sacrifice and blood. Make it truly Catholic, with perhaps a dash of Mel Gibson ...

Another day on the pond, and it never ceases to produce amazement and wonderment and bewilderment.

Even the punters at The Punch, Australia's most punch drunk conversation, found Bronnie's attempt at a conversation illogical drivel, and wondered if she had an actual alternative proposal to the problems facing the Murray ...

Well there's only one answer to that. Go drink a latte, and then go howl at the moon ...

But we do have one apology to make ... to Dorothea Mackellar.

How did she get dragged into this conversation about the threats facing the Australian landscape? Go ask Bronnie ...

The ADB has a short bio of DM here, and the State Library of NSW a tidy record of her poem here.

(Below: Dorothea Mackellar dressed as a Grace for a tableaux, and the handwritten original for her poem eventually titled My Country, click to enlarge).