Sorry Albo, but times are tough at the pond ...

Dear Albo - I hope you don't mind the pond calling you Albo - there's no hint of presumption or intimacy intended - just the dinkum relationship dinkum Aussies have with their dinkum pollies - so anyway -

Dear Albo,

thanks for the invite. It looks like a smashing nosh-up at Le Sands - the pond just loves the notion of Le Sands, out there by Le Beach and Le Botany Bay - and at five hundred bucks the pair, it'd want to be, notwithstanding the pleasure of your company and that of Greg Combet, but respectfully, the pond must decline, despite your elaborate explanations of how to pay the total on the tab.

Still, maybe somebody else will see it and decide they want to rock up for the company and the witty repartee, and they can respond to the invite.

Sadly, you have to include the pond out.

You see, there's not many things the pond has to say to you in you role as a local member, and unfortunately most of those are negative. Let's chew the straw and chomp on the bit together:

1. Sydney airport: in the pond's eyes, you've become the minister of reports. You're shortly due to receive a report on Wilton airport as an alternative to Sydney airport. Now it might say the airport will take 45 years to build and squillions in expenditure, much like the VFT report said about very fast trains. Or it might say it can be delivered cheaper and faster.

Either way, the pond will only swallow any proposed action plan with a generous lashing of a nice sav blanc. (NZ with that passionfruit tang. Yes it's treachery to the Aussie winemakers but oh that passionfruit tang, with bonus alcohol).

Here's the thing. The pond doesn't expect Kingsford Smith airport to shut down - in fact it's likely to continue to grow to its maximum potential, though you can expect riots in your electorate if the curfew is abandoned as part of that process. 

No harm in the airport staying and growing, to a reasonable limit. Sure the pond came to the area before the third runway was built and dumped on the area by fudging lying cheating Labor politicians, but no grudges. Except when Bob Hawke or Paul Keating says anything about an airport in Sydney.

Truth to tell, having a domestic airport handy is convenient.

But also truth to tell, everyone knows Sydney air space is under pressure, and everyone with half a clue knows that Badgery's Creek has been the obvious solution for years ... and all you've produced in your time in office is a report exploring an alternative. 

The Howard government departed this world on 24th November 2007 and here we are in April 2013 and if you run full term that's almost six bloody years of inert inactivity and report writing. 

2. VFT: somehow you see, this is a related issue, because big Bazza, who lives in cuckoo land when he's not up the magic faraway tree, seems to think that the solution to Sydney's second airport involves a VFT to Canberra airport. 

Here's the catch. As minister for reports, you've just delivered a report that says a VFT will take 45 years to build and cost squillions. Which means that big Bazza is dreaming. Did anyone tell him he's dreaming? Did anyone explain that as minister for reports you commissioned a report designed either to promote a delusion, or to destroy an illusion? Without anyone thinking to come up with a solution ...

3. NBN: poor, hapless, innocent readers who occasionally turn up at this site are bombarded with a whinging, whining, moaning pond complaining incessantly about how HFC can't even deliver decent streaming of trailers over an Apple TV - let's not mention Optus going off air altogether for 24 hours - while the copper in the ground is a sodden bit of left over crap you wouldn't even use for scrap metal.

Poor buggers, wretched eyeball-suffering sods. The pond feels guilty for torturing them so - they turn up expecting bright cheesy jokes and clap happy times, and what do they get?

It's indecent, obscene, worse than exposing them to a porn pop-up ad, and it's all your fault Albo, you and your lack of clout and the legendary contempt and indifference the Labor pond shows for its once rusted on constituencies.

Let's look after the cockies and Tony and Rob first you cry.

Oh sure you've taken care of the extended family in Tony Windsor's turf at Tamworth, and we were happy the 'Gong was looked after, but do you really think we give, deep down, a flying fuck that they're connected, when we're not? And the insufferable NBN runs ads explaining how a rainbow will at some indeterminate never never time in the future will pass the door ...

There's not much else. The roads in the district are fucked, but at least we don't live in Peter Ryan's electorate, where the roads are totally useless, and the sewage runs wild and free in the streets of picturesque villages. And at least there are no plans to fix up a jetty with no discernible heritage precautions - understandable perhaps, since any tourist who might want to reach the structure would first have to brave the shocking roads, and the sewage in the streets.

Yes, things could be worse.

There's not much that troubles the pond, not even the rat run that roars up and down the front verandah on a daily basis, or the planes roaring overhead to the third runaway, or the very slow trains running intermittently thanks to big Bazza (very fast when the rule of thumb is not even very reliable?).

The pond is grateful you got around to giving ethics classes a tax break, but then since you've mentioned it, please explain why the tax break was refused in the first place? Which doofus thought that was a good idea?

Does anyone in there have any idea how to appeal to what should be your base? The chances are Abbott, with a gay and actual women in his family, will be able to pretend that somehow he cares ...

So here's the problem. Why should the pond and partner drop five hundred bucks, that's five hundred sweet smackeroos, to chow down with you and Greg Combet, when in the few areas where it matters to the pond, all we've got is reports? 

Hell Tony Abbott could organise reports, and sit on his thumbs and twiddle them, and no doubt he will ...

Now the pond appreciates you've had a very hard time from the Murdochians - what a vile bunch they are - and the pond looks on the future with trepidation, and the pond does enjoy the way you go about the business of head-kicking in the house. For entertainment value, you're worth a quid or two. 

But Tony Abbott's going to provide entertainment too. A man that incompetent and negative in opposition is going to make a right royal hash of it when in power ...

Oh it might fuck Australia, but did we mention that the second Sydney airport and the NBN roll-out is fucked? And the VFT but a delusion or an illusion?

So instead of entertainment, how much better if in a few key areas, you'd exercised leadership and a capacity for decisive action ...

Which leaves us with the biggest problem of all Albo. The opposition is headed by a proven fraudulent liar.

Was it only a little while ago that he was blathering Axe NBN to reach surplus says Opposition Leader Tony Abbott.

And yet here he is proposing to build an NBN that's not much cheaper than your mobs, and with just as much chance of delays and budget blow outs, not that it matters, because it'll be off-budget, which he moaned about for years, and using copper which seemed modern in Queen Victoria's time.

So you can see why the pond wants to hold on to its shekels. It's likely to be a long cold winter, and chances are it's going to be a lot hot summer, and then who knows, except perhaps for the horror, the ongoing, unremitting horror ...

But do have a bang-up nosh-up do ... and thank the long-absent lord we're not in fund-raising election mode for September in bloody April ...