In which the Caterists propose a relaxed erectness of carriage as a way of dealing with dangerous emissions ...

Before moving on to the Caterist treat of the day, the pond would like to express its deep delight at the recent performances of Craig Kelly.

With furrowed brow and querulous tone and many a heavy sigh, he's exuded grave concerns about carbon emissions, caused by that fiendish device, the electric car.

At last, a reason to watch the ABC. And after the lizards of Oz helped set this hare running, he was in Fairfax too, here:

"I'm sure electric cars are fantastic to drive ... but I can't see any case whatsoever that they should receive special subsidies and special concessions over and above petrol cars because if you look at the numbers, there is no case they will significantly reduce CO2 emissions," he said.

Oh the emissions, the emissions, won't someone think of the emissions. And yet, how strange, only last October, there he was on 7.30, defending the onion muncher's climate speech:

Liberal MP Craig Kelly, who heads the government's Environment and Energy Committee, says the increase in carbon dioxide has been good for agriculture.

Dammit, and the pond had spent months urging an increase in emissions, because never mind fucking the planet, just lie there and think of Craig Kelly and Australian agriculture ...

It seems terribly unfair to leave horses in possession of their arses, when Mr Kelly might well be in urgent need of a horse's arse.

And now, to the Caterist, because there's nothing the pond enjoys more than the sight of Craig Kelly than a Pommie blow-in with a degree in sociology from a Pommie university explaining everything Australian ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, he's not going back to 1958, to explain how we should cringe at the sight of a Pommie blow-in explaining everything there is to know about Australia?

Some days the pond thinks if the Caterist didn't exist, it would have been necessary to invent him. What a pompous ass he is, a character who, while blathering on about John Stuart Mill, might find himself in a minor role in a P. G. Wodehouse novel.

Kanakas? Black-birding? Not in the world of this minor wannabe Jeeves ... apparently any attention to the conditions South Sea islanders faced or the indentured servitude Aboriginal workers suffered under British corporations of the Baron Vestey kind are just a kind of cultural cringe ...

As for the notion that anyone, even the greenies, want to abolish Australia Day, as opposed to moving it to another location, what was that about slippery slopes greased by insolent twits, singing for their supper about the wondrous state of Australian exceptionalism, cheap arse patriotism and absent-minded black shirt nationalism worthy of blow-in of the Frank de Groot kind?

Well it wouldn't be a proper pond Caterist day without the pond extending a bowl and asking for more gruel for the Caterists, more alms for the indigent poor, more Department of Finance of relief for the suffering who visit Australia's shores ... especially as the humble lad will this day rail against cronyism, protectionism and patronage, thereby valiantly matching the emissions of Craig Kelly, eternally worried by emissions ...

And so in that proud tradition, and with the ribbon cut, it's on to the final gobbet of Caterism ...

And so the pond and the Caterists welcome you to an exclusive world. Express regret, perhaps even say you're sorry, attempt a little empathy?

Do a Craig Kelly in the matter of emissions?

Nope, once you've got your slice of the action, anybody else can just bugger off.

None of this Poor Fellow My Country stuff from that dreadful Xavier Herbert, valiantly attempting to win the the prize for the longest, most unread novel in Australian history... and turning up even in the lizard Oz (needs googling) back in 2014 when at last the book was reprinted ...

His novel deplores the intermittent alliance between church and state that was such a feature of the 50 years after Federation. And it decries the forelock-tugging tendencies of Australian politicians in relation to imperial powers, whether their impositions are military or mercantile. Herbert’s valorisation of indigenous Australians, most visible in the frightening figure of Bobwirridirridi, makes the failures of white Australia only more stark. Poor Fellow never lets us forget that our material wealth has come at the cost of Aboriginal Australia’s dispossession. 
So while the 60s and 70s provided the underlying spirit of the work, and the 30s and 40s its narrative framework, the issues raised by Herbert retain their urgency and bite. For all his didacticism, Delacy makes one point that carries the full weight of truth: 
"We stole this land with murder and mayhem … and we have to reconcile the matter someday, either by acknowledging the fact that we’re bloody handed thieves and being proud of it, or giving back what we stole, and not as an act of charity, but of downright humility."

Shocking outrageous stuff. The pond abhors and abjures it.

It's much better to dance on graves, Caterist style, preferably with government cheque in hand, and learn what really happens, thanks to the Caterist's seminal insights, when pathetic weaklings talk of empathy and humility.

There's an erosion of shared values, there's a weakening of the social fabric ...why, it might even be part of an international conspiracy to sap and impurify all our precious bodily fluids ...when it's essential we maintain true health through the purity and essence of our seminal natural fluids ...

We need a relaxed erectness of carriage, a priapic pose, if you will, or perhaps a Rowe cartoon celebrating a man who thought a return to knighthoods was the way to emphasise Australia's glorious cultural development, aided by other simpering simpletons from the Old Country ...

And as always, there is more Rowe here ... because after the Kelly and Caterist emissions, the pond is always in urgent need of relief ...