One day in the near future the world as we know it will come to an end.
Australia will have become a series of atolls populated only by Gold Coast property developers and surrounded by smug hippies snorkelling past saying “I told you so”.
I speak of course about climate change, which is now certain to drown us in saltwater and self-pity and consign our grandchildren to interbreeding with dugongs in a bold but unbecoming attempt to keep the species alive.
Like all catastrophes lately this has been caused by the Federal “Government”, an administration which has produced so many cataclysmic disasters it is listed in the Yellow Pages under “Special Effects”.
But they have not been alone in creating this apocalypse. The Greens too have been helpfully cutting the brake cables and greasing the wheels as the runaway freight train for Federal Labor hurtles towards oblivion.
And of course the Liberals are also responsible for killing the environment but you can’t really blame them, any more than you could leave Philip Nitschke alone in a room with two bottles of sleeping pills and a nagging pensioner and wonder why only one of them was left when you got back.
The fact of the matter is this: If it were not for the Greens and Julia Gillard we would have an emissions trading scheme not in 2015, nor Barnaby Joyce’s preferred start time of Stardate 30457, but - and I urge all Greenies to sit down while reading this - the week after next.
That was the kick-off for the initial carbon pollution reduction scheme that Kevin Rudd wanted to see enacted and was given a mandate for. But it was killed off by the Greens in the Senate and then Julia Gillard and the rest of the people now running the country put a few more bullets in the corpse just to make sure that it was dead.
Then, in the most breathtaking act of all, she and the ALP razor gang knifed Rudd after his decision to take their advice and dump the ETS caused his popularity to plummet.
Now, a year after that sorry and shameful chapter of Australian political history, Gillard and her bloody-handed accomplices have been going around backgrounding the media on how the real reason had nothing to do with their sabotage of Rudd but was because he didn’t have a vision for the future.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but he did until you shafted it Julia - and then you shafted him for it.
This week is not just the anniversary of that miserable day. It is a reminder of what might have been possible had the country not been hijacked by the two equally dangerous forces of extreme leftist idealism and reactionary rightist populism.
It says a lot about the naivety of the first and the soullessness of the second that these two forces are now ruling the country in coalition with each other. It is the sort of sickening and ungodly alliance that should not be seen anywhere outside the Island of Dr Moreau.
And that is what is truly galling about the pathetic public bitchslapping that’s gone on over the past few days: The clumsy attempt at historical revisionism that only confirms those trying to spin it still think that they are too smart by half and we are all mugs with no memory.
They thought they could pull a swifty on us by swapping prime ministers in some grotesque human version of the old pea-and-thimble trick and now that it’s blown up in their faces they’re trying the same political sleight of hand to get out of it. It’s a tactic as stupid as it is cynical. Indeed Albert Einstein himself defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.*
But let’s leave lessons in political spin aside for one moment and think about the real consequence of the bloody-minded idiocy of the Greens and the self-interested bloodlust of the ALP.
Again I want any granola-crunchers reading this to sit down and pay careful attention to the following points:
1. In two years’ time Tony Abbott will be elected Prime Minister of Australia with a thumping majority and the Liberals will stay in power for at least two terms and possibly three;
2. Any carbon price that has been implemented will immediately be dismantled and the nation will settle in for another decade of Coalition rule; and
3. The debate about what to do about climate change will continue to devolve into the Dark Ages-style debate about whether it’s real or not.
This is the inevitable consequence of the events of 2010. It was a gun cocked by the Greens when they blocked genuine progress on tackling climate chance and fired by trigger-happy cowboys in the ALP.
And here is one more watertight prediction: In years to come the events overnight on June 23, 2010 will outrank the Dismissal as the most treacherous and damaging act of political barbarism in Australia since World War II.+
It will be seen as the catalyst for the destruction of the Labor Party and the trashing of Australia’s reputation as a mature, stable and progressive nation.
On the plus side, however, it will be a great chance to work on your tan.
*See also Morris Iemma, Nathan Rees, Kristina Keneally.
+By an entirely unrelated coincidence the date June 23 as an usherer of untold misery and destruction into the world also happens to be the author’s birthday.
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