Image: The Australian
There’s a movie due out soon called Don’t Look Up. Its plot revolves around the discovery of a comet that will hit Earth and wipe out humanity.
It’s a dystopian comedy of course.
Two scientists have to convince a Sarah Palin-esque US President and a babbling media of a stark and unavoidable reality.
It’s a sweet metaphor for Australia as 2021 comes to a shattering close.
A federal election is hurtling towards us bringing nothing but destruction in its wake. In the meantime, we’ll be faced with the same political manoeuvring we’ve always seen from the same hoky political characters.
Like a sitcom into its 12th season, Canberra has a sleazy cast of mainstays barnacled on.
And Australia still tunes in.
From Sunrise to Sky News, 7:30 to 2GB, #Auspol is a ratings hit. Audiences love a trainwreck, even when the train is hurtling straight towards their house.
Scott Morrison has won Australian audiences the same way Pewdie Pie won Gen Z. Prime Minister Scott Morrison (a non-fiction character, alas) as the anti-hero of Australia’s political narrative, is a narcissistic opportunist; a terrifyingly charismatic and influential thing when played right.
Polls say he does. Relentless news coverage reinforces the view.
Opposite this Gorgon of Millenial influencing culture, we have Anthony “Albo” Albanese. And the less said the better.
In an age of terrifying ideals and events, Albo can scarcely raise a pulse.
The ongoing recruitment across the political spectrum from an ever-narrowing mindset has lived up to its heinous promise.
Our political inbreeding has never been more obvious and the drag of our ineffectual, professional political class on democracy never scarier.
In the 18 years this writer has been of voting age, the same issues have raised their paws at every election.
None have been fixed. That’s not their lot in life.
Aristocratically high housing prices, racist offshore detention, superfluous submarines, poverty-level welfare payments, a stuffed Murray-Darling, corrupt and unchecked pollies and no effs to give about climate change…
None of these are issues which can be fixed anymore.
Not without a total reinvention of the Westminster system.
And given the clowns on the steps of Parliament House in Melbourne right now and the porcine billionaires clattering around the upper atmosphere, we all know where that goes.
Perhaps the most depressing part is the inevitability of it all.
The commentary, the interviews, the Murdoch and Nine Entertainment papers (gasp!) declaring for the Coalition. The social media backlash as people pretend to care what their elected officials say or do, before voting for them anyway.
Like a comet hurtling towards us, we know how it’s all going to hit.
Dystopia is a controversial and confronting label to place on your State.
Maybe it is better to pretend business as usual is just fine. It worked pretty well for the Boomers and Gen X.
We did vote for all this. Right?
#Auspol2022 … Don’t look up.
In Melbourne this Afternoon 