101 Uses for a John Howard

Peter Costello may like to think of himself as Australia’s number one aphrodisiac, but if we’re using power as the y-axis, then I’m afraid Pete’s the bridesmaid yet again (the fat one in the pink dress with the enormous bow on the back who may score a sympathy shag with the spotty guy with the nervous tic if the planets combine).

Okay, maybe I’m being too harsh, but John Howard’s the only person in Australia who can tell the whole country to get rooted and actually increase his personal popularity. If John’s half a dozen oysters sprinkled with powdered rhino’s horn and a bottle of Moët in a Lamborghini, Peter can be half a souvlaki and a can of UDL in the back of a Datsun 180B.

Anyway, enough of this unpleasant imagery. There has been a bit of scuttlebutt that some government-funded pregnancy counselling services may not be informing pregnant women of the full range of options available to them on the grounds that god (or some other imaginary friend) might not approve.

It is well known that if women (and especially pregnant women) are exposed to too much information in too short a time, their heads will explode. Thus, in the interests of public health and safety, it will be mandatory for all counselling services to inform their clients that once the stork has been booked, there’s no stopping delivery and that’s that. It’s nothing to do with a woman’s right to control her own body, it’s about the stork’s right to gainful employment, and this government’s all about jobs and families, so there.