101 Uses for a John Howard

If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys, and if you factor in peanut perks, peanut lurks, peanut allowances, exotic foreign peanuts during overseas study tours, hands-free peanut eating time in chauffer-driven cars, excellent post-parliamentary private peanut-reaping consultancies and last but certainly not least, peanut superannuation, you get very fat contented monkeys indeed.

A few years ago, the incumbent monkeys generously voted to reduce the peanut allowance of future monkeys to save the peanuts of Australia a few handfulls at tax time. Strangely, when the future monkeys became the incumbent monkeys, this turned out to be an unsatisfactory arrangement and the peanut allowance was increased with a minimum of flinging of fecal matter, though some might say the displays of public masturbation were a bit unsightly.

We might be only paying enough to get monkeys representing us in federal parliament, but they are a model of how Industrial Relations can work harmoniously in this country if only people could get along as well as monkeys do.