101 Uses for a John Howard

“But whilst believing that the planet is getting warmer and whilst accepting some, I don’t accept all, and I believe that the methods that he proposes will do a lot of short and medium term damage to the Australian economy.”

John Howard discussing Al Gore’s global warming movie An Inconvenient Truth on Lateline.

Now that, my uptight, unAustralian non-mates, is the quintessentially Australian value of she’ll be right. You simply don’t get any more comfortable and relaxed about an impending global catastrophe than “Crikey! Getting off our arses might muck up the economy a bit! Turn up the air conditioning, Sheila. We’ll muddle through.”

…And this leads us on to another favourite Aussie value: family. Small, non-integrating sections of the Islamic population aside, there’s no greater expression of the Aussie family than the Aussie Christmas, and what better present, nay, legacy to gift to our kiddies than a nice lump of coal.

Sure, in some (probably terrorist) cultures, a lump of coal for Christmas is the traditional gift for someone who’s been bad. In Australia, however, it could be a cherished keepsake to remind the next generation exactly why we stuffed up the whole world and then left it to be their problem.

As our offspring face flood, drought, cyclones, bushfires, rising sea levels, disease, possibly the breakdown of civilisation and/or the end of life on this planet as we know it, they can clutch their lumps of coal to their bosoms and comfort themselves that at least Australia didn’t suffer any short to medium term damage to its economy all those years ago when it was still safe to go outside.