101 Uses for a John Howard

All this talk of preambles to the Constitution takes me back to the heady days of 1999 when the Battlers of Australia voted against elitism by retaining the, er… British Monarchy. It’s no secret that Little Johnny’s a big fan of HRH and it is one of the great cruelties of male pattern baldness that as a loyal Monarchist, while he is certainly tugging away at something, he is entirely devoid of any forelock with which to make the traditional obeisance.

Fortunately, the solution is clear. Johnny was one of the unsung heroes of ‘99, obfuscating, complicating, bamboozling and befuddling the Elitist Army to snatch victory for queen and country. While he may lack a forelock of his own, he made up for it by tugging everybody else’s forelock for them.

The forelock-tugging power of one John Howard is approximately equal to that of 10000 Egyptian slaves (now those were the days) during the construction of the pyramids. It has been calculated that John Howard equipped with a cable fashioned from human forelocks and a quick burst of Rule, Brittania! would have been enough to get the Pasha Bulker off Nobbys Beach at Newcastle before they even got to the bit about how Britons will never be slaves.

Whilst Johnny Tugboat could enjoy a productive retirement towing refugee terrorist boat people back to the end of the queue where they belong, a more ambitious plan presents itself.

While elitists are self-evidently wrong about everything, they are slightly correct in pointing out that the Queen of Australia resides at the opposite end of the planet. Now, give John a map, a really strong cable woven from the forelocks of all true Australian British subjects and a rousing chorus of God Save the Queen and he’ll have us towed into the Atlantic, just to the west of Ireland before you could say off with his head.

What do you call a boomerang that won’t come back?

John Howard.

Sure, when it comes to pretty much any topic, a sudden reversal of direction wouldn’t cause a single eyelid to bat, but on the subject of indigenous reconciliation, you’d have to say that until quite recently, John Howard had all the direction-changing power of a well-flung stick. Practical reconciliation was all the rage, which mainly involved sending the tanks into the Northern Territory without so much as a by-your-leave, presumably on the grounds that it worked so well in Iraq.

But out of the gathering darkness, there’s a whirring in the sky as Johnny’s made a screaming U-turn, spinning like mad and promising to hold a referendum to have a Statement of Reconciliation incorporated into a preamble to the Constitution.

Now anyone who has attempted any sort of amble through Australia’s Constitution will tell you that a more pleasant stroll could possibly be had through an unmarked minefield inside a quicksand swamp infested by hungry crocodiles on a moonless night, and the smartest type of preamble would best involve ambling as quickly as possible in the opposite direction.

A simple apology would seem a more practical first step, but apparently that’s where is all gets a bit complicated. For what it’s worth, we’re sorry we asked.

A lert is a small, furry marsupial endemic to the urban areas of Australia. It is considered to be endangered, but zoologists suspect it is just extremely shy, spending most of its time hiding under rocks dialling the emergency terrorist hotline.

Contrary to popular belief, the lert has very few predators in Australia and the most common cause of death is caused by fright. It is a close cousin of the larmed, which although somewhat more robust than the lert, has a tendency to wander about like it’s not about to be blown up by terrorists.

The cruel irony is that this relaxed attitude makes the meat of the larmed considerably more tasty and tender than that of the lert, leading to it also being on the endangered list. The perfect method for making tenderised larmed steaks is to run it over, and the gruesome remains can be found in the fridges of Australia, leading zoologists to conclude that this explains the meaning of the cryptic warning occasionally found on magnets affixed to the front of these appliances.

We Australians love our wheat. Without wheat there would be no breakfast of champions, without wheat there would be no bread to wrap your sausage in at a barbecue, without wheat there would be no Australian Wheat Board.

The trouble with wheat is its vulnerability to various environmental factors. Australian Scientists have led the world on making wheat drought resistant, rust resistant, pest resistant and frost resistant, but their greatest recent breakthrough has been in creating a sanction resistant strain.

Created by splicing in a significant portion of John Howard’s genetic material, sanction resistant wheat is impervious to most forms of debilitating UN economic sanction, allowing a greatly increased yield of export dollars with minimal ethical input.

Sanction resistant wheat has also been found to be completely sound resistant when placed discreetly in the ears and the husks can be processed to create totally ink-resistant paper, which is perfect for certain parliamentary office memos. It also makes an extremely sturdy brown paper bag.

It’s a bugger, the economy. The couches of Australia are pointing emptily at brand spanking new 50″ plasma TVs, cushions bulging with spare change while everyone’s at work desperately trying to keep up with the repayments. We’ve never had it so good, it’s eco-bloody-nomic Nirvana, whack another shrimp on the barbie and crack open that bottle of Grange.

But economists are miserable bastards. They spend their whole day locked up in tiny cells wearing tight underpants slaving over hot calculators and whenever anyone looks like they might be having a better time than they are, they think up some devious way of spoiling the party. In this case it’s inflation.

The cause of inflation is this: high growth, blah blah, low unemployment, blahblah blah blaaah, tax cuts blah blah blardey blah etc etc Jupiter rising in Taurus and phwooosh! Up goes inflation and then those chardonnay-sipping bastards at the Reserve bank go and make things worse by raising interest rates, despite your superb management of the economy.

However, as all economic geniuses know, when the economy hands you inflation, you make balloon animals, and hopefully nobody will notice their house being repossessed. Sure, eventually the balloons will burst in people’s faces, leaving them with just a few brightly coloured scraps of rubber to remind them of better days, but that’s economics for you.