FAR be it for yours truly to tell our country’s leaders how to actually run the country.
But I could certainly give them some tips on how to stop wasting the taxpayer’s money – including mine – while they are trying to do that.
Take the weekend’s referendum schemozzle.
The old Whacker has done a bit of research here, and it seems the Republic Referendum from 1999, in today’s figures, cost us $113 million.
Yet somehow, in today’s terms, Albo and his mob have managed to spend well north of $300 million to follow in the traditional footsteps of all Australian bids to tinker with the Constitution – defeat.
Government-of-the-day bids to prove they know better than our founding fathers are just eight for 45.
Surely those numbers alone would give most dopey politicians pause for thought (if any of them ever have a smart thought).
The Whacker is a bit of a “no” man when it comes to referendums, as he was in the republican debate.
There’s no way any fair dinkum Aussie child from the 1950s, alright, yes, and the 1940s, could turn their back on the old queen.
But now she is gone, bless her soul, I would almost be just as likely to vote “yes” if the question ever comes around again.
Come on, let’s admit it, Big Ears and his missus, are a far stranger pair of fish than your average in-bred royals (and she’s not even a real royal) and I hardly think a few months in an elitist establishment such as Geelong Grammar back in the 1960s accounts for any great connection between Chucky and Australia.
That, however, is another debate for another day.
Right now, as we face the current cost squeeze – perish the thought this is the wake up call we had to have – the idea some half-baked halfwit in Canberra can find hundreds of millions of dollars for a referendum but can’t help my old auntie get the hip replacement she has been waiting on for the past five years beggars belief.
I’m pretty sure most Australians right now would rather see fuel prices go down, and food prices go down, than see those buckets of cash splashed about on an almost inevitable result.
It has long been the Whacker’s policy – where politics is concerned – to remain neutral other than constantly bagging whoever is in the top job. But to show my lack of bias, I am equally prepared to bag the top dog in Canberra and the smaller breed in Spring St.
To do anything else only encourages the bastards.
However, if there is any upside to a referendum, it can be found at the polling booth.
Where, instead of being assailed by everyone from the Libs and Labor to a representative of the Silly Walks party, you only have to fend off two pests – those with a Yes card and those with a No.
I’m pretty damned sure that at this point in my life I can work out how to write one of two words in the box provided without some snake oil salesman and/or woman telling me what to do.
Granted, in a Senate election, you might need a university degree in spreadsheets to fathom the four-metre long voting coupon allowing for idiots of every genre, but a referendum … puhleeze.
At the weekend the result, as expected, was a “no”.
That it was such a resounding “no” seems to have surprised only Albo and the most blinkered of “yes” supporters. Many of whom now blame the “no” campaign for being their undoing.
Let’s face it, the “maybe” campaign was never going to be the real challenge, was it?
So where does all this leave us? Apart from being $300-plus million out of pocket.
Well I’m sure the brains trust in Canberra (where the locals seem to have voted with their jobs in mind) is already on the job.
First with the excuses and then with the next brainwave to distract our attention from their manifold shortcomings.
And I can’t wait for the next instalment, just as I can’t wait for someone to get the economy back on track, for someone to seriously address issues such as the homeless, the health sector and education.
I added the last one because if there was ever a generation which did need people telling them how to spell “yes” and “no”, it is the one currently coming out of our education system.
