Byron Echo, September 2005

Recent US politics after Hurricane Katrina, the flooding of New Orleans and the revelation that tens of millions that would have strengthened the levees funded instead eight hours of the war in Iraq shows how clever, by contrast, the Bush-Rove response to 9/11 was. 'If you treat this,' Rove would have said, 'like the Lockerbie bombing, or the Oklahoma bombing, as a police investigation, Mr President, you lose.' 'How do I lose, Carl?'
'You lose because nineteen terrorists got with lethal weapons onto four domestic American planes and they shouldn't have, and the American system therefore failed. You lose because the billions you still spend on Star Wars, on shooting rockets out of the goddamn stratosphere, is plainly a waste of money. You lose because you were warned it was coming, and you went on holiday to your farm in Texas. You lose because you responded to it by reading a book about a goat and hiding in a cave in Nebraska, and Rudy Giuliani responded to it by risking his life at Ground Zero.'

'What then do I do, Carl?' 'You turn it into a religious event.' 'WHAT?'
'A religious event. You have prayers. You sing "Amazing Grace". You praise the bravery of the dead. You emphasise the sorrow of the living. You evoke the glory of New York. You tell the world that the Devil, no, call him The Evil One, was behind it, and He stands for Evil, and you stand for Good and you're against Evil and emphasise that. Otherwise the voters will think we're idiots for letting it happen, and the hijackers were damn clever to knock down those two towers with eight plastic paper knives. You have to do this, Mr President. A religious event.'
'Okay, I'll call Billy Graham.'

And he did, and it all worked out pretty well, with Afghanistan flattened and Iraq in chaos, the price of oil quadrupled and the Evil One still at large, but the politics of terror was effective enough, if only narrowly, to re-elect Bush. But Hurricane Katrina was a very different thing.
'What do I do this time, Carl? Another religious event? "Amazing Grace"?'
'No, you can't do that, Mr President.' 'Why not, Carl?' 'Because God himself was behind it, and his grace is nowhere evident in the prevailing toxic mud. And everyone behaved very badly. Raping and murdering eight-year-olds. Leaving old women's corpses rotting in their wheelchairs in the hot sun. Separating sad old black men and their starving dogs. Shooting decent young black men in supermarkets for looting sausages to feed their crippled mothers. Leaving Fats Domino to drown. And if you think you can just whistle up a black gospel choir to sing "God Bless America" in the ruins you're mistaken.' 'And Billy Graham's retired.'
'And Billy Graham's retired. No, Mr President, what you have to do is adopt this popular new doctrine called Socialism.' 'WHAT?'

'You have to say we'll rebuild. You have to say we'll spend the two hundred billion dollars of the suffering taxpayers' money reconstructing a great American city, as Joe Stalin did Leningrad, and Clem Attlee did London, upgrade its education, subsidise its music, refurbish its graveyards and jazz cellars and classier opium dens, turn its health system, drug rehab, free kindergartens, tapdance studios and trombone lessons into wonders of the world, overlooked by a two hundred foot high statue of Satchmo in the harbour, defying the waves. This way you'll get the American voters' minds off how God failed them, and their President drowned an American city because he needed the money to bomb an Iraqi one.' 'Well, if you say so, Carl, Socialism it is. I guess another two hundred billion of deficit won't hurt.' 'Mr President, there's just one further problem.' 'What is it, Carl?' 'It's called Hurricane Rita.'

The Strange Case of John Brogden

The strange case, Watson, of the forthright Frank Sartor and the summoned black arse of Mr Mick Mundine, and his improbable subsequent survival in the Ministry, and the even stranger case of the hectic Mark Latham and his foul defamations of all but two of his comrades (Premier Mike Rann, I am informed, is among them, and he is incensed at being omitted and will take court action, he has informed me, alleging discrimination) and his survival in the Labor Party, puts into sharp relief the even odder case of John Brogden, the groped hackette, the mail order bride, the prompt resignation and the slashed wrists in the hot shower.

It's clear now, Watson, Australians being a drunk, understanding lot who forgive most gross events at office Christmas parties, that all Brogden had to do was this: Get some sleep, call a press conference on Monday afternoon and say, roughly, this. 'I've clearly got a problem, and I'm booking myself into a detox programme, and taking three months' leave. During that time Barry O'Farrell will be Acting Opposition Leader and Peter Debnam Acting Deputy. If, in three months' time, the treatment has worked, I will return, as Neville Wran did, to the Premiership after his trial and acquittal. If it has not worked, I will resign from both the leadership and parliament. I'm sorry for what I said about Mrs Carr. It, and the rest of it, were alcohol-related. Wish me luck.'

Who, then, would have pursued him further? Aimed telephoto lenses at his hospital ward? No-one, I think, to judge by what happened to Andrew Bartlett when he followed, shrewdly, the above plan. He might just have got away with it. And in what way was apology, disgrace, oblivion and death a better option?

Bob Hawke proved you'll be forgiven anything if you admit it, weep, and say you'll try to be a better person in future. Had Brogden's minders slept a bit, and thought a bit, and had a brain to start with, the Liberal Party would not be now in gurgler mode; nor vulnerable to the following slogan. This is a party that drove their leader to suicide. Why would they be any nicer too you? Am I kidding? Not in these times, comrade. Think of the Latham Learner ads, and harden your heart.