What a year!
Throsby's utterly exhausted, having given up some time in the third quarter of his '2021 Regurgitated.'
And now it's almost Q1 of 2023 and the pace is even more punishing. In retrospect 2022 seems like the maddest year in politics. But 2021...?
With Murdocracy's NewsCorpse team of stenographers (and we've all been chastised for impugning poor old professional and actual stenographers) heralding daily the gory glory that is the "Morrison Government" (formerly known as the Commonwealth Government of Australia) in vain attempts to drown out the rabid irascible left latte quaffers infesting Twitter, with he - who will be our most memorable prime minister - in daily denial of anything he said, wrote, implied, or thought, who never accepts the premise of that question nor responsibility for, well, anything... let's just say it was bedlam, and not nice bedlam.
Twenty twenty-one began - this will sound familiar right now - with a tale of a Chinese Australian billionaire savaging Fairfacts and Aunty ABC for half a $mill damages plus costs for their report on Chinese influence in Australian politics. Yet just this week Benito the Potato accused Anthony Albanese of being a Chinese puppet, and he had security intelligence to prove it. Those inscrutable Asian folk. We can thank our lucky stars they prefer soft covert influence and aren't a belligerent imperialist with military bases in dozens of countries.
A Right Royal...
Some overseas news, that ultimately affects this colonial outpost half a globe away, due to eternal subservience of traditionalists, aka anti-republicans.
Betty Battenberg suffered another Annus Horribilis. First it was reported HM lobbied her gummint to hide her private wealth from the proles. Then Hocking's The Palace Letters laid clear to all but loyal royals her likely assent to the Palace's meddling in Whitlam's sacking. Nonagenarian HRH and post-mid life crisis Charles both were busily spreading COVID19 around the palaces. That was scary enough, until Phil the Greek rolled his Rangy and walked away from wreck, no doubt in search of his walking stick. But wait there's more. The old duke finally succumbed to what most in their 90s do: death. It was a sombre moment for the aging monarch, pictured alone in the abbey mourning her faithful consort of almost 70 years.
And more yet. To entirely ruin the party for QE2, Randy Andy, the grandy old Prince of York, for his sins against the common folk, and against common sense, was dethroned, defrocked, deprivileged, decried, and derided after being exposed as actually one of the till-then-merely-a-conspiracy-theory Lizard People. Andy, a literal war hero, who decoyed Exocet missiles, drawing them from targeted warships in a helicopter, enjoyed the most colourful life and was destined to greatness. Some say it was his misfortune to be born in the "Belgian Suite" of Palace B., others, his betrothal to that commoner redhead. Whatever, he descended into controversy: his hatred of the press reptiles (wrong type, it would seem); contempt for servants, pages and butlers; his collection of teddy bears and their precise arrangement on the royal King-size (bed, that is); and most damning of all was his alleged ramming the gates of Windsor Great Park with his Rangy. Police found no evidence, dismissing the gate stuck in the Rover's radiator as mere heresay.
True to Lizard Legend, he befriended the foulest of dictators and arms dealers, lived a millionaire's lifestyle on his paltry quarter $mill stipend, and numbered on Jeffrey Epstein as his bestie. Towards the close of 2021 the Queen was frequently heard muttering to the corgis "We Are Not Amused."
Lover's Nuts
This was the year the prime minister of Australia became officially aware of a 2019 rape in his defence minister's office, whose victim thereby became a household byname throughout the land. During the year the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) would cement its reputation as a cover-up outfit for their leader's reputation with a growing list of investigations that never completed, facts be damned. And Schmo himself would do likewise for the unsavoury crew his Nasty Party lawmakers would prove to be.
Christian Blue Balls, on the taxpayer's retainer, savaged the taxpayer-funded Aunty ABC in a series of courtroom battles paid for by - taxpayers. Tudge the Fudge would smart from that 4 Corners revelation by his trophy mistress (as she characterised his use of her), and later be accused of kicking her out of bed in a most ungentlemanly manner. These two alone managed to keep their odoriferous fellow parliamentarians largely off the front pages, despite strong efforts by Craig Office Equipment, Gassy Angus, Barina the Screech, the Member for Manila, the (all new) Colt from Kooyong, CannaHandaManaGrandaHamma, Coal Pitt, and endless others.
God's Work