If you felt a sense of disillusionment with the world yesterday, if the star by which you navigate home disappeared from the sky, if sweet fruit turned to ash in your mouth and you wondered if anything would ever be beautiful again, you were not alone. The sudden resignation of David Littleproud as leader of the Nationals has left our country rudderless. Dogs howled in the street. Bridges crumbled into the sea. Priests threw their vestments to the ground, mounted their Harleys and rode off in search of a new life. All was lost.
But from our darkest hour, comes our brightest dawn. After minutes of deliberation from the Nationals’ party room, black coal smoke rose from the chimney announcing the appointment of senator Matt Canavan to the nation’s fifth or sixth most important political leadership position, somewhere between Matildas captain and lamb ambassador.
If you have heard Canavan’s name before, that is most likely due to his profile being elevated by regular appearances on breakfast television, providing further credence to my belief that brekkie TV has done more damage to the fabric of Australian society than methamphetamines.
While, like all proponents of fracking, Canavan has massive faults, he is the right choice for leadership based on the simple fact that he is undeniably one of the last people left in the Nationals. In fact, a proud proponent of fossil fuels is exactly the right person to lead the Nationals, which itself is outdated, superseded, embroiled in constant controversy, losing market share and currently facing its greatest existential threat.
From Canavan’s first moments as leader, he has signalled that the greatest threat to the Nationals isn’t the Greens, Labor, or even the withered husk formerly known as the Coalition but rather One Nation. The senator’s first statement as leader was a call to arms every bit the equal of Churchill:
All we need to do to revive our great nation is to have more Australia. We need to have more Australian farming, more Australian manufacturing, more Australian jobs. We need to have more Australian everything. We need to manifest a hyper Australia, we need to go hyper Australia for our country, we need more Australian babies. We need more Australian humour, more Australian jokes. We need more Australian barbecues, sometimes often fuelled by fossil fuels. We need more Australian everything.
Personally, I am already going hyper Australia. There’s red cordial in my veins and my dad picked the fruit that went to Cottee’s. I’m prepared to have more Australian babies, feed them from more Australian barbecues and choke their atmosphere with more Australian fossil fuels so they can grow up experiencing more Australian bushfires and more Australian floods.
I am excited to revive our economy with more Australian humour and more Australian jokes. Will our golden futures be paved by the creation of a new Australiana, the classic Austen Tayshus album of Australian puns?
If so, I’m happy to give it a go, Anna. I asked the senator how the polls were looking and he told me he was staring down Nats zero. I asked what caused it. He said the koala population. He said koalas used to be pets and go for walks around town but lately there’s been a complete collapse of the koala leash on.
I asked if Australian jokes could help. He said he found them humourous but the humerus leads to the elbow, and he hates being led by Albo. He’d rather be stuck in a shed with a wasp, he’d rather barn a bee.
So I asked him, if we’re resorting to this kind of low-level pun to rescue our national identity, is there any hope for our country?
He says “Australia? Nah.”
James Colley is a comedy writer from Sydney. His debut novel, The Next Big Thing, is out now
