Another week of surprises

WHAT a week it has been. An expenses scandal at Australia Post started out with $20,000 watches paid for by you and given to favoured senior execs. Plus, of course, the usual personal credit card largesse, again at taxpayer expense.

ScoMo was furious and ordered an inquiry.

So, things will no doubt only get worse.

In the immortal words of the great Joh Bjelke-Petersen: “You never order one of these things unless you, you, you know exactly what you’re going to find out.”

Thank goodness we have a watchdog to make sure that all Australian business is properly conducted without what Joh would have called “monkey business”.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has oversight on such matters, but it seems somehow the watchdog missed sniffing out the Cartiers.

Perhaps the pooch was just too busy with its own business, because it turns out ASIC’s deputy chair has quit over a financial scandal of his own.

Sadly, after recent royal commissions, Australians will not be as surprised as they should be by institutional corruption.

In private enterprise and in the public service we have come to suspect rorting is systemic. It’s in our DNA and goes all the way back to the Rum Rebellion. (Google that kiddies, it’s a great story you might have missed out on in school.)

This week we were much more surprised and alarmed that 13 Australian female airline passengers were sexually molested in the hunt for the mother of a newborn abandoned baby in a lavatory at Doha airport.

The Australian government has protested the outrage, but beyond that, realistically what can it do?

Qatar is an absolute monarchy with a poor human rights record where women are second-class citizens.

Ridiculously, after 120 years of nationhood Australia too is still a monarchy, albeit a constitutional one, with a better than world average record of human rights and where women rule the roost. Well, certainly at my place.

Unless you are a paranoid republican conspiracy theorist you should have been surprised this week to learn that back in 1975 our future king, Prince Charles, meddled in Australian politics.

He wrote a letter of encouragement to Sir John Kerr, supporting the dismissal of the Whitlam government.

Former Australian governor-general Sir Peter Cosgrove indicated this week that Kerr’s correct course of action should have been not to trap Whitlam but to warn him that if he didn’t resolve the constitutional impasse by the end of the week, power would be handed to Malcolm Fraser.

This week historian Jenny Hocking, in her latest book, The Dismal Dossier, cited opinions shared between Prince Charles and Sir John Kerr while discussing the GG’s plans to sack Whitlam. Kerr told the prince he was worried about being himself sacked before he could strike. Hocking reports Charles encouraged Kerr: “But surely Sir John, the Queen should not have to accept advice that you should be recalled at the very time, should this happen, when you were considering having to dismiss the government.”

I know it is now a lot of water under Tower Bridge, but Australians should consider how such capricious behaviour and sheer incautious silliness from our heir apparent is just part of a long royal tradition and only likely to continue.

The careful, wise and sensible rule of Elizabeth II is an anomaly.

She is faraway the most competent in centuries, but there is little evidence her skill

IN THE IMMORTAL WORDS OF THE GREAT JOH BJELKE-PETERSEN, “YOU NEVER ORDER ONE OF THESE THINGS UNLESS YOU, YOU, YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO FIND OUT.”

has been passed on to any of the kids.

There are interesting genes at play here.

Prince Charles’s five-times great grandfather was known as Mad King George. Notoriously he lost the Americas, but will his remote grandson lose Australia?

I have backed the failing cause for so long that I have gloomily concluded the Republic of Australia is as unlikely as the waters of the moon.

But wait a minute! Here is another remarkable thing we learnt this week.

There is water on the moon. Not enough yet to get Hydro Tasmania excited, but apparently enough to manufacture hydrogen and allow rocket ships to refuel and leapfrog from Earth to Mars.

Just as well, we need somewhere else to live.

Given our disastrous mismanagement of Earth, we require another planet. Ideally one with no atmosphere to pollute, no natives to persecute and no wild animals to eat and catch the plague.

Best of all Mars is many millions of kilometres from all the cares of the world, COVID, ASIC, Australia Post, the White House and the nearest monarchy.

From Mars we will move on into the cosmos. What could ever go wrong?

Finally, I don’t want to ramble too far from the usual gravity of this column, but to cheer you up in this dismal week, Mars will cure the weighty 21st century problem of obesity.

On Mars a 100kg earthling becomes a 38kg lightweight.

But if you still want exercise, why not play a round of golf?

With 62 per cent less gravity than down here, up on Mars you should be able to smack the ball 748m.

Later over a martini in the Mars Bar you might look up through the dome and contemplate the stars. There, just one among millions, is a singular speck of bright blue light.

A once beautiful planet now burdened not just by gravity but by the self-centred stupidity, the deceit and the greed of its inhabitants.

A world divided by ideologies and religions. Beset by plagues and wars, raging fires and floods, by drought, hurricanes and intolerable heat.

In 2035, safe in the Mars Bar, have another martini and pledge not to make the same mistakes again.

After all, there is only an infinite number of other worlds to destroy.