Peter Dutton’s multiverse theory
QUANTUM politics has arrived, thanks to one Peter Dutton, Minister for the Utterance of Compassionate Statements. Let me explain, using my beloved tabby Cindy Clawford as a prop. Schrodinger’s cat is a thought experiment whereby some Austrian sadist pops his kitty in a box alongside a radioactive substance and a flask of poison and considers it both dead and alive until he opens the potential coffin to see whether there is a fuzzy little cadaver or a happy cat.
It is a very basic illustration of the quantum mechanics theory of superposition that the physicist and the RSPCA’s most wanted man Erwin Schrodinger cooked up in 1935.
This all boils down to the multiverse theory – an idea that every possible reality exists across an infinite number of alternate universes, and that those parallel worlds interact with each other.
A gross over-simplification, no doubt, but presumably another universe exists in which I actually understand quantum physics, am considered the greatest breakdancer this side of Dubbo and did not eat baked beans for dinner last night.
Applying this multiverse concept, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s comments about refugees this week begin to make sense. The Liberal Party’s resident comedian (remember that side-splitter about rising sea levels drowning Pacific Island land masses?) took to the telly to claim lazy asylum seekers would pinch all our jobs while simultaneously filling Centrelink queues.
“They won’t be numerate or literate in their own language, let alone English,” he told Sky News. “These people would be taking Australian jobs, there’s no question about that. For many of them that would be unemployed, they would languish in unemployment queues and on Medicare and the rest of it so there would be huge cost and there’s no sense in sugar-coating that, that’s the scenario.”
Unsurprisingly when you consider how mortifyingly unschooled in basic quantum mechanics most of us are, a few people were upset. The term “racist” was bandied around by nongs who failed to comprehend that on another astral plane, we are all hive-minded purple blobs with no concept of race whatsoever. And in an overlapping dimension, Tony Abbott is still Prime Minister and Peter Dutton was just crowned humanitarian of the year by a centenarian Harold Holt, fresh from a dip at Bondi Beach. Absolutely nothing matters.
We cannot even blame Labor frontbencher David Feeney for “forgetting” to declare to parliament he owns a $2.3 million home in the trendy inner-Melbourne suburb of Northcote. One day after the revelation, we learned his wife had another $745,000 undeclared apartment next to Parliament House in Canberra.
The ALP powerbroker has apologised for his first memory slip and even admitted the property was negatively geared. He need not have done either. Clearly, this was one of those multi-dimensional overlaps, a juncture with an interacting world where Feeney had severe dementia and, it seems, not all super-rich Labor MPs were entirely sold on scrapping negative gearing. Adding insult to injury, Feeney’s tenants have now staked a Greens campaign corflute into their pricy front lawn.
Now if you will excuse me, I need to check on the health of my cat.
Tony Abbott is still Prime Minister and Peter Dutton was just crowned humanitarian of the year ...