With the usual idle chatter about Australia Day swirling around again this year, I asked Dudley for his thoughts.
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He didn’t hesitate.
“If I was the prime minister, I’d scrap Australia Day altogether.”
“Why?” I asked
“It’s hardly unifying the nation is it? All we hear are bloody arguments, or as someone suggested, the day has become a bit of an idiot magnet, hasn’t it?”
Dudley was now on his soapbox.
“As well as scrapping Australia Day, I’d get rid of four other public holidays then give everyone an extra week’s annual leave to take whenever they want.”
“Think about the road carnage, chaos and work disruption you would fix by eliminating all those meaningless public holiday weekends.”
“What do you mean meaningless public holidays, Dudley?” I asked, and he was off again.
“The Queen’s birthday holiday is pointless. Apart from the bleeding obvious fact nobody could give a toss about the Queen’s birthday, she was born on April 26 and the holiday is on June 11. Go figure.”
“Labour Day is supposed to be about us getting a 40 hour working week. Who works only 40 hours anymore?”
“Which other public holidays would you get rid of, mate?” I asked
“Take your pick. These days they are all about retail therapy, Easter eggs, Christmas presents and traffic congestion, with their original purpose lost in the mists of time for most Australians.”
Warming to his newfound powers as Australia’s prime minister, Dudley then turned his attention to dual citizenship.
“Just abolish it. People would have to make a choice. One person, one country, one passport. Simple!”
“It is so wrong when you lob into another country as an Aussie passport holder and have to queue in the foreign visitor line, while some old lapsed Pom who has been living in Australia for the past 40 years whips out his second passport, slips into the fast-track EU queue and is out into the pub half an hour before you.”
What else would you do, Mr Prime Minister?” I asked.
“I’d put a cap on CEO salaries and bring in a law prohibiting people spending more than $2,000 on a wedding. Then another law banning leaf blowers. I’d put corellas on the noxious animals list and I’d fund a cat castration program to remove the goolies from all male cats in Australia.”
Dudley then moved effortlessly from castrating cats to improving sport.
“If I was in charge I’d ban sports betting advertisements. Tennis players grunting or shrieking and soccer players faking injury would be sent straight off and I’d get rid of that loud music at the Big Bash cricket matches. Just play the cricket and cut the crap.”
“Not sure prime ministers have that sort of power, Dudley.”
“Maybe not, but I would have the power to cut the phone line between Australia and India.
“That would get rid of tele-marketers and close down most of those annoying call-centres, wouldn’t it?”
“Best of all, I’d phase out state governments. They haven’t been relevant since the days of the horse and cart. You could pick one mob a year to move across for the Commonwealth to run – police this year, education next year, then health and so on until they were all gone. Too easy!”
Dudley finished his rant with an intriguing analogy.
"I reckon most bloody politicians are like a tortoise sitting on top of a fence post, Geoffrey," he boldly declared.
"What do you mean?" I asked, rather bewildered by Dudley’s logic.
"Well, you know he didn’t get up there by himself, you know he doesn’t belong up there, you know he doesn’t know what to do while he’s up there, you know he’s been elevated beyond his ability to function, and you just wonder what kind of silly bastard put him up there in the first place."
Remind me not to mention Australia Day or politics to Dudley in future.