There’s nothing funny about any of this. It’s one of the few things I agree with Fred Nile about, when he says we should do everything we can to preserve the family unit.
And this was the week I wanted to write about John Hewson, a.k.a. Dr Who. Only instead of a Tardis, this doctor blasts around in a Ferrari.
Apart from him being the most colourless speaker Parliament’s ever seen, my most vivid recollection of Dr Hewson was on Fast Forward, being interviewed by Pixie-Anne Wheatley, when she asked him how the Daleks were treating him.
Hewson didn’t have a clue what she was on about. ‘My dialect?’ he said. ‘The way I speak?’
‘No. The Daleks,’ said Pixie. ‘You know. Titter-titter-titter.’
For a man of the people, Hewson doesn’t even know what they show on the ABC. Wouldn’t know a Dalek if he tripped over one. Wouldn’t know K9 if it had an atomic screwdriver jammed in its date. Watching him on Fast Forward you’d think he’d just been hatched that morning.
Besides looking like a bit of a wally on the box, the other thing I wanted to write about was ‘his belligerent assault on the Australian Council of Social Services’, to quote Don Chipp in the Sunday Telegraph.
Hewson wants to revamp the social security system, which is okay by me if he wants to get rid of all the morons bludging on it. But I haven’t got a clue what he wants to do. No-one has. Not even Yoda — and he teaches Jedi Knights.
Does Hewson want to gas the poor, drown batches of kittens, disband the Salvation Army? Anyone who denies the Salvos a few dollars is a dropkick. Then he wants to introduce a goods and services tax on top of what they rip us off for now. Food, clothes, medicine. Imagine having to pay an extra 15 per cent on a bag of ganja, if you can find one. Plus your piss.
Then his mate Peter Reith accuses us of being a nation of tax-dodging bludgers! Why wouldn’t you avoid paying any extra tax when you see their performances in that billion-dollar palace we built them?
How about, instead of ripping us poor bludgers off all the time, they do something about their own waste and extravagance like their government car costs and VIP jets?
I admit, apart from a couple of NSW Independents, politicians of either party are not my cup of tea. And Hewson wants to lead the country. Of course my views on Dr Hewson could be tainted slightly by the awful bollocking he’s received in the media over the way he split up with his wife.
I didn’t see the 60 Minutes thing, but I thought fair enough, if she’s a nagging battleaxe with a face like a mangey doberman I don’t blame him. But I saw snippets on the news and she’s quite an attractive, bright woman — even for a brunette.
His three kids didn’t actually look like members of some colour gang either. Why leave a family like this? Especially at Xmas.
Evidently it was to further his political aspirations. Political aspirations?
Poor Bob Menzies must roll over in his grave every time Hewson opens his mouth.
Of course, Hewson isn’t the only man to leave his wife and family. There are heaps. Take Paul Hogan for instance. He did something similar, only he had five kids and didn’t leave at Xmas.
But why again? Oges’ wife is a better sort than Hewson’s — she’s a blonde for a start. Wears good gear, tarts her hair up. I reckon if I took her to the pictures and she had a pair of black stockings on I’d put my hand on her knee.
Yet Hogan left her for a 28-year-old American woman he’d barely met. It’s hard to figure out. Of course, it’s a credit to both men they never left their wives and families destitute.
Noelene Hogan doesn’t actually live in a caravan park at Umina and she’ll never starve. It’s doubtful she ever did. And I doubt if the Hewsons get around with a sack picking up aluminium cans out of garbage tins.
But it’s no laughing matter. The break-up of the family unit is a sad and terrible thing, whether you’re Opposition leader or a famous movie star.
I was watching TV the other night and who should bob up on the screen, in an ad trying to stop kids getting pissed off their faces, but my old mate Angry Anderson.
Actually, Angry isn’t an old mate of mine, I’ve only met him a few times. But, despite the tattoos and slightly menacing appearance, he’s one of the most intelligent, articulate people I’ve been lucky enough to meet.
If Angry shows his concern for kids, or the environment or for anything to do with making a better Australia, he’s genuine and means it right from his heart.
As far as dissuading kids from getting pissed off their faces or trying to stop under-age drinking, he might as well go and bang his little bald head against the nearest wall.
It’s like trying to stop the imbeciles from smoking or picking up their rubbish after them.
Kids these days know all there is to know, plus they’ve got their rights.
But as a disinterested observer, standing back, watching the youth of Australia pickle their brains, I’ll give you some examples of under-age drinking and getting blind out of your mind. And I should know. I had my first beer in a pub when I was 15.
It was the Imperial Hotel in Paddington. I was a pimply-faced apprentice butcher and we’d just finished training one night at the local Police Boys’ Club. The beer tasted like a glass of cloudy ammonia after a tomcat had pissed in it, but that didn’t matter.
As far as I was concerned, I was one of the boys, I was at the bar having a beer with the men.
I used to sneak the odd beer now and again at the Royal Hotel in Bondi, but this big, horrible detective who knew me and liked me kept booting my arse out of the place in front of all the other drinkers.
I didn’t realise it at the time, as I’d limp down Denham Street holding my arse, but he was doing me a favour. But the biggest favour done to me in regards to under-age drinking, was when I was 17. Still a pimply-faced apprentice butcher.
It was a Friday and one of the local butchers was going interstate, so a few blokes went down to the Bondi Hotel to give him a send off — and I was invited.
I had it made. I could breast the bar with all the local butchers. The men. I was only sorry I couldn’t wear my coat and apron and bring a couple of steak knives.
So here I am with all these huge blokes who needed a gallon of beer each to soak up the four T-bones and six lamb chops they’d eaten that day.
Next thing I was in a shout and, in less than an hour, I’d drunk eight schooners.
I wished them all the best then left, saying I’d catch up with them tomorrow.
I spewed on every corner and outside every block of flats between the Bondi Hotel and Lamrock Avenue. By the time I’d made it to my front door, my face was the colour of bad shit and the only thing coming out of me was something that looked like brake fluid.
I was in bed by 7 p.m. and my boss was banging on the door at 6.30 a.m. the next morning to get me to come to work.
Since then I’ve never been an after-work drinker. I like nothing better than a social drink or to get a bit roaring at parties. But down the pub for a couple of hundred schooners with the boys after work? Thanks a lot, but no thanks.
Another example of under-age drinking. A bloke I know had a step-daughter — we’ll call her Terri. Terri looked like a taller version of Michelle Pfeiffer, only with longer legs and bigger tits. She went to Terrigal High School and, according to her younger sister, she was 17.
I never used to perv on Terri. But if ever she was in the backyard hanging out the washing, I’d always give the sundeck a sweep and keep an eye on her just in case she fell over or a snake bit her or something. I even gave her a lift home from school a couple of times.
Well, what’s a man supposed to do when he sees the girl next door walking home in the heat wearing one of those heavy school uniforms?
Isn’t that what Neighbourhood Watch is all about?
I was working part-time then as a DJ in a club in Gosford. It was another Friday night and who should come marching in, looking stunning, but Terri.
The first person she saw was m
e, so she walked over and the first thing I said was: ‘Hey, Terri. You’re not 18.’
Just like a young kid confronted by the truth, she said: ‘Yeah, I’m 15. But don’t say you saw me, willya?’ My jaw nearly fell into the Duran Duran-Go-Go’s mix I had coming up.
Here was the girl next door, in a disco, having a drink and she’s 15. What could I do? Be Mr Nark, the old shit next door, and have her thrown out? I just did my job, throwing on Eurythmics and INXS.
By about midnight though, young Terri was starting to look like a second-hand dressing table. Her colour was starting to fade, her legs were wobbly and her drawers were getting a bit loose.
What happened to her on the night I don’t know, the last I saw she was standing at the bar, pissed, with all these blokes looking at her like they were Zeke Wolf and she was a tray of lamb cutlets.
I didn’t see her back at the disco as I left soon after, but I bumped into her down at the old Florida Hotel a few times and I remember her saying to me one night, in good, drunken Strine: ‘Hey, Bob. Thesebourn’cokesarrorightarnay?’
Another example: four kids, aged 15 to 18, just rolled a stolen car in Sydney’s suburban Lakemba. All four killed. Incinerated. They’d just drunk 24 cans of beer and a cask of wine.
I know it sounds callous, but I don’t feel sorry for them. I feel sorry for the poor mug whose car they stole and I’d feel a lot sorrier if they’d rolled the car through a schoolteacher or a nun taking a class of schoolkids on an outing, killing about 10.
So, if I’m so smart, what’s the answer to under-age drinking and kids getting pissed off their heads through peer pressure? Even if it’s only for the sake of the poor bastards working behind the bar or in bottle shops, who get pinched just for doing their job when some kid walks in with someone else’s ID?
Well one idea would be to copy the Yanks and raise the age limit for drinking to 21.
‘Aargh! Boo! Hiss!’ Already I can hear the screams from any 18-year-olds reading this column. ‘You miserable shit! Drop dead you old spackattack.’
But don’t worry, zitheads. The breweries know how much money you bludge off your oldies and there’s as much chance of the age limit being raised as Roger Rogerson getting the cleaning contract at Goulburn Police Academy. But it’s not a bad idea.
When I was in America I remember going into these bars and discos. There might have been a couple of 19-year-olds who snuck in, but there were definitely no 15- and 17-year-olds pissed out of their brains, arguing and chundering all over the place. Everybody seemed to be having a good time.
People were actually having intelligent conversations. Others who have visited the States have also remarked on this weird phenomenon to me.
But there is a compromise — sort of. Why not let some premises, if they want to, have a special licence so that you have to be aged 21 to be on those premises? Call it an American licence for want of a better word.
There’d still be heaps of places the zitheads could go and get pissed out of their brains, still sneak in on someone else’s ID and pass for 18.
But there would also be these other places — bars, bottleshops etc., where you would have to be 21 to get served.
A few 19-year-olds still would probably try to sneak in. But it would keep the 15- and 17-year-olds out. They might pass for 18, but try as they might, no 15- or 17-year-old can look and act 21.
Definitely not pigshead the pimply-faced apprentice butcher or Terri the girl next door.
You know, sometimes I have to sit back and ask myself why I’m so clever. Why I’m such a genius. A modest one, but a genius all the same. One astute reader even suggested I run for Parliament.
Is it the way I look at things that makes me such a genius: a sort of spaced-out, lateral thinking?
I look at things from a working person’s point of view, not the view of some politician or bureaucrat in an ivory tower in Canberra.
This column will prove once and for all why I’m a genius as, in one fell swoop, I sort out two of the biggest problems facing Australia today, and possibly the world: the environment and racism.
First, the environment. Apart from pollution and land degradation the most vexing problem would be the destruction of our rainforests.
I’m in no way against logging — I’m for the timber industry and keeping the small sawmills going.
But I’m totally against woodchipping, especially to make more money for those stinking Japanese. Turning rainforests into wrapping paper and chopsticks is an abomination. Fifty per cent of our rainforests are gone forever.
Now one in every three of what trees we’ve got left goes to those lovely, dolphin-slaughtering Japs to wrap presents in or sell back to us at some exorbitant profit to them.
But, according to the information I have, the whole deal with the forest industry is to get in and rape the guts out of what’s left because in less than five years it won’t be worth the effort.
Bolivia, Chile and Brazil had the foresight to grow millions of hectares of eucalypt trees and they’ll have that much plantation timber the price will plummet and what’s left of ours will be worth nothing.
So any timber workers out there who think the timber industry or the National Party have got your welfare at heart, you can’t see any further than the top of your schooner glass. In five years you’ll be redundant. But we’ll still have a timber industry of our own because we’re not going to miss a few trees here and there — and that’s a good thing.
Meanwhile we have to recycle what paper we use, but the answer to the whole problem has been in our hands all the time. Banknotes. Did you know banknotes aren’t made out of paper, they’re made out of cotton? Now what have we got in the middle of Australia? Millions of acres of scrub, with the potential for thousands of artesian bores underneath.
Why not flood the middle of Australia with bore water, grow millions of hectares of cotton and make millions of tonnes of the toughest paper available?
Use solar power and windmills to make it as self-sufficient and environmentally friendly as possible. Run in a rail system and, in a few years, all we’d be sending out of the middle of Australia would be billions of dollars worth of paper straight onto the export market.
We’d still have our rainforests, and all the woodchippers could find work in the parks and wildlife department making just as much money as they are now — showing tourists around while they rob them blind selling souvenirs.
Now, what else have we got in Australia that’s a tough fibre and definitely a @#$% curse from hell? Lantana. I hate it.
I used to clear it for a living and it fights back. You can rip it out but you end up in full nelsons and Indian deathlocks trying to hack it up. It fights better than a battalion of Ghurkhas. I reckon throughout Australia there’d be 100 million tonnes of lantana. Why not start up a lantana eradication scheme and pulp it too?
A schoolkid told me there’s more fibre in half a tonne of lantana than in four tonnes of woodchips and I believe him.
The stinkin’ shit grows anywhere too. Why not take some out to the middle of Australia, grow it around the cotton fields for protection and pulp the whole lot up together?
We can’t afford to do it? We spend millions to try a few old war criminals, we give more millions away in overseas aid to people that hate us and we blew a billion dollars on a new Parliament House.
If we can’t get this thing going, with overseas investment, we all need rooting. It’s a good idea well worth a try and it’s simplicity itself.
Now, onto the other problem, racism. Who are the biggest whingers — always wanting to put the boot into poor old whitey?
The Chinese students aren’t bad. But the government just gave them an $82 million refund on some university fees and let 10,000 into Australia, putting them straight on social security, so they’re happy.
The Kooris aren’t bad whingers. But after 200 years of rape and murder and the possibility of the canteen on Arukun being closed, the Abos are entitled to have a beef.<
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But the biggest whingers have to be the American Negroes or Afro-Americans as they now like to be called. Though you don’t know what to call them — blacks, negroes, niggers with attitude — there’s no pleasing them. But they’ve got the right to whinge, the poor bludgers.
Seventy per cent of the gaol population in America is black. They flunk school, they’re badly educated, they can’t get work. They either live in swamps in the south or ghettos in the north. They’re heavily into crack-cocaine and run around shooting each other. A black kid’s lucky to reach 21.
Even other minority groups are against them. When a black stabbed an Australian Jew to death in Brooklyn the blacks called out to the Jews, ‘Hitler should have finished the job’. The Jews yelled back, ‘Jews invented the wheelbarrow so niggers could learn to walk on their hind legs’.
Disgraceful racist comments and I’m glad I wasn’t there to witness them. I truly feel sorry for the blacks in America. I feel they’re crying out for something, missing something. And you know what the answer to the black racial problem is? Bring back slavery.
Now, before you all go off the deep end and call me another Hitler, think this over logically, to quote Mr Spock.
Look at those blacks running around with machine-guns, into crack, prostitution, killing other brothers. They’re stuffed.
But look at all those old Shirley Temple and Clara Bow movies. Look at Gone With The Wind and old episodes of the Jack Benny Show.
The blacks in them were as happy as Larry, out in the fields working in the sun and fresh air, eating watermelons and playing their banjos. Shuffling around saying, ‘Yes massa, no massa’. Everyone singing ‘Ol’ Man River’ and ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’. Happy as pigs in shit — they had it made.
Of course, you couldn’t go back to the original conditions. No whipping, no chains, no burning crosses. This is ACTU slavery. A 40-hour week and weekends free.
They could retain their Afro names, dress and walk like they want. Have ghetto blasters. Any Rastas could grow a bit of ganja.
So What Do You Reckon? Page 19