When There Are No Tomorrows

SOME YEARS ago, a boon companion from the Professor’s youth was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, one of the nastiest varieties you can get. His doctors detailed how they would go about treating it – if treat is the right word for an ailment that carries off 95% of its victims in less than two years. He went home, stared at the wall for a spell and was reviewing the options when his son cranked up the stereo in another room. The song was Lou Reed’s White Light, White Heat, from Rock and Roll Animal, and by the time the track was done his mind was made up.

Just twelve months to go? Bugger it! He called the oncologist and told him to inflict the rads and chemo on someone else. As he was almost certainly off to meet the Great Bunyip, he decided to jam as much fun as possible into however much time was left.

And he did, too. Cigarettes, the nicer drugs, alcohol, wild women while still able to handle the exertion – those became the staples of a life running down. His ex-wife took him to the cleaners when they divorced, so he stuffed his wallet with credit cards, whose debts would never be re-paid, and went to town. And to Europe. And Asia. And South America.

Fourteen months he survived, all but the last few jammed-packed with pleasure. When the coffin birds hovered by his casket at the funeral home he was wearing a very sharp Armani suit and, by arrangement with the undertaker, a smile. Oh, yeah, and they played White Light, White Heat very loud indeed, which is the only way to hear it.

You don’t often see such logic in the face of death, and until recently, the assumption had been that the Professor’s mate was one of a kind. Now, though, looking at what our PM and her rabble are getting up to, it seems he has inspired a brood of imitators.

The Gillard mob, they know they’re doomed, that sooner or later the brothel creeper Thomson will be forced to quit, and after that who knows what else might shave their numbers to the point where a no confidence motion sweeps them all away? In the meantime, they are making merry and there is no stopping them.

Give Bob Brown a staggering $11 billion to underwrite his party's green fantasies? Why not! There will be nice jobs for mates and board seats aplenty amongst all the burgeoning alternate energy outfits and think tanks that money is going to underwrite.

And propriety, that is another casualty of this wretched government’s impending demise.

Put a drunk and habitual rorter in the Speaker’s chair? You bet. Peter Slipper has been bought and paid for with his much improved salary, not to mention whatever sinecure or diplomatic post might be conjured into being as a token of appreciation for, ahem, fairness and discretion while presiding over the House.

And Rupert Murdoch? As Labor and its Greens guardians go down for the count you can stake your last dollar that the common goal will be to take him and News Ltd with them.

Subsidies for Fairfax? Probably. And if you think that is far fetched, just look at today’s decision to snatch away from Sky the contract for running the Australia Network and award it in perpetuity to the ABC. There is no basis for it, no rationale except a diseased and dying government’s spite.

The wake for the Professor’s friend was a hell of a party. So, too, will be the celebration to mark the demise of  the filth that now encrusts the government benches.

There will be a difference, though. The hangover will be worse, much worse, and it will last for years.