An Integrity Commission or perhaps a definition of corruption from the Kings Lawyer? Not bloody likely.

Integrity, King, is what you get when we believe that we can trust you – or even if you just tell the truth. And corruption, Mr Porter, is all the things that you do. The obfuscations, the anti democratic processes, the inhumanity you urge us to show to our fellow man in order that OUR children can have a respectable future.

The discretion permitted of parliamentarians by the Ancient Constitution. The leeway you give yourselves for our own good … Corruption. The money you steal from the common wealth, the curtailment of education, the pollution you sell to the world on our kids behalf … Corruption.

“It is a GREAT EVENT, come from what CAUSE it might, it is a Great Event. It astounds, it sets Thought to work in the minds of millions; it awakens Recollections; it rouses to remarks; it elicits a communication of feelings; it makes the tongue the loud herald of the heart; and it must in the nature of things … it is a great event! Say, the base, stinking Reporters what they will, it is a great event!!” – William Cobbett.

… Ppssstct …

Miss Mandy says,

“So, Miss Mandy, election time again. That time when suddenly all the powers that wish to be start spruiking Democracy. Do we have a crisis? What with the apparent ministerial misconduct and the failure to sell the kids the Kings version of demockracy? Can you perhaps let us in on the secrets of Ministerial Conduct and Corporate discretion as the country ramps up toward election time and the season of good will? Miss Mandy, has the Democracy experiment failed?”

“No no, I wouldn’t say that, its dependent on where you want to view the world from … Nice chocolate, imported I hope? I’d say we’re well on the way to a purer demockracy … something approaching Putin’s Russia or Trumps America. Another term of the King’s government and we can probably drop the whole demockratic notion altogether.”

“Democracy? Have we advanced that far? I mean, have we pushed progress to the absolute limit … rushed it all through, just in these past five years? Don’t you think that the King’s governments failed singularly to sell the great ideal? The kids, they seem to have a rather poor belief that Democracy could solve the problems … You don’t think we’re pushing them close to revolution, that we’re confusing them, pushing them to a rebellion against elitism?”

“Why?” she says, “The kids have no business delving into the machinations of the future. That’s just not their lot. Its not that we’ve failed to sell the kids demockracy, its that they’ve failed to buy it. I’d have to say that all the kings men have done a pretty good job. After all the job isn’t to sell democracy … Its to obey the constitution, and the constitution has never been about Democracy. Oshtralia’s Constitution is about maintaining the reins and if demockracy helps us neoLibs … with the limited help of the Nats, of course, maintain our position … Well, what more can we want? Thats progress.”

“But the kids seem to be losing faith in the process … ”

“The process is none of their business. They aren’t concentrating on all the good things that ministers do and they’re instead listening to all the claptrap pumped through the ledt wing social media and left wing journals and left wing think-tanks – egality, fraternity, public liberty, process … Poppycock. Piffle. Claptrap. Rubbish the whole lot of it. One doesnt get rich following democratic process … Thats for the … the masses, the plebs, the low life. Democratic process ain’t going to be allowed by a neoLibNat government. The neoLibNats dint run a democratic process within the party and look how successful we are – Whitlam and Hawke are long dead. No more free rides here in the Lucky Country. Paying tax and shutting the F up. Thats the future … ”

“Sure, thats fair, but didn’t we educate our kids to be part of the wider world? … To respect others, to share values, to look further into the future … To see progress as pertaining to all?”

“Well, you may have, but then thats your problem isn’t it. Education should never have been allowed to multi-culturals or to the youth for that matter. English, yes, damned right ya gotta speak the lingo. Its taken us years to set right that unholy socialist ideal of a good, equal and free education for all. But we’re getting it right now – education should be so damned expensive that only ministers kids can afford it. Of course, they shouldn’t have to pay – the ministers kids, I mean – thats demockracy. The whole purpose of curtailing public education is to show them that demockracy does work – as long as you leave it to the ministers. Why? – because it produces a better more self sufficient – a richer world. A world where at least a few of us can relax in peace … Be really happy.”

“Do really think that’s the way? Lowing the standard of public education, and cowing the public through fear of humanitarian actions … Keeping the iids in a place where, as you say, they just mind their own business and shut the F up is the way to a good future? That far from the King’s thieves and their state counterparts failing to sell Democracy … They’re actually selling demockracy almost too well?

“My oath,” snaps Miss Mandy, “but its all but irrelevant now anyway. The Kings in charge and he’s got good boys like Dutton and Porter and that new fella … Whats his name? The Tick? Thats it, Tudge. These ministers don’t care whether the kids are buying or not, they’re the salt of the earth, without them nothing gets done … There’d be no life worth living without this sort of minister. Why beat em up for taking cash for access? If you want something done you pay for it. Life costs money … thank god, just imagine the mess we’d be in if every commoner, every pleb was a welfare recipient, thieving from the public chest, getting fat pensions for fuck all and retiring with expensive perks? Chaos. Precisely why government ministers charge thousands of shmackers for a seat at their tables … Life costs, and the more you’re prepared to pay the better life is. Corporations deserve preference and Ministers deserve privilege. They employ people, those people pay tax … Durr!”

“Thanks Miss Mandy, good to know we’re on track.”

… Psstchht …

Too Busy Gladys – she’s heard stuff that is “practically, factually incorrect” … This is all, of course, with relation to the witch hunt currently underway regarding her personal life. I for one abhor this intrusion into anyones personal life but, yes but … Gladys like, all the other ministers connected to the Neoliberal Ideal – Demockracy – think nothing of interfering and attempting to control the private lives of those who pay them. Lets not worry about whether these ministers transgress the so called Ministerial Codes of Conduct; as Miss Mandy tells us they are discretionary and are none of our business. Its the outcomes that matter.

Now supposing that Too Busy Gladys, or Dirty Dutton or the ceo of Australia Post or even the King as a likely example, didn’t presume some right to impress a mode of conduct on us, and supposing, that those who paid for her to represent them – her electoral constituent – were somehow upset with their representative; that is, didn’t approve that her conduct was suitable to THEIR representative … Wouldn’t they just haul her back and stop paying her? No chance. They can’t. The ancient constitution permits her to thumb her nose at them while thumbing her nose at the rest of us. That’s Demockracy.

Her contract is first to her neoLibNat party, then if they allow it, to this ancient anti-democratic constitution, and then, when it suits them, to this thing we all like to believe protects us from runaway representatives – parliamentary process. This is how they sell the kids demockracy … All wrapped up in a thing the kids, but not their parents, mistake as failed Democracy. They have no CONTRACT WITH US.

Now since there are still enough of us left, beaten down as we are, who lived out lives with democratic intent and with government that while we knew didn’t have to pretended to respect democratic process. (I know this because we argue around campfires and hum and bemoan how easily the kids succumbed to fear and greed … Like all adults we choose to be Democratic and have ideals when we gather together at our picnics and dinner parties. What we may do when we slink back into our fortresses is another matter.)

How did this happen? We allowed it to!

Since were obviously all shaking our heads at the deceit and lack of integrity of ‘politicians’ – whom we should remember like to tell us that they are OUR representatives when the time finally comes for us to ok the continuence of their public paychecks and obscenely outrageous pensions – that one pitiful day every four or so years when we can actually pull them up; Election Day – why do we not stop it?

Our children have their hands on the technology. We don’t need them, these ministers, to make the change from demockracy to Democracy. We can bypass them like they bypass us.

Lets make a new constitution, based on a Bill of Fair and Equal Rights. Why not? Now is the time … What can they do, these paragons of deceit and corruption? Throw all of us in gaol? Shoot all of us? When is it ok to say enough is enough? When is it ok to say, No more? When is it ok to really look toward the future … sometime in the distant future or now, in the present?

The right to oppose a corrupt parliament exists “by the same rule of right reason, and law of equity, as the soldiers of an army may oppose the general, when he turns the mouth of his cannon upon them.” – William Walwyn.