An Australian Political Fable

The Turtle and The Scorpion

Paul was a union national secretary with ambitions, but he was also uneducated and spineless. One day he asked Tony, a Prime Minister to carry him politically on his back toward leadership of the Australian Labor Party by partnering up on industrial relations policy.

“Are you mad?” exclaimed Tony the Prime Minister. “You’ll stab me while I’m carrying you and I’ll be replaced by Malcolm the Minister.”

“My dear Tony,” laughed Paul the union national secretary, “because we would be as one on industrial relations, if I were to stab you I would go down with you. Now where is the logic in that?”

“You’re right!” cried Tony. “Hop on!”

Paul climbed aboard and halfway through the policy development process, he shoved a Ka-Bar mightily between Tony’s shoulder blades. The subsequent slanging match sank them both to a single par at the bottom of page 36 of the Adelaide Advertiser.

As they fell into political obscurity, Prime Minister Tony sadly asked, “If there was no logic in your stabbing me, why did you do it?”

“It has nothing to do with logic,” the now irrelevant union national secretary despondently replied. “It’s just in my nature.”

Postscript

Meanwhile, sitting on the bank of Lake Burley Griffin, quietly observing the shenanigans between Tony and Paul, Malcolm the Minister was sharing a bottle of Egon Muller-Scharzhof Scharzhofberger Riesling with Tanya the Baby Killer.

Both seemed quietly contented until Cory Bernardi came up behind them and smacked them both in the back of the head with his Louisville Slugger.