Labor's envy attacks miss the mark

Or, as was the case with me, did the ad alight on your mind like a lost and lonely snowflake on a hot tin roof, melting away to nothingness in a nanosecond?

Surely the ad’s politics-of-envy theme is misplaced? Surely Australians, nobler than the ALP imagines, are more likely to quietly admire the PM’s achievement of breathtaking wealth than to envy it?

If anyone was going to envy the PM his glittering wealth and soaring rank then it would be people like me, humble battlers (still driving our 2010 Barinas, always having to fly economy, making do with our 39-inch TV sets; how the hardships pile up!) who heartily dislike him and his politics. Yet, somehow, envy of him isn’t part of the suite of reasons for wishing aliens would abduct him (and Zed Seselja, and all Liberals).

But, thinking readers, from whence cometh this blessing, this inability to envy rich Turnbull and all other diamond-encrusted potentates like him? Back to this mystery in a moment.

My intelligence is badly insulted by the aforementioned attack ad just as it was by Labor’s theme taken into one of last week’s appalling Question Times in the despised House of Representatives. Labor stars attacked the PM with the soft snowballs of questions predicated on the accusation that he, Turnbull, this “banker from Point Piper”, has designed the much-discussed tax cuts so as to give his greedy self a $7000 tax cut.

The very idea that multi-billionaire Turnbull would bother his head about making himself a trifling (for him) extra $7000 (about as much as he must spend on a pair of silk, designer pyjamas) was absurd. It insulted my intelligence and my intelligence, insulted, rebelled. The following conversation ensued.

Ian’s Intelligence: “Ian, why do you keep making us follow sickening Question Time? Can’t we focus on Higher Things? We were reading fine poetry together this morning. Wordsworth and Robbie Burns. The shock of going from sublime things in the morning to toxic balderdash at 2pm is too much to bear. Why do you need to follow this swill?”

Ian: “I’m sorry, Intelligence. You’re right. I think it’s partly habit - for I was a political journalist in my flaxen-haired heyday. But I know it is a nasty habit. Like self-abuse, but not so excusable. And I am trying hard to give it up. I am going to Currentaffairsoholics Anonymous. They think their 12-step program may rescue me from politics’ gutter.”

Ian’s Intelligence: “OK. But turn off this QT now and let’s go back to reading uplifting poetry. Let’s read Robbie Burns’ greatest hit, A Man’s a Man For A’ That.”

Ian: “It’s a deal. But even better than just reading it, let’s go to the YouTube clip of Midge Ure singing it with feeling at the opening the Scottish parliament!”

Ian’s Intelligence: “O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

It was an uncanny coincidence that she, my intelligence, should bring up Burns’ masterpiece, his hymn to the decency, the common sense of the working classes. For, wondering above why we may be immune from the kind of banker-envy Labor wants to exploit, it strikes me that we may somehow have, perhaps in some whiffs of intoxicating socialism picked up in the very air we breathe, those common-man’s instincts Burns’ poem celebrates.

I am half-Scottish (it is my better half) and think it typically patriotic-sensitive of the Scots that they have someone sing Burns’ socialist ripper at openings of new parliamentary sessions.

The song says that in the great scheme of things, the poor, common man is made of gold and knows he is better than the strutting lords and class popinjays. He “looks and laughs” at their titles and pretensions and the mere “tinsel show” of their worldly possessions (such as their Point Piper mansions). What, envy Malcolm Turnbull? Envy him his expensive pyjamas? Feel convinced by a puerile attack ad? Like Burns’ poem’s “honest man … of independent mind”, I’m sure most Australians “look and laugh at a’ that”.

If we were to imitate the Scots and to open each new parliament with the recitation of something stirringly principled and idealistic, what might it be?

There is no perfect fit that fits as well as Burns’ blockbuster fits in Scotland. But we might, for example, have a respected Australian recite Henry Lawson’s radical, pulse-quickening A Song of the Republic. Lawson’s Song has about it quite something of the same hopelessly idealistic and sentimental optimism of Burns’ great poem. Both end with a sentimental stickybeak at the glorious future that is, surely, close at hand. Burns sees, coming, a brotherhood of man. Lawson sees us “Sons of the South”, Australians, shaking off the monarchy, “those old world [English] errors and wrongs and lies” committed by the tyranny of “the lord and Queen”.

And the ideal noble Australian to stand up in the parliament and, in the hushed silence, recite these noble sentiments? Let us invite the Socceroo’s manly captain Mile Jedinak. Untainted by the foul barnabyjoycery of party politics, a pillar of composed leadership in our World Cup matches, dignified in defeat and with his eerie resemblance to our Ned Kelly, he is a hero for our times.