Regrettably, for some time to come, Australians will have to endure more security than we are used to and more inconvenience than we would like. Regrettably, for some time to come, the delicate balance between freedom and security may have to shift.

There may be more restrictions on some so that there can be more protection for others. After all, the most basic freedom of all is the freedom to walk the streets unharmed and to sleep safe in our beds at night.

Tony Abbott in Parliament 23 September 2014

When it comes to entertainment, terror takes the cake. Say what you like about romance, game show or reality TV. None of these can poke a stick at terror. Not even Budget Crisis, the long-running LNP soap opera featuring popular villains Debt and Deficit. Not even sport. (Sport, like politics contains powerful theatre but essentially is applied psychopathy.) In sport and in politics you dedicate yourself to putting shit up your opponent. And occasionally on your opponent. Terror, on the other hand, scares the shit out you. And it’s good for you. It combines the therapeutic power of catharsis while it reinforces conventional morality. No wonder Abbott and the Death Cult Zombies, the latest smash hit theatre sensation is taking the country by storm.

Death Cult Zombies is a shrewd investment attracting powerful backers such as Rupert Murdoch. And billionaire entrepreneurs who have long lunches with the treasurer. It’s a sure thing. With terror you can’t go wrong. It’s tried and true. A box office you can bank on. Little wonder then, our LNP coalition has just treated us to a feast. It comes naturally. Political conservatives have a natural talent for popular entertainment. And creative fiction. It shows in their day to day dealings such as dropping unpopular bits of their budget while claiming today that they remain completely committed to their budget. It shows in their central political tenet that looking after rich mates is some form of public service. And it finds expression in rich theatrical occasions.

Who can forget such baroque epics as Malcolm where’s your trousers? Hockey’s biography: the compelling achievements of a man who so far hasn’t amounted to anything, much. So far. And who will go on to do even less.

What can compare with the finesse and fictive inspiration of Abbott’s intent to repay his mate Andrew Bolt for his support in winning the election by promising to gut racial discrimination law? And then claiming this would improve freedom of speech for the nation.  And then doing a backflip because of some mythic concern for the Muslim community. It’s a wonder they don’t incorporate the party and publish it as a work of fiction. It’d be a best seller. Shit all over the opposition. But then, Labor hasn’t walked out on the show. They are clinging to the second best seats in the house.

Death Cult Zombies is an all-singing, all dancing, (mostly) all Australian, anti-Terror Terror show. It’s a show to die for. Of course, it’s a Dutch treat. You get the bill in your tax assessments. With interest. Unless you are a big corporate sponsor like Murdoch. Then you’ll pay one cent in the dollar. Yet it’s compelling viewing. Endlessly diverting first Act. Then an enormous dramatic pause. So dramatic in fact that the suspense is killing us. Some of us are even beginning to notice impresario Anton’s vestments. The (former, would-be) holy roman emperor’s new clothes. And wonder if he’s wearing any.

Where’s the second act?

Why so quiet? A cone of silence has descended. The curtain remains down. The Greatest Australian terror raid played to packed houses mid- September. Two weeks have passed and there is not even an apology for extending interval. Why? What do the authorities have to share? Have to hide? Is it tough love? Or tough titty: we are never going to tell you and soon we will change the law so we never have to? 800 police and AFP must have more to show for their efforts than a pimply 22 year old with paranoid delusions about killing a random pedestrian.  When do we get to see it?

We love big shows in Australia.  Especially those which are big overseas. We love to talk them up before we go and afterwards. Up and up. This gratifies us for many reasons, not the least of which is the virtuous feeling we derive from talking up our experiences generally, our quality lifestyle, our good taste, our superior networking and of course our nose for good value.  “Great show and we were so lucky to get the best seats in the house so cheaply …”All sold out by my mate who knows the producer got me tickets.”

Exclusivity, amazing fortune, breathtaking bargaining skills or special contacts and great connections are all part of the weave of the legendary experience retold. Especially at ICAC. Rich indeed is the warp and weft of your typical après show discussion. Yet most of this is missing from our latest national diversion. Curiously absent.

It was a big operation. Massive. Even bigger was the hype. Australia’s biggest counter terrorism operation ever was the way it was presented. And re-presented. And commented upon. Repeatedly. Never has any show been so in love with its own production values. Not that we have that much to compare it with. A couple of smaller shows with a limited cast of evil bearded rotters and plotters. Still, others are bound to follow. You may depend on it. Now we’ve set a benchmark, we will have to better it. We won’t be able to help ourselves.

Australians deserve to know the score. It can’t just be nothing. Or next to nothing. After all we’ve just been slugged a cool $600 million for the beefed up security. And the costs don’t end just with the show. Factor in the cost of anxiety, fear, panic, paranoia, xenophobia and alarm washing through our consciousness as we battle to remain focused on those daily tasks which ordinarily make us if not paragons of productivity, a people chasing world’s best for time spent at work.

A great deal of fuss was made of the busting of terrorists on the day Abbott signed us up to fight in Iraq or Syria or wherever the United States said. But not go to war. Not yet. Humanitarian arms supplies and assisting air strikes. And a great deal of money was spent. And made, no doubt. Commercial news was full of the threat of a random beheading. Could happen to anyone. Just around the corner.

Abbott insists that we are all in real and present danger. Not because we are going to war. But because ‘truly evil’ jihadist terrorists in Syria and Iraq have stretched out their terror tentacles to Australia. ISIS operatives are hiding in bedrooms all over the country.  We need to go to war over there to stop them over here. If we could swat the ISIS blowfly in the Middle East we could be free from domestic maggots.  We would be safe in our beds at home.

But we haven’t really found any. Even though police kicked down doors and upturned beds all over the country. It’s not much of a plot, really is it? Stated baldly it’s not all that convincing is it? Or logical. True, there are successful shows that have creaky plots based on implausible stories but impresario Abbott needs to pull a rabbit out of a hat or his audience will walk out during intermission. Are walking out, as we speak.

Every impresario has something up his sleeve. Abbott is no exception. In this case it’s introducing new anti-terror laws. Laws that curtail our freedom. Especially the freedom to enquire about the missing second act of his Death Cult Zombie Show. The freedom to ask to see the proof of this dire new threat. Ask why we need new laws. A question we all need to ask. A question we need to be able to ask freely. Or remain forever silent.

Or before too long we will get laws we don’t need and didn’t ask for. Laws that don’t make us any safer. But which give much greater power to the government and its agencies.  Surely we don’t want that. No citizen  wants that. Or is it that after the Death Cult Zombie show, Act One, we are so frightened we’ll be happy to give up our right to stand up for our rights. Or even ask what’s going on.

No words can ever tell what led him to attack Police with a knife in the first hour of darkness on that fateful September evening. Strike at them not once but many times. Again and again in a mad frenzy. He wanted to settle things, perhaps. Unsettle everything, certainly. To settle nothing in the end. No words can ever let us into the deep, overwhelming darkness of his fury; the blind, frenzied lashing out, of his final, fatal acts.

No words can ever mend what has been done. And undone. No words can tell of his victims’ pain and shock and terror. Nor how their lives will never be the same. And those who know them. Belong to them. Love them. No words can tell, either how any of us will ever be the same. Bystanders, onlookers, outsiders every one of us, we can only re-trace some steps in his descent into madness.

Endeavour Hills is no stranger to desperation. Once a shift workers’ dormitory satellite serving Melbourne and Dandenong’s factories, it is today a many-layered place, a migrant melting pot, a terminus and refuge for the marginalised and dispossessed.

There are no hills to speak of.  You do climb a bit on your way through from Frankston to Dandenong. Any further elevation is all in the developer’s copy writer’s imagination. Increasingly those who live here, descend here. The place itself bears witness to much that is in decline.

Fading brick veneer buildings edge narrow streets, stunted drives, guillotined cul-de-sacs and crescents.  The 70s tint de jour was Dulux Mission Brown. Unmistakeable. Nothing like it. Imagine if you mixed every colour you could get together, you would end up with this brown. Perhaps how they made it. It’s a smart way to use up your leftovers, if you are DuPont. If you are just a consumer? You wear it.

Mission Brown will cover anything. Cover a multitude of sins. Here it’s everywhere like a dirty brown canker. Suck the life out of any streetscape. And out of you if you let it. Still keeping on keeping on defying you to rest your eyes on it. Find anything cheerful, anything remotely uplifting in it. Let your imagination run riot, as Barry Humphries might have said. Paint the town brown. Whatever it does for the painter, it’s not uplifting to the human spirit.

Cramped cream brick or tumbled brick veneer cottages have titchy unweeded yards where neglected dogs bark themselves stir-crazy. You get surround sound without having to ask for it. Neighbours can listen to neighbour without having to make up an excuse to pop next door to borrow a cup of flake. Hear their neighbours’ TVs; their domestics; doors slamming; their boy racer tuning his V8 in the drive; feel his sub-woofer shaking the bars of his roll cage.

These homes are too close for comfort. Closer to each other than their inhabitants will ever be in many cases. Their owners who have invested a lot in blinds and curtain netting. And more than the odd Rottweiler, mastiff, Pit bull terrier or mongrel combo with the lot. Estate developers cut costs and corners. Threw them up in a flash. Squeezed as many into the subdivision as they could get away with. Then got out in a flash. Made their fortunes. Made a killing. Put on white shoes and set off to walk arm in arm with another government to plunder the Queensland coast.

Cheaply made and poorly fitted, your average dwelling pinches at the elbows and around the seat, standing the test of time like a cheap 70s suit. After time that you couldn’t build quality if you wanted. Later constructions reflect how the ’80s and ’90s building boom strained building supplies. It shows in cheap and low quality materials.  Creature comforts are basic. Luxury is in low supply.

Not all the houses are tiny. Some are two storeys. Grass castles for stoner kings and queens. But the place feels cramped. Skimped. Confined. Tense. It is not the Australia of House and Garden magazine. You wouldn’t set Ramsay Street here. Domestics are violent.

A man shaved his wife’s head, bound her with duct tape and beat her for twenty minutes with a garden hose in a jealous rage. “If a wife cheats on a husband, she can expect to have this done to her. She made me do it,” her husband said in defence. His three-and-a-half year sentence would be nearly up by now.

Another resident kidnapped a Nepalese student he had befriended online, stealing from her bank accounts and was apprehended when about to push her into a grave he’d dug in the back yard. Her parents would not pay his $20,000 ransom. He said in court it was her idea.

Endeavour Hills bears more than its fair share of domestic conflict, home invasions and random bashings. It gets a bad press in some circles. But then, nothing good ever came out of Bethlehem or so they said. Best thing that comes out Endeavour Hills, wags say, is the road to Dandenong. And Dandenong’s rough.

Disharmony is a design feature in Endeavour Hills. Patterns, colours, textures and materials often argue with each other in the same fascia. Cheaper to get the job finished that way. Under budget. Parsimony knifes the soul. Cut-price suburban neurosis festers. Unwary visitors feel its chill. You could go easily go mad here. Kill yourself. If you weren’t a bit mad to have moved in.  Or desperate to escape another war-zone. Another hell hole. An Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon from the long gone days when Australia accepted refugees.

Any place at all suits when you’re desperate for shelter. Desperate to settle. Yesterday’s bargain build appeals when your budget is small. Practical necessity wins any arm wrestle over taste or design. No point in champagne taste on a beer budget. You may already know someone here.

And so it is the Hills have filled with migrants over recent decades. And their children. Their children’s children. It’s cheap real estate. Easy to get to. Near work. Handy to schools and other factories. It is an obscure place, unknowable to all but those who must reside here.  Unknowable even to itself. Easy to get lost in. Safely out of the way. Until now.

Today news bolts into our consciousness in an incandescent flash. It flashes, flares and burns like Icarus too close to the sun of everyday necessity. Simple stories are quickly whipped up and served hourly in our living rooms. Our anti-social social media is driven by them. Sick with them. Riven by them. Most are short-lived, self-destructing, fabrications. They burn up as they enter the atmosphere of our contested consciousness. Burn to ash in the short-fuse furnaces of our fractured and attenuated attention spans. How big is JLo’s butt, now? Celebrity obsession and our all-consuming appetite for the novel, superficial and the trivial help fan the flames. Yet others are ground out by big money’s boot heel, threatening law suits or big money calling the shots.

Yet our stories shape us. Define us. However long they may last. Give us a sense of ourselves. Who we are. Who we imagine we are. And who we are not. Stories define the outsider. The other. The threat. The monster. The real and present danger of the terrorist within. The red under the bed. The DIY mechanic boy with a petrol leak from his car yesterday in the parking lot of the Doveton mosque at his teenage friend’s funeral becomes a potential jihadist.

In a flash, a rampaging beast takes off. The demoniser. The hate-maker. It helps us ease our guilt. Cauterise our wounded pride. How could this happen on our watch? Quickly, the hapless man-child is the devil’s servant. A monster. In league with jihadist forces head-quartered in Syria and on Facebook. Gushers of hate-speak spew forth from public orifices to seal the deal. Pure Evil. Under the influence of pure evil, Tony Abbott says, of Jihadist forces abroad. Pure evil.

But wait, there’s more. There may be others like him, waiting to strike.

A heightened sense of alert feels very much like a paranoid panic attack, however, well the PM’s strategic communications unit may package it. Or the PM sells it. It strengthens the arm of central government. It sells newspapers. Boosts Rupert Murdoch’s income. No wire-tapping needed. It boosts ratings. Sets the hounds after the hares. Yet it also tears us apart as a nation. Tears at the very fabric of our social being. Turns us against them.

A young man is killed. Only now, forlornly, belatedly, do some of us seek to know him. Know who he was. What drove him to such desperate behaviour? Seek to find what went wrong. Discover the story. His story. Our story. For the rest, it seems, there is an easier way to deal with the facts.

‘Scum’ is the word many Aussie Bloggers are using in their rush to judgement. Too many.

Such simple-minded but savage attacks feed on ignorance and emotional immaturity but they now receive oxygen from the top. They are nurtured by a dominant public discourse in which we are under attack. Under attack not from our own lack of charity, compassion and concern for others but from the other. Evil is not in all of us. It is disembodied. Out there. In the young jihadist. This shameful, wilful black and white political narrative does none of any good.

It is a dangerous but familiar story which seeks to band us together against an enemy within.

It is the narrative of the witch hunt. We must root out the evil within us and destroy it. It is both infantile and lethal. It does not become as a nation. It does not serve us a people. It is a fiction which story which distorts our social conscience. It wilfully blinds us to the responsibility we must all bear for one of us has been lost. The flames of bigotry are fanned.

Now outbreaks of racist intolerance are reported in some quarters. No real surprise here. A litany of lies and wilful blindness is publicly broadcast. The deceased has become the enemy. Not ourselves.  This boy’s death, we are told in the subtext, is not our loss. He was not one of us in his growing up. We did not take him and give him succour. We did not nourish him, guide him, take care of him in every way we could as he grew into a man.

Instead of showing leadership, The Prime Minister’s spin on the story is to call it ‘a nasty incident in Melbourne’. Absolved, assuaged in this way is the fear-mongering unleashed in a terror alert upgrade. Absolved are those who resort to terms such as ‘pure evil’. Condoned is a primitive blood-lust for revenge and counter-attack.

A reporter calls on a neighbour in Narre Warren last week. A few doors away is the young man’s home. Blinds and curtains darken this house, with its untidy teenager’s room, a room that only yesterday was filled with music, life and laughter, friends and bits of gym equipment. A room whose emptiness is now eternal. No-one will call on him now. The dark angel has flown. Forever.

The neighbour turns the reporter away. He will not give his name.  Mr Go Away does not want to get involved.  None of my business.  Fear is in his voice. And anger.

Leave me alone is the gist of what the neighbour is saying. Just as the boy was left alone. Police covered his body with a tarpaulin. Left him on the road where he fell. Until the next day. The corpse could have been dangerous, they said. Lethal. A risk to our safety and security.

Mr Go Away is but one voice of the ‘community’ which surrounded, supported and educated the young man who has died. But it is not a helpful voice. This is not the voice of neighbourly concern. It is not the voice of any true community. Rather, it is just one representative of what has come to usurp community. A post-modern aggregation of self-absorption, self-interest, irrational fear, mistrust and indifference.

Sadly it is this voice which is privileged. It is this voice that appears to be in the ascendancy, nurtured, called forth by our national terror alert and all its eager handmaidens.

Narre Warren is another Endeavour Hills in the making. A cheap knock-off. Only the buildings are newer. The general idea is the same. Knock them up cheap. Sell them dear. The quality is the same or worse. The dead flat blocks are smaller. There is a sense of a future slum evolving before your eyes. A ghetto. It rises on stony ground: the stinginess and greed of its developers’ and builders’ hearts. Kids’ cars clutter streets and drive ways. Doors slam. Dogs bark all day. You feel instantly that you will be forever on the outer. Unwelcome. Uninvited. Unconnected.

There is no neighbourliness, no community speaking in this man’s voice. It is the voice of denial. Go away. In these words, we deny ourselves, our love for one another. That part of others that makes us whole. Our delight in another’s company. Another’s joy. Grief in another’s sorrow. Our humanity. Go away? We cannot go away. We are not made that way. Not one of us.

Perhaps Mr Go Away senses this. Perhaps he dimly realises that we are all in this together. Perhaps in some way it disturbs him. Traps him. Perhaps even he suspects that there is no easy way out. Senses that we are all involved for better or for worse in the end. All he would say for the record was that of course he knew of his neighbour. He knew of is a form of words you choose when you don’t know a person at all. Knew of is the Judas kiss of death to any real community.

Abdul Numan Haider’s knife attack on two policemen and his subsequent fatal shooting outside Endeavour Hills Police station at 7:45pm, Monday 23 September troubles us for many reasons. What caused this eighteen year old to attack police when they called him in for questioning? He clearly intended to harm them. He took knives. He set it up. He phoned to arrange the meeting outside the station. He reversed his Nissan Pulsar into a park as if making for an easy get away.

He did not get away. Whatever plans he may have had of escape, his actions have unleashed a perfect storm of hatred, recrimination, discrimination and revenge. And evasion.

Who knows what disordered thoughts ran through his teenage mind? Martyrdom? Revenge? Anger? Suicide? We need to ask hard questions of the evidence. We need to look into ourselves, our own hearts. Avoid boarding that juggernaut of popular opinion on its rush to judgement.

Media reports describe Haider as yet another desperate Islamic fanatic, an ISIL extremist obeying instructions to decapitate. A jihadist carrying out a fatwa.  An automaton programmed to destroy and self-destruct. Or a lone wolf. A lone wolf who chooses to carry out the fatwa rantings of a jihadist madman. The two are logically opposed but either fits well within the PM’s national scare strategy. Serves its purpose. Purpose? The euphemism is ‘team-building’.

Other journalists looking for the person discover personal stressors: his relationship breakdown. Some report his anger at having his passport cancelled, his resentment at being visited at home and hassled.  They write of a good kid from a decent family. They report his parents’ grief and disbelief. They write of his becoming a target for investigation of terror suspects. Earlier that day the police called at his home. They searched his bedroom while he was out before issuing their invitation to join them at the station when he returned. His parents tried to prevent him from going to the station.

Few trouble to raise some basic questions. A lethal trap sprang shut last Monday. The consequences are tragic. Was it entrapment? Was it a random act of madness? What efforts had police made to assess risk? Could police have not sensed the suspect’s psychological instability? They made many visits to his home. They quizzed him about his contacts his networks. Did they follow these up? They raided his room while he was out. They then requested that he attend the station. Could they not have reasonably foreseen a confrontation brewing? What steps were taken to defuse a volatile and potentially lethal situation?

The tragic events will not, of course, yield to any quick and easy explanation. Their origins are highly complex. Some would have us begin with the story of a migrant boy from Afghanistan and his family. Deep in this story are wounds of the heart and soul. Wounds of loss. Of deprivation. Dispossession. Betrayal. Conflict. Wounds that are slow to heal. If they ever really heal. No outsider can measure the pain and suffering. Embedded in the refugee’s trauma is the damage inflicted by a war torn homeland on all its people and especially those who forced to flee for their lives as refugees.

Others will talk of influences and radicalisation. And it is true, part of his motivation will be found no doubt in the ideologies of hate and killing that ensnared him. But these are catalysts more than causes. To be radicalised, it helps first to be alienated, unwanted, marginalised, dispossessed, and discarded. Cast off to one side. Made to make do with a place on the edge of things. It is not the influence itself so much but everything that has led to his vulnerability to such propaganda that should be our true concern. We do not need to cast him off. We do need to accept what is ours in this. Accept at least some of the responsibility.

The important questions are less easily explored. But they must be explored. Located deep within the fabric of our social being, they involve us all. Who took care of this family? Who took them in? Who made sure they were OK?  Provided for. Taken care of beyond the basic needs.

When a young man begins to act strangely, it is seldom a sudden event. Who was there who was prepared to get alongside this young man when he began to act so bizarrely? Who was there to take him to one side and untangle his snare of unreason? Which one of us made time to listen? To help bind his hurts? To move him out of harm’s way before he attracted the attention of the police? There will be hurts, wounds, hardships and other causes deep within that we need to acknowledge. Investigate. For our own sake. For the sake of the many strangers in our midst. For how we look after those at the margins, those on the edge is in the end the true measure of our humanity.

“First day back down, Boss”, croaked Team Captain Abbott, opening a frosty Phoenix Migration stout beer with a discarded set of dentures Warren “Tusker”, Truss or some other old NP blowhard had forgotten to take home after drinks. He made a mental note. Return Wozza’s choppers. It was the right thing to do.

They were stained, he noticed as he slipped them into a pocket. And chipped. I’d leave them behind, too. But no-one dared collect forgotten belongings after PM’s drinks and nibbles. They were too afraid to front Credlin. Too afraid to even look at her most of the time. But they loved Tony’s boutique beer. And Peta’s smack-downs. Well, they laughed anyway. Funny that. Especially Pyne.

“Great to get back to the bar fridge. Top end’s great but so dry. Dry as a Rudd tea party.”

Abbott perched on a leather Natuzzi Revive, his favourite new chair in the suite of furniture he had entitled himself to in the July  $50,000 furniture upgrade to the PM’s Parliament House Office. He patted the leather with genuine affection and pleasure.

“Boss” was his pet name for his personal chief of staff Peta Credlin who would soon be over to unlace his shoelaces for him, he thought happily. And his tie. Undo his top button. Adjust his waistband. No wonder Malcolm had raved about her. That girl could handle anything. Looked like it, too.

Credlin reached for her Bollinger. She detested beer and those who drank it. She did her best not to look at Abbott. He let her put her IVF needles in his bar fridge. But had to tell the press about it. He thought it made him look enlightened. Feminist. She thought it was tacky, another cheap and self-defeating lunge at image- boosting. Malcolm “rotary nuts” had not felt the same need. Any moment now he would burp. Or fart. Disgusting little chimp. Had the hide to appoint himself Minister for Women. Most women can’t stand the sight of him. The sound of him. No wonder that they remain another of life’s total mysteries to him.

Peta Credlin, personal assistant and most powerful woman in Australia, rose to adjust the new electronically operated curtains to obscure the ASIO operative disguised as a useful human being pruning the pittosporum outside the window. She was a tall woman. She loved controls. She despised mediocrity. She was offended by incompetence. She hated fraud. What was she doing in Abbott’s employ?

She made a mental note to have the ASIO agent replaced. He looked uppity. Poor disguise, too. He appeared to be looking in. With intent. And he failed to salute her.

She would dismiss him by email later that evening. Or get Tony to tell him on the way out.

Abbott and Credlin met regularly to review the day and to plan strategy. The encounter was typically bruising. No holds barred. Neither of them liked it. He was all “yes Boss” “no Boss”, “you’re the boss, boss” But the next day, give him an open mike on his mate Alan Jones show and he’d come out with his same old shit. Couldn’t stick to a script if it was Araldited to his bum. She was in the mood to let him have both barrels.

“We still suck in the polls”, she glowered.

“You’re kidding! ”

“Not even a dead cat bounce. We stink. Our budget stinks. You rant about terror and opinion drops further. And stop perching like a Cockatoo trying to shit. No point in getting fine furniture if you don’t relax in it.”

Credlin knew Abbott was incapable of relaxing. He lived on stress. If you stripped out his anxiety, you wouldn’t be left with much. Tics. Abbott certainly put the tics into politics! Best to sidestep the bad news in the opinion polls. Still, she felt like slapping him. Jolt him into reality. He wrote about his masturbation in his wank Battlelines but there were times when she thought he was a total wanker. Many times. And so did others. You could tell.

“Terror raids were a shemozzle!”

“I thought they went off rather well.” Abbott hated it when he found himself sounding defensive. Especially with women. Besides when Credlin was in this sort of mood, you couldn’t take a trick. Best not to try.

“No-one’s fooled. Apart from the intellectually challenged, the mentally feeble, the terminally confused and readers of Rupert’s papers. And we’ve already got them onside. They already voted for us. They are our demographic. And the idle rich and would-be rich. The aspirational voters. Wankers the lot of them.

The terror raid was as fake as a three dollar bill. It was contrived. It looked contrived. It was unsuccessful. It didn’t work. And it has created a wave of resentment. We’re getting even more off side.”

“Geez. I know what you mean. Know what you mean. All we could get is one 22 year old lunatic. One 22 year old mental defective. And we put so much work into it. Even had the police doing their own press releases with pictures. And the choppers. No looking real flash is it, Boss.”

Well, I got my point across in the House. Great speech the unit did for me. Statesmanlike.”

“You sounded like a dodgy undertaker reading someone else’s badly-written, lame obsequies. And all that: they-hate-our-freedoms-shit. That was lame in the days of the Korean War. ISIS is tech-savvy. They have billions of dollars. Many of ’em have enjoyed Western freedoms. They have thousands of recruits from other countries who … ”

“Well, at least we’ve got Shorten on the payroll.” Abbott cut Credlin off.

“Don’t get me started,” Credlin snorted and poured herself another flute of champagne. She was glad she included flutes in the refurb. She felt like kicking the little runt in the chair.

“Shorten is a whining, mealy-mouthed moral pigmy. Wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire. No credibility, Bill. Useless as tits on a bull. A total tool. Less horsepower than my kitchen blender. Nothing to look at. Nothing to listen to. He’s redefined the charisma bypass. No integrity. He’s a right wing leftie with the Queen’s representative as his mother in law, for God’s sake. He makes Peter Dutton look credible. All he’s ever been good at is brown nosing. Cultivating the right connections. A Clayton’s. He’s the leader you have when you are not having a leader. Labor put the little whinger in to keep the seat warm for Albo. Just in case we get a crack at two terms. Which right now looks highly unlikely.”

And so it continued. The new anti-terror laws which were not new at all and entirely unnecessary were beginning to look iffy. And they’d prevented police from questioning the handful of suspects they did detain. Pyne had got himself into trouble with his travel bill. And then there was the stinking carcase of the budget so dead and stench-ridden even the blowflies wouldn’t touch it. Then there was the RET. The back bench were getting mouthy.

At this point Abbott drifted off. Thing about Credlin, he thought, apart from her natural cattle-dog authority is that she tells it like it is. Never short of a word. Not much that gets by her. Wonder how she puts up with me. Wonder how I put up with myself at times. Just hope there’s another frostie in the fridge.

8:34 AM

The coalition’s cabinet meeting was opened by Peta ‘Don’t look at me in that tone of voice’ Credlin and Prime Minister for Aboriginal Photo-Opps,Tony Abbott adding that there was a lot on the agenda. A very big agenda. A lot to get through. And if we don’t quite get to everything, today’s edition of the Daily Telegraph will, as always, carry full details of our decisions and resolutions. Abbott winked at Credlin. Credlin stared wordlessly back at Abbott for some time. She went back to sorting through a pile of high-vis vests, assorted sundry hard hats, lycra tights and tie-dyed loin cloths.

It had been an eventful coupla weeks, Emu Dancer Abbott said winking again and jerking his head in his collar like a skittish workhorse bitten by a botfly.

Been a bit on the go. He fiddled with the bottom button of his jacket. But we will get to that shortly. First job is to hand out report cards for those of us who had not yet been in to pick them up. You gutless bastards.

My but they look so big, thought Christopher Pyne who has a trained eye for educational resources. Pyne had missed his performance review when his weekly hairdressing appointment had gone over time because so much work was discovered that needed doing. And then he had been told a long but juicy story about a friend of a former member of Peter Slipper’s office. He just could not get away.

So big! Massive cards. Must have got a job lot off some reality TV, cooking, singing or some such TV show. Nice! He made a mental note to quiz the PM about his new tone of hair colouring. And did he spot some extra thatch? Was Tone intending to go down the Shane Warne path, he wondered. Who said politics was show business for “ugly” people he murmured admiring himself on the new security monitor. Hair today. Gone tomorrow.

Scott Morrison led members in prayer, fell into a trance and began to babble, speaking in tongues.   A quick thinking attendant nearby deftly inverted a nearby wastepaper basket and wedged it tightly over the minister’s head. The meeting resumed accompanied by a seductive low babbling like a neighbour’s radio tuned to the Dapto Dogs or 2GB.

Defence Minister? Peta Rottweiler Credlin scanned the assembled group, holding up an F. Do we have one?, quipped Barnaby Joyce.

“Missing in action”, Pyne chipped in. He couldn’t help himself.

“AWOL, more like it”, he added for good measure.

“Senator the Honourable David Johnston”, Abbott intoned, stepping in before the boys got too raucous.

Just like that prick not to turn up after a coupla weeks’ holiday. Gutless bastard. And I’ve been working my arse off Emu dancing and having my photo taken in the top end. As if I don’t have anything better to do with my time.”

The minister was typically nowhere to be seen.

“Nigel Scullion”

“Who?”

“Keeping a low profile!,”

Warren Truss hoped his witticism would deflect his leader’s wrath. At least he was still awake.

Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Abbott snarled through gritted teeth. He is quite good at it. His father, Dick is a retired dentist. They had wanted to call their son little Dick but agreed that another Dick in the house would be confusing.

“Scullion absent again”, he snarled to Credlin who was keeping a roll call with notes on her Blackberry. Credlin sighed rolled her eyes and arched her long neck and shoulders in withering disdain.

The meeting proceeded as meetings must. It was agreed that the terror threat and the imminence of random execution would eclipse the budget crisis, absolve the government of all sins of omission and commission and distract the nation from attempting to hold the government to account on anything. The “humanitarian war” would take care of the rest. This was met by universal random noises of approval from those present who were still fully conscious. A spontaneous outbreak of over-hearty applause ensued.

Warren Truss woke up with a start and coughed his teeth into Barnaby Joyce’s cup of tea which he was resting on his lap.

I am with you all the way, John!  Truss boomed, his a voice a stock auctioneer’s at the end of a long sale day. Clearly the Deputy PM had slumbered back into the dream time of the last coalition government where he was already banking his superannuation payout and about to embark on free travel for the remainder of his days.

Credlin hissed. Truss pretended he was just testing Siri on his iPad. He lowered his long head until his chin struck the sharp edge of a pin in his lapel causing him to rear up in pain and knock little Julie Bishop out with an elbow blow to her temple. Pyne was at her side in a flounce and gave her a prolonged kiss of life. Sucking and gurgling sounds ensued for a few seconds before Bishop screamed, eyes crossing “Take it out! And get that thing off me!” Bishop took to kicking and slapping Pyne forcefully, a gesture which found favour with the entire group except the Minister for Sturt himself.

Business resumed but not before Pyne had been dealt some further hearty random slaps and kicks from other members quick to exploit such a rare and long deserved opportunity.

All war questions would be evaded, it was agreed secondly. As too would be any questions including the illegal invasion of Syria, Assad’s genocide, Turkish shootings of refugee Kurds and lies about the existence of any government to speak of in Iraq could be augmented with empty rhetoric about our humanitarian duty. Nothing would be said about numbers in the coalition of the wilting which currently stand at two.

Lurid, graphic details of beheadings would be repeated. Random execution plots would be said to be imminent in all parts of Australia. The phrase on the best available evidence at the time would be brought into play. On no account could the words war, feet on the ground, Assad’s gassing of his own people or Saudi beheadings be brought up. The total lack of anything resembling an Iraqi government or army could safely be deemed to be the result of the Labor Party’s great big new tax on everything, their hopeless mismanagement of everything and their putting of IOU’s in the afternoon tea kitty instead of cash like everyone else.

House Leader Pyne outlined a series of very clever strategies for the day. He circulated a briefing paper on why terrorists hate our way of life and our freedoms, food, hairdressers and barber salons plus another in his capacity as shadow minister for Justice on why all civil liberties should be curtailed indefinitely.

The second was a favour to the Attorney General who has yet to learn about computers. Brandis and Abbott would explain why new anti-terror laws would effectively mean the end of the current rule of law including habeas corpus. Suspended without notice would be all other legal principles governing arrest and fair trials. Everything necessary would be prudently retired in order to facilitate Summary arrest, indefinite detention and any other legal precedents needed to replace onus of proof with suspicion of intent.

Backbenchers would ask fatuous questions of Ministers about terrorism. What was the government doing to combat terrorism? Other leaders would simply turn their backs on the opposition if questions about Ashbygate, actually eventuated as rumoured. Bronwyn “The Rhinocerous” Bishop would continue to deploy her formidable talents as speaker to prevent any semblance of fairness in debate and promised to head-butt Electricity Bill Shorten should he get within striking distance. It was generally agreed, however, to give Shorten a hearing given that he has been so useful to the coalition already. And given his performance so far in this parliament, this can only continue. Members uttering the words budget, RET or responsible competent government would be evicted immediately.