ian mcdougall
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  • Out & about
  • Grumpy Old Fart
PictureJOHN HOWARD - Fox Sports photo
How ’ard can it be?

Come on John – how ’ard can it be
To give battlers a fair go
You might think you’re a good sport
Sitting for free in the best seat on the grounds
Soaking up the compliments of your corporate clowns
Watching cricketers and footballers
Who get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars just to entertain us
While you bring in workplace “reforms”
That disempower the unemployed, the lowly paid, the battlers, single parents, shiftworkers
That disenfranchise the people who do the real work but who don’t get paid anywhere near enough
Teachers, disability carers, child safety workers, nurses,
And then sit back smugly, silently watch the politicians vote themselves salary increases
To pack their retirement-pension purses.

Come on John  - how ’ard can it be
To be fair dinkum
Johnny the liar
11 years of arrogance, feigned ignorance, turning the blind eye and Beattie-style backflips
Children overboard
Interest rates
Non-core promises
The once mighty Murray
Uranium sales to India

Come on John How ’ard can it be
To open your eyes
11 years of ignoring, excusing, encouraging racism
For decades, blackfellas fled in terror screaming
“Gubba man coming!” “It’s the Gubba man!”
When the government raided camps to steal their children.
You’re the new Gubba Man, Prime Minister
How ’ard can it be, to say …sorry.

Come on John, how ’ard can it be
To be the leader we need to have
You’re only a big man when you’re standing in front of a fairground mirror
Years of being second string, of being beaten by the polls, beaten by Labor, beaten by your own party
Is this revenge, Prime Minister?
For the years of schoolyard and backroom taunting
When they called you
An obnoxious little snot.
Times change.
People don’t.

© eoin macdhugail 2007




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