[BITList] The White Telephone

[John Feltham]

FELLOW Australians! Diplomats and politicians come and go - but I'm still here.

I am very proud of the fact that when most people in the Overseas Community think of Australia they always think of me.

I have grown to be a bit of an icon, a symbol and a role model, but that's what you have made me, so I've got a huge responsibility.

And in case you haven't noticed, I have resisted all efforts to put me on a pedestal, even though I'm sitting on one now as I write this thoughtful composition.

I've also resisted an enormous amount of pressure to put me on the stamps and the money because grandiosity has never been my thing and I have seen many a fellow politician, man of the people or captain of industry come to grief from being, quite frankly, up himself.

There's an old Asian saying which, roughly translated, says: "The higher the monkey climbs, the more you can see of   its arse."

What a sensitive analysis that is of the politicians' downfall or hubris (to employ another Asian epithet).

I yield to none in my abhorrence of fancy phrases, and we of the Left have never been too proud to flaunt our ignorance.

The very spelling of the words "Labor Party" is a tribute, if you like, to an anonymous bloke of yesteryear who was not afraid to depart from the traditional spelling of the word "Labour", rebranding our beloved party in homage to our dyslexic American cousins.

When we helped the Seppos (Septic Tanks) to victory in World War II we never thought that one day we'd be saying "Enjoy!" to our wives and kids at the breakfast table, or "Hi you guys!" to the sheilas at the reception desk at my office.

That's something I love about Australia - our adaptability to overseas trends in human intercourse.

I've always been at the sharp end of intercourse, in any form, and though I yield to none in my abhorrence of sexual harassment in the workplace, there is a way of doing it which most of my research assistants over the years have found totally acceptable.

I guess Australia has got a healthy self-esteem and we recently paid Oprah Winfrey a bundle to come Down Under and give it a bit of a boost. I personally persuaded her to say "Australia is the greatest country in the world" on the steps of the Opera House and it didn't cost the Australian taxpayer much more than one day's unemployment benefit and child support for the entire Aboriginal population of Australia.

I was jetting in to Sydney last year, having represented my homeland at an international cheese-sniffing convention at Gorgonzola in Italy, when the Pom next to me asked me if I could hear a distant thumping. "What's that rhythmic pounding?" he inquired, and since I wasn't doing a Ralph Fiennes in the nearest restroom with a horny little flight attendant, I was as mystified as he was. "Could it be kangaroo is down there?" said the stupid bastard. "No, mate," I said. "It's 22 million Australians patting themselves on the back!"

I love Australia because like America in the olden days anyone can rise to the top. We recently had a Prime Minister called Kevin - where else in the world could that happen?  Now we've got a red-headed woman. She's got a nose like a woodpecker and a cushion up the back of her dress but she's very nice until she opens her mouth. The Lord be good to her.

My services have been called upon to groom her for international exposure and I've been as busy as a Brisbane mop-shop trying to teach her the rudiments of elocution - doing a Geoffrey Rush on the poor old PM.

I got to know Oprah quite well while she was out here on the Australian taxpayers' payroll and I started to see this wonderful country through her eyes.  She was particularly impressed by our burgeoning pillow-biting community.

"We've got them in the States too, Les," she said, "but this is ridiculous."

I tried to point out to her that we Australians only discovered sex about 53 years ago and since then we've been trying to make up for lost time.

We knew the rudiments, and even some of the rude rudiments, but only in the past few decades have my countrymen studied and put into practice the small print on the toilet wall.

She wanted to see the Outback even after I told her that most Australians give it the big miss, particularly since it's cheaper to get drunk in Bali.

When she left our shores she took me to one side and dumped an assortment of plastic boomerangs, Ken Done tea towels, wallaby scrotum duffle bags and goanna jaw money clips as well as Tim Winton and Bryce Courtenay paperbacks and an indigenous digital didgeridoo in my lap. They'd all been given to her at official functions.

"For God's sake get rid of all this crap please, Les!" I managed to drop most of it over the side of the Manly ferry one night but I hung on to a pair of cane toad cufflinks for ceremonial occasions.

I have never stuffed a swag, boiled a billy or humped a jumbuck. I've never chucked a boomerang, climbed Uluru Rock and the Sydney Harbour Bridge or gone down to Penguin Island to take photos of the Jap tourists.

I like a beer, but I'm really a single-malt man, or even a quadruple-malt man, and pies and sauce for breakfast are not   compatible with the powder blue polyester and cashmere-blend suit with hand-stitched lapels.

The last time I tried a pie I yodelled so violently I lost my Order of Australia down the white telephone.

But I love Australian women and I let them know it too when Lady Patterson isn't on the prowl or having one of her episodes.

If I ever politely suggest anything a bit Continental and off the beaten track to a lovely young research assistant, our Aussie sheilas have got a lovely way of smiling and articulating that universal Australian phrase, "Not a problem".

I love Australia and I'm glad they sent my great-great-great-great grandfather Ebenezer Patterson out here in the olden days on a trumped-up charge of surprise sex.

I am as proud as buggery to represent this magnificent land of ours overseas.

God Bless Australia - I only wish we owned it.

 



ooroo



 


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