The Native Iowan

For those of my faithful readers that are not literate in regards to Politics A la’ Aus…

During one of my very first trips to Australia, somewhere in the mid 1980s, I had the TV in my hotel room on, and unknowingly was watching a session of parliament. I need to set the scene a bit… I’m visiting Aus from Solomons Islands where I was an “aid-worker”, living remote, enjoying zero, absolutely zero interaction with TV. It did not exist in the Solomons then.

So when I got my hotel room in Brisbane, I automatically turned on the boob-tube.

I know now that it is practice here for sessions of parliament to be televised. But back then, I initially thought what I was watching was some sort of spoof. A mix of Monty Python and Saturday Night Live… remember, this was the 80s.

I am watching as the speakers, Parliamentarians, yelled and heckled and laughed and shouted, and boo’ed and basically carried on like a bunch of fools/actors pretending they were the leaders of a Nation. I recall sitting there in wonder.

But I soon learned that what I watched WAS INDEED Aussie Parliament in action. It continues to this day…

Much like the night in late 1980, my brother and I are watching Saturday Night Live. Our 80 year-old grandmother is watching with us. She walked in as Chevy Chase and Jane Curtain were doing their “Weekend Update” skit. Granny thought it was the late news, but when Chevy started sticking his tongue out and making lewd gestures, as my brother and I laughed foolishly, Granny figured it out and left the room a bit peeved.

Now, over 40 years later… no longer a stranger in a strange land… a fully fledged Aussie (and proud of it)… I still find the televised sessions of Parliament to be a very comic and tragic skit.

The Political Scene here in Australia is still farcical.

Reminds me of an old line… “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”

I do believe that the dunces have been in control here in Aus way too long.

More later