Today’s Melbourne Cup had me in tears. It’s been a long day. I drive the truck tonight so I woke up early and went out on my desert sled through the overgrown roads of the Southern Tablelands before planting the tomatoes, zucchinis, cucumbers, and squash. There’s a rule in this region that you don’t plant your veges before Melbourne Cup Day.
Is there anything more Australian than managing your vege garden by the Melbourne Cup? Perhaps that Anzac Day signals the end of harvest and the day before which one should never light their fireplace.
Robbie Williams apparently loves Australia. He’s not the only one. Other famous Brits like Leo Sayer love this place, too. His opening of the Melbourne Cup had me in tears. Nup to the Cup? Nup, to you, Wokerati. In the words of Clint Eastwood’s Marine understudies in Heartbreak Ridge, ‘Go away now. Just go away.’
During the Great Depression, many Australian heroes rose to prominence. Phar Lap at the 1933 Melbourne Cup. Sir Donald Bradman, the Coota boy who went to school in Bowral. Sir Walter Lindram, the billiards player who dominated the game. Not enough Australians know about him, but like his contemporary heroes, they tried to change the rules to beat him, and he prevailed.
Today, the Reserve Bank raised interest rates. Again.
The Treasurer is on the nose and has fallen in the polls.
The Prime Minister is overseas. He doesn’t talk about domestic politics when he is overseas. Lucky. If he did, we’d be asking him how he managed to cock up the Lucky Country so badly.
We’ve been listening to Labor’s rot for far too long. It hasn’t helped that the Coalition got nervous about their principles, so they acted out parts of Aesop’s fable The Man, the Boy, and the Donkey with gusto.
Speaking of fables, have you heard of Labor’s fables? They go something like this:
A competition to deal with global boiling was held recently in Tuvalu, which is further than most global leaders can be bothered to go. Three turned up, the President of Timor-Leste, the Prime Minister of Mauritius, and our own Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen.
Timor-Leste brought a portable fan. Mauritius brought an umbrella hat. Both were applauded.
Bowen walked in with a car door off an EH Holden.
The other two looked at it. ‘What the bloody hell are you going to do with a car door?’
‘When it gets hot,’ Bowen said. ‘I wind down the window.’
Back home, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer had gone into melons. They were buying them for a dollar and selling them for a dollar. The melons were walking out the door.
Albanese turned to Chalmers. ‘We aren’t making any money. What are we going to do?’
Chalmers thought about it, then brightened. ‘We’d better get a bigger truck.’
Productivity, meanwhile, had fallen over. Chalmers called in the Minister for Industry and Innovation, Tim Ayres.
‘The hardcopies of those laws weigh a ton,’ Chalmers said. ‘Can you get me a wheelbarrow?’
Ayres came back with one wheelbarrow stacked on another. ‘I only wanted one,’ Chalmers said.
‘What did you want me to do,’ Ayres said, ‘f**ken carry it?’
Unfortunately, the joke is on us. Albanese wanted to make us a republic. He also went to Alice Springs to sort things out. The irony is out of control.
As the Melbourne Cup unfolded, so did Albanese’s legacy. The horse that won was purchased from King Chares III. As reported elsewhere, it has been suggested the price was north of $3 million. Queen Elizabeth II would have slapped the King upside the head after today’s result.
British-bred Point of Law was trained on the dirt tracks of Alice Springs.
I keep saying it, but you can’t make this stuff up.
During the Great Depression, Phar Lap rallied the hearts and minds of Australians who were doing it tough. Today, Point of Law brought us full circle, even if we didn’t know it.
The Reserve Bank increased interest rates again. Albanese is not only found wanting on the economy, but he is not to be found. He’s in Jamaica, man... Not only does he not hold a hose, you can’t find him when you need him.
Thank God for the Melbourne Cup. Hopefully that will provide enough of a distraction for the millions of Australians who will be doing it tough because of the worst Prime Minister and Treasurer in our history. Given Labor brought us Gough Whitlam and Paul Keating, you’d think that was impossible.
I recall my days as a Young Officer at the School of Artillery when it was at North Head. We often enjoyed the Spring Carnival at The Steyne in the Sportsman’s Bar. I recall watching the great Darren Beadman win it all on Saintly.
This year I accidentally noticed it was on again. Lucky.
As the warm fizziness of the Spring Carnival recedes and the cost-of-living bites even harder than it did yesterday, Point of Law gives me a sliver of hope. If a British-bred, Australian-trained horse can win the race that stops a nation, perhaps we old war horses can overcome the odds, too.
Only our odds are not the distance, the weight, or the track. They are Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers. May they lose the next big race sooner rather than later.
Dr Michael de Percy @FlaneurPolitiq is the Spectator Australia’s Canberra Press Gallery Correspondent. If you’d like to support his writing, please shout him a drink over at Donorbox.
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