In a post-election dystopia, veteran Kerry O'Brien hunts NXT-16 crossbenchers
MARGINAL RUNNER
I was eating Pho at the Hong Hau Vietnamese Restaurant in Kingston when Antony Green tapped me on the shoulder. “O’Brien. Malcolm.” he stated, gesturing to the waiting Comcar. As we rode the government’s public-private very fast bullet train from Canberra to Point Piper, Antony folded a how-to-vote card into an origami fox. I kept quiet. It was no use pressing Antony for results he wasn’t ready to declare.
Malcolm’s agenda was falling apart. His leather jacket lay crumpled on the floor and his breath smelled like he’d been double-dissolving his liver in single malt whiskey. He wouldn’t be out the door before midnight in this condition.
“Siddown Kerry” he muttered. “I’ve got six crossbenchers walking the streets. Jumped my election campaign. Killed the sitting members, crash landed in Canberra.”
“Embarrassing,” I commented.
“No, not embarrassing, because I’m not going to make any deals. You’re gonna find them, and you’re gonna get their support for my government before any results are announced!”
“I don’t work here anymore. Give it to Tony Jones” I said. “He’s good”.
“I did” scowled Malcolm. “He can text a little, long as no-one unplugs his twitter feed. Not good enough.” He gestured to the wall-mounted plasma screen television.
On the screen, a smooth, silver-haired journalist interrogates a man with a cowboy hat.
“The Great Barrier Reef lies there, bleaching in the hot sun, but you’re not helping, Bob. Why is that?”
“Whaddya mean I’m not helping? I’m puttin’ a bounty on the head of every crown of thorns starfish, I’m transplantin’ coral from the Red Sea, I’m demandin’ subsidies for ethanol production…”
“I mean you’re not helping, Bob! The reef is lying there, dying from global warming and agricultural runoff. Why aren’t you stopping it?” A bead of sweat trickled down Bob’s face, but perhaps it was the Queensland heat.
Abruptly, as if an ‘on air’ switch had been flipped, the smooth man relaxed. “They’re just questions, Bob. They’re sent in by members of the public! Now. Describe, in single words, only the good things that come into your mind about… your rural communities?”
“My rural communities?” Bob repeated. “I’ll tell you about my rural communities.” Gunshots exploding. The smooth man thrown back in his seat, blood seeping from his mouth. “I’ll… take that… as a comment…” he whispers. The video cut out as the screams of the carefully vetted and balanced studio audience began.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “They can’t form a government. Why would they come here?”
“The founders knew we might have this problem”, Malcolm muttered. “So they built in a failsafe. Three year electoral term. But the latest models, these NXT-16s; they can develop their own policy platforms in that time! Some of them think they can work the system to get a six year term, maybe more.” I shook my head.
“This is a bad one.” Malcolm growled. “The worst yet. I need you, O’Brien. I need the old fox. I need your magic.”
“I was quit before this election, Malcolm” I retorted. “I’m twice as quit now.”
“You stop right there, pal!” yelled Malcolm, his Prime Ministerial authority almost returning. “You want your taxpayer-funded ABC superannuation package, or you want to live on a pension that fails to keep up with the cost of living? You know the score! If you’re not on Insiders, you’re little people!”
“No choice, huh?” I smiled ruefully.
“No choice, pal.” confirmed Malcolm. “Now, they’ve got one of the NXT-16 crossbenchers in Adelaide. Get over there and run the machine on it.”
“And if the machine doesn’t work?”
Malcolm said nothing.
I stared out the window as we descended to Adelaide. Great puffs of black smoke rose from burning automobile manufacturers. Immense church towers combined with lack of economic activity made the place look like a giant mausoleum. Inside, I watched a sleek, hydrodynamic shape flit between ports.
“Do you like our submarine?” Click of heels. Female voice.
“It’s artificially subsidised?”
“Of course it is.”
“Must be expensive,” I said awkwardly.
“Very.” Pause. “I’m Rebekha.”
“O’Brien.”
“It seems you feel our work is not of benefit to the public.”
“Representatives are like any other machine, either a benefit or a hazard. If they’re of benefit it’s not my problem.”
“Can I ask you a personal question?” I nodded. “Have you ever called a seat against a representative by mistake?”
“No.”
“But in your position, that is a risk”. Was she trying to make me doubt the ABC’s impartiality?
“Is this to be an alignment test?” boomed a voice from the centre. “Candidate declamation, the so-called ‘rush of blood to the head’ response? Fluctuation of the preferences? Involuntary dilution of the senate quota?”
“Mr O’Brien, Senator Nick Xenophon” Rebekha interjected smoothly.
“We call it Vote Compass for short” I said to Xenophon.
“Demonstrate it.”
I glanced around. “Where’s the crossbencher?”
“I want to see it work on a voter. I want to see a negative, before I provide you with a positive.”
“On you?”
“Try her.” He gestured to Rebekha.
I set up the easy-to-use online quiz and read her the first question. “You’re watching television. You come across a full-screen grab of a former chief of staff lying on Sky News.”
“Is this testing whether I’m a representative or a Credlin, Mr O’Brien?” Rebekha snapped.
“Just answer the question,” I growled.
The questions rolled on until the Vote Compass produced its result. I sat back, stunned. Rebekha glanced at Senator Xenophon. “Would you step into the lobby for a moment, please”, Xenophon directed. There was no mistaking who held the puppet strings.
When she was gone, I leaned forward, bewildered. “How can she not know what she is?”
“Protectionism is our goal, here at Team Xenophon”, the Senator stated. “ ‘More Centrist Than Sensible’ is our motto. Our NXT-16 representatives are inexperienced, with only a few years to build up the political acumen which you and I take for granted. If we gift them with a party political structure, we can control them better.”
I stared at him. “Policies” I gasped. “You’re talking about bipartisan populist policies.” He gave me an inscrutineerable smile.
Antony and I searched the media echo chamber where the crossbenchers had hidden. Pop-up adbots streamed videos past the windows, and a booming advertorial voice was spruiking the chance to begin a new life in post-Brexit England. Antony folded a how-to-vote card into a chicken. His silence was starting to get on my nerves. A piece of paper in the bathtub caught my eye.
I held up the tattered piece of candidate nomination form. “Who wrote this?” The AEC Commissioner examined it. “Superior brinkmanship,” he hissed. “Druery’s work!” I tracked Druery down in a fish and chip shop. “You ever run a minor party candidate?” He looked at me contemptuously. “All the time, pal.” Before I could ask more questions, the M.C. boomed: “And now, for your viewing pleasure, Queensland presents - Pauline and the White Australia Policy! Watch, as she garners votes from the thinking that once ruled Australia!” I gaped at the brazen nature of the prospective Senator’s positions.
After the show, I knocked on her dressing room door and assumed my most ingratiating tone. “Hi, I’m uh, Cory Bernardi. I’m here from the Liberal Party.”
“The Liberal Party”, Pauline repeated, staring at me.
“Oh, I’m not here to ask you to rejoin the party, or get your support for our ABCC legislation - that’s not my department! No, I’m from the, uh, the Senate Inquiry into Halal Certification. You see, we’ve been hearing some reports that, uh, some farmers around here might have been getting their products certified Halal, or selling their farms to the Chinese, you know, slipping through little holes in the Foreign Investment Review Board.” She was still staring, and I could feel my façade slipping. “I mean, you’d be surprised what some Asians will pay for a piece of beautiful Queensland real estate…” I cringed inwardly.
“No”, Pauline stated flatly. “I wouldn’t”.
“So, yeah, uh” I flailed “If you feel in any way threatened by Halal snack packs, or Asian foreign investment, and you’re being silenced by political correctness, you can come to us, and we’ll send someone to apply the common sense conservativism shared by millions of Australians…”
“And that’s you?” Pauline arched a sceptical eyebrow. “Yeah!” I nodded and tried to look stupid. “You’re a dedicated Senator,” she commented. “Join me.” She tossed a One Nation how-to-vote card in my face. Before my vision could clear, she was on me. Her electoral strength was incredible. It felt like she was trying to split my right side apart, and the pressure she was applying to my house of review was making rational deliberation impossible.
That might have been the end of ‘Cory Bernardi’ if she hadn’t been distracted from her death-grip on my rural and regional areas by a passing Free Trade Agreement. Pauline sprang away and ran for the Upper House. I staggered to my feet and sent a volley of embarrassing media appearances, undisciplined intra-party spats and charges of larcenous car theft flying through the air to impact her members. When it was over, she lay still, bleeding support in the wreckage and splinters of a bygone economic model. I waved my ABC staff card at the PC from the Thought Police, and staggered off in search of a fair trade organic latte.
I prowled through the detritus filling the streets of Melbourne. Living Goth mannequins, post-hipster fashion constructs and incomprehensible coffee deconstructs, produced by the same trends Xenophon was exploiting. Bandt. He would never go Malcolm’s way. I could hear his voice, echoing around me. “Quite an experience, to live in fear of housing unaffordability and homophobia. That’s what it is, to be a Millennial.”
Without warning, Bandt smashed through what looked like a solid major-party duopoly and grabbed my throat. “This is for Steph Hodgins-May” he growled, as he broke my indicative first-preference distribution. “This is for Alex Bhathal!” I screamed as he tried to tear apart my understanding of the challenges facing Australia in the 21st century. He broke away and I pursued him to the roof. He was holding a dove. Bloody peacenik.
The marginal clouds opened, and a rain of final election results descended. The fight left Bandt and he slumped against a nearby barrista. Was this the end of the Greens’ bid for major party status? He spoke, softly, slowly.
“I’ve… seen… things, you political insiders wouldn’t believe. Pristine coral reefs bleaching off the shores of far north Queensland. I watched old growth eucalypts tower in the Telstra blackout over Launceston. All these… ecosystems… will be lost… to climate change, like… tears… in rain”. His eyes closed. The dove took flight as the agile, innovative sun beamed down, promising an exciting time to be an Australian.
Antony Green waited with the Comcar as I hurried Rebekha to the safety of the House of Representatives. “It’s too bad she won’t get re-elected” he commented, handing me a how-to-vote card folded into a unicorn. “But then again, who does?” As I considered the fate of the last four Prime Ministers, I had to agree.
I was eating Pho at the Hong Hau Vietnamese Restaurant in Kingston when Antony Green tapped me on the shoulder. “O’Brien. Malcolm.” he stated, gesturing to the waiting Comcar. As we rode the government’s public-private very fast bullet train from Canberra to Point Piper, Antony folded a how-to-vote card into an origami fox. I kept quiet. It was no use pressing Antony for results he wasn’t ready to declare.
Malcolm’s agenda was falling apart. His leather jacket lay crumpled on the floor and his breath smelled like he’d been double-dissolving his liver in single malt whiskey. He wouldn’t be out the door before midnight in this condition.
“Siddown Kerry” he muttered. “I’ve got six crossbenchers walking the streets. Jumped my election campaign. Killed the sitting members, crash landed in Canberra.”
“Embarrassing,” I commented.
“No, not embarrassing, because I’m not going to make any deals. You’re gonna find them, and you’re gonna get their support for my government before any results are announced!”
“I don’t work here anymore. Give it to Tony Jones” I said. “He’s good”.
“I did” scowled Malcolm. “He can text a little, long as no-one unplugs his twitter feed. Not good enough.” He gestured to the wall-mounted plasma screen television.
On the screen, a smooth, silver-haired journalist interrogates a man with a cowboy hat.
“The Great Barrier Reef lies there, bleaching in the hot sun, but you’re not helping, Bob. Why is that?”
“Whaddya mean I’m not helping? I’m puttin’ a bounty on the head of every crown of thorns starfish, I’m transplantin’ coral from the Red Sea, I’m demandin’ subsidies for ethanol production…”
“I mean you’re not helping, Bob! The reef is lying there, dying from global warming and agricultural runoff. Why aren’t you stopping it?” A bead of sweat trickled down Bob’s face, but perhaps it was the Queensland heat.
Abruptly, as if an ‘on air’ switch had been flipped, the smooth man relaxed. “They’re just questions, Bob. They’re sent in by members of the public! Now. Describe, in single words, only the good things that come into your mind about… your rural communities?”
“My rural communities?” Bob repeated. “I’ll tell you about my rural communities.” Gunshots exploding. The smooth man thrown back in his seat, blood seeping from his mouth. “I’ll… take that… as a comment…” he whispers. The video cut out as the screams of the carefully vetted and balanced studio audience began.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “They can’t form a government. Why would they come here?”
“The founders knew we might have this problem”, Malcolm muttered. “So they built in a failsafe. Three year electoral term. But the latest models, these NXT-16s; they can develop their own policy platforms in that time! Some of them think they can work the system to get a six year term, maybe more.” I shook my head.
“This is a bad one.” Malcolm growled. “The worst yet. I need you, O’Brien. I need the old fox. I need your magic.”
“I was quit before this election, Malcolm” I retorted. “I’m twice as quit now.”
“You stop right there, pal!” yelled Malcolm, his Prime Ministerial authority almost returning. “You want your taxpayer-funded ABC superannuation package, or you want to live on a pension that fails to keep up with the cost of living? You know the score! If you’re not on Insiders, you’re little people!”
“No choice, huh?” I smiled ruefully.
“No choice, pal.” confirmed Malcolm. “Now, they’ve got one of the NXT-16 crossbenchers in Adelaide. Get over there and run the machine on it.”
“And if the machine doesn’t work?”
Malcolm said nothing.
I stared out the window as we descended to Adelaide. Great puffs of black smoke rose from burning automobile manufacturers. Immense church towers combined with lack of economic activity made the place look like a giant mausoleum. Inside, I watched a sleek, hydrodynamic shape flit between ports.
“Do you like our submarine?” Click of heels. Female voice.
“It’s artificially subsidised?”
“Of course it is.”
“Must be expensive,” I said awkwardly.
“Very.” Pause. “I’m Rebekha.”
“O’Brien.”
“It seems you feel our work is not of benefit to the public.”
“Representatives are like any other machine, either a benefit or a hazard. If they’re of benefit it’s not my problem.”
“Can I ask you a personal question?” I nodded. “Have you ever called a seat against a representative by mistake?”
“No.”
“But in your position, that is a risk”. Was she trying to make me doubt the ABC’s impartiality?
“Is this to be an alignment test?” boomed a voice from the centre. “Candidate declamation, the so-called ‘rush of blood to the head’ response? Fluctuation of the preferences? Involuntary dilution of the senate quota?”
“Mr O’Brien, Senator Nick Xenophon” Rebekha interjected smoothly.
“We call it Vote Compass for short” I said to Xenophon.
“Demonstrate it.”
I glanced around. “Where’s the crossbencher?”
“I want to see it work on a voter. I want to see a negative, before I provide you with a positive.”
“On you?”
“Try her.” He gestured to Rebekha.
I set up the easy-to-use online quiz and read her the first question. “You’re watching television. You come across a full-screen grab of a former chief of staff lying on Sky News.”
“Is this testing whether I’m a representative or a Credlin, Mr O’Brien?” Rebekha snapped.
“Just answer the question,” I growled.
The questions rolled on until the Vote Compass produced its result. I sat back, stunned. Rebekha glanced at Senator Xenophon. “Would you step into the lobby for a moment, please”, Xenophon directed. There was no mistaking who held the puppet strings.
When she was gone, I leaned forward, bewildered. “How can she not know what she is?”
“Protectionism is our goal, here at Team Xenophon”, the Senator stated. “ ‘More Centrist Than Sensible’ is our motto. Our NXT-16 representatives are inexperienced, with only a few years to build up the political acumen which you and I take for granted. If we gift them with a party political structure, we can control them better.”
I stared at him. “Policies” I gasped. “You’re talking about bipartisan populist policies.” He gave me an inscrutineerable smile.
Antony and I searched the media echo chamber where the crossbenchers had hidden. Pop-up adbots streamed videos past the windows, and a booming advertorial voice was spruiking the chance to begin a new life in post-Brexit England. Antony folded a how-to-vote card into a chicken. His silence was starting to get on my nerves. A piece of paper in the bathtub caught my eye.
I held up the tattered piece of candidate nomination form. “Who wrote this?” The AEC Commissioner examined it. “Superior brinkmanship,” he hissed. “Druery’s work!” I tracked Druery down in a fish and chip shop. “You ever run a minor party candidate?” He looked at me contemptuously. “All the time, pal.” Before I could ask more questions, the M.C. boomed: “And now, for your viewing pleasure, Queensland presents - Pauline and the White Australia Policy! Watch, as she garners votes from the thinking that once ruled Australia!” I gaped at the brazen nature of the prospective Senator’s positions.
After the show, I knocked on her dressing room door and assumed my most ingratiating tone. “Hi, I’m uh, Cory Bernardi. I’m here from the Liberal Party.”
“The Liberal Party”, Pauline repeated, staring at me.
“Oh, I’m not here to ask you to rejoin the party, or get your support for our ABCC legislation - that’s not my department! No, I’m from the, uh, the Senate Inquiry into Halal Certification. You see, we’ve been hearing some reports that, uh, some farmers around here might have been getting their products certified Halal, or selling their farms to the Chinese, you know, slipping through little holes in the Foreign Investment Review Board.” She was still staring, and I could feel my façade slipping. “I mean, you’d be surprised what some Asians will pay for a piece of beautiful Queensland real estate…” I cringed inwardly.
“No”, Pauline stated flatly. “I wouldn’t”.
“So, yeah, uh” I flailed “If you feel in any way threatened by Halal snack packs, or Asian foreign investment, and you’re being silenced by political correctness, you can come to us, and we’ll send someone to apply the common sense conservativism shared by millions of Australians…”
“And that’s you?” Pauline arched a sceptical eyebrow. “Yeah!” I nodded and tried to look stupid. “You’re a dedicated Senator,” she commented. “Join me.” She tossed a One Nation how-to-vote card in my face. Before my vision could clear, she was on me. Her electoral strength was incredible. It felt like she was trying to split my right side apart, and the pressure she was applying to my house of review was making rational deliberation impossible.
That might have been the end of ‘Cory Bernardi’ if she hadn’t been distracted from her death-grip on my rural and regional areas by a passing Free Trade Agreement. Pauline sprang away and ran for the Upper House. I staggered to my feet and sent a volley of embarrassing media appearances, undisciplined intra-party spats and charges of larcenous car theft flying through the air to impact her members. When it was over, she lay still, bleeding support in the wreckage and splinters of a bygone economic model. I waved my ABC staff card at the PC from the Thought Police, and staggered off in search of a fair trade organic latte.
I prowled through the detritus filling the streets of Melbourne. Living Goth mannequins, post-hipster fashion constructs and incomprehensible coffee deconstructs, produced by the same trends Xenophon was exploiting. Bandt. He would never go Malcolm’s way. I could hear his voice, echoing around me. “Quite an experience, to live in fear of housing unaffordability and homophobia. That’s what it is, to be a Millennial.”
Without warning, Bandt smashed through what looked like a solid major-party duopoly and grabbed my throat. “This is for Steph Hodgins-May” he growled, as he broke my indicative first-preference distribution. “This is for Alex Bhathal!” I screamed as he tried to tear apart my understanding of the challenges facing Australia in the 21st century. He broke away and I pursued him to the roof. He was holding a dove. Bloody peacenik.
The marginal clouds opened, and a rain of final election results descended. The fight left Bandt and he slumped against a nearby barrista. Was this the end of the Greens’ bid for major party status? He spoke, softly, slowly.
“I’ve… seen… things, you political insiders wouldn’t believe. Pristine coral reefs bleaching off the shores of far north Queensland. I watched old growth eucalypts tower in the Telstra blackout over Launceston. All these… ecosystems… will be lost… to climate change, like… tears… in rain”. His eyes closed. The dove took flight as the agile, innovative sun beamed down, promising an exciting time to be an Australian.
Antony Green waited with the Comcar as I hurried Rebekha to the safety of the House of Representatives. “It’s too bad she won’t get re-elected” he commented, handing me a how-to-vote card folded into a unicorn. “But then again, who does?” As I considered the fate of the last four Prime Ministers, I had to agree.