To Arthur Sinodinos on the occasion of his exile

Senator the Hon Arthur Sinodinos AO
Assistant Treasurer (in Exile)
Senate
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600

Dear Artie

I have been distressed to read of your recent troubles following your tenure at Australian Water Holdings.

I am certain your paltry ‘compensation’ of $200,000 for two and a half weeks work per year can have done nothing to assuage your stress and worry.

I’m shocked that you, a top Tory who spent 10 years in the presence of John Howard’s eyebrows, was paid just 4 times the annual median Australian salary for 6% of the annual hours worked.

How can life’s basics be afforded on such a measly sum?

Why, $200,000 wouldn’t put an entry-level Maserati Quattroporte in the one vacant spot in my 18 port garage beside the Mean Machine 00 that I purchased from the Member for Bowman, Dick Dastardly.

Artie, you were truly 100 hours a slave!

That aside, I’m flabbergasted you managed to hold that quantity of water for so long.

I’m no leftist scientist, but I suspect there must be at least several dozen Olympic-sized swimming pools of H2O in and around Australia. What a sterling effort to hold it!

And after Gina’s last Summer Socialist Slaughter and Soirée, you know I couldn't have managed that feat. You saw the trouble I had just keeping the tonic water in my tall tumblers of Old Raj Gin!

Senator Abetz still hasn't forgiven me for spilling my drink on him while Gina had us on the dance floor for the traditional Soirée closing hokey-pokey. He kept shouting about his uncle and that I'd destroyed a precious, historical family heirloom and that I'd face 'dire repercussions'.

What a silly sausage! He shouldn't have been wearing a genuine uniform in the first place.

Plenty of other guests wore replica Nazi kit!

But I digress.

Amidst your troubles I was delighted to see Senator George Brandis, my old chum and lifelong badminton rival, vociferously defending you in the Senate.

It's not hard to see why I consider him the preeminent orator in the history of Westminster parliamentary democracy – finer that Churchill, Thatcher and Pitt the Younger when he wasn’t mired in an opium bender.

Brandis called you a great Australian and he should know. He has all 29 volumes of Andrew Bolt’s annual ‘Top Aussie Tories’!

Call me a bigot, but you must be relieved to have the support of our calm, humble and entirely non-looney Attorney-General.

But I digress.

Over the last few weeks, whilst inconsolable with concern for your welfare, I have also read of the sizeable donations that Australian Water Holdings made to conservative organisations in recent years. These apparently include $33,000 to the ‘The North Sydney Forum’ linked to Joe Hockey and $10,000 to our coalition chums in the NSW branch of the Agrarian Socialists.

Artie, I don’t have to remind you that I’ve long been considered one of Australia’s topmost Tories.

Indeed, since 1958, I've never dropped from Bolt's Top 5 (where I currently sit behind only John Howard, classic 1970s Malcolm Fraser and pre-phone card shenanigans Peter Reith).

As you know, I have long nurtured Australia’s conservative community through my generous awards and scholarships program.

My annual ‘Kick a Serf in the Spine Day’ is now celebrated in 94 countries and my popular parenting intervention program ‘Gazooks! My Child’s Joined Get-Up’ has been greenlighted for a Hollywood motion picture starring Jennifer Lawrence and the ghost of Charlton Heston.

And in June last year, I was chuffed that Rupert Murdoch himself presented ‘The Lord Lamington Perpetual Stipend for Most Arse-Lickey News Ltd Columnist’ at LNP Headquarters in Castle Greyskull.

But I digress.

Artie, for some time I have imagined a project so bewildering in its reckless ambition that I’m convinced it will render not just Ipswich, but Queensland and perhaps the Southern Hemisphere a bastion of Conservative values for eternity.

And so I seek, through you, the support of organisations such as the one you were so recently involved in.

Perhaps, if you have a free moment while addressing the Independent Commission Against Corruption next week, you might mention my request to your former employer.

For your information, I'm seeking funding in the vicinity of 136 million dollars.

I’ve included an early artist's impression of the project below.

Imagine it in gold, topped with lasers.

Yours fraternally

Lamington.

Advanced Cloaking Technology!

MEDIA RELEASE

Fake Ian Berry MP has revealed that he possesses advanced cloaking technology.

‘The Americans and Soviets got nuclear weapons from the Nazi scientists they smuggled out of Germany after the war. I put my goose-stepping boffins to another use – mastering the awesome power of invisibility!’

Dressed in a silk royal-purple bio-hazard suit, Lord Berry said he had first disappeared in 1956.

‘Initially the technology was built into a emerald-green Leyland Titan PD1 front-engined double-decker omnibus – which limited disappearing opportunities to motorways, car parks accessible with a clearance of at least 13 feet and 2 inches and meetings of the Leyland Titan Appreciation Society.'

'However, over time, the Berry Manor laboratory has miniaturised the technology.’

‘It’s amazing what homesick Bavarians will do for sauerkraut and sausage!’

Lord Berry pulled back the sleeve of his bio-hazard suit to reveal a glinting gold watch.

'Now the magic is contained in my commonplace solid-gold Rolex.’

'How clever, everyone in Ippy wears these gadgets!'

Lord Berry cleared his throat, crossed his wrists into an ‘X’ in front of his face and vanished before shimmering back into view perched atop a nearby post box, the air smelling vaguely of sulphur.

‘Easy a pie,’ he said, ‘And ever so useful.’

‘I call it the De-Lamingtonator.’

Lord Berry said that he regularly used the De-Lamingtonator to escape unwanted situations.

‘If a serf manages to cross my electorate office’s piranha moat with the intention of bothering me with some trivial incident from their life, then I can quickly dematerialise and reappear in the smoking room at Berry Manor with a tall tumbler of Old Raj gin and not a trouble in the world!’

Lord Berry said the De-Lamingtonator would have remained secret but for the Electrical Trades Union hinting at its existence in the local paper.

‘The ETU president even asked, “How do get in a conversation with the invisible man?” – well that’s exactly the point!’

‘If a mob of Trotskyist tradies come after you, invisibility is the logical response.’

‘And I say to them – and every other malcontent serf - you'll never catch me if you can't see me!’

‘There’s a little ditty that we Ippy Tories say,

‘They seek him here, they seek him there,
those sparkies seek him everywhere,
is he in Brisbane or hiding under his table?,
that damned elusive Lord Lamington!’

END

Not Dead Yet!

MEDIA RELEASE

Fake Ian Berry MP has hit back at suggestions that he is deceased.

‘There’s scurrilous scuttlebutt that I’ve joined the choir invisible!’ Lord Berry fumed.

Dressed in a mauve herringbone blazer atop khaki knickerbockers, Lord Berry suggested a number of sources of the rumours.

‘I’ve narrowed it to the ALP, the ETU, PUP, KAP, my enemies in the LNP, UNESCO, the CWA or MILF.’

‘The Moro Islamic Liberation Front, in particular, are still peeved after last year’s Ipswich Cup.’

‘While I’ve apologised for the damage to the MILF marquee, I will continue to exercise my customary right to celebrate my thoroughbred’s win with a nine canon barrage.’

Peering through his Sunday monocle, Lord Berry warned serfs not to underestimate him.

‘Despite what you may have heard, I continue to respire - repeatedly and resplendently,’ he growled, drawing a deep breath and launching into several deep-knee bends.

However, Lord Berry admitted that he had considered resignation in 2013.

‘I was at a loose end when I ran out of Labor funded projects to open.’

‘Constituent contact was pleasingly low due my electorate office’s piranha-moat and lack of phones or computers. My policy is, if you don’t see it on Downton Abbey, you won’t see it in my office!’

‘But, eventually, spending your days sipping tumblers of Old Raj gin and randomly bull-whipping serfs in the Ippy Mall stops getting your dander up and leaves a Lord wishing for more.’

At his most bored, Lord Berry admitted considering stepping aside for Countessa Tessa Hardlinger.

‘Her negative one-percent swing in Blair at the last election was truly spiffing stuff. She’s unburdened by popularity within the LNP or with party members. She a champion campaigner – whether it’s waving at cars or renting sky-writing planes. And she’s still wearing her badge!’

Lord Berry paused to remove a chunk of venison from his prized falcon Humperdinck’s beak.

‘However, a call from Federal Immigration Repulsor Scott Morrison has restored my vim and vigour.’

‘I can reveal that since early January I’ve been patrolling the Bremer River in my galleon ‘Rum Buggery’ as part of Operation Sovereign Borders, keeping Ippy safe from the scourge of asylum seekers.’

‘I assure serfs I’m here for the long haul, I’m eager to fight the next election and I’m considering reintroducing droit du seigneur in Ippy.'

END