Fast forward 154 years, 6th June 2013 is 100 days until September 14th, the day of the Australian Federal Election. September 14th 2013, in my mind, will be remembered as the Slaughter of the Australian Labor Party, the ascension of Anthony John "Tony" Abbott as Prime Minister of Australia and the day things really went shit for the country. Short of an alien invasion, there is little to save Federal Labor from a electoral massacre that would make George R R Martin cringe.
Reports from Canberra indicate that Labor Parliamentarians are resigned to their fate. Whispers of a leadership challenge are becoming an audible murmur. KRudd has been clearly marked as the hearthstone from which Labor's phoenix shall rise but nothing is certain. Nothing is certain except that Australia's first female Prime Minister Julia Gillard is quite possibly the only Australian who could reasonably be cast as a no make up special effects required zombie character in The Walking Dead. She is by all reports and polls, very unpopular. How unpopular?
Julia Gillard is so unpopular, Morman missionaries see her and cross the street.
Julia Gillard is sooooo unpopular, people mistake her for Pauline Hanson.
Julia Gillard is sooooooooooo unpopular, Australian school kids are throwing their sandwiches at her. THEIR SANDWICHES!
Whatever you may feel about Julia Gillard, watching school kids pelt vegemite and salami sandwiches at her is just sad and undignified.
My own thoughts on sandwich throwing are:
a) I wonder if those kids made their own sandwiches for lunch and
b) clearly these kids are not Indian. As certain as Labor's demise is, no Indian kid would ever be caught throwing their school lunch.
Everyday my Mother made my school lunch. It was not that I was incapable of making my lunch (which I was) or that it was expected. In an Indian household a mother shows love for her children by ensuring that they are well fed. To reject a Mother's food is a sin that would result in swift beating (that is to be specific, a lovingly swift beating). A fat chubby Indian kid is a kid who is dearly loved by his mother. That is not to say that a skinny Indian kids are not loved. If you see a skinny Indian kid know this, his mother's smile is masking a severe psychological crisis as to why her love for her child does not manifest itself into chubby fat rolls.
My childhood household was no different to any other Indian child's household (for the record I was a fat baby, skinny child and now rotund adult) and there is little doubt in my mind that if my Mother were to have found out that I had thrown my school lunch sandwiches at anyone (let alone the Prime Minister), I would have had the brown slapped from my skin. I would have been beaten white! I would have been pulled up by ear and told in no uncertain terms that I had brought shame on my family and for weeks afterwards, when I walked into a room where my Mother was sitting, my Mother would look at me in silence, let forth a deep and long sigh, sadly shake her head and then look to her lap. There is no greater humiliation for an Indian boy than for his mother not to look lovingly upon him and had I been one of those sandwich throwing monkey's bum of a kid, that would have been my fate. In my Mother's mind, whoever threw their lunch sandwiches at the Prime Minister, totally disrespected their mother.
It is also worth noting that it is a strange twist of circumstances in that we have seen shoes and boots thrown at former Prime Minister John Howard and sandwiches thrown at Julia Gillard. I wonder in the years ahead, what will ever be thrown at Tony Abbott? A dead wombat? Board shorts? Germaine Greer? Some might argue that I am repeating myself as a dead wombat and Germaine Greer are the same thing. Why are people so unkind (maybe they are Eddie McGuire).
In the future I might find myself moved to throw something at Tony Abbott as he passes by. I'm not sure what it will be (or if I will ever get close enough), but whatever the object, one thing is for sure, it will be something that will make my Mother proud.
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