Why I, Dr Dick, Should Be Prime Minister

Attention fellow citizens!

            Today is the day I announce my intention to be Prime Minister of this fine, wild, sunburnt nation of ours! I wish to take the reins of the bucking brumby that is our island and tame that wilful beast, whipping it onwards to better tomorrows, like a monumental jockey winning the Melbourne Cup of being a great nation!

            But, why you, Dr Dick? Why should we elect you our Prime Minister? Our figurehead? Our supreme ruler? Why should you be the captain of our Spirit of Tasmania lost in the tumult ridden seas of our modern world?

            A fine question and one worth a strong answer!

            I am a man driven by his convictions. I stand by my beliefs as the swagman stands by his jumbuck – taking them to my grave. Particularly, the conviction that my convictions are in fact malleable. A man should stand by their beliefs, their ideologies, their driving philosophies, as a man should also stand by their willingness to abandon them if they are proving to no longer be profitable!

            There is nothing braver in this dusty bushranger tundra of ours than a man whose conviction is to have no conviction and thus have greater conviction than everyone else!

            I will never hold back when it comes to this fact! And I will stand by all the truths and non-truths in the unfolding narrative of my rise to power, giving credit to all ideas, for this is the genuine democracy of our thirsty archipelago girt by sea.

Should one man dispute that the Yarra is in fact turquoise, I will readily agree, even as I stare at its unique shade of brown and see therein only crystal.

Boat people are a problem, but not. Boats are the real problem, or the sea. Refugees don’t exist, except when they do.

Climate change is a myth, and also real. An energy initiative is the only way to fix it, though I do not believe in crafting an energy policy, though maybe later, if people want one.

African gangs in Melbourne are a problem, but also not, though I do and do not go out for dinner in Melbourne some nights, and African gangs may or may not be why.

Clearly, I give my ears to both sides of the debate: from the north of Queensland, to the boroughs of Melbourne's inner city, fact and truth reside everywhere, even in falsehood and lies. For I have feelings about the issues. 

            Is this not what we need today in our great Southern land of kangaroos bounding freely across the eucalpytus horizon? The ability to have many feelings about many issues? And to then articulate them? Like my feelings about immigrants. These are complex feelings, because there are lots of them. Feelings, that is. 

            Should I become Prime Minster I will continue to have many feelings, and I will boil them down, make them simpler, craft them into phrases palatable to your damper taste buds. And, like our emblematic kangaroos, I will leap from one feeling to the other, exploring them, breaking them down, giving them to you. 

            Experience? What about it?

            As I am an academic and clearly smarter than the average punter, up above while everyone is down under, experience does not matter, for my wits will travail and succeed on all the rugged Burke and Wills paths of our problems.

Even should I lack the title of doctor – which I do not – I would argue experience remains irrelevant in the echidna dirt of our storm boy washed shores. What we need is an absence of experience in governing to govern effectively. To climb the grassy knoll of our Parliament requires no mountaineering equipment. I see a lack of experience as a new start. And in the great Bathurst race of life that our nation is caught in, isn’t it an amateur we need at the wheel? One brave enough to hit those corners hard, with no prior knowledge of what can go wrong, so that everything can potentially go right? But, faster.

            A vote for me, Dr Dick, is a vote for a man with conviction, on the side of fact and feelings, with fruitful inexperience, who will be willing to put aside running Australia so that I can maintain my grip on power, as a koala hangs onto a tree when chased by a territorial cow.

            I can be that koala. We can all be that koala.

            Dicks your pick.