A Single Unit of Value
Mr Morrison sat this morning in his sunny office
determined to find something to monetise.
It was clear to him that the true business
of government was to monetise things
to give opportunity to those who “have a go”.
Since there is money to be made from coal
but not from eco-terrorists (except maybe their arrest),
he put all his effort into monetising the first
and removing from currency the second.
In that context he wisely realised
that there is little money to be made from science
and none whatsoever from ecology.
He recognised the emotional pull
of domestic violence, but a lack of imagination
seemed to forbid him from monetising
those services, so he took the money away,
The women complained, but it was the men
who worked and earned more money, not the women.
So he sat, casting about for something,
anything, to monetise, because that was the business of government.
Some bleeding heart that he was tricked into meeting
had left a book of Jennifer Maiden’s poetry on his coffee table.
He grunted with disgust and threw it in the bin.
He saw the painting on the wall
and an embryonic thought was born:
he could monetise artistic creativity,
He sat for an hour trying to find a scheme
for monetising the arts, but he did not
open the Treasury report showing it was already money,
to the not insubstantial tune of eleven billion dollars.
After casting about uselessly
he decided he couldn’t monetise the arts.
With not even a crocodile tear of regret
he decided to make money by abolishing
the Department of the Arts,
after all, if it can’t make money
it shouldn’t be given a single dollar,
or a single particle of government oxygen
to recognise such a useless endeavour.
Somewhere in the Western Suburbs
of Sydney, a poet sits silently,
alone under a dark and sullen sky,
wondering why we give oxygen
to a man who would lead the country
to a place of such degradation, violence,
and the absence of the heartfelt
humanity incarnate in the arts.
He wondered about moving to New Zealand.
