Ah, victory is sweet. It is quite splendid to finally be sitting on top of the heap, looking down on the vanquished and planning how you will bend them to your will. There can be nothing more glorious than the knowledge that the battle for Australia has been fought and won, and my side has emerged victorious.
And it is with this delicious feeling that I read David Penberthy’s report from the frontline, passing on the news that the bogans have won and the hipsters have been crushed beneath our tough, cement-crusted boots. Across the country, fixies are being thrown on bonfires and fringes brutally chopped off as the new regime takes control to put this country back on track.
The reason it is so sweet, of course, is that we bogans have been copping it left right and hindways since time immemorial. I have been a proud bogan ever since I purchased my first Shania Twain cassingle, and have felt the cruel lash of the hipster tongue, quite literally in some cases, all my life.
For the hipster is a vicious beast, devoid of decent or human feeling. When I was at high school I was mocked for my flannelette shirts worn over my commemorative Alternative Nation t-shirt. When I was at university I was mocked for my preference for Cold Chisel over Radiohead. And when I went out into the world I was mocked for the way I would go to Coles at 10pm each night to buy six king-size bags of Smiths chicken-flavoured Ruffles, a six-pack of Bundy and the latest That’s Life! And inside I seethed, but I assumed this was simply the way of the world. I assumed there was something wrong with me.
But no, this was a country-wide campaign of discrimination and harassment, as Penberthy (or "Penbo" — Penberthy is his slave name) notes: there was a systematic attempt to shame the noble Australian bogan and make him feel dirty simply because he preferred to eat at restaurants where the pictures on the walls have blinking lights.
It was a grim time indeed, a time when we lost the sense of what it means to be Australian. After all, bogans built this country — or at least the parts of it with three cars on the lawn and footy streamers on the letterbox — and they deserve to get their due.
Great bogans of Australia history include Shane Warne, Maurie Fields, Martin Ferguson and former prime minister John "Wazza" McEwen. In many ways the story of Australia is the story of all-you-can buffets and children with rat’s tails. Yet it seemed for a while that Australia was destined to be ruled by weaselly intellectual types, people who turned up their noses at V8 ute races; people who would rather go to university for six years to earn a master’s degree in medieval art than buy a new lawn-edger from Bunnings; people who didn’t even care whether their parma went on top of the chips or not.
Ah but now, the worm has turned. As Penbo reports, no longer is the most prized attribute in today’s job market a pair of soft hands and an ability to accurately quote Wes Anderson films. Today we want rough-and-ready, calloused men and women of action, which is why the blue-collar worker — or, to use the correct economic terminology, the "aspirational mullet" — is now earning much more than the lily-white latte-sipping watermelon Greens who expect people with actual jobs to subsidise their nouveau vague appreciation short courses.
So you know what that means, soft-handers? That’s right — we win. As determined by the constitution, as the most affluent earning block in society, the blue-collar sector is now in charge. Plumbers, electricians, carpenters, miners, mechanics, opinion columnists — we bogans are taking back this country and BY GOD there’s going to be a few changes.
First of all, universities — they’re gone. They do nothing, they produce no valuable goods or services, and they just sit around sucking up taxpayer money and spitting out GetUp members. They will be abolished and the campuses converted either to fitter and turner training schools or racetracks.
Secondly, the Australian Greens will now be illegal, on the basis of scientific evidence. Scientific studies show that scientists are whiny and untrustworthy, and the Greens are far too close to them, so they have to be hunted down and imprisoned before they threaten any more of our nice houses and gigantic cars.
Thirdly, no restaurant can charge more than $21.95 for ANY meal. And garlic bread should be free.
Fourthly, our armed forces will wear tracksuits at all times. They will be green and gold, and there will be massive funding injections into a programme to research a new device to easily extract a lost drawstring from inside a waistband.
Also, every home will be required to select a football team and attach balloons in that team’s colours to the house, where they will remain year-round. Additionally, parents will get a tax rebate for every child they have who walks around shopping centres in football boots.
Australia will, naturally, become a republic under president-for-life Jimmy Barnes, with elections held every three years in which only those with a proven record of down-to-earth commonsense will be granted the vote. Those with a proven record of political correctness gone mad will be sterilised. There will be a preamble added to the constitution recognising the nation’s original inhabitants and the need for them to get over themselves, and noting Australians’ strong commitment to the concept of wankers.
This is how it’s going to be, sneering hipsters. We have the money, we have the power. We won, so you can forget your arts grants, you can forget your vegan communes, you can forget your lesbian witch recruitment programs. You lost, and you shall henceforth be ruled with an iron fist, perhaps with a nice picture of Mick Doohan engraved on it. This is Australia, today. We have entered the age of the tradie and the dim sim, and you better get used to lest you be swept away on the VB tide.
It’s time to get with the program. Shut up about global warming, stop saving endangered species, start torpedoing refugee boats, and get in line to collect your McMansion. From now on, Australia’s riding on the wifebeater’s back.
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