wanted for crimes against humanity, honesty, decency

 

wanted for crimes against humanity, honesty, decency

for the series Men Who Made Australia Worse

 

Little Johnny Howard

aka

Monster Once-was-Prime

aka

the Cunning Drainpipe Rat

the Rabbit in the Headlights

 

wanted for war criminal

little worm of a man, little slug

 

wanted for mean, mean, mean

his dream for Australia –

take the colour away

 

Pauline Hansen sprang fully armed

from his nethermost thoughts

his unspeechables

 

wanted for drowning the babies

for throwing them overboard

 

he has made us much worse

made us to have business numbers

made money the all-measure

 

I have the prisoner now

by the rules of the dream

 

he is a cancerous growth

how much less he made us

little rodent man, all scurry

inheritor of conquests

inheritor of denials

Little Johnnie – the great gallipolizer

 

how he hates the arts! the ABC

letters are his enemy

 

all those words hidden under his breath

cleanshaven, but the eyebrows grow over him

they are the burning bush of his Bible

 

nice suit, the bigot's under there

he was made to our measure

 

and are our hearts so dark?

wanted for the tablet bearer of Tories

he made us forget who we are, could be

 

so middle class, nice, so white

scratch under for the cannibal heart

rub the Gollum tum

 

his precious

three million kilometers square

all stolen and he won't say sorry

 

little man

wanted for making all of us smaller

mean, mean, mean

 

set us back a long long way

 

he threw the truth overboard

 

lying little man, meek emperor

Scroogest of all prime monsters

 

he is a weapon of mass destruction

dark of heart all the way back to your childhood

God save the Queen!

 

wanted! the master criminal apoplectic with our fears

 

the blacks!  they're going to bail us up

the shanty edge of our hearts is rising

comes at us with tin for the sun

better form the wagons in a circle

good thing we have powerful friends

and buy the ranch next door

 

I am his judge

I put on the black rag

I stare into his blinking doubts

 

just a dream

just a dream

o it's fun to catch him like this