GO WEST, LIFE IS FRUITFUL THERE

By Pearl Bullivant on July 17, 2017 in People

There has to be more to life than loitering around Bondi Junction, aimlessly annoying frantic yummy mummies hot-trotting it to the 9am Bikram yoga class. So I’ve opted to put aside this tedium to jet over to the posher climes in Perth, to the burbs inhabited by Twiggy Forrest and the Big G.

Once there I intend to hire a flatbed truck, leap on the tray (attired in high-viz and hardhat) with a megaphone and disturb the peace, screeching: “Stop Cuts to Centrelink Benefits”, “Class Warfare”, and “Axe Rebates to Mining Companies”. I’ll basically be doing stuff that pisses off mega rich people (like graffiti and bill posting on telegraph poles).

Then I’ll back the truck into Julie Bishop’s nearby electoral office in the hope of using my “wealth and influence to pursue vested interests”, reminding her that Pearl represents so much more than pensioners – “I represent the hopes and dreams of thousands of Centrelink recipients who depend on miserly government handouts” – whilst accusing her government of turning Australia into a fascist dictatorship run purely for the benefit of big business.

And then I will be thrown into a paddy wagon because that’s what happens in WA to Indigenous people, protesting pensioners and, Uniting Church ministers.

It’s exactly seven years since Twiggy Forrest and the Big G were as bored and outraged as Pearl. With too much time on their hands they engaged in a similar protest, albeit ‘billionaire activism’ (i.e. rich person dummy spitting), to prevent Australians sharing in the benefits of their ‘own’ resources, via a mining tax. Accusing the then-Rudd Government of being more communist than China and then running a fear campaign that gave birth to Turnbull’s ‘jobs and growth’, the two over-stuffed mining magnates somehow won the hearts and minds of the naive masses who were truly swayed that the tax was ‘class warfare’. Seven years on we watched with the same naivety as Twiggy donated’ $400 million to causes he deems as fit and deserving in a media, celebrity, and politician filled circus act, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house – trickle-down economics at its best.

Pearl is rather averse to paying tax, but for a different reason to mining magnates. I morally object to ‘my taxes’ funding the destruction of the Barrier Reef via the construction of the Adani Coal Mine, being lavished on private schools, or getting squandered on corporate welfare. So the $400 million question is whether Australians would bestow on Pearl the same good grace as Twiggy if I indulged in a public display of spoilt brat-ism over my moral financial obligation to Australia and instead distributed my withholdings to those deemed as worthy – public education, transport and hospitals, disability and aged services, parks and recreation – i.e. those the LNP refer to as ‘leaners’. The answer is a resounding no.

Instead I would be labelled a weirdo leftie and the ATO would investigate my black-market solar energy trading scheme. In a country that prides itself on egalitarianism, there’s no place for Pearl’s form of oligarchy.