A Nation United

By WILL SKIS

The year was 2025. Thunder rolled outside the lawns of New Parliament House in Canberra as a scrunched up piece of paper fell haphazardly next to a small office rubbish bin. Another near miss.

The newly elected President of the Republic of Australia sat with worry creasing his sweaty brow. He mopped at it with a small handkerchief emblazoned with a grand ocean liner. The thunderstorm had brought heat with it, unseasonable heat, coupled with dry lightning plaguing the countryside. The President missed the cooler thunderstorms of his youth.

Clive Palmer had been considered a joke by his political counterparts during his Senate foray a little over a decade ago. Oh how they had laughed. A wry smile appeared on President Palmer’s face as he reached for another blank sheet of paper monogrammed with his initials, next to the emu and kangaroo of Australia’s coat of arms. It was he who was laughing now. Oh yes.

The forming of the new Republic in 2022 had been a stroke of genius that the new President would not readily admit was not his own. It had propelled him to his current seat in the recently renovated Australia-shaped Presidential Office where the old Australian Houses of Parliament had once stood. The retained word ‘Parliament’ in the title of New Parliament House was largely ornamental - for the populism gained from the sense of nostalgia that many Australians still had for the traditions of yesteryear. That, and it helped less-informed Aussies understand the change.The forms and features of the old parliament had been abandoned and replaced with new legislative and executive bodies that dealt directly with the President. Clive had financed the lavish renovation to the buildings himself, as a sort of larger-than-life imitation of the United States’ Star-Spangled Office.

President Palmer had taken a fancy to the similarly redecorated Oval Office on his first diplomatic mission to a frail (yet sprightly) President Macaulay Culkin soon after his inauguration. The Republican President Culkin had taken Clive and a select few other world leaders on a Willy Wonka-esque tour of the New White House, which had been converted partially into a mega-mall sponsored by Wal-Mart in order to cover the national debt. This had delighted Clive very much.

But no, the Republic of Australia had been a result of a great many things, not least the chaos outside his (and most Australians’) windows. There had been a lot of underhanded schemes and back-room deals to change the political landscape before the real, environmental landscape had changed. The extreme weather was just the tip of the iceberg.

President Palmer winced as soon as he thought the word ‘iceberg’. The ironic events of 2019 still seemed fresh. It had not been his best publicity stunt. It had taken a lot of money under the table to Governor-General Murdoch to cover that one up.

What worried Clive, as he feverishly spilled his thoughts onto yet another page, wasn’t the escalating weather events, but the crumbling and defeated society which he had found himself in charge of. The society he had to speak to in… he looked at his watch. Five minutes. He had to put all his patented inspirational charm on in this address. His pen scribbled faster.

The Palmer United Party had sat in the shadows of parliament for years as the former top dogs of the Australian political system, the Liberal and Labor parties, bickered uselessly at one another about which member of the British monarchy had been made a Knight or Dame, or which hashtag to embrace on social media. They had grown steadily out of favour with an increasingly frustrated population. A burgeoning population, growing faster than ever thought possible. (Who’d have thought the terms worldwide exponential population growth would have turned out to be so important? Clive disliked politicians who spoke in those sorts of terms. ‘Why spend a fortune on five dollar words?’  he always liked to ask.)

A sharp rapping on the Australia Office door derailed President Palmer’s train of thought. “Is it time, Jenny?”

“Yes, Mr. President,” his assistant’s voice rang back. “The throng has grown in the last hour, and apparently hundreds of new viewers are joining the YouTube stream every second.”

Clive stood up and exhaled nervously. He surveyed the Presidential office, sweeping his gaze from the Velociraptor skeleton in the far corner, over the myriad scrunched up pieces of paper on the green-and-gold carpeted floor, finally to his latest speech attempt before him on his gilded desk.

The door knocked again. Clive re-read his final words, and decided they, too, weren’t good enough for today’s speech. It was time to speak from the heart. He picked up the paper, scrunched it up, and threw it at the rubbish bin. It almost made it.

The President walked to the double-doors that opened out onto a balcony nestled in the Great Australian Bight area of his office, swinging them open. The resulting cacophony from the crowd below sitting on the lawn was almost deafening. Cheers, yells, boos, cries for help, and angry calls for him to resign all coalesced into one roar. Clive immediately regretted not having been able to come up with the right words for even a little bit of his speech. He raised his hands in an attempt to silence the crowd, and to their credit, the din quietened significantly.

“G’day to all my fellow Australians, new and old,” began the President, hearing his words echo a half-second after he said them. The YouTube live stream was being transmitted across the globe. That would be annoying. He made a mental note to speak slower and more methodically.

“I am here before you today, speaking as your President, to mobilise our great nation.... strengthen us, for a big challenge ahead of us.” The crowd once again became loud, however Clive was thankful to be given a moment to decide how to properly phrase the next part of what he wanted to say. Who knew being a politician actually IN power would be so hard? Clive much preferred just waiting for the other blokes to stuff up or say something wrong.

“Our challenge, is one that we as a society are capable of facing, and it is one that we must do together, as Australians united with a common purpose.” The President scanned the crowd and saw the Orwellian double-speak and political weasel words were having the desired effect; the crowd looked wary and confused.

“We have had significant success in the short time that the Palmer United Party has been elected to lead this great nation, by you, the bright-eyed battlers with ANZAC spirit and a desire for mateship amongst a multi-cultural landscape. Since introducing our $19.95-a-week government service subscription scheme with free mobile phone app, we have reduced the amount of hospitals closing in metropolitan areas by a significant nine per cent, and our new nuclear powered wind farms are well on their way to providing enough power to the grid to meet our mining KPIs.”

The mention of ‘mining’ riled up the crowd once more, with jeers and angry swear words filling up the moments in which the President was choosing his next words carefully. His abolition of the mining royalties scheme, despite increasing his net worth threefold, had been his biggest media blunder since twerking in front of Kyle Sandilands. He struggled for a topic to begin anew with. Why hadn’t he written anything down? Good news, good news, what could he tell them which was actually good?

Raising his hands to quieten the crowd once more, Clive was suddenly struck with an overwhelming sense of his own power. Far from being a foreign sensation, Clive had relished any time he had felt in control of things from a very young age; it filled him with a raw confidence that had navigated him through business power lunches and senate backroom deals as much as it had given him the courage to seek his current station in life. His tremulous voice had become strong and powerful. It was time to lead the nation.

“Our big challenge, Australia, has been overcome. You have elected me and my party to take care of the nation, and that is exactly what we have done. As you continue to experience the benefits of your weekly Palmer government mega-subscriptions, including tri-monthly visits to the soon-to-be-opened Jurassic Park III, coffee and chocolate coupons, and lower tollway fees for your flying cars on our overcrowded SkyRoads, we can continue to abolish taxes, and return your lives to a state of economic freedom that once made this country great!” Clive had paused for emphasis on the last word, and thumped his chest and raised a fist in the air in the patented Palmer Salute. The crowd roared with approval and many reciprocated the gesture.

“With my new executive powers I aim to solve the problems that have riddled this great sunburnt land for decades with no solution offered by your pathetic previous governments!” The President’s heart was pounding in his chest, but there was no stopping him now.

“My asylum seeker Snowy Mountains Scheme II has produced thousands of jobs and dramatically lowered the burden on our neighbours in Papua New Guinea! My diplomatic relations between hostile nations has defused every sticky situation I have encountered, including my recent successful negotiations of the free citizenship policy to residents of Papua New Guinea! The opening of nineteen new hybrid power plants has all but ended debate on which energy source is best, because now they’re all being used to power the others! The environmentalists claiming that my shark cull had destroyed ecosystems by removing the apex predator were SILENCED when my research departments introduced the genetically engineered MegaSharks into Australian waters, which are proving to be twice as efficient as normal sharks! And teaming up with Al Gore, we have just finished shooting the documentary that will single-handedly reverse the dreaded bushfires and droughts we are experiencing!”

The crowd was frantic now, yelling and screaming with such such force that the President could not be sure they were happy or angry. He decided he didn’t care. His heart was beating faster. Years of cholesterol abuse were catching up with him.

“You, the people of our newly powerful Republic of Australia, voted for me because I will not be bullied, not by my opponents, not by the Chinese bast-- er, the Chinese, not by anyone! We will rise up stronger, more dedicated, and more invincible than ever! THAT is my promise to you, the people of Australia!” The president thumped his chest, grabbed the microphone raised it high in a Palmer Salute, and did what he’d always wanted to do since he was a teenager: drop a microphone on a grand stage in front of a legion of screaming fans (Clive preferred the term ‘fans’ to ‘voters’.) With that, he whirled around and strode off the balcony, slamming the double doors behind him.

The crowd’s roar was muted as soon as the doors were shut, and Clive Palmer sank back against them, trembling with excitement and feeling dazzled by his own oratorical prowess. Yes, this one was a good one. He began to laugh. Before more than a few hearty guffaws had emerged from his wide mouth, however, the door knocked again.

“Jenny, I’m post-speech. I’ve told you before, you’ve got to give me a minute.”

Jenny replied back with a distinctly noticeable tremor in her normally professional voice: “Sir, it’s… he says he’s your boss.”

It took a moment for this to actually process in the President’s mind. “Wait, I’m Clive Palmer. I don’t have a boss.”

It didn’t seem to matter. Clive heard the clinking of keys and quickly scrambled to stand up and compose himself. The hallway doors slowly slid open and an old man in a wheelchair was pushed into the room by a mortified looking Jenny.

Clive watched in disbelief. It was Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh.

“It’s lovely to have you in my office, your majesty, but I don’t know if you’re aware of what’s happened over the last few years… you’re not my boss. You’re in a republic now.”

The 104-year old Duke smiled weakly. “Ah my lad, you must be joking me. You’re still not aware of the deal?”

Clive began to feel frustration creeping up his face. “What do you mean, old man? What deal?”

“Well, you might not be as in charge of this whole country as much as you think. I was informed by Christopher you were… aware of this?” Philip punctuated his sentence by hacking into a tissue as he reached in his pocket for a Werther’s Original.

Palmer did not need to ask which ‘Christopher’ Philip was referring to. Biting back a mouthful of angry expletives, he turned to Jenny. “Can you ask my Vice President to come in here, please?”

Within a few awkward moments, Vice President Christopher Pyne walked in beaming, wearing a bright yellow tie embossed with a PUP logo. “Hello, Mr. President, that was a rousing and wonderful speech. And Sir Philip, so nice to see you!” He ushered Jenny out and closed the office door.

“You told me, Christopher, that we would finally be a nation united. You told me that the new executive branch would have me at. The. Top.” A quiet fury overwhelmed the President, taking away whatever may have been left of his post-speech euphoria. “Why has this former Knight of the Realm of Australia come to me claiming to be my ‘boss’?”

Vice-President Pyne gave one of his trademarked sardonic grins. “Well, Mr. President, uhh, maybe after your wonderful address, now is the time for a little chat.” He motioned toward the small sitting area near the Tasmania area of the Presidential Office.

“Look, Chris, I’m pretty busy actually, I just gave a speech and I have to deliver on a whole lot more of my executive orders, so if you could just nip this in the bud, that’d be great.” Clive sat down in his desk chair and adjusted the little lever so he could recline. He hoped it made him look relaxed as opposed to a Bond villain without a cat.

“Well, Mr. President, ahh, the thing is…” Pyne fidgeted nervously. “The thing is, he’s kiiind of still correct. When you and I were conspiring to take down the government a few years ago, there was one teensy detail that I may have neglected to mention to you.”

Clive looked from his Vice-President, to Philip and then back again. “...well? What is that?”

Christopher Pyne walked over to a bookshelf and picked up a large volume from the end of a higher shelf. “Well, if you can cast your mind back, Clive, to when we were working together around about ten years ago to undermine the other parties? And I was looking through all the bylaws of the parliament, trying to find a loophole? Well, it turned out that Tony had been doing the same thing at the time. I found this whole raft of laws that only apply if someone is a Knight or a Dame of the realm, is royalty... and they apparently supercede all national sovereign laws and authorities.”

Clive was perplexed. “What the hell do you mean? Give me that.” He snatched the volume from Chris and read:

BY ORDER OF HIS MAJESTY GEORGE III, KING OF ENGLAND

I hereby decree that the unkempt southern colonies will be ruled by a council of my finest knights and dames, and they shall have divine authority over the land, its resources and its peoples from now until time immemorial. Furthermore...

The paper continued on at some length but the words were too old-fashioned to hold the President’s interest very long. He slammed the tome on the desk and looked up at the two men in his office who were watching his reaction with interest.

“The whole point of a republic, Christopher, was that we shed the old masters, and we rule ourselves. That’s what you said over and over ten years ago when you helped me with our coup. You were going on about how we had to detach ourselves from the monarchy and seize power, it’s how you won me over!”

Pyne, true to form, did not look sheepish in the slightest. “Well, it was always my plan. And for what it’s worth, we were successful. Mostly. A lot of the older parliamentary processes and laws simply can’t be overturned until we get our Senate to look at them… and it would be an enormous political disaster if you let this knowledge of the true reasons for the Knights and Dames thing out into the public. They’ll crucify you. And you’re still the President, sir. That counts for a lot. We just have to … you know, consult with the people at the top of the chain.” He motioned with a sideways nod to Prince Philip, who appeared on the verge of a nap in his wheelchair. Clive Palmer coughed loudly and the Duke awoke with a start.

“Look old man, I don’t know what you’re playing at, but we’re not recognising royalty around here anymore,” fumed Clive Palmer, President of Australia. “I’ll take this to the senate, political reputation be damned. I am the highest executive authority in this country, and no Knight or Dame is going to take that away from me!”

“Ah my dear boy, you’ll come around in time,” said Philip, opening another lolly. He popped it in his mouth. “They always do. We just need to make sure everything you do, is in the best interests of all of us. That’s how we look at it. Now, this Office won’t do for my quarters, I will need far more accessibility… Tony always took care of me that way, now where is that chap? A fine fellow.”

Clive Palmer’s fury could no longer be contained. As he opened his mouth to begin a monumental hissy fit that he didn’t care would not look Presidential, Christopher stepped in between the two men with his hands up in a peacemaking gesture.

“Mr. President, I can assure you, you still retain much of the power here, it’s just that Tony Abbott saw us coming, sort of... In a way. He didn’t know what exactly we were doing, but he put the Knights and Dames clauses into the legislation and copped a lot of media flak for it, just so that we wouldn’t ever be able to have absolute power to run the country. He cemented a few 200 year old laws a decade ago, and now we’re paying for it. But we’ll find a way to work around it, sir. We always do. Just think of it as… another minor obstacle for our cultivation of this great nation.”

The Vice-President, looking pleased with his rhyme, turned to the Duke of Edinburgh, who was on the verge of nodding off again. “Come on, Sir Philip. Let’s get you some rest and we can talk about the week’s itinerary.” He grabbed the handles of his wheelchair and began to lead him out the door. Philip looked up and began asking rambling questions. “Can we go fox hunting? Do you colonials even have foxes over here? I used to be quite the shot, you know. I will have to sire a new horse however, that fat man over there dropped a microphone on mine as we were arriving. Give it quite a spook. Where are the stables here? I should like to inspect them.”

Clive didn’t hear the answers as the two exited and the door was quickly shut behind them. He stared down at the old decree, trying to find some loophole that meant he could have his country back. Bloody royals! They always had their fingers in everything. He supposed they hadn’t created an empire that spanned half the world without knowing how to keep power in their hands. Pah! So much for a nation united. So much for his republic. So much for being a saviour for the working man. He felt his hands shaking and he slammed a fist on the old tome, and the brittle page ripped easily. In a fit of anger, he scrunched up King George’s apparently-still-binding decree into a tiny ball. He turned to his rubbish bin, lined his shot up and threw it with an angry grunt. It nearly made it in.

WRITER’S DISCLAIMER: The writer of this piece, WILL SKIS, would like to acknowledge no ill-will toward Mr. Clive Palmer. This article spawned from a random musing about what Clive Palmer would be like in charge of Australia, which originated in Will’s own brain. It is a light-hearted and tongue-in-cheek piece; thus any deep and meaningful social commentary discerned from this text is probably your fault as a reader.