Cabinet Reshuffle

Scene: A Liberal Party ‘cabinet reshuffle’ meeting. In attendance are ABBOT, BISHOP and JOYCE.

ABBOTT: Now, we’re all here to talk openly. This isn’t the Labor Party, you know, where the leader –

JOYCE: – Shut up, Tony.

ABBOTT: Sorry, Barnaby.

JOYCE: This meeting is eye-poppingly redundant, a point which I will demonstrate by popping my eyes out of their sockets and subsequently reinserting them. I am – quite literally – gobsmacked that such a ridiculous meeting is occurring right now.

ABBOTT: I don’t think you mean literally –

JOYCE: – Enough, college boy. Not all our mummies were flush enough to send us to Ye Olde Oxford Towne. [Sniggers bitterly].

ABBOTT: Barnaby, Julie has something important she wants to say. First, though, Julie, could you be a dear and iron this –

BISHOP: No, Tony. [Glares at him with utterly inhuman coldness and ferocious intensity.] I. Wish. To. Speak.

ABBOTT [wincing]: Meee-owww!

BISHOP: What has recently occurred is deeply unfair.

ABBOTT [in a professional tone]: Now we’re making progress. Why, Julia?

BISHOP: Because Barnaby gets to be Finance spokesman and I don’t.

ABBOTT [patronisingly, soothingly]: But you’re Deputy Leader, Julia. That’s the second most important position in the whole wide world. What more do you want? You’d get to be leader of the party if I ever went under a....truck.
[There is total silence. Abbott’s face turns ashen as he contemplates this possible future.] Of course, you could choose a more, well, ‘traditional’ portfolio.

BISHOP [sulkily]: Like what, Tony?

ABBOTT: Well, you could be minister for whaling prohibition, for example.

BISHOP: We don’t have a minister for whaling prohibition.

ABBOTT: We can make one! [Quietly]: That’d stop the sun from shining out of Bob Brown’s –

JOYCE [seething]: – The only proper place for a whale is in a fucking tuna can.

ABBOTT [agitated]: Barnaby, please. At least try to cooperate.

JOYCE [muttering]: Chowing down on those giant useless grey water-loving bastards is pretty much the only thing the Japs’ve done right since WWII.

ABBOTT: That’s enough. You just can’t say things like that anymore.

JOYCE: You thought it was piss-funny before –

ABBOTT: – I became leader. Julie?

BISHOP: Barnaby doesn’t know the first thing about economics.

JOYCE: I was an accountant before I came to this dump, Julie. You might not have heard of us: we eff about with bloody complicated numbers all day and make ‘em add up, whether they like it or not.

BISHOP: Running a country’s economy isn’t like running a household budget, Barnaby.

JOYCE: Too right it is! When my kids waste their pocket money on crap, I send ‘em to their rooms. So when Kev pisses my money away on total crap, I –

ABBOTT: Not total crap, Barnaby: climate change is total crap, remember. Except when we’re speaking in public. Then it’s –

JOYCE [mockingly]: – ‘the greatest human challenge of our time’, yeah. I read your brown paper about it.

ABBOTT [incensed]: It was a white paper, Barnaby.

JOYCE: Not after I wiped my arse on it. [Laughs uproariously while vigorously nudging Abbott.] Your Uncle Kevvie won’t let you say stuff like that anymore, Tony Boy, will ‘e? That mongrel’s got yer balls pickled in a jar beside his –

BISHOP: – I really don’t appreciate that kind of hyper-masculine language, Barnaby. And besides, we’ve both seen plenty of Tony’s –

ABBOTT [flustered]: – That’s quite enough from both of you. Julie, Barnaby knows plenty about economics: watch this. Now, Barnaby, if you have 5 oranges and I take 3 oranges, how many oranges do you have?

JOYCE: Hands off my fucking oranges, you grasping Bolshevik bastard.

ABBOTT [wearily]: It’s only a theoretical problem, Barnaby. We discussed this, remember? Nobody’s going to take your oranges.

JOYCE: You’re just like the other mob. Bleeding me white. Sucking me dry. Taking my oranges and giving them to Japanese refugees.

ABBOTT: Our refugees don’t come from –

JOYCE: Whose side are you on, anyway? All I know is my oranges are gone and now I’m bloody hungry. I know the other mob are saying that I can’t tell my squillions from my zillions. Fine. The important thing is, they’re both bloody big numbers, and there’s one thing I do know.

ABBOTT: Oh? What’s that?

JOYCE: Ten hap’orth farthings’ worth of bloody oranges won’t cover more than three pissteenths of a bushel of twice-fathomed acreage. Not within a bee’s franger – especially when the barometer’s dropped clean under threescore bars!
[ABBOTT and BISHOP glance at each other worriedly].

JOYCE: That’s real maths. For real men. Bloody metric system made everyone soft in the head. Kids don’t know how to count without taking their electric arithmicators out of their baggy pockets. Pants down round their arses of course. As usual.

BISHOP: This is what I’m talking about, Tony. Barnaby clearly presents us with a PR liability.

ABBOTT [grave]: Julia.

BISHOP: Yes, Tony?

ABBOTT: Do you remember when you were finance minister?

BISHOP: Oh, yes. I learned...so much that week.

ABBOTT: Yes. But what did you actually achieve?

BISHOP [fishing crumpled diagram out of pocket]: I educated the public about the fiscal benefits of the Laffer Curve.

JOYCE: Pointy-headed crap –

ABBOTT: Give it a chance, Barnaby. [Hesitantly]. Ah yes, the ‘Laffer Curve’. Remind me, Julia?

BISHOP [increasingly confident]: Well, the ‘Laffer Curve’ is a mathematical formulation that dictates the inverse relation between taxation and revenue.

ABBOTT [intrigued, despite himself]: The inverse relation?

BISHOP [in schoolmarmish tone]: Yes. You see, Tony, if you tax rich people, they get angry.

ABBOTT: Ah.

BISHOP: And if you give all the rich people’s money to lazy poor people, they get even lazier!

ABBOTT: Right-oh. [To self]: All single mothers, no doubt.

BISHOP: The rich get too angry to make the money. The poor get too lazy to do the work. And we get –

JOYCE: – screwed, I’ll bet. Bloody poor can’t get lazier than they are already, if you ask me. Sponging little parasite Whitlamites sitting in their raggedy jackets drinking Chai Teas off scummy little saucers –

ABBOTT: Shhh, Barnaby. Go on, Julie. What’s the alternative to taxing the rich?

BISHOP [beaming]: We must let the magnificent businesspeople of this nation replenish the coffers of plenty with their overflowing bounty of beneficent public generosity and charity.

ABBOTT: So we stop taxing them?

BISHOP: Yes.

ABBOTT: And we’ll get lots of money out of this?

BISHOP: Oh, lots. It’s all been worked out by people in America!

ABBOTT: What about the poor?

BISHOP: The Laffer Curve will instil them with the cleansing desire to be absolutely all that they can be!

ABBOTT: By taking away their food stamps?

BISHOP: Of course, Tony. The Laffer Curve therefore increases State revenue as well as delivering the priceless gifts of spiritual and moral victory to the less ‘achievement-inclined’ among us.

ABBOTT: Now that’s the kind of Christian charity I can relate to. You’re re-hired, Julie. [Long pause.] Barnaby?

JOYCE [awkwardly]: Yes?

ABBOTT: Give me back my wallet.