Open letter to Jack Waterford

The Waterford presumption.

There was an editorial in the Canberra Times (which thinks it’s an Australian Washington Post, sans talent or vigour, of course), and which based its bloviating vacuity on the notion that Queensland-bashing is fashionable in Canberra.

Except, it argued that Queensland people – not politicians – should not be helped because of where they live!

Is there a more obviously politically biased position to be made by a journalist? ‘I don’t think you deserve to live, be nurtured, nursed back to health, fed, or helped because I don’t like the colour of the politics in your State!’

I wrote a letter to the editor, but in between being challenged to register and comply with password elitism, I was also required to limit my response to 300 words, and be subject to an undisclosed censorship policy. Fair enough.

Here, though, is my letter in full.

Dear Sir

The rough and tumble of politics, and the exigent need to keep your tumescent belly fed with restaurant fare notwithstanding, Mr Waterford, how about you come to Bundaberg, or any town in the district, to repeat your words? The people there would look at you nonplussed, offer you tea and sandwiches out of a steadily dwindling supply, and pity you for being such a drongo.

Why? Because you, sir, are a couch potato coward complaining of alluded-to corruption which is so small in scale compared to the larceny practiced on a grand scale in your home town that you come across as petty. I would guess, though, that no one here would beat you up the way Victorians or NSW residents might for your well-fed callousness, and the contrived, manufactured comments in this feed.

What’s more, you think that charitable instincts stop at your immediate borders. Heaven help WA, the NT, Tasmania or Queensland if people who have no idea what you’re talking about should need help. Plainly, as far as you’re concerned, we don’t deserve it because we aren’t part of the Canberra gravy train that keeps you fat and in line for a heart transplant the rest of us couldn’t afford if we needed it, no matter whether we were as biliously at risk of heart disease as you.

What’s that? You have no heart … . My apologies, clearly you shouldn’t have to pay for anyone else’s then, eh? Not unless you had shares in the IPO.

The dripping fat of the taxpayer billions that all flow to Canberra, and which keep public servant bureaucrats like you employed (and you are a public servant for all the independence you show as a … ‘journalist’?) has apparently made you insensible to the suffering of people who are nowhere near the allegedly ransacked coffers you speak of.

Queensland doesn’t deserve help!

Your argot reprises myths about Joh’s Moonlight State, with no reflection about the fact that what is happening here right now is the consequence of a decade or more of Labor ascendancy. An ascendancy that appears to be every bit as self-serving, and profitable for you as anything preceding it.

Let’s pass by the nausea you felt when you heard Bligh and Newman sing Hosannahs about “Queenslanders’. But tell me, please, sir, when exactly did people who live here become less than human because you don’t like the politics your patrons play in the boonies?

You are hardly notable for calling the sad sacks in Canberra for their larger conspiracies and thefts, and your reportage about the self-serving misappropriations of senior public servants is non-existent (I suppose you will plead that no one delivered the evidence to your in-tray so you wouldn’t need to get your fat arse out of your favourite Kath’n’Kim cardonay-wine chair).

In the meantime, I think the water is mostly gone here, and the kids have adjusted to the notion that arseholes like you don’t like them when they cry just because they are prettier than the pale Canberra progeny, regardless of the wind and rain blowing over trees and cars here. You know, the sort of thing that would make you piss your pants and blow wet farts in your overpriced underwear while we sort out what water is drinkable and what structures are inhabitable.

If you have something to say at all, Mr Waterford, it is that in Canberra the concept of human decency and empathy has been privatised, along with the souls of the people whose livelihoods actually depend on the existence of the people they would like to see burnt at the stake of some sin (like Kathryn Campbell’s insane desire to demonise her entire raison d’etre).