In another blog I baggeth the Hollowmen programme for being a bit shallow and a few people have pointed out to me that the cartoon above is also too "obscure"... I agree.

In the traditions of convoluted cartoons of the early 20th century in Australia, I tried to put too much subtext in it thus the immediacy of reactive understanding is lost in a sea of sand... May be the Hollowmen have the same problem, too much to accept, except that one can choose to linger on an image while a TV show at pace passes us by like annoying blowflies in summer.

Thus I have been sprung for the obscurity of my depiction. My apologies...

I dreamt that Rudd was up s%$#t creek without a paddle when attacking the art scene and its naked kids. Our Venerable Rattus would have skirted the issue by discreetly passing the ball to the police or the art spooks, washing his hands with a "it's not up to me to damn or praise but my personal opinion is that...". Rattus would have shown this issue was not an affair of importance to his very important job: making sure the slaves are slaving and the bosses are bossing.

Thus our Kev is shown with a gun, in a boat — by the way stranded in the middle of the Murray River sands as a subtext — about to remove an offensive naked "Cherubin" called "Seraphinus" both often associated with images of "little angels" — naked kiddies, with wings and appendages, floating in the vapors of the Catholic Church imageries.

Of course in the background, our Morris and our Pell push the WYD with all their might — the Pope sitting smug in the Popemobile (obviously not driving it but faking to...) calling back his "little angel" into the fold. Although not obviously depicted, the air is resonating with sex abuses in the clergy: not an important aspect of life as a whole in a glorious day to be had in the desert where the mirage of eternal life is promised to the wandering tribes...

Alice-who-can't-stand-this-stuff (our Kev) is also pissed off by our Morris who seems unable to find his own paddle but is eager to offer one — may be as a distraction to his troubles and a perceived but not real Rudd's "lack of substance" that the media and the opposition cultivate like pretty bows to annoy him. Rudd of course takes the bait. He's smarter than that, but, seriously busy as he is to dismantle the shoddy work from the previous government, he fails to see the joke.

Thus I created the cartoon in five minutes flat... (from bits collected from other images obviously) otherwise the immediacy would have plunged to greater depth of laboured obscurity...

Irrigators should move to Queensland: Joyce

Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce says irrigators in the country's south should relocate to Queensland.

He says water from flash floods in the Australia's north never make it far enough downstream to help southern irrigators, and there is no point to irrigators trying to sustain their crops in areas like the Riverland.

Senator Joyce says growers should get tax incentives to shift their lives and expertise to the north.

"Why don't we come up with something that really is entrepreneurial, and have tax incentives or zonal taxation to move people to the north to where the water is, give people the reason to go up there, to make a buck, and to also produce the food that we need," he said.
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Sure, Senator Joyce... Let's make the south of the continent even drier than what it is, since more water would be needed up-river to grow huge carrots...

Why not build a gigantic dam across the border as to hog the liquid....

The Murray River southern dwellers would not be "up shit-creek without a paddle" but "down shit-creek without any water"... Could be used as an interstate highway though, for four-wheel drives only, in case of deep puddles — unless we concrete it over — flat...

All the red-necks, all the climate skeptics and all the anti-environmentalists  should move to Queensland too...  The rest of us can become basket weavers...

Alternatively, the cotton farmers in Queensland should learn to grow things with a third of the water they presently use.   And keep their cane toads....

see all the relevant cartoons on this site re the Murray River....