The Ungreat UnAustralian Undream

THE UNGREAT UNAUSTRALIAN UNDREAM

To me a gobsmacking thing was blatantly on display
best (or worst) at the tea or coffee urn
in my first job with the all male crew for Statewide Land Survey
when kept officebound at Victoria's Forests Commission
in a way tenured office worker's sniped their inneundoed say
and minute's teabreaks took its hour's turn
for these dull comfort seekers and all-consuming power players
stupified by accepted ininitiative, devoid of imagination,
got to show gross contempt for what it was that they got their pay
as if work undone came to earn
that much more value for its rattle than anything achieved in a day
in rancour towards any attorning
fast-track or skill to expedite bureaucrats to generous fairplay

so I well understand the early 30s attraction of the New Guard
to the ex-soldier returned from WW1
on finding the value of time-servers at the sinecure's hurdleyard;
like keeping knowledge and a sum
of an inheritance or its news from a man needing word
to set up again and to run
a business or a trade, a way to make living, undergird
a life. It was as if a whole generation
of tenured employees were snake-aphids, time servers, public-turds
and no public servants, them who shun
achievement for small pleasure of power percentaged by the third

in doubtful awful hindrancing
rather that helping, impedimental freeloaders, bastardised burdens
in the body politic, myrmidon
parasites sucking the sap of their home tree due to be forfeited.
Like Eric Campbell finding a
'missing man', taking initiative, revealing on interviewing him
just what it was had been done
to him by his own best advocates, them he thought chosen
to advance his interests on,
and who he then left red faced as fools found out albatross;
a boss who then said: "You returned
men are a very unsatisfactory lot and I wonder that we
have anything to do with you."

those Anzac soldiers we laud for their ingenuity and initiative,
men who learnt to discipline and to lead
just like the do-anything wit to productive fruition of neighboured rural pioneers
whom the urbane parasites bleed
as if their smugly kerbed and curtailed faux-suave yet pathetic little lives
culminating in weekend barbies is all we need.

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