The Wakadoo Café in Canberra

Joe Hockey could certainly be Cook:

The skin we're covered in

is insulation for the world we're in…

It doesn't matter what shape you're in,

What really counts is beneath the skin.

Then there is a character called Lonely, who always sits at the bar

'waiting for a friend to call my name'

He does conjure up Kevin Rudd in appearance and voice.

I used to be someone once but I got lost, lost.

I wasn't quite the classroom dunce but I was tossed

Between the devil and the deep blue sea

Every teacher's had a go at me

Learning was a river I paddled in but never crossed.

These characters struggle with their lives and their personalities but eventually they reach an understanding and conquer their weaknesses, aided by Zelda the negotiator, whom I can't seem to identify in the Canberra scenario. She sings:

Wake up gang, you're no longer in the cradle

Life's a bowl of soup and you have to seize the ladle.

You have to really mean it when you make a vow.

All together now or you'll be history and how.

Eventually Boss comes to her senses.

It's a strange old world

That we're living in

Always someone out to rule

The world's next spin.

Life of being Boss

Is pretty cruel and hard,

You lose your friends

And then you drop your guard.

I'm sorry now,

Oh so sorry now,

But I'm lost and don't know where to go.

And Lonely finally gets some friends

Now I know that I was wrong

My friends were with me all along

Oh I'm so glad to have such friends as you

In the fantasy world of Wakadoo, characters can learn the errors of their ways and life goes on in relative harmony. But not, it seems, in Canberra.

The Australian Children's Television Foundation should arrange screenings of Wakadoo in Parliament House urgently in an attempt to teach our politicians the essential skills they did not learn in early childhood. But can they grow up? Psychologists say, show me the boy and I will show you the man.