Howard's history for dummies

1861
Loony left state governments decide that a few individuals holding the vast bulk of private property in Australia is unfair and decide to nationalise it, carving up the runs and letting the peasants have a crack at it. Oh well, at least they are small business battlers who can live off the smell of an Australian workplace agreement and won’t be needing the dole or other welfare hand outs.

1868:
Some of the settlers whinge that the squatters, many of whom are respected members of the Liberal Party, are trying to rort the land selections by claiming more than their fair share and cutting off the selectors’ access to water. As if. The problem is there’s not enough land because those bloody states just want to lock it all up as national parks for the greenies.

January 1891
Australia’s first strike. Union thugs hold the country to ransom by refusing to shear sheep unless they get a pay rise. Obviously inspired by the unionists’ political party of choice - the AL bloodyP, pretty soon the comrades are infiltrating parliaments all over the country and ordering everyone to strike.

1894 :
Women get the vote: What’s the point when your husband can do it for you?

November 1907:
That café latte sipping leftie Judge Higgins passes the Harvester judgement giving all workers a minimum wage, for goodness sake. What sort of precedent is that? This irresponsible union/ALP-inspired socialism gives birth to a century of whinging by bleeding hearts for more, more, more. Sure enough, it’s not long before demands are being made for such rorts as an eight hour day, sick leave and Sundays off.

August 1908
The Messiah comes to Bowral. Who would have thought he’d come back as an Australian cricket captain?

April 25 1915
Mates are invented. To stop everyone thinking the war being a total tragic misadventure, the ANZAC tradition is born showing that something good can come out of something so bad. Mates are those who stick by you and look out for your back while part of a futile and badly executed military campaign thought up by a government that is not yours. Later, the term mate takes on wider meaning, referring to any big donor to your political party who wants you to get them out of any sort of sticky situation.

1930s
The great Depression. Time of character building where battlers learned valuable skills like how to feed a family of eight for a week on one rabbit and a potato, and how to resole your shoes with newspaper and spit.

1965
Australia called in to help the US beat the commies at a game called dominos in Vietnam. Somehow it all turns nasty and ends up in war. So many of our boys want to go, the government introduces an exciting new lottery based on birthdays to decide who can go and who has to stay. It’s called conscription. Seems to work out in the end and means plenty more diggers to keep the old ANZAC Day parade going for years to come. Everybody’s a winner.

November 1975:
Australia’s worst ever Prime Minister gets the sack and then has the gall to claim unfair dismissal.

1996.
Australia’s greatest ever prime minister elected.

September 11 2001
Australia’s greatest prime minister anointed the world’s deputy sheriff by none other than the greatest president of the United States.

October 2001:
Norway tries to invade Australia. The Norwegian government sends its navy ship cunningly disguised as a freighter and attempts to approach Australian shores in a bid to land a 200-strong special commando unit disguised as Middle Eastern refugees. Brave PM counter attacks by sending its own crack SAS forces that capture the vessel with superior fire power, decisively winning the battle for Aussies and send the enemy packing. Just as well, as state-of-the-art POW camps in Woomera and Baxter are full, after previous Australian military counter-insurgencies.

March 2003:
Deputy sheriff asked to join the sheriff’s posse to run out of town the world’s biggest threat to world peace since Hitler - Saddam Hussein, that well known despot, architect of the World Trade Centre terrorism and cause of Hurricane Katrina, world poverty, the AIDS epidemic and global warming, (if there were such a thing). Well known to have had the world’s biggest arsenal of conventional nuclear and biological weapons that mysteriously remains hidden to this day.

24 November 2007:
The end of history.  The king is dead. Long live the King.