Meltdown #18: Social Battles
Melbourne is battling a brutal battering
Soaring COVID, violence and tremors earth-shattering
Last Wednesday we’d wake
To a freak earthquake
Floors vibrating and our houses rattling
And vaccination protesters intent on disruption
Tradesmen incited by right wing corruption
Vandalising streets
Confronting police
Over a two-week cancellation of all construction
To get COVID and riots off the front-page news
Building sites closed and tradies in curfews
But when the earthquake struck
Dan was a bit stuck
If he needed those tradies as emergency crews
Hooligans blockaded the Westgate Bridge entrance
The next day they ransacked the Shrine of Remembrance
Vaccine centres mobbed
Some flog kicked a dog
May the full force of law respond with vengeance
More broadly there’s tension in the Indo-Pacific
Against the Great Wall of China to be specific
So from virus and vaccines
To nuclear-powered submarines
Clear and present danger, all equally horrific
We have banded together with the US and UK
To buy their submarines, no matter what we pay
The Scott, Boris and Joe show
Teamed up to let the world know
Of this hastily hatched treaty to hold China at bay
Scott just texted President Macron the night before
To say we don’t want French submarines any more
That we were ditching their contract
We had formed a new compact
Our new nuclearised family of three and not four
The new partners agreed to call their club AUKUS
The French were outraged, revengeful and raucous
But if we’d included France
Invited them to dance
We would have had to aptly rename it FAUKUS
Our near neighbours reacted with consternation
Some worried about nuclear proliferation
Many caught surprised
Didn’t want to take sides
Diplomacy’s not a text or one-way conversation
But have we just put a target on our back
Will our allies join the battle if we’re attacked
Are we closer to war
Than we were before
And what has now happened to our nuclear-free pact?
Will we be safer outsourcing our national security
Giving up much of our sovereign capability
With total reliance
On this enduring alliance
Will this anglophile pact stoke Chinese hostility?
Old melodies resonated with this week’s traumas
Like a bridge across these troubled waters
Cities like desert islands
Bone chilling sounds of silence
On grand final eve of our game of four quarters
The AFL Premiership is playing out in Perth
While Melbourne’s battling COVID and quaking earth
Whether it’s the grand old flag
Or a winning doggy tag
May our great game return to the home of its birth
While we’re creeping out of lockdown at a glacial crawl
Scott raced to make the captain’s submarine call
Faster to buy submarines
Than to order enough vaccines
Here’s to power in our arms …. to battle every Great Wall!!
Kevin Holmes • 24th September 2021
