The Open Season

A special committee of the Australian Labor Party declares that Mr Catt’s charges are “a tissue of carefully concocted misrepresentations.” ... Mr M’William, M.H.R., refers to Mr Greene’s audacity in producing faked figures. ... Mr Massy Greene asserts that Mr Fenton is guilty of “sheer misrepresentation.” ... In New South Wales Mr Weaver launches a bitter attack on Sir Joseph Carruthers—and so on, and so forth.

Brothers!

This is not propaganda on behalf of
any Carruthers,
Or Weaver, or Greene, or Catts, or
M’Williams or any of the others
It is merely my intention
To mention
That the hunt is up; and the pack
in full cry
Is out to do the public in the eye.
For observe, my friends, observe
How the simple politician makes in-
vective serve.

With an eye upon elections
He is keen to make capital out of the
other chap’s defections.
Posing, himself, as a stern patriot and
a wonderful political charmer,
Keenly he seeks for joints in the
armor
Of the man he seeks to dish.
It is his wish
To smother
his own defects and shortcomings by
exaggerating the faults of some
other.

Brother!
It has all been done before.
Aye, o’er and o’er.
Yet we, the public, who are mainly
fools and silly dupes
Are apt to be impressed when some
wild Member whoops
And slyly seems to seek
(With tongue in cheek)
To cut the ground from underneath
the other fellow.
We hear them bellow
Loudly in the House—
We hear them rouse
And roar and rage in righteous
indignation

Rising upon a point of order, with
some silly personal explanation,
Charges, rebutting, contradicting,
scoring, sneering;
And all the time, my friends, it’s just
electioneering.

’Tis just the same
Old game
That they have played
Throughout the years. And we who
have been made
Mere pawns in this smooth game—
we read the papers,
Observing this or that man’s silly
capers.
Applaud, resent, or are amused, may
be,
Forgetting meanwhile, friends, that it
is we,
The chuckle-headed voters who must
pay
For all the time that’s frittered thus
away.

Brothers, get wise!
Open your eyes!
Our ears are over-tired
With all these mock heroics. For in
the decent government of a de-
cent and enlightened people all
this hot air should not be re-
quired.

Brothers, get busy.
And before all this hypnotic spouting
makes us dizzy,
Let us learn
To spurn
The wily ones who seek in devious
ways to put it over
The patient public so that they (the
wily ones) may continue to live in
clover.

For, lo, there are Big Things to do
for the welfare of our Nation,
And these are not to be furthered by
the employment of senseless re-
crimination.
It rests with us, my friends, if the
power of the hot air merchant be
broken.
Brothers! I have spoken.