Now, let's see if we can keep guns, politics and religion out of this. <br /><br />Anybody who introduces race is a dope, 'cos no race has a monopoly on bludging.<br /><br />This has been around before, but maybe not in its original Australian version. Don't worry about the names and parties you don't recognise. They're the same everywhere.<br /><br />THE STORY OF THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER<br /><br />The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.<br /><br />The grasshopper thinks he's a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.<br /><br />Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The shivering grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.<br /><br /><br />THE AUSTRALIAN VERSION<br /><br />The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.<br /><br />The grasshopper thinks he's a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.<br /><br />Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.<br /><br />The shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others less fortunate like him are cold and starving.<br /><br />The ABC and Channel 9 show up to provide live coverage of the shivering grasshopper, with cuts to a video of the ant in his comfortable warm<br />home with a table filled with food.<br /><br />Australians are stunned that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so while others have plenty.<br /><br />The Democrats, the Greens and the Coalition Against Poverty demonstrate in front of the ant's house. <br /><br />The ABC, interrupting an Aboriginal cultural festival special from North Queensland with breaking news, broadcasts them singing "We Shall<br />Overcome." <br /><br />Bob Brown rants in an interview with Ray Martin that the ant has gotten rich off the backs of grasshoppers, and calls for an immediate tax<br />hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share."<br /><br />In response to polls, the Liberal Government drafts the Economic Equity and Grasshopper Anti-Discrimination Act, retrospective to the<br />beginning of the summer.<br /><br />It is quickly passed through the Senate. The ant's taxes are reassessed and he is also fined for failing to hire grass hoppers as helpers.<br /><br />Without enough money to pay both the fine and his newly imposed retrospective taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.<br /><br />The ant moves to Asia, and starts a successful agribiz company.<br /><br />The TV stations later show the now fat grasshopper finishing up the last of the ant's food though Spring is still months away, while the<br />government owned house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house crumbles around him because he hadn't maintained it. <br /><br />Inadequate government funding is blamed, Kim Beazeley now is appointed to head a commission of inquiry that will cost $10,000,000.<br /><br />The grasshopper is soon dead of a drug overdose,<br /><br />The Sydney Morning Herald blames it on obvious failure of government to address the root<br />causes of despair arising from social inequity.<br /><br />The abandoned house is taken over by a gang of immigrant spiders,praised by the government for enriching Australia's multicultural diversity, who promptly terrorize the community.
