Opinion: Sunburnt country still a land of whining and waste

After coming home to news of $14m 13-tonne white elephants and $700m redundant ferries, to wars being blamed for everything, and a $12bn monument to poor planning, only a new Queensland Premier is keeping me from leaving again, writes Mike O’Connor.

Lindy Lee with her sculpture Ouroboros

If you are looking for a place in which to hide from our politics and politicians, a town in Norway called Kirkenes, some 400km north of the Arctic Circle, is as good a place as any in which to do it.

Alas you can’t hide forever, and in any case it was so cold I feared I was in danger of losing one or more of my more treasured extremities, and so holidays done, we retreated down the green, serene and incredibly beautiful coast of Norway and headed back to dear old Oz.

We flew home with a Middle Eastern airline, and were thus spared the insult of being told we were welcome in our own country, and filled in the arrivals card – which is soon to be made redundant, and which has been for the past 10 years – and made for home.

When the jet lag fog cleared I discovered that the federal government had been spending our money wisely in our absence, with the National Gallery paying $14m for a 13-tonne chunk of fabricated stainless steel said to represent a snake eating its tail.

The Australian newspaper’s art critic Christopher Allen described it as “an example of the incompetent management of our National Gallery” and “an absurd sum to pay for a work of debatable value”.

I thought the work sounded suspiciously like an oversized metaphor for the Albanese government, which seems to have its head firmly inserted in its fundamental orifice, but then I’m no art critic.

A Bass Strait ferry under construction in Finland. Picture: Rauma Marine Constructions

Other artistic endeavours, I discovered, were also afoot, with plans revealed to create a statue of former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews, a man who inflicted untold financial and psychological damage on tens of thousands of Victorians before skulking off into the sunset.

In what must take out the Irony of the Year Award, he is set to be made chairman of a mental health research organisation. Only in our beloved country could these things happen.

There are a lot of ferries plying Norway’s fjords. Fortunately for the Norwegians, none of their maritime engineers sought advice from the Tasmanian government, which bought two brand new Bass Strait ferries for $700m but forgot to build terminals from which they could operate.

Both are now unusable and will be for years. Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff described this state of affairs as disappointing.

When we left these sunburnt shores, federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers was blaming the war in Ukraine for the inflation which is driving cost-of-living increases.

When we got home he was blaming the Israeli-Hamas conflict. He was unable to explain how this conflict had only managed to affect Australia and not the US, Canada, the UK and New Zealand, where inflation and interest rates were falling.

It seems that if only the Israelis would stop defending their homeland, everything down here in Oz would be hunky dory.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Picture: Martin Ollman/NCA NewsWire

You might think that a year on, the proponents of the Voice to Parliament might have accepted defeat, but barely had my feet touched our sovereign soil than I heard a loud whining noise.

It could have been a jet engine firing up, but it was outspoken academic and Voice architect Professor Megan Davis complaining that it had failed because Australians did not grasp the “fundamental facts” of the proposal. Sorry Prof, but we did exactly that and acted accordingly.

They have a lot of hydro plants in Norway – more than 800 at last count – and they build roads through towering peaks and drive tunnels under fjords. Ninety years after construction started, we still haven’t finished the Bruce Highway.

As for hydro there’s Snowy 2.0, but the less said about that $12bn monument to poor planning and execution the better.

It’s being surrounded by familiar things that makes homecoming such a pleasing experience, and so we knew we were back in the welcoming bosom of our native land when Senator Lidia Thorpe picked up her favourite possum skin from the dry cleaners and headed off to Parliament House to prove yet again that she is unfit to hold public office.

We have a new government in Queensland, and so plans to permanently relocate to Kirkenes in the event of the re-election of the Miles administration have been shelved.

Premier Crisafulli has the job in front of him. We deserve a lot better than what we’ve had. If he stuffs it up, history will judge him harshly.

Senator Lidia Thorpe doing what she does. Picture: Reuters