After the ABC evicted me due to old age, the hits just kept coming

As you may have read, I’ve had some bitter disappointments in recent months. But I do have some good news.

Phillip Adams. Picture: James Croucher

As you may have read, I’ve had some bitter disappointments in recent months. First, I was evicted from my long-held job at the ABC on the flimsy excuse of old age – at 84 I was deemed beyond my use-by date. Then, despite being the oldest member of the Young Liberals, I failed to win the Liberal Party leadership after my old mate Peter Dutton’s political demise. Then came my rejection as the new Pope, Vatican authorities ruling me out on the grounds that I’m an atheist, and married with four children.

The good news? I’m the first Australian to win a hat-trick of Nobel Prizes – for Peace, Literature and Economics.

Yes, there have been some negative reactions. The Nobel Prize for Literature? I won that for my decades of columns for this masthead. If Bob Dylan can win for a few pop songs, why the hell not?

Peace? Admittedly, my plans to end the world’s wars have yet to be entirely successful. But remember, the Nobel Peace Prize was also given to Henry Kissinger, the late US statesman who many view as a war criminal – and also to the disappointing Barack Obama.

But there has been no criticism of my Economics gong. Were they alive today, Milton Friedman, John Maynard Keynes, John Kenneth Galbraith and Nugget Coombs would be joining in the thunderous applause.

You’ve heard of President Ronald Reagan’s neoliberal Reaganomics. New Zealand’s Roger Douglas gave us an antipodean version with his Rogernomics. Now we have my Philonomics. It’s hard to say it, but think of it as philharmonic as I harmonise so many fiscal policy instruments. Like the Tobin Tax, my concept is simplicity itself. It will revolutionise the Australian and global economies in a way beyond the dreams of the Federal Reserve, our Reserve Bank and Trump’s terror tariffs. The IMF and World Bank are in awe. You will be, too.

I argue that everything, except house prices and international plane fares, should cost a fiver. Yep, $5. This follows my discovery, using my pocket calculator, that a fiver is the average price of everything (burgers, bunches of bananas, cheap red wine, cups of coffee, ice-creams, blocks of chocolate, newspapers). So let’s charge a fiver for everything and simplify everything for everyone everywhere. Not only will you save money, but you’ll also save time at supermarket checkouts. The cost of living will plummet. And it’ll be easy for all your domestic maths, adding things up and working out tips. Standardised as 5 per cent.

Taxis? A $5 flag-fall plus $5 per trip. Taxi usage would increase, and passengers would be free to top up with a $5 tip. A fiver would also pay for all other forms of public transport, plus road, tunnel and bridge tolls. And Sunday donations in church. Parking meters, parking fines, postage stamps, pumpkins. Welcome to the new world of simple Philonomics.

Don’t bother thanking me. The Nobel nobility are doing that already. I win $3 million – almost as good as winning the Lotto. (PS: Lottery tickets will all be $5, too.)

I shall now turn my attention to the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. And talking of chemists, did I mention that all your scripts will be a fiver?