CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
Australia’s most powerful policymakers are today butting heads over who gets to reel in the next big catch to be booted from the ranks of the coalition government.
Nationals Senator McKenzie looks set to resign from politics after it was revealed she used a $100 million grants program to hand cash to sporting groups that were affiliated with Coalition MPs and clubs in marginal seats before the May election.
While this kind of disgraceful resignation may appear to be yet another blow for the embattled Morrison, it seems to have his bosses quite excited.
But which lucky mining magnate is going to be lucky enough to give the outgoing McKenzie a job for life?
The job-for-life-retirement package has been a common trends for retiring coalitons politicians, most notably Andrew Robb MP who helped negotiate the destruction of the carbon tax and 99-year-lease for the Port of Darwin to the Chinese-owned corporation Landbridge, before immediately announcing his retirement from politics to take up a 7-figure consultancy job with Landbridge.
Or the former resources minister Ian Macfarlane who took up a job as the chief executive of the Queensland Resources Council, six months after Prime Minister Tony Abbott called on the sector to “demonstrate their gratitude” to him for scrapping the mining tax.
While both MacFarlane and Robb, like many perennial backbenchers had the cognitive skills of a couple 30-minute old twin merinos, they brought with them to these corporate roles endless contacts and endless favours owed from a lifetime of dipping their noses in the trough that is Parliament House.
It if for this reason that Australia’s two biggest environmental vandalist billionaires are now fighting over who gets to hire Bridget McKenzie.
Indian coal mining billionaire Gautam Adani and the tax-evading darling of Hancock Prospecting Gina Rinehart met in the top floor of a secret Singaporean skyscraper to argue it out today.
Gina Rinehart makes a good case that it should be her that gets to give the embattled Victorian senator $900,000 per year with unlimited travel.
“I’ve got cattle interests, Guatam!” she shouts.
“It make sense that I get to add a former Ag minister to my stable!” she barks, however, Adani is unflinching.
“I need more Nationals. All I have is the Labor right” says the subcontinental billionaire.
“Their hearts aren’t in it. I need all of these damning reports about the catastrophic bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef buried Gina! If I can pull that off, we both win!”
Gina stays firm.
“Guatam! When it comes to sitting politicians all I’ve got is those piss-wrecked bogans from the Hunter. Barnaby and Fitzgibbons could fuck up a driver reviver coffee”
“At least you get Senator Canavan. He’s almost exclusively working on getting your mine off the ground. Just give me Bridget and you can have Taylor when he goes down next month”
Adani, seemingly content with Rinehart’s compromise, agrees to the negotiations before making his way to the lift for a private jet back to Ahmedabad.
“I’ll see you at the mining conference next month in Delhi” he says.
“Scotty says there might be a bit too much pressure on him to make it. I told him to just turn his phone off like he did in Hawaii [laughter]”
Gina laughs as well.
“Haha. Fuck that was good. Australia was all like Ooooh bushfires waa waa! Haha”
