Horus looked towards the growing hole at Kurnell.
Was it the site of the desalination plant – or something a whole lot more sinister?

Was it mere coincidence that a black hole had appeared in NSW labours budget about the time the Large Hadron Collider at CERN was turned on. A hole that sucked labors best & brightest into political oblivion.

Others were also showing an interest in Kurnell.That Belly character, who nightly came in to the karaoke bar dressed in his union T-shirt and sang “we have the power”. And then there was that Forrest character in the northeast penthouse. He’d seen them both more than once staring out towards Kurnell.

Suddenly the building vibrated, The exterior lift, Forrest aboard, dashed by in express mode. Speak of the devil! He made an entrance like the mail man at the Chevy Chase Funny Farm. Must do that a dozen times a day! And what’s with the harlequin outfit?

He’d been keeping tabs on Forrest through his trusty PROED100-SKY scope but since the new tenant, with his portable terrace garden, had moved in between , he couldn’t see the Forrest for the trees.

Think he’d make some adjustments to that express lift. He chuckled to himself , he’d like to be there to see Forrest’s face when the lift jams between 20 & 21 and his 60ish muzak morphs to full on rap, but, by that time he’d be rifling his apartment.

He gave thought again to the CERN –Kurnell connection.
There were two mooted side affects.
Blackholes – he ticked that box.
But what of the other, a visitor from the future?
How would you even recognise such a person?
Well… they likely have superior intellect, charisma, be inspirational.
Has anyone meeting that description been evident recently, he scratched his head.

Then the morning papers lobbed onto his desk.
The headline shouted: ‘Turnbull elected lib leader’
He gave the second box a big tick – case proven!

Horus I must do something about my voice.
Or was it the rum?
Me and the blokes went out for a beer or five.
See yesterday was THE day.
The day the Italian stallion was formerly gelded.
Song I was singing was meant to be solidarity forever, maybe it was the rum.
You should have joined us my shirt is a bit second hand this morning, pie stained and smells like , well we know what it smells like .
Should have changed it before bed, usually do, but could not find my Kevin 07 shirt.
Thanks bloke, my head hurts , self inflicted but your joke about Mal got me laughing again.

Forrest hadn't intended to brag about the fact that his personal express lift was external to the building. It was not as if he had determined the building specifications himself, or that the exterior lift represented some outworking of his personal drive or genius in any architectural sense. That credit was due to others. Forrest was simply doing the best he could with what he'd got.

Whether anyone could observe his comings or goings was quite outside the scope of his concern. Building security overall was excellent. You couldn't even access the express lift from anywhere but the secure basement building reception lobby, which had all of the security of bank premises. The lift itself was bullet-proof, and contained both an emergency floor-to-ceiling window exit and a combination rocket belt and ballistically deployable base-jumping parachute kit. You could not activate the exit unless the kit had first been donned. Forrest could understand why someone may have misidentified the two coloured blue and high-visibility yellow action-back overalls he frequently wore as a harlequin suit, especially if such an observer had not done a day's manual labour in his or her life. C'est la guerre.

Forrest idly checked the MP3 player in the helmet of the bale-out kit to ensure that it was playing in full synchronism with the lift music. It was. The architects had thought of everything. Nothing was to be permitted to interrupt one's train of thought, or auditory enjoyment, not even a lift failure.

The building manager had let slip to Forrest that building management were on the lookout for a lobby receptionist. Desirably female, early to mid-thirties, well groomed in a PR sense, full of a sense of her own importance. Ideally, the sort of receptionist that would make anyone who did not have genuine essential business in the building want to turn and go the other way on sight. Forrest said he would keep that in mind.

Debouching from the lift into the penthouse, Forrest remembered a perfectly qualified candidate.

Reba.

The coup. The political sabbatical. That was the task at hand, Forrest reminded himself.

It was going to be all the more necessary, if Ozzians at large were going to be able to ride the wave of opportunity represented by Peak Oil to their advantage, to get this coup on the road as quickly as possible.

A very interesting point had been raised in the OLO article 'Decay in a time of penury', by Des Griffin, see: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7915&page=0 That point was that if NSW, being in a position of having a very low ratio of debt to gross State product and well able to borrow safely, was to borrow significantly (in this case to implement the coal-fired generation waste heat desalination/solar pondage accumulation/HDR project) it would have to get Loans Council approval. Such approval not being, in the normal course of events, anticipated, any coup would have to encompass not just the Commonwealth, but most, if not all, of the several States, if anticipated difficulties with respect to Loans Council approvals were to be forestalled.

An infrequently considered aspect of the office of Governor-General, given the indissolubility of the Federal Commonwealth, is that of its implicit co-ordinative role with respect to the offices of State Governors. In circumstances, for example, of a Governor-General coming to the reasonable suspicion that both Commonwealth and a number of States governments were acting, or had acted, together, in a manner subversive of the Constitution, then under the terms of Section 61 of the Constitution that Governor-General may well have a responsibility to co-ordinate dismissals of State governments simultaneously with any possible required or indicated dismissal of a Commonwealth government.

It would seem in such circumstances there to be an implicit subordination of the respective State Governors to the Governor-General.

This begs the question as to what could possibly move a Governor-General to take such a view, and then, in turn, take such a course.

Forrest suspected complicit evasion of the Constitution's Section 99.

Section 99 of the Constitution says:

"The Commonwealth shall not, by any law or regulation of trade, commerce, or revenue, give preference to one State or any part thereof over another State or any part thereof.".

Gavan McDonell, in his OLO article 'Fencing wire and mirrors: the world of the National Energy System' ( http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7585&page=0 ), made the statements:

"In the early 1990s, with a national system now technologically possible, economically cheaper and socially more secure, governments faced a constitutional question: is it legally possible? A national electricity system wasn't an option considered by the writers of the Constitution.";

and,

"There were, however, problems in getting it all together. One law covering all that was needed couldn't be passed by the Commonwealth, because the Constitution didn't allow it. And at any rate the states wouldn't accept it. They were jealously guarding their energy assets, which were, in fact, milch cows, each year providing steaming flows of public revenue.".

It would have been nice to be able to ask the writer as to exactly what he saw the constitutional problems as being, by posting a comment on the article. This was no longer an option, as the discussion had been closed by OLO and archived. Still, Forrest reckoned that he had some idea of where the pressure to privatise NSW' electricity was really coming from.

Forrest reckoned it was from the Future Fund, and those who stood to benefit from it in due course.

If power could be privatised in all States, then it would almost certainly be that one way or another the Future Fund would be able to secure at least a hefty slice, if not the whole, of the electricity pie, via shareholdings in foreign corporate ownership of those power assets. Great for all the retired politicians and Commonwealth public servants. Nowhere near so great for all the other Ozzians. The National Electricity Market business was a sure fire thing in an increasingly uncertain world, almost as good as holding the power of taxation!

TBC

Forrest fumed.

"Talk about abuse of power and snouts in the trough!" thought Forrest.

Gavan McDonell had also observed in his OLO article (linked to above) that:

"South Australia could have the debates and voting and all that carry on, and everyone else, including the Commonwealth, would pass what is called an Application Act. ...........those Application Acts also provided that if the South Australians amended the law at any time, after agreement with all the other jurisdictions, then those amendments would apply everywhere else, without further debate in any of the other Parliaments, including the Commonwealth.".

Forrest reckoned that those Commonwealth application acts were the smoking gun in a case of collusive evasion of the provisions of Section 99 of the Constitution. It was seeming evidence that the five eastern States', and the Commonwealth, governments had all knowingly been party to this evasion. It couldn't be any other way! The five eastern States had either been advantaged, or disadvantaged, whatever the case might turn out to be, with respect to Western Australia. It didn't matter which. WA was not part of the NEM! The Commonwealth had acquiesced in the giving of preference to one State over another State!

"That had to be worth a gubernatorially generalistic bullet" Forrest thought. "On second thoughts, one gubernatorially generalistic and five plain gubernatorial bullets", Forrest thought yet again for the fourth time, "just for evading the Constitution".

But it gets worse. As McDonell says, "We have all been disenfranchised. .... we - you, me, all of us, even the South Australians - have been dudded on democracy. Do you think they would use this malarkey for, say, a national child care system, or a national medical scheme? Of course not - the mums and dads would be in the streets. But in as crucial an area of policy as energy, they use it BECAUSE THEY THINK IT'S TOO TECHNICAL FOR THE PUNTERS TO NOTICE.".

No wonder Costa had been trying to talk up a $billion hole in the budget! Bum-rushing the sellout on behalf of all the Snouts that had been in the trough!