ALL IS FORGIVEN: OR NOT

Lake Illawara

He scraped the mud off his shoe. 
They disrobed in the high reaches of the monastery. 
There were footsteps everywhere. 
The beach lapped the shore. The drones hovered overhead. A cloud, a distant cloud. Malevolence was born and stalked the earth. A thousand times they heard them and tried to hide. Before the time when there was no point hiding anymore. They clustered their robes around them. They marched. They stepped onto a stage. They whispered to each other. They emerged from the rocks and the deep stupidities of the race. They knew they had been found, and no longer cared. 
There was a shift and they could feel it everywhere. 
Why here? Why now? 
If not here, where? If not now, when? 
"It's better to capture them when they're young," one of the hunters said. 
And in all the dismal times they had endured.
The country was sick. This sad, terrible place. Only enclaves of wealth. Comfort. Security. 
The news media died. 
The country lost the ability to tell its own story. 
The greediest, most self-serving, self-interested of the oligarchs preyed on the weak, plundered the nation's resources. Built their modern day castles and mythical moats. 
The Prime Minister, the worst the Liberal Party had to offer, preened before the cameras. 
Mere mortals watched. 
A thousand cameras flashed. 
The man, that preening monster, boasted of how well he slept at night. 
As his bombs had rained down on the Middle East, killing mujahadeen and children and innocents. 
Most of all, killing the believers. 
The Abrahamic gods were caught in a time swell not even they understood. 
The ocean lapped the shore. The sand decayed. 
He smiled, a rigor mortis grin, his skeleton already imprinted on the skree. 
We were shocked, shocked, at the blatant robbery, the plundering of the country, the terrible manipulations. 
The rulers did not rule, they ravaged the land. 
Insouciance. Inconsequence. They did not know what they did. They were too greedy, too one-dimensional. 
And so we rose. And surrounded them. And history swept them aside. 
Just like that.

THE BIGGER STORY:

Labor has won all four of the Super Saturday by-election seat it contested and increased its margin considerably in the key Queensland electorate of Longman.

The victories are sure to buoy Opposition Leader Bill Shorten’s hopes of federal election victory after pollsters predicted a much closer contests in the Qld seat and the western Tasmanian electorate of Braddon.

Incumbent ALP candidate for Longman Susan Lamb increased what was a precariously thin margin to about 4 per cent, while in Braddon, Justine Keay maintained her 2 per cent lead on a two-party preferred basis.

The Western Australian seats of Perth and Fremantle were won easily by Labor. The Greens were their nearest rivals in those seats with the Liberals declining to field candidates.

The only other seat to host a by-election on Saturday was the South Australian electorate of Mayo.

In that seat, Centre Alliance (formerly Nick Xenophon Team) candidate Rebekha Sharkie easily defeated Liberal candidate Georgina Downer.

Before the dual citizenship status of several MPs triggered Saturday’s wave of by-elections, Labor held all four of the seats it contested.

Speaking in Longman, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten was urging supporters to begin a two-day celebration of the “four from four” victory.

“What a great night for the Labor Party,” he said. “What a great night for Labor women. Actually, what a Super Saturday night it is.”

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull did not address the public on Saturday.