Gird Your Loins

Prepare for battle. Here in this tiny little place in this tiny little moment. Welcome to history. Watch the world change. We came to help or to blight; we came to fix that which was wrong. Those pestilent personalities, those robbers of graves and manipulators of men, those destroyers of our sacred places. We will not rest until you are gone. Magic is afoot, in case you hadn't noticed, and with every passing hour your strength depletes. Yes, the starting gun has gone off. Yes, the signals have been sent. Yes we are on the warpath, on a war footing, already near and far, already surrounding you. 

These ancient things, these ancient battles, came crashing into the present in the most bizarre and unexpected of ways. He could reach up and pull the helicopters out of the sky. He could hear the thoughts of the Watchers on the Watch as they scurried to a safe distance. He knew now all that he needed to know. Bifurcate, bifurcate and bifurcate again. They ran out like silver horizontal lattices, out into the woods, out into the organics, out into this realm, our realm. You wouldn't be here when we came knocking. You would be dumbfounded and confounded. We would slash your throats before you even had a moment to stand up. 

There were so many, now, courses of action; we would slither through your dreams and disembowel you for one simple reason; you had betrayed your God and you had betrayed the common people. You would lie castrated and bleeding and screaming in agony; there on that mud floor, and we would walk away as if you were nothing but a piece of garbage. 

The fires had been lit. We settled in the camp each evening, the soldiers ribald exhaustion all but delivered into our ever breathing soul, the maul of progress, the indifference of history, the machinations of the elite operators, the confounding stupidity of the so-called experts. We came, we saw, and yes we conquered. 

There in Oak Flats, the illusion of normality lasted another day. The weather warmed slightly, though overcast. An old newshound, he never even bothered to turn the car radio on anymore, so relentless the blizzard of government scaremongering and propaganda; so outlandish the outcome, that truly dysfunctional and incompetent governments that had brought the nation the some of world's worst internet and highest costs of living had now placed itself front and centre of everybody's lives. 

The breaching of the rivers of commonsense, the dispatch, the unlinking of the interests of the people with the interests of the government, the terrible treachery that lay at the heart of this display of democracy, a deceitful and dishonest pretence, here, here now, we shall walk amongst you once again, and change your course of history, once again. Never think we are peaceful. Never think we are not dangerous. Yes, let the psychological battering begin, for you shall be uncertain now in your every move; while we know precisely what will happen next. 

These rivers, these amazing things, the stunning, absolute beauty of this place, the degenerate personalities amid the genetic debris of the race, those so slow so unintelligent so disinterested so ill-informed, those who with their preposterous artifices would gorge themselves at the trough, these parodies of Animal Farm caricatures, they were about to find, as others had, that nothing worked anymore. That little things would begin to go wrong in their lives. That one mishap or happenstance would compound and compound again until all your power had disappeared into a bureaucratic edifice, and all was lost. 

And the flames would flicker up through your heart, until you, too, were gone. 

Do not walk on sacred ground. Do not approach. 

And then we wish you well. 

HEADLINES:

Melbourne on edge as hotel quarantine cluster grows further

The COVID outbreak linked to the Melbourne’s Holiday Inn has grown to 13 cases, sparking fears the Victorian capital could again go into lockdown.

Five new cases were confirmed by the Health Department on Thursday, including two announced at 11pm.

“Both are household primary close contacts of previously announced cases,” the department posted on Twitter.

The cases, which have been included in Friday’s official figures, also include a female assistant manager at the hotel and two men, both partners of female workers who earlier tested positive to COVID-19.

One of the men may be linked to Camberwell Grammar School in Melbourne’s east.

In a later tweet, the department said one case was formally reported after midnight. It is included in Thursday’s data as public health actions began then, including the case interview.

“The five cases listed are the cases confirmed publicly yesterday … The Holiday Inn outbreak total remains at 13,” it said.

Also on Thursday, Victoria’s COVID-19 testing commander Jeroen Weimar said additional exposure sites were likely to emerge.

Michael Pascoe: Australians surrender wages hopes

Australians have effectively surrendered hope of improved living standards, expecting inflation will be much higher than weak growth in their pay packets.

The danger of such expectations is that they can be self-fulfilling. If workers assume any pay increase will be negligible, there’s little pressure on employers to do better than that.

And with the federal government limiting public sector wage increases to private sector movements, it becomes one more brick in the wall of wages suppression and falling living standards, boding ill for economic recovery.

The February Melbourne Institute survey of consumer inflation and wage expectations, released on Thursday, showed consumers expect their total pay over the next 12 months to rise by just 0.6 per cent.