“Off the Record 2020”

The fictional transcript of an alt-world PM of Australia caught in a contemplative moment, Jan 2, 2020. (The BOM maps below are entirely factual).

In an alternate reality, a leaked transcript is published from a voice memo recorded in the male toilets of an undisclosed location, Thursday 2nd January 2020.

"Look, off the record, I did wake up this morning and think, wait, what if I do have this completely wrong? I said to myself, just look at this from a different perspective for two minutes. What if your powers of persuasion, your expertise in marketing and messaging are so good that they've worked a treat on you, not just the people of Australia? Set aside the propaganda genius of 'the Quiet Australian' and the 'no better place to raise kids', and consider another point of view, and starting at the foundations...

What if there isn't a patriarchal deity who we should all believe in because a bloody good story says so? Instead, in reality, he's just that, a character in a story we've told ourselves, and now that story's become badly anachronistic. Looking around at the state of the world, that would be a problem wouldn't it? Instead of end times in just the story, what if it's the end times in the real world, but not because it's ordained, but because we've buggered it up? And the real sin was against nature, if you like. You might go as far as to think that it would be sensible to stop telling the kids that story. I mean, do they really need it to lead moral lives?

And what about this real sin, the state of the environment? What if that is, as the scientists agree and have been conservatively arguing, a profoundly delicate system that's now tipping into the red because of the massive amounts of trapped, warming gases in the atmosphere, produced by the enormous demand for goods and services by billions of people historically and existentially reliant on a fossil fuel economy? That would explain in the least problematic terms the incremental rise in temperature we're seeing, that's now beginning to creep into the danger zone, resulting in extremities of weather phenomenon destined to get worse each year as we keep adding to the problem, rather subtracting. That might start to look like the climate emergency the kids are complaining about...

And what if I've just been in the business of making beliefs for too bloody long that I've lost the read on reality for future generations. Then my best course of action would be to steer the country toward a thoroughly sustainable future, not continue to ask everyone to remain patient whilst the threat passes and the world starts to look like an ad again...

Or... Or, I could just continue to get out of bed, have a shower, kiss the kids goodbye and be driven to work as usual, and carry on telling a story about how everything's going to be okay, because the end is coming anyway and it’s best to let the dreaming go on as long as possible. As I said just a thought, and obviously off the record, mate."