Porridge time for Garrett

Only one thing is certain from the foil insulation debacle – Peter Garrett must go to prison.

Apparently the mere act of providing funding for a voluntary program of household insulation makes Peter Garrett guilty of manslaughter, according to an Opposition furiously and sanctimoniously overplaying its hand.  “If Mr Garrett were a company director in NSW he would be charged with industrial manslaughter,” says Tony Abbott.

Also, according to Abbott, in Arabia, if you don’t burp after a meal they chop your head off.

So Garrett’s off to gaol, and rightly so.  After all, if he went out into the street and shot someone to death, he’d be charged with homicide, right?  Guilt by analogy.  What a pity he can’t be charged with his real crime – that of entering politics after having had a life first. Everyone knows party hacks are the only people who should enter politics.

It’ll be a sight to see the bars slamming shut on that bald head, I can tell you. Trying selling out of GAOL, mate.

But responsibility doesn’t stop with Australian politics’ answer to Skeletor.  The guilty party is much larger.

In Australian politics we have a basic principle called Cabinet responsibility.  As Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd has overall responsibility for what happens under his Government.  No excuses, no nonsense – the buck stops with him.

On that basis, there’s no alternative: if Garrett is going to be sent up the river, Rudd has to go as well.  As “chairman of the board” of which Garrett is a director, Rudd has blood on his hands, too.  Let’s see how the Milky Bar Kid, or Kevin Prison # 247 as he’ll be henceforth known, goes with his programmatic specificity in the slammer. Don’t drop the soap in the shower, Tintin.

But it doesn’t stop there.  What about Wayne Swan?  He’s Treasurer and therefore responsible for the funding that led to the deaths.  Follow the money, I always say – that’ll reveal the guilty party.  One order of porridge for the Treasurer, waiter!

Not to mention Minister for Finance Lindsay Tanner, who has oversight of Commonwealth expenditure.  You’ll have about as much hair as Garrett by the time you breathe free air again, Lindsay.  Try and deregulate your way out of Pentridge!

And of course there’s Julia Gillard.  Now, she’s not directly linked at all to this industrial manslaughter, but we all know she’d be up to her eyeballs in this sort of thing – being an ex-IR lawyer she should have known better.  Off to Women’s Prison, Julia!  We all know you’ll be running the joint in no time anyway.

Now we know perfectly well that this would leave a bit of vacancy at the top of the Australian Government but luckily we’ve got a red-hot Opposition ready to leap into the breach.  Who’d make a better Prime Minister than some economically-illiterate abortion obsessive who believes in transubstantiation but not climate change?

But I’m still not satisfied.  There are more people responsible for these deaths than just Peter Garrett and his ministerial colleagues.  I demand the following be put on trial as well.