Not Inheriting the Kingdom of God

Hon. Bill Shorten, Australia’s Federal Opposition Leader, has declared, “I actually think that the meanest commentary that I’ve seen in this election is actually the proposition that gay people are going to go to hell.”

Mr. Shorten claims to be Christian. Does he or does he not accept as scripturally-established doctrine the statement of St. Paul to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 6: 9-10 that among the unrighteous who, if unrepentant, cannot inherit the Kingdom of God are effeminate men and those men who bed men?

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.

The two words translated as “effeminate” and “abusers of themselves with mankind” in the KJV (μαλακοὶ and ἀρσενοκοῖται) may be translated into modern English as “pansies” and “arse-bandits”. The Vulgate’s translation of ἀρσενοκοῖται, masculorum concubitores, in English is “[male] bedmates of men”.

Koine Greek: ἢ οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι ἄδικοι θεοῦ βασιλείαν οὐ κληρονομήσουσιν; μὴ πλανᾶσθε· οὔτε πόρνοι οὔτε εἰδωλολάτραι οὔτε μοιχοὶ οὔτε μαλακοὶ οὔτε ἀρσενοκοῖται οὔτε κλέπται οὔτε πλεονέκται, οὐ μέθυσοι, οὐ λοίδοροι, οὐχ ἅρπαγες βασιλείαν θεοῦ κληρονομήσουσιν.

Vulgate: An nescitis quia iniqui regnum Dei non possidebunt? Nolite errare: neque fornicarii, neque idolis servientes, neque adulteri, neque molles, neque masculorum concubitores, neque fures, neque avari, neque ebriosi, neque maledici, neque rapaces regnum Dei possidebunt.

By the way, why do those who denounce the proposition that men who bed men might go to Hell not also condemn the proposition that unrepentant fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, thieves, coveters, drunkards, defamers and graspers are similarly hell-bound?

“Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief”

Illuminating Mischief

Turnbull’s light-bulb ban
was, I say, emblematic
of the statist man.

His awarmist views
suggest that Turnbull’s present
restraint is a ruse.

Awarmists can’t be
rational, logical or
prudent* fiscally.

* earlier, at Catallaxy Files, I posted this comment:

As I have suggested elsewhere it it impossible to be an awarmist and a fiscal conservative at the same time.  To believe in the pseudo-scientific conjecture of AGW a person has to reject logic and science in favour of immoderate irrationality; to support the supposed solutions to the non-existent problem of global warming—which involve massive spending, increased taxes and illiberal statist controls—believers perforce deny personal liberty and freedoms in general; such a person cannot reasonably be expected to consider other issues logically, scientifically or prudently.

The egomaniacal, amoral and seemingly psychopathic Turnbull is evidently more dangerous than Rudd and Gillard combined.

“Don’t Overestimate Threats,” Shriek Scaremongers

In “Don’t overestimate Islamic State threat: Malcolm Turnbull” David Wroe (of the seditiously scaremongering, awarmist SMH) reports the soothing words of Hon. Malcolm Turnbull, the former federal Minister for the Environment and Water Resources:

The threat posed by the Islamic State terror group should not be overstated, and critics of new national security measures should not be denounced, Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has said.

The threat posed by the Islamic State terror group, judging only by its murderous acts and not by its quite minatory pronouncements, is great; the threat posed by a very slight increase of average temperatures around the world, in contrast, is extremely slight.  When Malcom Turnbull was Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, however, he banned incandescent light-bulbs in Australia, “in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”, and because of his deep but groundless fear that their extremely slight contribution to supposed global warming would doom us all:

“A normal light bulb is too hot to hold—that heat is wasted* and globally represents millions of tonnes of CO₂ that needn’t have been emitted into the atmosphere if we had used more efficient forms of lighting.”

On his own department’s projections (at the time), his banning of incandescent light bulbs was expected to reduce Australia’s total output of allegedly threatening “emissions”—i.e. beneficent CO₂, essential for life—by as much as 0.1%.
So, a real, murderous regime trying to impose a barbaric caliphate—meh; a fantasy of doom predicated on a pseudo-scientific conjecture insisting that the world’s climate might warm by as much as half a degree—run for the hills after destroying industry!

The man is a nincompoop.

* in cold weather, in many homes, the heat from internal incandescent light bulbs was not wasted: it helped warm living spaces.

The “Progressive” Submission

The Greens have already lost their heads

With any trouble,
plight, mess or crisis which might
afflict our nation

The Greens know what to
do: plan yet another march
or demonstration.

Dr. Bandt* will write
a chant, and one having
a simple thesis:

the only way to
solve our problems with Islam’s
by proskynesis;

if any muslim
promise your immediate
decapitation

bow, bow, bow to all
demands whilst blaming Western
civilisation.

*  An example of Green silliness:

Greens MP Adam Bandt asked whether Australia’s deployment to the Middle East [were] making Australia less safe.
“We have to ask the serious question what is it that makes someone, a teenager, so disaffected with their own country that they want to kill people,” he told reporters in Canberra.

To answer Dr. Bandt’s question. Australia’s recent deployment to Iraq and Syria started Monday; Abdul Numan Haider’s plans to behead someone began at least three months ago.  Clearly, for a Government’s action to have an effect on someone’s “radicalisation” three months before it occurred, it must be really bad.

UPDATE I:  The Chant of Adam Bandt:

An some jihadist threaten you
blame, blame, blame your racist view,
and when your blood is on your chest
blame, blame, blame, the biassed West.
Should Muslims take away your head
blame, blame, blame yourself instead.
An Islam turn your life to shit
never blame the cause of it:
appease extremists!  let them slay!
Blame, blame blame the Western way.

UPDATE II:  see “Melbourne terror shooting: Numan Haider planned to behead Victoria Police officers, drape bodies in IS flag” by John Silvester in The Age:

Numan Haider used a small knife to attack an Australian Federal Police officer and a Victorian policeman before he was shot dead with a single shot.
When Haider was searched he was found to be carrying a larger knife and an Islamic State flag.
Police believe the plan was to follow instructions from the international terror group Islamic State and behead the officers, cover the bodies in the flag and then take photos to post via the internet.

Yeah, but it had nothing—nothing whatsoever!—to do with Islam, the Religion of Peace.

The “Putting a Price on X” Game

In “Clear link between climate change and bushfires: UN adviser warns Tony Abbott”, by the credulous Judith Ireland, we learn that the useless-when-it’s-not actually-destructive UN is still hoping to persuade people that slightly warmer weather is catastrophically dangerous, and that we must therefore lavish even more money on the already bloated bureaucrats who have lied to us for so long about the alleged dangers of very slight global warming.

A senior United Nations climate change official says there is “absolutely” a link between climate change and bushfires and has warned that the Coalition government will pay a high political and financial price for its decision to scrap carbon pricing.

There is, of course, no link at all between supposed anthropogenic global warming—which is what these venal buffoons mean when they refer to “climate change”—and bushfires.  That is a self-serving lie—or, to be charitable, perhaps yet another wondrous case of the modern flexibility of language whereby “absolutely” means “not at all”.

In an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Monday, the head of the UN’s climate change negotiations, Christiana Figueres, said there was a clear link between climate change and bushfires such as those raging in New South Wales.

She noted that the World Meteorological Organisation had not yet established a direct link between the NSW fires and climate change.

“But what is absolutely clear is the science is telling us that there are increasing heat waves in Asia, Europe, and Australia; that these will continue; that they will continue in their intensity and in their frequency,” Ms Figueres said.

Uh huh; there’s no direct link, and no proof, but we should base all our spending on the notion that there is a proven link, anyway.  This loony is allowed outside to walk among us.

Ms Figueres described the NSW fires as an “example of what we may be looking at unless we take actually vigorous action”.
The UN adviser said the Abbott government would not only pay a high political price but a “very high financial price” for stepping away from a price on carbon.

A price on carbon, by the way, is code for a neo-Luddite tax (on industrial emissions of beneficent carbon dioxide, for the most part) which can do nothing to stop any global warming, or cooling, but further enriches banks, middlemen, and the misanthracist, malfeasant UN, predicated on the ludicrous, pseudo-scientific conjecture that man’s puny contributions to the atmosphere are warming the world dangerously.

“What we need to do is put a price on carbon so that we don’t have to continue to pay the price of carbon,'' she said.

Christiana Figueres, clearly, is seriously deluded, but her “What we need to do is put a price on x so that we don’t have to continue to pay the price of x” game seems like fun.  I’ll have a go:

What we need to do is put a price on the silly but expensively corrupt UN so that we don’t have to continue to pay the price of the silly but expensively corrupt UN!

Furthermore:

What we need to do is put a price on those deluded, misanthropist, enviro-mentalist lunatics who won’t allow burnoffs but then have the gall to blame preventable or deliberately lit bushfires on non-existent AGW so that we don’t have to continue to pay the price of those deluded, misanthropist, enviro-mentalist lunatics who won’t allow burnoffs but then have the gall to blame preventable or deliberately lit bushfires on non-existent AGW!

Or, logically enough:

What we need to do is put a price on putting a price on things so that we don’t have to continue to pay the price of putting a price on things.

See also Tim Blair’s “Tell It to Ixchel”. 

UPDATE I:  see “UN climate chief breaks down in tears over global warming”.  See also “Why the Global Warming Agenda Is Wrong”.

UPDATE II:  see “What Is Christiana Figueres Thinking?” by Donna Laframboise:

Christiana is a supremely well-connected child of wealth, power, and privilege.  At this moment, she’s the Executive Secretary of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).  […] Ban Ki-moon, the head of the UN, reached out his hand and appointed her to that prominent position on the world’s stage.
Let us be clear about what this means:  She is a bureaucrat, a hand-picked UN employee.  She speaks for no one other than her UN bosses.
As the person tasked with trying to secure a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, Figueres is supposed to be a diplomat.  Her job is to coax nearly 200 countries to come to a common agreement.
So what in the world is she doing criticizing Australia’s shiny new, democratically elected government?  According to an article in today’s Australian newspaper,

UN climate chief Christiana Figueres has told CNN the Abbott government will pay a heavy political and economic price for walking away from Labor’s commitments on climate change.

But Figueres has things backward.  Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s freshly-minted government is doing exactly what he promised on the election trail.  It is reflecting the will of the people by scrapping that country’s hated, economically destructive carbon tax.

UPDATE III:  Prime Minister Tony Abbott today dismissed the irrational comments of Christiana Figueres, rightly asserting that bushfires, sadly, have always been “part of the Australian experience”; he explained to Fairfax Radio that the deluded woman was “talking through her hat”.

UPDATE IV (25 October):  US Congressman (and candidate for the US Senate) Paul Broun writes:

[S]ixty-eight years ago a clandestine organization was born.
It was the birthdate of the United Nations.
And now, sixty-eight years later, our nation is in danger because of this very institution.  The United Nations is threatening our everyday way of life, the freedoms and liberties we enjoy and the privacy our families deserve. 
I want to get the US out of the UN and the UN out of the US.  That’s why one of the first bills I introduced this year in Congress was HR 75 to end all US participation in the United Nations.
If you agree that our nation is better off alone then cohorting with this organization that allows dictators into this country, then add your name to my petition today.
As the United Nations grows in power and authority, the United States sovereignty dwindles with it.  Our country, under the dismal direction of the Democrats, is spending millions of dollars supporting a organization that undoubtedly endangers our children and grandchildren’s future.

UPDATE V (25 October):   see “Al Gore Throws Another Climate Lie on the Barbie” from Investor's Business Daily: 

Al Gore, patron saint of climate fraud, argues with Australia’s prime minister that its brushfires [brushfires!] are not caused by warming and that the record shows the koala bear, like the polar bear, is quite safe.
They were the largest Australian bushfires in a populous region in recorded history, consuming half the state of Victoria, claiming 12 lives and destroying an estimated 1 million sheep and thousands of cattle.  And they occurred in February 1851 during one of the coldest years on record.
Bushfires have been part of Australian life for centuries, long before the Industrial Revolution and the sale of the first SUV.
Since the 1851 fires, there've been the 1898 fires in Victoria, which consumed 2,000 buildings, fires in Victoria in 1938 that killed 71 and destroyed 3,700 buildings, and the Ash Wednesday fires in the early 1980s that left 71 dead in the state of South Australia.
Australia has been battling another round of massive bushfires west of Sydney for more than a week now, fires not unlike those that have occurred throughout its history.  The difference is that this time we have Al Gore and his climate co-conspirators at the U.N., the corrupt and fraudulent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to blame the fires on climate change.
Gore is upset with Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s insistence that the recent New South Wales wildfires are not linked to climate change and his statement on Australian radio that “these fires are certainly not a function of climate change, they are just a function of life in Australia.”  […]
“It reminds me of politicians here who got a lot of support from the tobacco companies and who argued to the public that there was absolutely no connection between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer,” Gore said on ABC’s Los Angeles affiliate Wednesday night.
This echoes the mantra of the climate scammers that climate change “deniers” have long had their science-based skepticism subsidized by energy companies.
Yet it is Al Gore and others like him who have gotten rich peddling their climate fiction, while leading governments to stunt economic growth and divert scarce billions to chase a mirage.
The inconvenient truth for Gore et al is that wildfires have been decreasing as have been instances of drought that cause them.
“Historical analysis of wildfires around the world shows that since 1950 their numbers have decreased globally by 15%,’ wrote Bjorn Lomborg of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and the Copenhagen Business School in the Wall Street Journal.  […]
Domestically, the number of wildfires across the U.S. this year is on pace to be the fewest in the past 10 years and the acreage involved is at the second lowest level in that same period, according to an analysis by the National Interagency Fire Center.

See “Al Gore: Tobacco Hypocrite”
See also “‘Lack of political will’ the trigger” by John Ferguson and Stephen Fitzpatrick:

The Blue Mountains bushfire crisis was the result of a lack of political leadership over bush management issues and had nothing to do with climate change, says one of Australia's foremost disaster management experts.
It also demonstrated a failure to learn lessons from the 2009 Black Saturday fires in Victoria that killed 173 people and left thousands homeless, said David Packham, a former deputy director of the Australian Counter Disaster College.
Mr Packham said while issues such as power assets were crucial when it came to bushfires—and moving them underground would be an important step—ignition would remain a given, whether man-made or by lightning.
A spokesman for Endeavour Energy, which covers the Blue Mountains region, said more than 100 damaged poles had been replaced since the blazes began last Thursday.  However, he questioned a finding by the NSW Rural Fire Service that one of the biggest fires, in Springwood, was started “as a result of powerlines during strong winds”.
“These were extreme conditions and any time there [are] winds over 90km/h predicted that’s bad news for electricity providers,” he said.  […]
Mr Packham said “a little” had been learned from the Black Saturday fires—five of which, out of 11, were caused by electrical assets—but said the Blue Mountains had been allowed to accumulate fuel, with the predictable outcome being large-scale, uncontrollable burning.  “What is happening in NSW is exactly what happens every 10 or 20 years, right back to 1915,” he told The Australian.  “If you have lots of … fire fuel you will have lots of unpleasant fire.”
Mr Packham also said linking the NSW fire disaster with global warming was “nonsense” because climate change was incremental and could not be blamed for dire fire events such as this.

Preparing for a Knifing

A transcript of the future.

At home, in the wee hours of the morning, Bill Shorten rings a parliamentary colleague:-

Unidentified Caucus Member:  Huh? Do you know what time it is? It’s—hell!—it’s two-sodding-thirty-effen-two in the bloody morning!

Bill Shorten:  Yeah, I needed to know the time, but my watch is broken! Hello … hello?  Comrade?  That was a joke.

Unidentified Caucus Member:  Um, who is this?

Bill Shorten:  Bill, mate, Bill Shorten.

Unidentified Caucus Member:  Oh, faark.  What do you want, Shorten?

Bill Shorten:  I’m ringing around to see whether I should move against the Opposition Leader, yeah, and discover what sort of backing I might have.  I might have to sharpen the old knife again.

Unidentified Caucus Member: Hang on, what?

Bill Shorten:  I was thinking of moving against the Opposition Leader, and wondering whether I could count on your support, mate.  For a challenge.  Are you there?

Unidentified Caucus Member:  Um, Bill, you are the bloody Opposition Leader!

Bill Shorten:  I know; but can I be trusted?

UPDATE I:

Later that evening being interviewed on Lateline:-
Tony Jones:  There’s been talk around Canberra today that elements within the federal ALP caucus are unhappy with the current leadership—
Bill Shorten: Well, I know that I’ve heard absolutely nothing about that; but I do know this, that Mr. Abbott will cut, cut cut, and slash, slash, slash, and knife, knife, knife, and stab, stab, stab, and hack, hack, hack, and gash, gash, gash, and, um, impale, and, uh, lacerate…  Anyway, I must say, Tony, that I know that the Opposition Leader has a tough job—a very tough job—and I agree with everything and whatever our leader has said, absolutely at all times and without question—
Tony Jones:  Everything?
Bill Shorten:   And whatever.  But I know this:  Abbott can’t be trusted.  He will slice, slice, slice—
Tony Jones:  Ah, I put it to you, Bill Shorten, that you are the Opposition Leader—
Bill Shorten:  Well, yes, yes I am.
Tony Jones:  —so, you are saying that you agree with everything you have said?
Bill Shorten:  Everything!
Tony Jones:  Without, it seems, without even hearing what you’ve said?
Bill Shorten:  If that’s what I said, yes.
Tony Jones:  Right.  Ah, well, right.  Yup.  Well, Bill Shorten, we’re out of time, I’m afraid.  We’ll have to leave you there.  We thank you very much for taking the time to come in and talk to us tonight.
Bill Shorten:  Thank you.
Tony Jones:  That was the agreeable Bill Shorten, Opposition Leader, agreeing with his leader.

UPDATE II (13 September):  thanks to Wikileaks, we can read an assessment of Bill Shorten from the USA’s Embassy in Australia.

UPDATE III (13 September):

“One Day More”

Disobeying Rules and Breaking the Law

As is the case in every election, candidates—who seek to become our legislators—willfully refuse to comply with provisions of the Commonwealth Electoral Act (1912); here, for example, is Section 328:

Printing and publication of electoral advertisements, notices etc.

(1)  A person shall not print, publish or distribute or cause, permit or authorize to be printed, published or distributed, an electoral advertisement, handbill, pamphlet, poster or notice unless:

(a)  the name and address of the person who authorized the advertisement, handbill, pamphlet, poster or notice appears at the end thereof […]

(1A)  A person must not produce, publish or distribute or cause, permit or authorise to be produced, published or distributed an electoral video recording unless the name and address of the person who authorised the video recording appears at the end of it.  […]
(2)  A person who contravenes subsection (1), (1A) or (1AB) is guilty of an offence punishable on conviction:

(a)  if the offender is a natural person—by a fine not exceeding $1,000  […]

“address” of a person means an address, including a full street address and suburb or locality, at which the person can usually be contacted during the day.  It does not include a post office box.

Here is Section 328A:

Publication of electoral advertisements on the internet

(1)  A person commits an offence if:

(a)  either:
   (i)  the person publishes an electoral advertisement on the internet; or
   (ii)  the person causes, permits or authorises an electoral advertisement to be published on the internet; and
(b)  the electoral advertisement is intended to affect voting in an election; and
(c)  the electoral advertisement is paid for by the person or another person; and
(d)  the name and address of the person who authorised the advertisement do not appear at the end of the advertisement.

Penalty:  10 penalty units.  [One penalty unit = $170.]

(2)  Subsection (1) does not apply if the matter published on the internet forms part of a general commentary on a website.

Let us examine the authorisation on an advertisement for Jane Austin, the ALP candidate for the seat of Denison in Tasmania:

Somehow, I reckon that “for the ALP, Hobart” inadequately constitutes “a full street address and suburb or locality, at which the person can usually be contacted during the day”.

Rules, of course, are only for little people. 

UPDATE I:  here’s an electoral video recording for the ALP, shewn nationally:

For some reason, I doubt that “Australian Labor Party, Canberra” adequately constitutes “a full street address and suburb or locality, at which the person can usually be contacted during the day”.

UPDATE II:  here’s another national advertisement:

UPDATE III:  Australian Unions publish electoral advertisements on various websites which are not authorised, and even the picture of a newspaper advertisement constitutes electoral material and ought to be properly authorised:

UPDATE IV:  I suspect that Australian Unions, like so many corrupt former unionists—such as Julia Gillard or Craig Thomson—, care not a jot for Australian laws except for those which might impede their own aggrandisement.

UPDATE V:  The Greens (I surmise) sponsor electoral advertisements on Facebook which fail to comply with the Act; for example:

UPDATE VI: The Greens, who cannot comply with the simple provisions of electoral law, will apparently find a way to end poverty!

UPDATE VII (5 September):  I have been searching for Liberal Party advertisements which fail to comply with the Act, but all those which I’ve seen have, so far, been authorised properly; meanwhile, the ALP’s main video, on its YouTube page, treats “Australian Labor Party, Canberra” as a sufficient description for the place, “including a full street address and suburb or locality, at which the person can usually be contacted during the day”:

UPDATE VIII (5 September):  a website, dontbeafuckingidiot.com, contains rather profane propaganda for the ALP (though pretending to be independent) and disparages the Coalition—which the site, rather ignorantly, designates “LNP”, though LNP properly refers only to the Liberal National Party of Queensland—, but fails to provide any authorisation:

UPDATE IX (6 September):  with false figures, feigned friends, phony followers and, now, fraudulent flyers, the fakery never stops with our fabricating, fibbing fabulist of a PM; see “Australian Electoral Commission to look into claims Kevin Rudd election campaign material is fake after voters deny giving quotes”, by Des Houghton and Anthony Gough:

Kevin Rudd has been accused of using phony endorsements in the campaign material designed to help him save his own seat.

A glossy flyer handed out in his electorate features endorsements from constituents declaring “that’s why we’re voting for him”.

But some of those featured say they never said such a thing.

Perhaps it’s all just a matter of forgetfulness.  Tim Blair noted a month ago:

Rudd’s wife Thérèse Rein told an interviewer in 2009 how she coped with negative media attention.

“All that stuff goes straight to the forgettery,” Rein said, explaining that the “forgettery” is a tradition in the Rein family.

These days, Rudd is claiming his wife’s family history as his own:

Asked how he dealt with [slights and offences], Mr Rudd said: “So for me, I just stick it into what Mum used to call her ‘forgettery’ – boof!  Remember the old computer programs it [sic] had the little rubbish bin at the top?  Boof.  Gonski.”

UPDATE X (8 September):  the LDP also failed:

Fast Lies and Not Very Fast Trains

Hon. Anthony Albanese, the Deputy PM and Minister for Transport and Infrastructure, today claimed that all continents—including, he helpfully explained, Europe and Asia—have high-speed rail.
That was a lie.
In Africa, Morocco, Algeria and South Africa are planning to have high-speed rail systems.

In South America, Argentina had plans to have high-speed rail; Brazil is constructing high-speed rail.
In North America, the USA has high speed rail only if we define high speed as not much above 60 mph—i.e., not very high speed at all.
Only in France and Japan, by the way, do enough passengers use high speed rail to make it profitable.
If Mr. Albanese were to give the $52,000,000 which he’s promising a proposed HSR-investigating authority* to me instead, I can safely promise him that I’ll be able to teleport people between the cities by transporter beam within twenty-five years—with as effective a guarantee as he’s promising high speed rail to the electorate. 
Of course, the Government’s silly proposal proves that the Government hasn’t quite listened to its own NBN propaganda; within twenty-five years no-one will need to travel because 120% of the population will be working from home, seeing their employers or clients on their monitors, having their medicines prescribed online, printing all their technological devices on their 3D printers, growing all their soylent green hydroponically in their basements, and going on holidays in their surround-sound holo-chambers. 

*  to “finalise station locations and to develop a business case”. 

(Originally posted, piecemeal, to Catallaxy Files.) 

UPDATE I:  at a projected cost of $114,000,000,000, according to the Government, and assuming that the HSR averaged a thousand full fare-paying passengers a day all year (and also assuming—ha!—that the trains cost no more to run after that substantial investment), to pay back 10% of the investment annually, fares (in today’s value) would have to be over $30,000 each.  Currently, a cheaper fare for a trip by aeroplane from Melbourne to Brisbane can be procured for $147.

UPDATE II:

Yet Another Good Idea 

Though we’d travel more
quickly and far more cheaply
by an aeroplane,

the latest grand plan
from Rudd and Albanese:
a very fast train!

How could such a scheme
ever make any profit?
They cannot explain.

Evidently, the
PM and his deputy
are not very sane.