Fentanyl penguin has no plan.

A long time ago, in an alternate universe far, far away, I was shadowing Kim Beazley for The Sydney Morning Herald, watching him wind his big, genial self around the country like a hopeful blimp full of happy gas, squaring up to John Howard in the steel cage death match of the 2001 federal election. It was fun. I thought Beazley might actually win. (Do not follow me for racing tips)

But somewhere during the week or two I spent with him, a Norwegian freighter—the MV Tampa—appeared over the horizon, its decks crowded with refugees stacked like human Tetris blocks. Howard deployed the SAS and his own considerable talents for phobic demagoguery.

Boom.

I wasn’t in the room with Beazley when the news broke, but I caught up with him within a day or so—and the change in him was both noticeable and remarkable. He’d deflated. It was like watching a soufflé implode.

I have a strong memory of him shrugging and muttering, “Well, that’s that then.”

Everything afterwards was just going through the motions.

And this week I find myself wondering—is Peter Dutton having a Beazley moment? Every guttural burp and grunt sounds like a brain fart leaking from the pressure-cracked skull of a man who knows he done fucked up

I wonder if, via some deeply cursed butterfly effect, we’ll end up owing Donald Trump a thank you, sir, before he kills us all.

Because I’ve got this twitch instinct that Trump’s world-historical act of seppuku yesterday may have just handed the whole democracy sausage to Albanese, the same way the Tampa gifted 2001 to John Howard.

To be clear, the Tampa was not an actual crisis. It was a fake-ass memergency. But it condemned us to another two terms of that beady-eyed little rat-bastard in power.

Dutton was already having a bit of a shocker in the first week of the campaign. The free ride he’s enjoyed for the past couple of years—where the legacy corporate media let him fill dead air space with nonsense and waaambulance-chasing—was suddenly over. Now, he was being asked actual questions. Rather awkward ones, too. Like: do you have any policies? Do you know how to spell ‘policy’?

Example? His plan to “bring down energy prices” by telling the gas market to, um, bring down energy prices.

The gas he’s talking about magically pumping into the domestic market to increase supply and lower prices? It doesn’t exist. Most of our gas is perma-locked into contracts so long-term they might as well be carved on Infinity Stones in Elvish runes. The spot market—what’s left—is a thimbleful of microwaved burrito juice.

Any producer working the spot market will see Dutton coming a mile off and either lock their leftovers into a future contract at a higher price, or claim they’re currently negotiating one.

The final ingredient of this gas-fired fail cake? The main market for microwaveable burrito juice is Victoria, but the main source is Queensland, and by the time you’ve shipped it from one to the other, transport costs have jacked the price back up to current market maximums.

So, either Dutton’s lying—or, more likely, he panicked and yanked that rabbit out of a paper shredder. Like he did with his nuclear reactor ‘plan’.

It’s increasingly obvious that he hasn’t done the policy work. He has nothing to offer. And I don’t mean that in the usual rhetorical sense. I mean, he literally has no policies. They haven’t been written. Sure, some policies will be released over the next couple of weeks. But whatever he drops into the feed is gonna be slapped together with the same crazed energy I used to finish end-of-term uni papers: sitting up all night, necking half a bottle of 100 Pipers to wash down nauseating amounts of No-Doz, while hammering away on a mechanical typewriter at 4 am.

Game recognises game, Spud.

And then comes Trump. A collapsing orange supergiant of mental illness and morbid spite who self-detonates the US economy to, what, take out a bunch of fentanyl penguins on Heard Island?

Watching Dutton respond to Trump’s tariff announcement yesterday—which everyone knew was coming, and everyone knew was going to be a disaster—was somewhat triggering for those of us with long memories of all the exams we knew were coming and knew were going to be a disaster, because despite knowing that and dreading it we still didn’t get our lazy arses into gear to do the merest shred of preparation.

Dutton didn’t just know this was coming, though. He knew the day and the time. And he knew he’d need to answer for it. So what did we get?

“It’s Albo’s fault.”

I mean, in his defence, I guess it’s worked for him so far.

Interest rates go up? Albo’s fault. Netflix cancels your favourite comfort show? Albo’s fault. You put a six-pack in the freezer to chill for half an hour and you forgot about it, and now your fish fingers are full of glass shards and lager slushy?

I think we all know who’s responsible.

It’s nonsense, but you can understand the appeal—because nonsense has worked for him for three years.

However, while Trump’s reality distortion field is weirdly potent, it doesn’t reach beyond the boundaries of his cult. Sure, some of that cult lives here, but they’re not just a minority of voters—they’re a minority of conservative voters. And they were already in Dutton’s column. So why simp for their orange God King?

No one is buying the idea that yesterday was Albanese’s fault. No one believes Dutton could have done any better. I doubt even Dutton believes that. And yet—24 hours later—that’s still the line he’s running with.

I suspect it’s because he has no plan.

And without a plan, he walked straight into this trap. Knowing it was a trap. Knowing that the jaws would snap shut by lunchtime yesterday.

The rusted metal teeth have shattered both his legs, and he’s bleeding out. But like some bizarro version of Monty Python’s Black Knight, he’s thrashing around on his stumps, yelling, “Come on, I’ll have ya!”—only he’s not yelling at Trump, who put him there. He’s yelling at Albanese, who’s halfway up the hill, already planning his next sausage sizzle.

Honestly? It feels good.