Grimdark Consequence.

The airport lounge in Rome was full of Australians, all waiting to board the red eye for Dubai and then onto Brisbane. I’d been walking most of the day in Rome, after checking out of our apartment in the morning. I was grateful for the chance to have a shower, as was everyone who got within sniffing distance of me. Freshly scrubbed until my belly button shined, I filled a glass with free champagne and sat down to start reintroducing myself to Vegemiteland.

That didn’t take long.

“Ha,” a thick nasal voice snarled out. “Fucking Voice went down. Too right. That was just a bunch of inner-city elitists.”

I looked up from my flute of free Vueve.

The voice had come from a short, thickset, balding man in the pod of leather armchairs next to mine. He was reading The Australian, of course, and talking to his son.

I said nothing.

I wanted to, but I also knew if I got rolling, I wouldn’t be able to stop.

I wanted to lean over to him and go, “Hey, Digger, I noticed you’re sitting in an exclusive, first-class airport lounge, necking top-shelf drinks and waiting to jet home from your family holiday in Rome. I wonder if you could tell me a bit more about these fuckin’ elites, eh?”

I think we all know how that would’ve ended, with your correspondent escorted from the lounge, mostly likely into the care of the Carabiniere.

Your choices always have consequences, and our choice last week has delivered with interest.

I believe I predicted a while back that Peter Dutton would lean into destroying the Voice because he was desperate for a win, any win, no matter how ugly. It didn’t take him long, having achieved his grotesque victory, to double down, dropping an earlier tactical promise to revisit the question of First Nation’s Voice to Parliament in a form that would unite rather than divide the nation.

(Excuse me while I roll my eyes).

He was quickly followed by a stampede of state leaders, both Liberal and Labor, all backing away from previous commitments to push ahead with their own regional Voices.

Leaning into Conan’s philosophy that driving your enemies before you is the peak of what is best in life, Dutton called for a Royal Commission into child sexual abuse within the Aboriginal community.

Sickening and cynical, but not the worst thing so far.

In the realm of grimdark consequence, I’m gonna call it now. Nothing will do more damage to this country than the emergence and empowerment of the extreme Right. Dutton may be the mainstream face of the No-vote, but it was delivered by a horde of fellow travellers from the outer wastes of white nationalist grievance politics.

Good luck putting that back in the bottle.

Not that I imagine he’ll even try.

Because he was desperate for a win. Just like he will be at the next election.

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Apologies for the lack of jokes this week. I had a funny column planned. Something about a taxonomy of No Voters. But in the end, it seemed a bit gross to be playing this shit for laughs.

At any rate. I’m back at my desk. Still jet-lagged. But ready to get into harness for real next week.

This is way off-topic, but I know some of you will be interested. The sequel is finally out for anyone who got into my first series of novels about the time-travelling aircraft carrier, the USS Hillary Clinton. It’s only on Amazon for now. But it’ll be dropping everywhere else for Christmas.

As for The Collector, Imma work out what to do with that over the next few weeks.