Summer isn’t meant to be like this

There should be blue skies, not red

Christmas dinners.

Not the call out to face an inferno

Carefree days

Not the dread of where nature is taking us, and

Where next it will rain its wrath down

I think of so many communities across the water

Devastation

The toll on life and lifestyle

The toll on wildlife and wild places

I look around my city

The forest clad hills

With fingers of bush pushing

Right into its heart

And I wonder and I fear

Please, never another 1967

Images abound of the horror of it all

At the start of this mint new decade

But for me there’s one, from

Some time ago now

Its not a horizon of fire

Nor singed koalas and ‘roos

Or people holding loved ones close

On a beach or a jetty

As the apocalypse approaches

To me the image of this summer

Perhaps for all summers henceforth

You’ll recall it, no doubt

It’s a few years back now

A galoot of a Prime Minister to be

Entered our parliament cradling

In his palm

A single lump of coal

Said he with a smirk of glee

‘Lookee here and see. Right here, folks

With this black stuff you spy the future.’

Then and there he gave the middle finger to science

Where is the spine of Fraser and his

Vietnamese refugees forever thankful

Where is the nous of Hawke

Saving the Franklin

Where is the eloquence of Keating

With the Redfern Oration

Of Howard facing down the gun lobby

In a bullet proof vest.

We’ve had Rudd flip-flopping

Abbott nay-saying and denying

Turnbull – well, whatever happened

To his spine and core beliefs

At least Julia had a go

And now the galoot is our leader

His time has come

A Christian without, to date

Any Christianity, at least

In any form I know it

It’s not coal he’s holding

In his clutches now

But the futures of my

Beautiful and extraordinary grandkids

Of all our beautiful and extraordinary

Grandchildren

Stand up.

Be a leader

Stay Christian if you must

But grow a spine, for pity’s sake