‘La la la. What a woonderfuul woorld... ’
Oh, hello. Just pass the towel, would you? Well, don’t you sing in the shower too? I mean, we’ve got so much to be thankful for, haven’t we? Australia may be the lucky country, but thank heavens there’s so much good work going on all round this wonderful, happy world. John Kerry is going to make such a fine President, and Simon Crean is showing all the doubters what quietly good statesmanship from a prime minister can do to make the nation mature and compassionate and visionary.
Yep, I feel glad to be part of it all. Since Joan Chittister became Pope ten years ago, there has been such a resurgence of faith that churches are packed with teenagers; and all those new small parishes are working so well with their clerical families. We all grieved when dear old John Paul I died, but he was such a wise, unifying force, that he left the church stronger, kinder and happier than he found it. There had been some fears from conservatives when he relaxed all those antiquated patriarchal marriage and reproductive laws, but strangely, throughout our culture, there seems to be more respect for the human body now that we know that harmless consensual joy is not sinful. And ordaining women and married people has saved the church from an unthinkable shortage of priests. JP1 was such a visionary that the church is affecting people’s lives for the better all over the world. It’s nice to know we’re still relevant to today’s world and respectful of different ways of thinking.
And it’s such a relief to know that we’ve arrested the greenhouse effect. Thank God for the probity of the forestry companies: once it was pointed out that native forest logging was causing such problems, they all got together and began to work out truly sustainable ways of getting timber. ‘We’d hate to think we were responsible for one of the greatest mistakes of the century’, said the CEO of Nolongerrapacious Pty Ltd. He is now the main force behind an extraordinary resurgence in rural economies because now that employment and business aren’t tied to a decreasing resource, they can really be creative.
Our Governor General, Lowitja O’Donoghue, said the other day that the 1988 treaty between Indigenous Australians and the rest of us—the January 26ers—had been a powerful force for good. She was