The utterly unlamented Malcolm Turnbull had returned to Australia.
God only knows why.
He had betrayed his own political party as assuredly as he had betrayed the country.
A pariah even amongst the luvvies, the false narrative that the country was punishing the so-called Liberals, in Australia the conservatives, for having dumped Turnbull was allowed to run.
For the simple reason that the truth was even less palatable.
Oh how the big end of town had suffered.
A $12,500 a plate dinner had to be cancelled because of Turnbull's demise.
Money will get you everywhere when it comes to access to Australia's politicians.
A geriatric John Howard quivered across the seat of Wentworth.
"I'm John Howard," he said, bowling up to an ice-frozen constituent.
"I know who you are," came the frosty response.
It provoked heartbreak, this appalling moment.
At the local garage, the hard working couple who had become family friends were plotting how to escape the coming downturn.
"You can feel it coming. Everyone says so."
The future was already whispering into the present.
The prophets had arrived.
The airport was at bay, the horizons smashed. Every order was breaking down. A symphony orchestrated, in part, by the Jesuits in their midst, those who believed the country had to be destroyed in order to save it. That in crisis the people would return to a purer form of God.
Here on the farthest outskirts of civilisation.
A party in your honour. To dance on your grave.
He could remember every last travesty.
The dogs who perpetrated their lies and gossips, who tittered behind fingers and ran in vicious, supercilious herds, protecting the corrupt, their rotten mob behaviour, the corrupt authorities who had deliberately let these things run for years on end, he could feel them all running in the ether beneath his feet.
Flushed down the drain.
They were dead already. Or might as well have been.
The poison eye, the dank curse. Fast forward to the present. These imbeciles on death watch. We were going to come stalking you. We were going to show you who's boss.
And then one day: nothing worked anymore.
The illiterate faggots, the born again Jehovahs, the Universal Church, the snapping heels of the dislocated, someone said to me once: beware.
Laugh now, for you won't laugh long.
They were finished here. They had been betrayed. They had lost their jobs and their positions, even the volunteers, and made to look like fools. Vicious, nasty, malicious, dumb as dog shit fools.
He gathered his robes around him. He walked again.
"What are you?" they demanded to know. "What are you?"
Or that heavily inflected demand: "Who are you?"
"Nobody. Just another person you ripped off."
Now the whole country had been ripped off by the multi-millionaire crooks aka the oligarchy who plundered the country.
And guess who was sailing free?
While you are trapped in your own lies.
THE BIGGER STORY:
Mr Turnbull was surrounded by security as he made his way inside.
The former prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has touched down in Sydney this morning, as the fallout continues from the Liberals defeat in Saturday's Wentworth by-election.
Key points:
Mr Turnbull did not speak to journalists as he arrived at his Point Piper home
His return comes less than 48 hours after the Liberals lost the by-election in his old seat
Independent candidate Kerryn Phelps, who won Wentworth, has revealed her campaign cost $300,000
Mr Turnbull travelled to New York with his wife, Lucy, after the Liberal Party's leadership spill that toppled him from the nation's top job in August.
The Turnbulls flew home after a brief stop in Singapore to visit their son, Alex, who used social media to criticise the Liberals in the lead-up to Saturday's vote.
Scott Morrison, who replaced Mr Turnbull as PM, downplayed his former colleague's decision not to help the party campaign in Wentworth.
Mr Morrison said Mr Turnbull rejected offers to help Liberal candidate Dave Sharma, including writing a letter of support.
However former prime minister Tony Abbott was among those who criticised Mr Turnbull for not being active enough in the Liberals' campaign.
"I know he doesn't want to get too involved with Australian politics, I understand that," he told radio station 2GB last week.
"I know he is probably enjoying a bit of R&R with Lucy in New York, but I reckon he owes it to the party and the people of Wentworth to give Dave Sharma a solid, clear personal endorsement this week in particular."
Former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce joined a chorus of Government figures criticising Mr Turnbull, telling News Corp: "That's all he had to say: 'Please vote for Dave Sharma'. Five words. He owned an IT company, I think he could have managed that."
Labor says the government’s decision to protect a multinational arms manufacturer by suppressing a finding from the auditor general will have a “chilling effect” on his independence.
The defence minister, Christopher Pyne, on Monday defended the decision to black out sections of an auditor general’s report on Australia’s $1.3bn contract with Thales to provide the Australian army with 1,100 Hawkei light protected vehicles.
Following a request from Thales, the attorney general, Christian Porter, used extraordinary powers to redact parts of the report, saying it was necessary both on national security grounds and to prevent unfair prejudice to Thales’ commercial interests.
Documents obtained by Guardian Australia suggest much of the censored content relates to a finding that Australia could have paid half the amount through the joint light protected vehicle (JLTV) program in the United States.
Pyne on Monday defended the decision to redact the audit report, insisting there were national security grounds justifying the decision.
The leak of top-secret Asio advice to the media concerning Scott Morrison’s proposal to relocate the Australian embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has been referred to the federal police.
In a bulletin leaked to the Guardian Australia, Asio had warned the move may “provoke protest, unrest and possibly some violence in Gaza and the West Bank”.The bulletin, marked secret, AUSTEO (Australian eyes only), circulated on 15 October – the day before Morrison’s announcement on the Israel embassy – notes that the putative shift would “attract international attention”.The director general of Asio, Duncan Lewis, told a Senate estimates hearing on Monday that an internal investigation into the leak was under way and the matter had been referred to the federal police. The advice was not intended to be made public, he said.
“It’s very unusual,” Lewis told the hearing.
He was unable to shed light on how it was leaked but said the bulletins were “widely distributed” across the federal government, state and territory governments as well as various departments and agencies.
“It was a routine piece of advice,” Lewis said, adding that Asio issued multiple bulletins and threat level assessments each week, sometimes every day.
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