Invaders in parliamentary benches use extraordinary powers to selectively fleece sinful mankind
Well, no, sir, no, not really; with the greatest respect, it's no challenge at all. A slightly sozzled smoker in a brewery could work out "what aliens might actually be like". And they'd tell you, sir. Oh, yes, they'd tell you in a trice.
Indeed, a smoker in a brewery in our little corner of the globe would tell you in a jiffy, sir - which, as you know, is one thousandth of a trice. Such a smoker could tell you "what aliens might be like" because they were here on Wednesday, sir. Yes, they were. They we here. We saw them.
Admittedly, they were cunningly disguised as politicians - or wellies from Wallywood - but we know it was them because they were doing what you say aliens do best, namely, sticking their tentacles into human affairs and plundering our resources.
Okay, not everyone's resources. They won't plunder everyone's resources till next month, sir, when they unleash their fiendish cash-eating alien Budget creature thingee. On Wednesday they just plundered some horrid people's resources.
Without warning or consistency, sir, having lulled everyone into a false sense of security by announcing there'd be no extra tax on booze - perhaps because the brewers are still contributing handsomely to their campaign coffers - they suddenly whipped out their alien secret super-weapon, aka Extraordinary Urgency.
It's a devilish thing, this Extraordinary Urgency, sir. We know that from bitter experience. The aliens, errr, politicians, never deploy EU to do us Earthlings a favour. They never say, "Good news, folks, we're going into Extraordinary Urgency to give you half your money back. The courier will be round with a cheque in the morning!"
No sir, they never do that! They never say, "Hey, guys, we're going into Extraordinary Urgency to repeal Sue Bradford's anti-smacking Bill because 80 per cent of you told us that's what you wanted and we think it's our bounden duty as your elected representatives to respect your wishes."
Uranus would freeze over, sir, before that happened - and so would ours. You're right about contact with aliens being "too risky". Certainly, our Daft Vadars are nothing but trouble, particularly when they're shielded by this inviolate force field, Extraordinary Urgency. They're bullet-proof then, sir and we cannot resist their alien invasions. Especially not when they close ranks, as they did on Wednesday, in a smarmy lather of cross-galactic self-righteousness.
Truly, sir, truly, in all the infinite reaches of the vast and seething cosmos, there is nothing more nauseating to behold than politicians being sanctimonious about other people's sins - except, perhaps, all the politicians being sanctimonious about the same sin at the same time in the same place.
And it's particularly nauseating when the place is a vacuum as it was on Wednesday.
No matter they were capaciously plundering the resources of nearly one quarter of their employers, 95 per cent of the aliens couldn't even be bothered to turn up and sit through all the wittering "It's for your own good" drivel in their plush leather seats.
They didn't need to. They know smokers are pariahs, like Catholic priests and Wall Street bankers. They know they can piously punish the users of a product legally sold and legally purchased. They know they can safely and selectively intone, "This is not about extra revenue, this is about saving lives" without attracting excessive censure.
And to be fair, sir, it may be about saving lives. But it is also about extra revenue. And it's a very selective application of the financial disincentive. Look, sir, food kills. Fuel kills. Cars kill. Grog kills. Knives kill. Milk kills. Electricity kills. Television kills. Everything we use and abuse can kill us.
Giving benefits to adults kills children. We've known that for years. The research, as the parliamentary aliens love to say, is conclusive. But they've never gone into Extraordinary Urgency to reduce the supply of that lethal substance. Or to push up the tax on booze. ("Sorry, Parties A. B, C, and D. No campaign cheques next year!!!")
And where sits the idealistic alien willing to rise under Urgency to advocate the stencilling upon every baby's forehead of the incontrovertible message: Government Health Warning: birth causes death.
Mind you, since they've plundered an extra $200 million from smokers, making a grand total of $1.3 billion per annum, perhaps they will want to fund such stencils. Or perhaps they'll have a road to Uranus experience and decide it's only fair to spend all the $1.3 billion fag tax on health instead of shoving some into the consolidated fund.
While they're at it, perhaps they'll vote to spend every cent of petrol tax on safer state highways - because, like tobacco, the manifestly inadequate and unsafe roading network which they're responsible for also kills many people every year. Although, sir, there's as much chance of finding such ethical and logical consistency in the alien minds of those here to plunder as there is of discovering intelligent life at a Justin Bieber concert.
