'Old King Coal' - by Mungo McCallum

"Coalaphopia" - a term used by an Australian
Government Minister to describe the leader
of the Opposition, Bill Shorten.

After a couple of days of Malcolm Turnbull berating Bill Shorten as a hypocrite, parasite, fake, suck-up and general scumbag, the prime minister and his government finally got to the substance of the argument.

The Opposition leader’s ultimate, irredeemable sin is that he does not love coal. To prove the point, ministers handed a chunk of the stuff around parliament last Thursday. 

Shorten, Scott Morrison declared, suffers from coalaphopia, while the aptly named Coalition really adores the stuff, wallows in it.

Coal is the modern philosopher’s stone, the cure for all ills; coal will provide cheap, reliable energy for the whole country, the entire world – it would probably power the known universe if we could only export enough of it. And what’s more, coal can be made clean. 

Well, actually it can’t; it can be made marginally less dirty through the very expensive technology in which Australian industry has not the slightest interest in investing, but to get rid of the emissions altogether involves tapping and burying them at prohibitive cost – even if, as the government has hinted, taxpayer money is offered for the process.

But forget about the details: coal rules, OK?

Read Mungo MacCallum’s story in The Monthly - “Old King Coal.”