Idiots Anonymous

Showing that the Coalition between the Liberal and National parties only sings when they’re winning, several of their key members have, in recent times, decided that they aren’t interested in playing with Labor when they don’t get to decide whether the game is touch football, soccer or handball, and who gets to play.

The recent departures of Coalition heavyweights Alexander Downer and Mark Vaile have signalled a change of guard within the party, with both electing to “bring a ball from home next time”, so that they can play under their own rules and feel like they are, once again, the most popular kids in Parliament. Though splintering off from the cool kids is rarely a successful venture, Downer and Vaile both believe it is in their best interests to leave before Mr. Nelson tells them to fetch papers.

Self-confessed cool dude, Mark Vaile (front).

Downer had become so accustomed to answering the question: “Who’s the boss?” with: “I’m the boss, and you can’t play!” that when the question was posed weeks after the Coalition’s electoral defeat, he threw his jelly cup across the Lower House, hitting Anthony Albanese in the forehead.

“It’s not fair!” said Downer, arms folded. “Ever since Kevin [Rudd] took the ball from us, he’s telling us all we can’t play! We brought the ball for twelve years and all of a sudden, his is cooler? He’s a dork!”

The Nationals’ Vaile, the mis-shapen best friend that, given his circle’s own inadequacies, seemed to borrow lunch money and copy test answers from the more popular Liberal Party at every given opportunity, was forced to the backbench after the election, which had him sitting with what he described as “the spastics and the fatties”. It was a significant fall from grace for him, since the position of Deputy Prime Minister was, in official Parliamentary terms, the third coolest thing to be, behind Prime Minister, and regional athletics champion.

Since attaining the top office, the Labor government have enacted such rules as footsies in handball, electricity in tag — abolished by the Coalition in 2003 after Helen Coonan noted a natural phobia of all things electrical — and the dreaded “catch and kiss” in bullrush, which has allegedly made Wilson Tuckey so wildly uncomfortable that he has elected to misbehave in class just so he can stay behind each day and write out lines.

There has been no word as yet as to whether the parents of either retired Parliamentarian will allow them to bring their own balls, or whether they will be forced to go without by the decree of the Prime Minister, which is a feeling Peter Costello is reportedly “all too familiar with”.