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satire

1 Mar 2012

What Next For Our Man Of Mystery?

To America he might be just another protected source, but to us, Mark Arbib is the man who made factionalism fun again. Ben Pobjie says goodbye to the senator who gave more than we knew

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

The above lines, from the poem "Four Weddings and a Funeral Blues", by Anthony Albanese, sum up so eloquently what the country is feeling this week with the departure from public life of the man we had come to see as our protector, perhaps even our father.

It was with a heavy heart that we bade farewell to Senator Mark Arbib, knowing we would not see his like again. All we can do now is ask ourselves, "Whither Australia?" Where do we go from here, now we are no longer being watched over by Arbib’s eagle eye and tortoise forehead?

It’s difficult for me, without powerful artificial stimulants, to describe just how much Mark Arbib brought to the table in Australian politics, so I’ll let his Wikipedia page do the talking: according to it, Mark "worked part time at a Sizzler restaurant in Bondi Junction". Now doesn’t that just sum the man up in a nutshell? Let’s hope not, because this column is not finished yet.

My fervent hope is that in the rapid-fire, scattergun, squeeze-tube hurly-burly of political life, the Australian people don’t forget everything Mark Arbib did for them. I hope they remember, when they look back at the years 2008-2012 — generally agreed by experts to be the best years in Australian history — that all the wonder and magic of this modern era is a result of the tireless hard work and shifty nose-touching of the Boy From Chippendale.

So much of what we take for granted in politics is built on the architecture of the Arbib Doctrine. For example, before Arbib came along, everyone assumed that prime ministers got to face more than one election. I can barely even remember those dull days, they were so long ago, but it is certain it was a grey, flat time in our lives. "Oh, there goes another election," we’d say to each other. "Guess we’ll have the same PM for three whole years now — YAWN".

Contrast that with the excitement of the AA (Anno Arbib, or In The Year Of Our Mark) era, where every day is an adventure, and God knows who will be prime minister tomorrow. Will it be Gillard? Will it be Rudd? Will it be Abbott? Will it be Andrew Wilkie, bursting into the Great Hall with dynamite strapped to his chest and demanding to move in to the Lodge or the local football team gets it? You just don’t know — the entire Australian populace is like Drew Barrymore in 50 First Dates, waking up each morning with no idea where we are or what has happened or if the person in our bed and/or prime minister is going to kill us all. It’s delightful. And Mark Arbib did that. Also, before Arbib factions weren’t allowed to be armed.

If it weren’t for Mark Arbib, Julia Gillard would not even be prime minister, or at least, not with her current approval ratings. Can you even imagine such a strange parallel universe? We’d still be stuck back in the days of glass ceilings and old paradigms and neo-Hansonite obscurantism and all the things that made us sad before Arbib let the sun shine in.

Arbib made factionalism fun again, and for that we owe him a massive debt of gratitude. Without factions, Australia just doesn’t work. Kevin Rudd may have wanted to smash the factions, but if we didn’t have factions, who would do the hard yards in caucus? Who would crunch the numbers? Who would make the threats? Who would select the wildly unqualified ministerial candidates? Who would stab Kevin Rudd in the back? Now there’s a question I’d like to see Kevin Rudd try to answer — in English. If he can, am I right?

So we are agreed that Mark Arbib, through his hard-nosed factional wheeler-dealing, his passion for the cause of the working man, and his Grim Reaperish sex appeal, is everything we want in a politician and more.

So the question remains: why quit?

Why, at the peak of his powers, when he was poised to go down in history as the greatest Assistant Treasurer this country has ever known, and probably would have got a free ticket to the Olympics, did he choose to pull the pin on his career? It’s as if Jesus decided to nail himself to the cross, which raises logistical problems for a start — how did he hammer the second nail in? That’s just one of the worrying theological conundrums thrust upon us by Arbib’s shock move.

Of course he claimed to be quitting to spend more time with his family, but this doesn’t really wash. Firstly, politicians always say they’re quitting to spend more time with their families when actually someone’s just got hold of a photo of them in a pig mask being whipped by Alice in Wonderland. Secondly, nobody ever wants to spend more time with their family, because spending time with your family is horrible. And thirdly … WE are his family. Aren’t we? Didn’t you lead us to believe you’d always be there for us, your children, Papa Arbib?

No, there must be some other explanation. Perhaps Gillard, the iron fist in the velvet glove with the fingers cut out, put the hard word on him. Perhaps Rudd took his revenge and ordered him out of the Senate at knifepoint. Perhaps he decided he could no longer handle the pressures of the Sports Ministry whatever they might be. Or maybe it was as simple as somebody speaking the trigger word which let him know it was time to return to Washington to receive his next assignment. It’s just impossible to tell.

But I prefer to think that he simply realised he was needed elsewhere. One cannot hold on to an angel — they inevitably depart to where they are most needed. Who knows what democratic institution he will now move on to strengthen, what nation he will save from ignominy and degradation, or what orphans he will rescue from fires. But you can be sure that wherever there is injustice, oppression, or a transparent pre-selection process, Mark Arbib will be there.

Farewell Mark — the Senate was never meant for one as beautiful as you.

Discuss this article

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ianjohnno
Posted Thursday, 01 March 12 at 3:41PM

I’m still trying to work out what MA and his careerist kind are doing in the Labor Party, rather than in the right wing of the Liberals.

wideEyedPupil
Posted Thursday, 01 March 12 at 4:15PM

I think it’s just a case of MA belatedly realising that future headlines like “Mark Arbib (protect) Steps Up for the Top Job” would be confusing to mouth-readers of the Herald Sun.

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roma
Posted Thursday, 01 March 12 at 4:35PM

Mark who? Thanks Ben.

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David Grayling
Posted Thursday, 01 March 12 at 4:50PM

I guess the American Ambassador will have to groom another person to spill the beans about the internal workings of the LABOR Party.

It won’t be hard of course. There are many LABOR politicians who would love to have little tete a tetes with the oily Ambassador who siphons the news back to his handlers in the U.S. with amazing diligence.

If only we had a LABOR Party which worked hard to make Australia an Independent Nation and a Force for Peace rather than a grovelling acolyte of Imperial America!

If only!

www.dangerouscreation.com

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jackal01
Posted Thursday, 01 March 12 at 7:56PM

David Grayling, well put.

Israel needs the Coalition of the willing and we must always be a bully boy for either England or America.
We know what the American Ambassador, Arbib and Bush’s Bum lickers did to Mark Latham, so that Australia would join America in Iraq.

When we started to dribble on about how well we treat our women, we were suddenly informend that the 2 biggest advocates of Freedom and Democracy America and Australia never had a female Prime Minister when a lot of Muslim Countries did. So the Joke was on us, well we now had a female, so its time to get rid of the Bimbo and get back to Preaching about how good we think we are.

Smoke and Mirrors, someone should have slapped Banjo Patterson, he taught us how to lie. The Man from Snowy River, Yeah, right. Haven’t met one yet.

Betty
Posted Thursday, 01 March 12 at 9:46PM

Betty
Mark Arbib should have been asked to resign at the first sign of his leading rebellion when his USA agency was known - he doesn’t represent USA/CIA in Parliament but the people of NSW and Australia.
At the time USA was against partition of Israel for Hebrew and Palestinian people - Kevin was for and Julia against parition. Ironically Obama is now for partition but where does CIA stand on this issue?? We know their agents go their own way irrespective of government!! The Jewish lobby would still be against partition I expect. Was this at the heart of the Gillard/Rudd leadership battle? I doubt if Rudd wants Arbib around but if Rudd resigned there would have to be an election for his seat and this could lose Labor the government, the Senate only requires an ALP replacement! Is this what Arbib means by resigning for the good of the party in Government??? Goodbye Arbib with pleasure - you should not have ever had divided loyalties in representing Australia - perhaps he should go back to working at Sizzlers.

Valli
Posted Saturday, 03 March 12 at 9:51AM

Personally, I think Bob Carr put the squeeze on him.

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denise
Posted Monday, 05 March 12 at 11:59AM

Mark Arbib, as the man behind the Gillard coup, has become the fall man.
And for that reason alone (not to spend more time with his family) he has had to resign, to do as he says, ‘heal the party’.
This makes sense really, as he is the perceived instigator of the group that removed KRudd from power, which began a series of events and bad feelings that have increasingly dominated the media and undermined ALP cohesion.
Now he’s gone, KRudd can also start to heal himself, as the painful memories of his fall from power fade with time.
And now the ALP, under the leadership of Julia Gillard will at last be able to get on with the job of governing the nation, without the underhandedness of a section of caucus brewing about an unfair dismissal claim, finally weeding out and removing from power those determined to be undermine her authority over this issue.
Personally, I think she has a remarkably talented front bench that has just increased its talent immensely with the appointment of Bob Carr.

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DrGideonPolya
Posted Tuesday, 06 March 12 at 11:00AM

I would love to believe that Mark Arbib is a SNAG who has turned down a brilliant Ministerial political career to spend more time with his daughter but media reports get in the way.

Mainstream media this week reported Mark Arbib as one of the “faceless men” responsible for the June Coup against the very popularly elected PM Kevin Rudd.

However Arbib has been revealed by WikiLeaks as a US “protected source” and outstanding expatriate Australian journalist John Pilger has written “Australian intelligence agencies are, in effect, branches of the main office in Washington. The Australian military has played a regular role as US mercenary. When prime minister Gough Whitlam tried to change this in 1975 and secure Australia’s partial independence, he was dismissed by a governor-general using archaic “reserve powers” who was revealed to have intelligence connections. WikiLeaks has given Australians a rare glimpse of how their country is run. In 2010, leaked US cables disclosed that key government figures in the Labor Party coup that brought Julia Gillard to power were “protected” sources of the US embassy: what the CIA calls “assets”. Kevin Rudd, the prime minister she ousted, had displeased Washington by being disobedient, even suggesting that Australian troops withdraw from Afghanistan” (see “John Pilger: Threat to Assange is a threat to us all”, Green Left Weekly, 5 February 2012: http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/49948 ).

Further, the 2010 Coup in addition to being foreign mining company-, and US- backed was also pro-Zionist–backed and pro-Zionist-led (see Gideon Polya,”50 ways racist Zionists (RZs) and Israeli state terrorism (IST) threaten Australia and YOUR country too”: http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article19618 , this having been sent to the AFP, media and Australian MPs; Gideon Polya, “Mainstream media lying hides corporate, US and Zionist subversion of Australian democracy”: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya110212.htm ; Antony Loewenstein, “Does the Zionist Lobby have blood on its hands in Australia?”: http://antonyloewenstein.com/2010/07/02/does-the-zionist-lobby-have-bloo… ; and Francis Enden, “Treating Australia with contempt”, Countercurrents, 4 December 2010: http://www.countercurrents.org/enden041210.htm ).

Mark Arbib is part of the pro-Zionist push of the Labor Party and has been to Apartheid Israel. The Jewish News reported: “A delegation of Australian and British politicians, diplomats and business leaders last week held talks with Israel’s top brass as part of the Australia Israel Leadership Forum (AILF) in Jerusalem. The group met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Palestinian counterpart Salam Fayyad, as well as former British and Israeli heads of state Tony Blair and Ehud Olmert. Founded by businessman and philanthropist Albert Dadon [Ms Julia Gillard’s lover’s former employer: http://www.countercurrents.org/enden041210.htm ] in 2009, the inclusion of a UK contingent at the 2012 AILF marked the first trilateral meeting of Australian, Israeli and British lawmakers. The Australian delegation included federal Minister for Sport and Small Business Mark Arbib, and MPs Josh Frydenberg and Michael Danby. “The trip provided an amazing insight into Israel’s domestic politics and the changes taking place in the Middle East since the Arab Spring,” Arbib told The AJN” (see Australian Jewish News, 24 January 2012: http://www.jewishnews.net.au/bibi-blair-headline-at-leadership-forum/243… ).

For a list of Australian politicians and journalists who have been on sponsored trips to Apartheid Israel see “I’ve been to Israel too”, Middle East Reality Check”: http://middleeastrealitycheck.blogspot.com.au/2009/03/ive-been-to-israel… ). - it includes most of the Coup plotters.

Outstanding anti-racist Jewish Australian writer Antony Loewenstein has concluded : “It is reasonable then to assume from what Sheridan [The Australian] has written that, to one degree or another, Australia’s Israel lobby was a factor in, or even perhaps a player in, Rudd’s removal from the prime ministership. If so, this is a truly extraordinary and deeply disturbing development in Australia’s political history and merits the closest possible examination. To quote the anonymous “Australian official” in an earlier Hartcher [Fairfax] piece: “It wouldn’t matter whether it was John Howard or Kevin Rudd or Tony Abbott in the prime minister’s chair… [the Israelis] know they’ve got us by the balls… partly because of the strength of the Israel lobby…” (see Antony Loewenstein, “Does the Zionist Lobby have blood on its hands in Australia?”: http://antonyloewenstein.com/2010/07/02/does-the-zionist-lobby-have-bloo… ).

Peace is the only way but Silence kills and Silence is complicity.

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David Grayling
Posted Tuesday, 06 March 12 at 11:30AM

An interesting comment, Gideon! It suggests that Julia has much more than blood on her hands and Kevin’s downfall was brought about in part by the U.S. and Israel.

Most Australians are unaware and uncaring about the manipulation of our Government and its politicians by the Predators and Parasites who are running our world.

When the nukes fall on Iran, perhaps some of them will wake up!

grumpyoldman2
Posted Thursday, 08 March 12 at 8:46AM

grumpyoldman2

Ben, you say it all in your penultimate paragraph. There was another reason.

Arbib took more than he gave, and the real powerbrokers told him to pack up and piss off, just as they did to Carr years ago. Corruption is always hard to prove unless done in front of witnesses. ALP does not give points if you get caught, just ‘plausible deniability’ in USspeak. They’ve still got Carr’s file so we’ll see if he can hold on to this sinecure this time round. Someone may leak it and off he’ll have to go again.