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<\/p>\nFrom Port Havannah, Vanuatu:\u00a0What have you missed?\u00a0If you\u2019ve had a gutful of trending politics like me, probably all of it. Every day brings another story about how the Albanese government is driving the cost of living through the roof. Labor has become the proverbial \u2018passion fingers\u2019.<\/p>\n
Exhausted by press releases and nauseated watching Labor\u2019s pitiful social media campaign (designed to bombard taxpayers with so much Budget propaganda that they eventually fall in love it), we went off to Port Havannah in Vanuatu for a week. It is the first time I have had an actual holiday in nearly 40 years of adult life. I turned my phone off and drank Pi\u00f1a Coladas like they were going out of fashion (if that\u2019s possible).<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no point saving money while Labor is in power. I figured they\u2019ll take it off me somehow. So off we went.<\/p>\n
The trouble is, we ran straight into a microcosm of Labor\u2019s bullshit in Vanuatu.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a stunning place and we\u2019ll definitely go back, but even paradise has its quirks.<\/p>\n
The non-political one first. Did you know that the last time cannibalism, in its traditional form, was carried out there was in 1969? Within living memory.<\/p>\n
I wonder, if one can have generational trauma for decades, how long does it take to rid oneself of the macabre taste of one\u2019s own species?<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s not half of it. Vanuatu has a Ministry of Climate Change. Photos or it didn\u2019t happen, you say? Here then:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Just like the Australian Labor government, it\u2019s a complete farce.<\/p>\n
[Editor\u2019s Note: Yes. They were in the news all week following the UN adoption of the ICJ ruling for a case brought by Vanuatu. As our Canberra Vanuatu correspondent, where is the interview? All you filed with me were photos of yourself in an infinity pool. Headless. I will be publishing this in the article as punishment.]<\/p>\n
More than 80 per cent of Vanuatu\u2019s electricity is created by diesel generators, yet they don\u2019t produce their own fuel. They\u2019re a struggling developing nation playing games, in my view, to prop up their national finances.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Australia is an advanced economy playing the same games \u2013 only we\u2019re getting fleeced to fund things that will ultimately ruin us.<\/p>\n
The parallels hit me straight away in the bus-driver rants.<\/p>\n
At Sydney Airport, our bus-driver waxed lyrical about how \u2018the Chinese own everything\u2019. The one in Vanuatu hit me with the same rant, only in a Bislama twist. (Bislama is the national language, a pidgin-creole.)<\/p>\n
Funny thing is, I didn\u2019t see any real evidence of this beyond a few Chinese traders and restaurateurs with excellent merchandise and kai kai.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Albanese\u2019s steering of the ship of state lately reminded me of our coxswain, Harry, who tried to piss in our pockets with one hand while pinching our trolled kai kai with the other. We caught a couple of bonito for sashimi, then a fish that looked like a red snapper. Harry swore he\u2019d eaten it before and it was good \u2013 until he wasn\u2019t so sure. When we handed our catch to the chef, he suggested we keep only the bonito. Turns out we\u2019d caught a local delicacy: the poulet fish. Smells like fish, tastes like chicken. In Tusker beer batter it still haunts me \u2013 nothing that good will ever come again.<\/p>\n
So, in Vanuatu we navigated Harry being gammon.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Playing tricks on each other is their version of taking the piss like Australians used to do. And while nobody likes to be duped out of some good kai kai, the earthquake we experienced at the airport just before we flew out brought the reality home. Nobody begrudges Vanuatu for doing what it has to do to help its people survive.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s the problem. As a conservative newsletter pointed out today, when you get to the point of such a surplus that you have no real problems, the problem-solving instinct kicks in and you start making up problems to solve.<\/p>\n
Idiocy hit the roof last week\u2026<\/p>\n
In Senate Estimates, the Sex Discrimination Commissioner explained to Michaelia Cash that transwomen, aka biological men, may be discriminated against for being able to become potentially pregnant. (I have since suffered through listening to Labor luvvies trying to explain the situation to a bewildered friend.)<\/p>\n
If Australian law is willing to lose touch with biological reality (or reality in general), I might consider taking out the sole parent pension for the theoretical possibility of a potential child.<\/p>\n
The end result of this nonsense news week is One Nation clambering to the top of the pops! Labor\u2019s let-them-eat-sh*t budget has resulted in\u00a0no one being happy. It is a discontent that unites the social, economic, and philosophical classes of Australia.<\/p>\n
But that doesn\u2019t mean One Nation is in the clear. The freshly minted Member for Farrer will be flying three national flags instead of one.<\/p>\n
Which reminds me \u2013 every other car in Vanuatu flies a large flag. Turns out they\u2019re not national flags at all, they\u2019re the flags of their favourite World Cup soccer teams. Brazil was clearly number one.<\/p>\n
I hope you had a break from last week\u2019s drudgery: our heritage being sold up the wazoo, gender confusion in workplaces, and the worst budget ever. Even with Angus Taylor and Tony Abbott back at their respective helms, the Coalition is still slipping backwards (along with Labor). One Nation is on the rise, and even Joe Hockey says it\u2019s because the majors have lost the plot.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/20260528_1601501.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Give me Harry and his joshin\u2019 about our fish any day. I hope you had a break from the rot, cause it\u2019s only going to get worse. Give me an infinity pool overlooking a late-autumn tropical wonderland while reading Jack London\u2019s South Sea novels any day.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll even put up with Harry\u2019s gammon fish identification skills.<\/p>\n
Being back in the cold with the reality that my latter years look bleak under Labor is enough to make me sell up and move to Vanuatu. Did I tell you there\u2019s no income tax there?<\/p>\n
Dr Michael de Percy\u00a0@FlaneurPolitiq<\/a> is the Spectator Australia\u2019s Canberra Press Gallery Correspondent.\u00a0If you would like to support his\u00a0writing,\u00a0or read more\u00a0of\u00a0Michael,\u00a0please visit his website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Port Havannah, Vanuatu:\u00a0What have you missed?\u00a0If you\u2019ve had a gutful of trending politics like me, probably all…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":708122,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,9616,44],"class_list":["post-708121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-flat-white","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/708122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}