There’s a strange old bird on scorched southern ground,
called Neoliberalism – a native by name,
forged in backrooms and woken by profit’s strange call,
its feathers stitched from bargains and slogans,
eyes glinting cold as a miner’s gold.
On the left, the ALP wing flashes bright,
on the right, L-NP cuts through the sun –
different colours, same strong bone humming:
each beat fans a wind still battered and mean
as the outback’s thirsty wind.
From above, the Neoliberalism bird circles, swoops,
feasting on rivers privatised, public trusts sold off –
from its set of glittering tail-feathers
stream the droppings – another fee, another wage lost,
dampening the houses clinging to the edge of tomorrow.
It shits and pisses from high in the sky,
rain of contracts, storms of forms;
pensioners squint at shrinking shadows,
youth measure hope in gigabytes and zero hours,
and families cough under the golden excrement.
Below, billionaires stand in tailored suits,
their hands slick with glee and profit;
they stroke the neck, feed the bird seeds of exemption,
jewelled fingers tossing coins to the sunburnt ground –
gleaming gold on their palms, in their eyes.
No matter which wing guides the drift,
the cry is always the same – market, efficiency, freedom –
heard and not heard over the screeching,
while the Neoliberalism bird perches,
and the people, looking skywards, brace
for the next shower of policy, the next dark rain.
