I had to read the paper standing up last week.
Because it’s better to shadow box in a position that doesn’t knock the Rice Bubbles and orange juice.
I was having a ball, mustering testosterone like a 16-year-old.
Mohammad Ali vs Joe Frazier; Jeff Horn vs Manny Pacquiao; me vs the club treasurer; Wanda vs the old so-and-so who does nothing but complain about how the world’s had it in for her the last 30 years.
This was Logan standing up for itself after the Gold Coast tried to pull a swifty on us.
It was our mayor coming out swinging after the beach boys pulled a fast one; a cheap shot; a pulling of the rug; treating us like we’re fools who came down in the latest storm.
And what better way to wake up to the local rag than to be hyped up by a good old fashioned rumble – Raven in the blue corner, and the glitter strip bloke in the blue corner.
We’re lovers, not fighters. But when push comes to shove, we won’t back down. Because we’ve got each other’s backs. That’s who we are.
And we don’t hate the Gold Coast. We use it when it suits us. We borrow their beaches, add class to their shopping malls, and have fun in their parks.
It’s the under-culture we scoff at, the cashed up bogans who somehow feel they can look down on their land-locked neighbours from the deck of their inland mansions no closer to the beach than we are.
And there he was, the Gold Coast CEO supporting a report that takes aim at our guys for not laying information on a silver platter for him to digest over a blue label whisky and a lobster lunch.
You know, where he’d be surrounded by people with over-sized lips and balloon-sized butt cheeks protruding from either side of a string.
You know, boasting about new apartments built along a stretch of coast with more tattoo parlours than a bikie conference.
You see, my breakfast-time excitement was fuelled by an old stunt.
When you know you’re in trouble in politics, you commission an “independent” report that supports your view. It’s the “nothing to see here” approach.
And that’s what the Gold Coast’s CEO had done.
There was always going to be a blame game over the millions of litres of poop that made its way into the Albert and Logan rivers earlier this year.
Someone would have to cop it on the chin. Why had it taken so long to fix? Why had nobody noticed the prawns were gagging on human waste?
According to the report, it was because Logan wasn’t sending information about water quality to the Gold Coast.
Problem is, says our mayor, the Gold Coast was actually paying to have access to the information they say wasn’t being sent to them. Couldn’t see the woods for the trees.
If you’re paying for information, surely someone’s looking at it. Or not. Doesn’t matter.
What matters is that a leaky sewer pipe at the Goldie’s end of the river gate-crashed our party and ruined all the good work we’d done to improve our water quality.
We’ve a right to be livid. Here they were, the Gold Coast council paying for information that’s meant to be protecting their own.
But in the process of neglecting botox county, they’ve poured millions of litres of their digested buffet into our end of the tribune.
It may be true that Logan pen pushers too had a responsibility to glance occasionally at the computer to keep their southern counterparts in check.
But this isn’t about that. It’s about a clumsy public relations tactic that went horribly wrong for the orange tan brigade who thought they could pull wool over everyone’s eyes.
And they’ve been called out.
That’s exactly what we want from our elected officials. To stand up for their people, to call it how they see it, and to be alert to old-fashioned jostling from those who think they’re better, richer and more astute than we are.
Touche, Gold Coast. One to the good guys. And it’s got me pumped.
Hey Wanda, where’s the Dencorub? I was throwing punches and I think I’ve done an elbow.
