THE NAKED CITY – CLIVE’S DYSTOPIAN VISION

THE NAKED CITY – CLIVE’S DYSTOPIAN VISION

Anybody watching commercial television in this country in recent months could not have missed the onslaught of advertisements for Clive Palmer’s freedom loving United Australia Party. In the 2019 Federal election Clive is reputed to have spent somewhere between $60-80 million on advertising, securing around 3.5% of the popular vote but failing to win a single seat. Now in 2022, it seems he is opening the purse strings even wider, with a massive spend on TV, radio, print media and those wretched canary yellow billboards.  

He might have blown another stack of loot importing a reputed 32,900,000 doses of the discredited drug hydroxychloroquine in the fight against COVID, but in general the pandemic has been a blessing for his political cause. Lockdowns and vaccination mandates have enraged a small section of the population and with maverick Craig Kelly at the helm, the rallying cry for ‘Freedom’ is seen as their big vote winner.

Not surprisingly many of the UAP television and Facebook adverts focus on the subject of ‘Freedom’, or more importantly the deprivation of such under a Liberal or Labor government. The latest round hits hard on the threat of biometric surveillance, suggesting that the government is already rolling out a system of mass facial recognition, known as ‘the capability’.

It’s a dystopian vision and one that we are already familiar with given the numerous books, TV shows and movies that predict a harrowing future, orchestrated by the deep state and dominated by mind control, artificial intelligence and the total eradication of personal freedoms. Transfer that fictional paranoia to a very well funded political campaign and you are bound to attract at least 3.5% of voters, even if they are all card carrying members of QAnon.

With millions at the disposal of the UAP, there could be the germ of a great dystopian movie here if Clive, Craig Kelly and their advertising agency put their heads together. Imagine a blockbuster all Australian Blade Runner released just before the next Federal election and free to download for anybody interested. There’s one possible title, ‘Freedom’, and it begins as does one of Clive’s TV spots with a hapless punter helping himself to an excess of toilet paper in a public loo. That’s what Clive’s latest commercial tells us is happening right now in China, with the offenders being photographed and punished accordingly.

Let’s call our movie hero Pete and after a really bad Chinese meal (yeah, give it to the Chinese Clive), he is forced to seek out the nearest public bog with a bad case of the runs. There’s goes the whole roll of bum fodder and as he peels off the very last sheet he is injected with a microchip that will control the rest of his life, biocharger or not.

When the Government announces another phony pandemic and lockdown he rushes to the local supermarket to stock up on Sorbent only to be knocked back at the checkout when his microchip triggers a ‘do not serve’ response. The cashier, who doubles as a secret police operative, makes an immediate arrest and Pete soon finds himself in a mass detention centre, imprisoned with thousands of other likeminded souls.

There’s some shameless appropriation from Squid Game and even a Mad Max style car chase – it is entertainment after all. Nevertheless the subliminal political message returns when both Clive and Craig Kelly make cameo appearances as transformer like liberators, smashing down the walls of the gulag in a souped up Rolla. Together with our hero Pete, now armed with a new and improved biocharger, they unite the thousands of detainees in a rousing rendition of Twisted Sister’s We’re Not Gonna Take It.

In scenes reminiscent of the US 2021 Capitol insurgency, they break loose from detention and storm the houses of Parliament in Canberra. The ‘deep state’ is routed, the building painted canary yellow and a giant billboard erected outside reading, yes you guessed it baby, ‘FREEDOM’.

The movie is a smash hit and Netflix even dub it for the Korean market. Twisted Sister launch legal action again but Clive throws them a $1 million and tells them to piss off. ‘Freedom’ is such a boost to Clive’s ego that he decides to desert politics and become a movie mogul instead. He soon rounds up the remaining dinosaurs from his old Palmersaurus theme park at Coolum and approaches Baz Luhrmann to make ‘Jurassic Park – The Musical’. Can it get any crazier?

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